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RIMI Bets on Emotional Storytelling to Reframe Supermarket Shopping
RIMI's 'Start your story' is a 2013 Lithuanian retail film campaign created by AD McCann Vilnius that repositions a weekly supermarket visit as the opening chapter of a personal narrative, moving the brand away from price-comparison mechanics toward emotionally resonant storytelling.
RIMI is one of the biggest supermarket chains in Lithuania, and by October 2013 the brand was operating within a fiercely contested grocery landscape. Rather than compete on shelf-price messaging — the dominant register of Lithuanian supermarket advertising at the time — AD McCann Vilnius developed a single film asset built around the idea that every visit to RIMI is a moment of possibility, a place where stories begin. The campaign carries the search-friendly simplicity of its title as both creative brief and consumer promise.
In Lithuania, the campaign landed at a juncture when the retail sector was consolidating rapidly. Per data cited by docslib.org, supermarkets represented 43.5% of grocery-retail sales in Lithuania in 2013, making the format the dominant channel in the market and intensifying the pressure on chains to differentiate beyond product range and price. RIMI's response was to invest in brand equity rather than promotional mechanics, commissioning a film that leads with human emotion rather than a weekly circular.
The campaign was produced by Some Films and directed by Nejc Pohar, with the film standing as the sole media asset associated with the release. Its October 2013 publication date places it in the pre-holiday window — a strategically significant slot when Lithuanian consumers were beginning to orient their shopping habits toward festive occasions, gifting, and family gatherings. The Clapboard Score for 'Start your story' is 60 out of 100, reflecting solid creative ambition and a clear strategic rationale that is nonetheless constrained by the absence of verifiable performance data and limited documented industry recognition.
RIMI entered the 2013 Lithuanian retail advertising cycle carrying the memory of a regulatory setback. Lithuania's Competition Council ruled that RIMI's 2008 comparative advertising, which directly contrasted RIMI prices with those of competitor Maxima LT, violated comparative-advertising requirements and issued a formal warning, according to reporting documented via madeinvilnius.lt. That ruling effectively closed the comparative-price route as a communications strategy, pushing the brand toward a differentiated positioning built on values rather than numbers.
Maxima LT, part of Maxima Group, held an estimated leading position in Lithuanian grocery retail during this period, according to Llufb Llu Lv, making it the primary competitive pressure RIMI faced in the domestic market. A second significant competitor, Norfa, operated an extensive discount-format network across Lithuania. Against these entrenched rivals, RIMI's decision to invest in emotional, experience-led supermarket branding represented a genuine strategic divergence rather than a tactical adjustment.
The broader Baltic context adds further dimension to the strategy. Rimi Baltic reported 2013 net sales of approximately €1.2 billion across 235 stores at year-end, according to Icagruppen Se, with the Lithuanian operation contributing to a regional footprint that held approximately 15% market share across the Baltic region, also per icagruppen.se. In Lithuania specifically, Rimi operated 46 stores in 2013, ranking fourth nationally, according to data cited by docslib.org. That fourth-place standing gave 'Start your story' a clear purpose: a brand without category leadership cannot win a price war, but it can win a perception war by owning an emotional territory its larger rivals have not claimed. McCann's strategic insight was that storytelling itself could become a form of retail differentiation in the Lithuanian market.
Nejc Pohar directed 'Start your story' for RIMI, with production handled by Some Films. The choice of a film-first execution — a single media asset rather than a multi-format campaign — signals a deliberate concentration of creative resource into one emotionally coherent piece rather than a dispersed media plan.
The campaign's creative approach, as documented in the Clapboard archive, situates the supermarket not as a transactional environment but as a threshold space — a place where the decision to cook a meal, host a gathering, or share food with someone becomes the inciting incident of a larger personal story. This framing is characteristic of a strand of European retail advertising that gained traction in the early 2010s, in which grocery brands moved away from product-feature communication toward lifestyle and values-based narratives. John Lewis in the United Kingdom had been developing its own annual emotional film tradition since 2007, and the broader shift toward narrative retail advertising was observable across Northern and Eastern European markets by 2013.
AD McCann Vilnius, the agency behind the campaign, brought a regional sensitivity to this global creative current. The Lithuanian market had been accustomed to functional, price-led supermarket advertising, which meant that a film built around quiet human moments carried a higher degree of novelty in this specific context than it might have in a more advertising-saturated Western European market. The production through Some Films suggests a modest but purposeful budget allocation, consistent with a fourth-ranked grocery chain investing in brand-building rather than volume-driving promotional spend. Production credits beyond the director's name are not publicly documented for this campaign.
No verified performance data for the 'Start your story' campaign is publicly available. No substantiated coverage has been located in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, and no verifiable trade-press reviews, journalist commentary, or awards documentation have been found. The analysis that follows is therefore structural rather than empirical.
The campaign's effectiveness case rests on three observable structural strengths. First, the timing was coherent: an October release in Lithuania positions an emotional, story-led film in the pre-holiday consideration window, when consumers are most receptive to brand narratives linked to family, food, and occasion. Second, the competitive positioning was sound: by abandoning the comparative-price territory that earned RIMI a regulatory warning in 2008, as documented via madeinvilnius.lt, the campaign moved the brand onto ground where Maxima LT and Norfa had not yet established strong emotional equity. Third, the single-asset film format concentrates creative impact rather than diluting it across formats, which is structurally appropriate for a brand-building objective in a market where RIMI ranked fourth nationally, per docslib.org.
The principal structural risk is reach. A single film asset, without documented media amplification across television, digital, or outdoor in Lithuania, limits the campaign's ability to shift brand perception at scale. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects this tension: strong creative intent and a defensible strategic rationale, moderated by the absence of documented results and limited evidence of sustained market impact.
'Start your story' is a 2013 Lithuanian retail film campaign created by AD McCann Vilnius for RIMI supermarket. It repositions a routine grocery visit as the beginning of a personal narrative. The campaign was directed by Nejc Pohar and produced by Some Films, and it was published in Lithuania in October 2013 as a single film asset.
Lithuania's Competition Council ruled that RIMI's 2008 comparative advertising against Maxima violated comparative-advertising requirements, according to madeinvilnius.lt. That ruling made price-comparison messaging a legal risk. By 2013, AD McCann Vilnius had reoriented the brand toward emotional storytelling as a safer and more differentiating long-term positioning strategy in the Lithuanian market.
Nejc Pohar directed 'Start your story' for RIMI. The film was produced by Some Films and created by AD McCann Vilnius. It stands as the sole media asset associated with the October 2013 campaign in Lithuania, reflecting a deliberate concentration of creative resources into one emotionally coherent piece rather than a multi-format rollout.
RIMI operated 46 stores in Lithuania in 2013 and ranked fourth nationally, according to docslib.org. Across the wider Baltic region, Rimi Baltic held approximately 15% market share and reported net sales of approximately €1.2 billion from 235 stores at year-end 2013, per icagruppen.se. In Lithuania, Maxima LT held the leading competitive position.
The Clapboard Score for 'Start your story' is 60 out of 100. The score reflects solid creative ambition and a coherent strategic rationale — particularly RIMI's pivot from price-led to narrative-led advertising in Lithuania — moderated by the absence of publicly verified performance data and limited documented industry recognition for the campaign.
Supermarkets represented 43.5% of grocery-retail sales in Lithuania in 2013, according to docslib.org, making them the dominant retail format. RIMI ranked fourth nationally, competing against leading player Maxima LT and discount operator Norfa. This competitive context made emotional brand differentiation a more viable strategy than price-based messaging for RIMI and AD McCann Vilnius.
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