ALDI said 'shop ALDI first', not 'switch' — and won the cost-of-living basket.

Discount supermarkets want shoppers who buy their basket at the discount store, but Australians are attached to a main supermarket and do not switch for a price promise. The obvious pitch, 'switch and save', is a hard, loyalty-laden ask.

ALDI and BMF reframed the role rather than the brand: 'Shop ALDI First'. Do your ALDI staples run first, then finish the shop wherever you usually go — what the category branded as supermarket polygamy.

The insight was to treat the smaller range not as a weakness but as permission: a first, cheap trip is easy precisely because it is not asking you to give up your normal store. It uses the everyday cost-of-living pressure to make a big saving feel effortless.

Judges called it a compelling lesson in standing out from competitors, praising how ALDI repositioned a perceived weakness into a strength and turned known truths into trustworthy positioning, with ROI that exceeded its KPIs.