You also… deserve to be surprised

In just five years, Lidl Romania expanded with more than 200 stores and four logistical centers. Since we are constantly developing, we needed to build customer loyalty and boost the engagement level among our main clients – Lidl employees. The transformation of brand communication by shifting focus towards the emotional aspect (You deserve to be surprised!) was an opportunity to change the tone-of-voice internally, and to launch an utterly unexpected campaign.

In order to better understand the needs of our employees, we conducted internal surveys – Organizational culture survey & Internal communication survey. Taking into account the insights we obtained, we wanted to develop a campaign that was relevant for our colleagues, bringing the external claim (“You Deserve To Be Surprised!”) within the company: “You, Too… Deserve To Be Surprised!”

Lidl employees were surprised in the most unexpected moments and all the action was filmed. The surprise takes place during working hours: the employee was “kidnapped” and offered an unforgettable experience – with friends, colleagues, and family, or just by her/himself. A Lidl employee with a passion for football was surprised at the cash register by her idol, goalkeeper Helmuth Duckadam, who presented her with sports gear and even played a football game with her on the field built in front of the store. Another employee was “kidnapped” during a teambuilding trip: we fulfilled his dream to fly a plane, offering him a flight assisted by an instructor. Furthermore, for our five-year company anniversary, the employee with the most creative birthday wish got rewarded with a vacation to the Dominican Republic.

The cases were prepared in the most minute details, months in advance, requiring identification, case verification, and research. Based on these, we created a script for the surprise. The videos turned out so great, that we decided to also include them in the external employer branding campaign.

200 employees were directly involved in the 10 surprises arranged so far – either as “accomplices” or as teammates. 87 % of the employees saw the surprise clips on the intranet. On Youtube, the videos got 76231 views and on FB 2054528 people were reached. In a survey conducted at the end of the campaign, employees placed the surprises among the “top 5 things I love working at Lidl for”. The overall company likeability level increased by 12% year-on-year.