For two weeks, Sport Chek replaced its trusty paper circulars with Facebook ads. "The results of this test," says Duncan Fulton of Sport Chek, "blew our minds. This case study looks at the secret behind the publication’s success.
Case study summary
• Tire circular posted to Canadians every week- only 17% actually read it
• Switched to Facebook ads in 2 week experiment
• Sport Chek saw a 12% lift in national in-store sales and a 23% lift of in-store sales of items specifically promoted on Facebook.
The challenge
For years, the paper circular was a reliable way for customers to learn about weekly store sales. And for no company was the circular more vital than Canadian Tire Corporation and its subsidiary, Sport Chek. The Canadian Tire circular — which goes to every house in Canada every Saturday morning — is the most-read piece of paper in all of Canada.
In recent years, though, the team at Canadian Tire began questioning the merits of its circular. “We learned that only 17% of people that received the circular actually read it,” says Duncan Fulton, Chief Marketing Officer at FGL Sports and SVP at Canadian Tire.
Looking for alternatives to its most trusted marketing tool, the team at Sport Chek decided to try something unprecedented in Canadian Tire’s 92-year history: start shifting investments from the circular into digital.
The solution
After 18 months of testing with digital platforms, Sport Chek’s paper circulars were pulled out of market for two weeks to experiment with digital advertising, mainly through Facebook.
The results
For a company that “lives and dies” on planning the circular, this was a high-stakes experiment. And it paid off. By advertising through Facebook over the two-week span, Sport Chek saw a 12% lift in national in-store sales and a 23% lift of in-store sales of items specifically promoted on Facebook.
