Wakefern’s ‘We Are Here’ campaign redefines community connection in retail
Wakefern Food Corp. reimagined retail marketing with an emotionally charged, hyper-local campaign powered by Sprinklr. The campaign united hundreds of stores and millions of customers through authentic storytelling — and won Sprinklr's 2025 CXUnifier “Social Media Campaign of the Year” award.
Challenge
Wakefern Food Corp., the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the U.S., wanted to reinforce its identity as a family-owned, community-rooted brand. With hundreds of independently operated supermarkets under multiple banners, the challenge was to create a unified message that resonated emotionally while driving engagement at the hyper-local level.
Wakefern looked to create a social media campaign that would strengthen brand loyalty and trust, humanize the brand through authentic storytelling and engage customers across diverse communities.
Solution
In April 2025, Wakefern launched “We Are Here,” the ShopRite brand’s most emotionally resonant campaign to date. The initiative spanned broadcast, print and digital channels, but its social extension became the heartbeat of the campaign. It brought the message to life at the community level, turning a brand promise into a personal experience for millions of customers.
Humanizing the brand through storytelling
At the heart of “We Are Here” was a simple but powerful idea: show the faces behind the ShopRite stores. Wakefern created a rich tapestry of photo essays, short-form videos and behind-the-scenes imagery featuring real ShopRite families and store owners. These stories weren’t scripted ads; instead, they were authentic narratives of multigenerational legacies and new entrepreneurs stepping into the ShopRite family. By elevating these voices, Wakefern transformed its brand from a grocery chain into a neighbor, a friend and a trusted part of the community.
Hyper-local engagement at scale
To make this vision real, Wakefern turned to Sprinklr as the engine for social media activation. Using Sprinklr’s unified platform, the team managed hundreds of individual store Facebook pages, ensuring every post felt local and personal. Sprinklr enabled seamless publishing, real-time engagement, and proactive two-way conversations with customers, allowing Wakefern to respond quickly, celebrate community stories and amplify customer voices. This hyper-local approach created pride and belonging across diverse neighborhoods.
Extending the experience beyond social
To deepen engagement, Wakefern introduced an omnichannel sweepstakes, We Celebrate You Here, inviting customers to share in the celebration. The campaign evolved to spotlight fresh offerings — meat, seafood, baked goods — and partnerships with local farmers, reinforcing the family-owned ethos at every touchpoint. By weaving together emotional storytelling, interactive engagement and localized content, Wakefern did more than simply tell its story: it lived it, creating a campaign that resonated far beyond the aisles.
Outcome
The “We Are Here” campaign delivered measurable impact across every channel. By blending emotional storytelling with hyper-local engagement, Wakefern achieved extraordinary reach and resonance. Powered by Sprinklr’s social media platform, the campaign generated more than 136 million impressions at launch and continued to scale with subsequent phases, surpassing 190 million paid impressions across TV, radio, streaming, social, and digital. On social alone, organic efforts drove 6.4 million impressions, 3.16 million reach, and over 52,000 engagements, proving the power of authentic, community-driven content.
The omnichannel sweepstakes amplified participation even further, attracting 60,000 entries and shattering benchmarks by more than 2,300%. These results validated the strategy: when a brand moves beyond transactional messaging and leans into human connection, loyalty deepens, engagement soars, and the brand becomes part of the community it serves.
