top of page

GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR & WRITER

REAL CANADIAN SUPERSTORE

TRULY SUPER

We hijacked an annoying vocal tic and turned it into a ✨totally super✨ grocery store campaign.

These days, the word 'super' is recklessly bandied about to describe everything from slightly stickier glue to slightly larger sizes.

Part grocery store, part Wal-Mart, Real Canadian Superstore is a chain in the bucolic Canadian prairie lands where everything is always the lowest price, guaranteed.

So we took a stand. Parodying “Morning in America,” we made “Morning in Canada,” encouraging society to return to the good old days when 'super' was reserved for things that were #trulysuper. Like Real Canadian Superstore.

“As with awesome and amazing, [super's] ubiquity has led to diminishing returns on its significance. What was once reserved for the best, the most awe-inspiring and the wondrous is now routinely deployed for the mundane, the banal and the taste of fro-yo.”

GREG LAMARCHE, "A CERTAIN WORD IS REALLY GETTING ON MY NERVES," THE NEW YORK TIMES , MARCH 12, 2016

But how did we get here? How did 'super' become the irritating vocal tic it is today?

We provided a brief timeline for the website.

To galvanize enthusiasm for the campaign among employees, we turned the employee handbook into a textbook on the history of the word 'super.'

(Click to open the PDF.)

Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 3.17.06 PM.png

As an Easter egg, we wrote an actual chapter of the romance novel from the :30 and made it available on the brand's website.

(Click to open the PDF.)

tender are the tongs.png

We wrote a manifesto for the website.

My favorite part is that we gave the brand name a signature.

Screen-Shot-2022-08-24-at-11.37.52-AM-1.png

Some other fun stuff: a 'super' swear jar for employees, a tattoo (so you never forget what the word actually means), and a 'X days without misusing the word 'super'' calendar for break rooms at stores.

instc 2025-01-28 113003.488.png

instc 2025-01-28 112553.911.png

instc 2025-01-28 112553.708.png

Agency: john st.
CD: Cher Champbell
AD: Lia MacLeod

bottom of page