Supermarket Mobile: How Tesco Mobile grew to a billion pound business by being helpful in a category that wasn’t.

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2024

By 2020, amidst challenging market conditions, Tesco Mobile faced a lack of differentiation and struggled to attract new customers. The solution? The brand doubled down on Tesco helpfulness, reframing a perceived weakness – its supermarket connection – into a proud badge that positioned the brand as the most helpful in the category. By doing so, Tesco Mobile significantly outperformed the market, adding 370,000 customers, growing revenue by +17%, and delivering a ROMI of £2.25:1.

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Client Statement

Rachel Swift, Chief Marketing Officer, Tesco Mobile

As we reflect on the success of Supermarket Mobile, pulling us closer to the Tesco masterbrand was absolutely vital in helping us cut through and achieve growth in a highly competitive and increasingly commoditised telco market.

We got there by celebrating our Tesco-ness and bringing helpfulness to a category that was missing it, and ensuring that all of our brand and communications were both proudly helpful in telco and proudly Tesco. We’ve learned that company values and beliefs can be at the heart of everything a brand says and does. In our case our Tesco helpfulness differentiated us in a highly competitive market. Rather than being something we needed to shy away from, embracing it galvanised the entire business, and created work that brilliantly cut through with our audience and led to growth. We also learned that committing to an idea for the long term works. Whilst the product messaging may change, consistently bringing Supermarket Mobile to life across a number of years and number of campaigns helped the idea wear-in, and our performance to grow year after year.