Ica dates back to 1917 and is a long-standing food chain. Hakon Swenson founded the wholesale business AB Hakon Swenson in Västerås and then let customers become partners in the company.
ICA as we know it today was founded in 1938 with the aim of coordinating the operations of four Swedish purchasing centers. Today, Ica, together with Coop and Axfood’s stores, accounts for approximately 90 percent of food sales to Swedish households.
Icander and Monica were big in the 70s
Ica is thus a food chain that has been around for a long time and that everyone has some kind of relationship with. Over the years, Ica has had various campaigns and characters that have become very popular.
Among other things, they have an advertising series about an Ica store with a merchant called Path. Ica-Stig has become one with the Swedish people and engages many, something you especially notice when it’s time to replace Stig.
Already in the 70s, Ica had characters that created commitment, namely Icander and Monica. But the two Ica traders disappeared at the end of the 90s.
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It happened to Icas Icander and Monica
News24 have found out what happened to Icander and Monica.
– Icander and Monica were very popular characters and strongly associated with Ica during the 1970s and 80s, and appeared then in everything from advertisements and sign material in stores to advertising prints on buses and billboards, Marlene Lindholm, brand director at Ica Sweden, explains to Nyheter24 and continues:
– They stopped being part of our official marketing in the 90s when we chose to renew the marketing and introduce new concepts that better suited the marketing strategy of that time.
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Therefore, some stores still have the pair in their marketing
In 2001, when Icander and Monica disappeared, the Ica soap was introduced instead with Stig and the gang as front figures for Ica.
– Despite the fact that Icander and Monica are no longer an official part of Ica’s marketing, there are still individual stores that still have signs and bags with their images, says Marlene Lindholm to Nyheter24.
It is therefore up to the local Ica retailers if they want to keep the couple as mascots, but Icander and Monica are no longer an official part of Ica’s marketing.
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