Giant Food Weekly Ad
Role
Creative Director
Timeline
Ongoing / Weekly
Channel
Print & Digital
Business Impact
High customer engagement, campaign amplification,
brand consistency
As the Creative Director, overseeing the weekly ad for the largest grocer in the D.C Metro., I lead a cross-functional team of designers, copywriters, and production specialists to develop and deliver one of the most visible and impactful marketing tools for the Giant Food brand. The weekly ad not only showcases hundreds of offers and products each week—it serves as a strategic vehicle to reinforce the brand's value proposition, elevate seasonal messaging, and integrate larger marketing campaigns seamlessly across all customer touchpoints.
The weekly ad supports a broad range of marketing initiatives throughout the year. Beyond the tactical goal of promoting weekly deals, the ad plays a critical role in amplifying two things.
Each campaign requires us to adjust the creative tone, layout priorities, and callouts in the ad—while still staying true to our brand's core voice and aesthetic.
Major Food Holidays
Campaigns centered on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, where the ad shifts to highlight seasonal essentials, meal inspiration, and hosting solutions.
Brand Value Propositions
Ongoing initiatives like “Compare & Save” (price transparency), “Fresh Low Price” (affordable, quality produce and meat), and digital coupon programs aimed at driving loyalty and engagement.
Objectives
The success of the weekly ad, and by extension Giant Food, comes down to 3 main objectives for the ad. By guiding my team through these objectives and ensuring we achieved each objective week in and week out we ensured the success of the business and marketing goals.
Drive traffic to stores and online
The most important objective for the ad is to drive traffic. Whether that is to our Brick and Mortar stores or online shopping, the ad needs to bring people in. Understanding shopping behaviors and what motivates customers to actually look through the ad is key to creating layouts and creative that grabs attention and converts that viewer into a shopper.
Maintain “presence of mind” in customers
Research shows that if you are not front of mind in your customers you are less likely to get their business. The weekly ad is incredibly powerful for this as it is a passive interaction that happens every week through mailboxes. Achieving this objective has become more of a challenge newspapers consolidate and reduce their distribution. Increasing our reliance on digital presence and developing a more robust digital presence was the key for maintaining presence of mind in our customers.
Bridge gap between in-store and digital experiences
With traditional media waning due to the evershifting landscape that is News media the ad has taken on a more prominent role teaching and guiding our customers into the digital environment. While our digital presence grew and we increased our activity online we needed to convert those customers who aren’t already online into digitally active shoppers.
Creative Execution
My role includes translating complex business goals into clear, compelling visual narratives within the ad. Which requires that I employ the below tactics consistently for my success.
Collaborative Briefing
I work closely with marketing strategists and merchandising leads to align on goals for each week’s ad—whether that’s amplifying a promotional theme or coordinating programs for a high-traffic shopping period.
Creative Cohesion
I ensure the ad reflects current brand campaigns visually and tonally. For example, during “Compare & Save” weeks, the ad includes pricing callouts, competitor comparison visuals, and bold typography that supports the campaign’s assertive tone. In contrast, holiday editions feature warmer color palettes, festive imagery, and editorial-style layouts that invite the customer into an experience.
Brand Standards & Flexibility
My team maintains strict adherence to brand guidelines, but we also build in flexibility to accommodate campaign-specific visuals and limited-time messaging. The balance between consistency and adaptability is key to producing a weekly ad that always feels fresh, yet unmistakably on-brand.
Results
The weekly ad continues to be a high-performing channel for our business, both in print and digital formats. Not only does it drive in-store and online traffic, but it also reinforces our core brand pillars—value, freshness, and customer-first service—week after week. Our creative consistency and attention to campaign integration have helped increase engagement with digital versions of the ad, and have made it a dependable storytelling vehicle for larger marketing efforts.
Some highlights from performance metrics:
• Contributed $50 million in annual sales directly attributed to ad performance
• Increased digital traffic by 25%
• Improved store traffic by 5%
Takeaways
The world of weekly ads has changed greatly in the few years I’ve been leading my team. Shifting from a heavily print focused ad to evolving into a digital-first strategy has come with many growing pains and opportunities to learn and try new approaches. This evolution has provided me with a wealth of experience and learnings.
Understanding the analytics of performance from heat mapping customer interactions online, to offer redemptions, to how much time customers spend looking at specific pages provide clear insights on how to improve future iterations of the ad and creative execution
Trying to replicate the passive nature of an ad flyer being delivered to every customer’s door is nearly impossible. No other channel can provide that type of interaction alone. Working with the print ad and digital channels to find and capture that blend of interaction is paramount to continued success of the grocery business and the ad.
Managing Stakeholder expectations and cross-functional collaboration is the secret sauce behind getting a massive promotional vehicle like a weekly ad flyer out the door to customers. Every team who has a connection to the ad needs to work in the same direction as the business to pull it off. The challenge is that each of those teams has their own individual goals and objectives for their departments. Learning how to manage those perspectives and how to help each team be successful through the ad is one of my greatest professional growth opportunities.