METRO

The German company METRO was founded in 1964 and has evolved over the decades into a global brand operating on three continents and in 24 countries, serving more than 16 million customers – mostly independent business owners. In 2020 METRO successfully completed its back-to-the-roots transformation from a holding company incorporating a variety of consumer retail businesses into a pure professional wholesaler. With the help of a broad-based, global brand campaign, METRO is now to be positioned as a wholesale brand that, beyond pure wholesale, also offers numerous free digital services to support retailers, especially the core target group of restaurant owners and small food retailers, and accompany them on their path to entrepreneurial success. The brand claim “Your success is our business” is now complemented by the statement “We redefine what wholesale can do for you” as the campaign message. The entire campaign is an invitation to customers to discover the company’s additional range of services. Cross-media images and videos were released, each focusing on a service, setting the core message in capital letters in the brand colour yellow and framed by the addition “We … for you”. A short section of text is followed by the prompt “Discover …”, which contains additional information about the service. The visual language uses a cinematic look and feel to situationally capture the business reality of customers in their everyday work and provide an authentic and emotional stage. The campaign’s unifying design element to consistently structure all communication media is a mostly yellow, sometimes white triangle as a recurring element with a 16-degree slant, the metaphorical “angle of business success” that stands for shared growth. This angle is derived from the METRO brand logo, a blue rectangle with the brand name in yellow, by drawing a diagonal line from the bottom left to the top right corner. The logo is placed on the top line of the triangle so that it divides the rectangle and visually connects this element and the preceding content.