Retail Partner Appreciation

Nailing a worldwide campaign requires a strategic and creative approach that will break through the inevitable cultural barriers and resonate with every audience.

As part of an ongoing brief to create and promote the use of centrally produced content across the company, a global retailer asked The Croc to come up with a universal brand agnostic campaign that would strike a chord with every market operating its digital trade engagement platform.


People want to be appreciated – and a simple ‘thank you’ can carry a lot of weight and create an emotional bond with retailers. We built on this universal, human truth with Retail Partner Appreciation Month, a month-long campaign that brings to life a series of thumb-stopping digital experiences designed to engage and entertain.

Taking the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ was integral to this strategy, with market teams furnished with a set of design templates that could be tailored locally.

A high-production video opened this digital campaign as the hero asset, shining the spotlight on genuine retailers going about their daily routine. Markets were able to run this as a global piece of content or include their own retail partners to evoke an even richer sense of community. Throughout the campaign, retailers were invited to take time out to enjoy games and interactive quizzes, or to participate in user-generated vox pops that focused on stores and customer relationships.


Retail Partner Appreciation Month closed with a celebration of retail excellence, offering markets a set of commercially focused awards which could be hosted online or presented in person for a more personalised, human touch.


Flexible deployment was central to the campaign strategy, with each market able to run the campaign in line with their own tactical requirements. Smashing all previous benchmarks for toolbox uptake the campaign has successfully shifted perceptions and ignited game-changing engagement levels across global markets.