AB Vasilopoulos

The Challenge: AB Vasilopoulos, owned by the Delhaize group, is the largest super market chain in Greece. The company has been growing rapidly and expanding nationally. Although the brand has a lot of equity and holds high quality perceptions, the external as well as internal branding of the stores varied dramatically from store to store. External signage was often not visible, many different colors and types of signs, some handwritten, were used internally and externally. Specialty departments such as the bakery, ready foods, fishery etc. were not visible. With international competition such as Carrefour and Lidl, moving into Greece, AB Vasilopoulos had to revitalize its image and offer an easy and pleasurable shopping experience.
An additional problem was posed by the brand’s slogan “…even the bird’s milk”, with the opening of small size stores. Although smaller stores carried the same slogan, due to their size, these establishments, could not offer the product variety of the larger stores as the slogan promised. Furthermore, the AB Vasilopoulos company wanted to franchise many of the smaller sized stores to carefully selected partners. The franchised stores had to be differentiated from the self managed establishments.

The Solution: A comprehensive branding strategy waw developed in order to address all issues at hand. The AB corporate identity was carefully revitalized.
Comprehensive environmental branding was developed for all their departments. Corporate identity and environmental branding manuals were developed. The new stores are clearly branded internally and externally, using colors that represent the brand, differentiate it from the competition and create a pleasant shopping experience. Departments in each store are easy to find and shelf signage ensures easy product category identification, promotions etc. Both client and customers provide positive feedback for the new environments.

Gold Ermis Award 2006: Retail Identity/ Environmental Branding Category