Dive Brief:
- Lowe's Foods is seeing remarkable success following an unusual effort to rebrand its stores.
- Branding guru Martin Lindstrom convinced the retailer, which operates 99 stores in the Carolinas and Virginia, to create an in-store experience akin to a theme park. Lindstrom even hired writers from Walt Disney Co. to create storylines that would be the basis of the store's sections.
- Among the more memorable of the new experiences in Lowe's are the Chicken Dance, in which workers and customers dance whenever a chicken comes out of the rotisserie oven, and Sausageworks, where a crazy sausage professor oversees production.
Dive Insight:
It's easy to dismiss Lowe's Foods efforts as a simple stunt. But the numbers would suggest that the strategy has legs. The first store to go thought the rebranding saw a 7% rise in basket size and a 23% surge in transaction volume.
The rebranding has not been without controversy. Many employees apparently balked at the idea of being performers, rather than just workers. Lowe's lost 30% of its executive team during the rebranding process.