Grill King: the interactive campaign that fired up Tesco’s barbecue season

Business context

In 2015, Tesco in Poland was looking for a new way to differentiate its barbecue product range at the peak of the season. The goal was to combine promotion with an engaging experience that would go beyond standard leaflets and banners, capture customers’ attention, and translate into interest in the product range.

Tesco turned to Leaware to design a mobile solution that would become the centrepiece of the campaign. The objective was to create a simple, fun application for iOS and Android that would invite users to actively participate in the promotion and strengthen the brand’s image during the barbecue season.

Challenge

The retail market was highly competitive, and consumers were bombarded with numerous promotions. The challenge, therefore, was to offer a format that would engage from the very first interaction, be intuitive for a broad audience, and be clearly associated with Tesco’s barbecue offering.

The time and budget constraints typical of seasonal campaigns were also critical. The application had to run smoothly across a wide range of devices, comply with brand guidelines, and ensure secure use of the phone’s camera, while requiring as few user steps as possible.

Solution

Leaware delivered the Grill King application using Xamarin, enabling parallel deployment on iOS and Android from a single codebase and accelerating time-to-market. The solution was designed to engage users from the very first launch without requiring complex setup.

At the heart of the experience was taking a photo and transforming it into the distinctive Grill Master shape associated with the campaign creative. This made the interaction simple, entertaining, and directly reinforced the message promoting Tesco’s barbecue range.

The team ensured a brand-consistent interface, smooth performance on popular device models, and efficient delivery of the application within the campaign timeframe. The result was a tool that combined light entertainment with effective delivery of promotional objectives.