As people remain in the doldrums of lockdown, many of them aren’t in a particularly celebratory mood.

However, Danone Canada’s new shopper campaign for International Delight is playing up the party favors and is whooping it up at shelf, where the brand says it’s more important than ever to be impactful as it connects with category newcomers.

Shopper is a big part of Danone’s integrated “Live Life to the Flavourest” campaign, which repositions creamers as a fun and playful way to make a regular coffee a more exciting experience. So, in-store messaging is appropriately built around celebratory phrases like, “it’s like a party in your coffee,” and “don’t forget your party flavours,”

Shopper assets include bunkers, floor stickers and shelf danglers. Each of the in-store pieces is a celebration of all of its varieties, not just vanilla, so that a consumer “can live a fun coffee life,” according to Fiona O’Brien, director of marketing at Danone Canada.

Classically, International Delight has had a female target demo but now with indoor restrictions, more people are shopping the creamer category, including a younger subset of consumers that are more interested in flavour experimentation than a typical, more mature coffee “purist” that wouldn’t shop creamers.

“We are the number one creamer in the category, so we have a nice strong shelf set and a good retailer relationship on board with the journey,” O’Brien says.

Walking down an aisle now, thanks to the pandemic, is a different, more hurried shopper experience and O’Brien says it’s more important than ever to be impactful at shelf, and to stand out from the crowd that includes chief rival Nestle Coffee Mate, and help the consumer with decision making.

“We focus on bright impactful colours, both on pack but also in creative to bring home brand essence,” O’Brien says. Bright colours and iconography within the logo is how it differentiates, and there are tiny umbrellas, party favours, sunshine, to bring the personality of brand to life.

The International Delight brand has been around since the 80s, and was being run by Saputo before Danone Canada repatriated the brand into its portfolio.

It then began embedding itself in the Canadian consumer to find out what sparked joy, and positioning the creamer experience as one that enhanced coffee, rather than attracting an audience for whom coffee could only be enjoyed if its flavour was “replaced” – International Delight’s prior “take the bitter out” messaging.

According to O’Brien, International Delight’s approach to flyers has evolved along with the consumer. That means more efforts are being focused on digital and reaching the consumer at different touchpoints and ensuring the messaging is similar across platforms, with digital flyers a bigger part of the mix.

The shopper campaign runs until mid-March. “Live Life to the Flavourest” was created in collaboration with Momentum, Wavemaker, LPI Group, Carl Social Club and National PR.