How No Frills Leaned Into Weird Marketing And Won

When No Frills (a Canadian discount grocery chain) launched an album called Haulin’ State of Mind a few years ago, it blew my mind. A supermarket… with a hip-hop album?

Five years later, it’s still living rent-free in my brain.

And it’s worth revisiting (ICYMI) because the strategy is just as smart today as it was then.

What They Did

No Frills had already been building its “Hauler” platform, celebrating bargain hunters as heroes of saving. Then in 2020, they doubled down with a full 13-track album called Haulin’ State of Mind.

• The songs dropped on Spotify, Apple Music, and were available as a free download if you texted a code.
• They released a bright yellow vinyl record (the signature colour of their house brand).
• The tracks had cheeky titles like Bananas, Spicy, Low Bills, and A Cart Apart (a pandemic-era ode to distancing in the aisles).
• And yes, the songs actually played in stores while people shopped.

But the album was just one piece of their bigger “Haulerverse”:

• An 8-bit video game called Aisles of Glory.
• An anime-inspired ad.
• A weekly comic strip featuring cost-cutting superheroes in their flyers.

The result? A grocery brand that started to look more like an entertainment studio—and a cohesive play that made bargain shopping feel like pop culture.

The Coverage

This wasn’t just a grocery ad that stayed in trade publications. It broke through.

• The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon featured Bananas in his “Do Not Play” segment, mistaking it for a real artist release—giving the brand global exposure overnight.
• Marketing outlets like Campaign Canada and Canadian Grocer praised it for being bold, fun, and refreshingly different.
• Social media lit up, with people calling it “the coolest ad ever for a grocery store.”

Even international outlets covered it, proving the buzz reached far beyond Canadian shoppers.

What Brands Can Learn

So why talk about this in 2025? Because the lessons still hold:

1. Weird wins attention. A grocery chain making a hip-hop album sounds absurd, but that’s exactly why it worked. Safe doesn’t stick.
2. Build worlds, not one-offs. The Haulerverse wasn’t a single ad. It was music, comics, games, merch… a whole playground for shoppers to explore.
3. Entertain the everyday. Groceries aren’t exciting by default, but No Frills reframed discount shopping as epic and fun.
4. Commit 100%. The album wasn’t a joke. They produced it, packaged it, and pressed it on vinyl. That kind of commitment turns quirky into credible.

Final Thoughts

No Frills turned the most ordinary of categories into a cultural moment. It’s proof that the “boring” industries often have the biggest chance to surprise.

If a discount grocer can get Jimmy Fallon talking about Bananas, what could your brand do if you gave yourself permission to get weird?