How Whole Foods used Map Ads to increase footfall

The Objective:

Having previously worked with Whole Foods Market when Forest was just a wee lil baby (and still called HumanForest), they’ve always recognised the synergies  in our values and trusted Forest Ad’s capabilities. So, we were delighted to welcome them back onboard in September 2023 with a two month campaign, with the mission of driving footfall to their five stores across London.

Sharing the same forest green colour palette, audience and core ethos, ensures that each time we work with Whole Foods Market it makes sense from the get go. Also, remember that trust we mentioned above? Well this time round, Whole Foods Market took the plunge to become our first ever partner to trial our Map Ads feature.

Since we first worked with Whole Foods Market in November 2022, Forest’s user base had significantly grown, so for us we were keen to deliver a campaign performance which reflected the growth we had experienced. Whole Foods Market wanted to capitalise on our user growth too, as it meant there was a fresh audience for their assets, allowing them to engage with both existing and new Whole Food Market customers who live and work in London.

The Campaign:

Unsurprisingly, utilising Forest’s Map Ads was at the centre of Whole Food Market’s second campaign, with their five locations all being highlighted in the app map. Being our inaugural Map Ads partner meant they had exclusivity throughout the map, allowing their forest green map pins to enjoy uninterrupted visibility whilst users explored Forest’s map during every single app session.

Unsurprisingly, a big hurdle to overcome with Whole Foods Market’s campaign was educating users about Map Ads, and how to interact with them, as this was integral to the success of the partnership. Utilising push notifications and in-app pop-ups, we introduced Map Ads to our users, and the value they offered. A key attribute to the feature is the ability to integrate with map platforms, such as Google Maps, making it much easier for riders to direct themselves to Whole Food Market’s stores.

With Map Ads clearly signposting Whole Foods Market locations, Journey Ads were then used to incentivise user’s to take the next step of actually heading to their nearest store. Across the two month partnership, Whole Foods Market tested two different asset designs, to mitigate any potential ad fatigue. Their first round of assets highlighted their stores as the hottest one-stop shop for delicious lunches, and therefore tailored more towards one portion of their target market, of London-based workers. The updated assets were more focused on making Whole Foods Market your go to grocer, influencing more long-term consumer habits of those who live in London.

Both assets were colourful and eye-catching, featuring snapshots of their fresh fruit and veg produce, and took riders to a landing page with a unique barcode providing Forest users with an exclusive discount to be redeemed in store. This physical Call to Action, combined with the Map Ads, ensured a slick journey for riders, from the point of receiving the discount to knowing exactly where it could be redeemed.

The Impact:

We’re going to let the 32.8% average CTR on Map Ads stat do the talking here…

For a brand new feature, we were quite frankly chuffed to be able to report such results to Whole Foods Market. The combination of Journey Ads featuring an in-store discount and Map Ads highlighting the actual locations of the Whole Foods Market stores, provided users with the complete journey to execute a transaction, reflected in the high CTR of the Map Ads - with some store locations receiving over 50% CTR!

We were super pleased to be able to provide Whole Foods Market with these results, especially given their support of Forest since the early days, so we look forward to hopefully working with them again in the near future.