Social media has been a staple of marketing plans across industries for almost a decade now. But even with years of practice with this medium, brands still face the same daily struggle — how to make their content stand out amongst the noise.
No longer just a trend or buzzword, “influencer” marketing has proven to be an effective tool for brands to not only gain measurable results and ROI, but to also expand their reach, foster positive relationships with their target audience, and increase consumer engagement with their brand.
As Digital Strategy Consultant Joanna Campbell told us, “when a consumer sees a sponsored post from someone they find interesting and aspirational, it lends credibility to the product… social media users tend to trust recommendations that come from people they feel connected to, more so than recommendations coming from traditional brand advertising.”
Case Study: Jessi Cruickshank and Joe Fresh
Joe Fresh recently published their results from a campaign they developed with television personality Jessi Cruickshank, an exclusive talent on our roster.
In 2018, Joe Fresh wanted to make more of an impact with Millennial moms, specifically during the holiday season. Research told them that 90% of Canadians use YouTube to discover new brands or products. Wanting to capitalize on this, they decided to partner with high impact influencers to develop a creative content strategy that showcased their unique voice, positively represented the brand, and resonated with their target audience.
That’s where we stepped in. We knew Jessi — widely known as one of the funniest moms on the internet — had the platform, personal brand, audience, and creative voice they were looking for.
Together, Jessi collaborated on a custom video campaign during the weeks leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday. She used her signature humour to show how Joe Fresh’s products can make time-strapped parents’ lives easier, especially during the gift-giving, holiday season.
The results? Jessi’s videos proved to resonate with Joe Fresh’s target audience — moms — especially her messaging that they can shop online whenever they want. Her videos resulted in a 10% lift in purchase intent and a 122% lift in brand search.
Also, during the holiday season Joe Fresh had big online and in-store wins. They saw a 170% lift in website traffic (based on year over year performance), and store visits increased by more than 10x, with cost per visit decreasing -6%.
“Our content experiment proved our two-strategy approach was worth the return. Insights allowed us to identify where we could have the most impact, and YouTube influencers helped us carve a space within the crowded holiday shopping season,” Mitchell Yapp wrote, director of media and analytics at Joe Fresh.
Based on the success of this campaign, Joe Fresh expanded their partnership with Jessi to continue into 2019.
When prepping your next influencer campaign, Joanna Campbell, digital strategy consultant, suggested that brands answer the following four questions to determine some clear “must haves” going into a new partnership. This will help streamline the process and set your campaign up for success.
- What key messaging needs to be included? Make sure the brand’s social handles for all platforms are included in your partnership agreement, and that you share finalized campaign and/or brand hashtags and clearly outline exactly how the product should be referenced in all posts
- Are there parameters about how the brand’s product should be shown in images? It’s important to share information regarding brand placement in an image including whether a logo needs to be visible and how prominently a product needs to be featured.
- What’s the timeline for content creation and approvals? No one wants a last-minute scramble and there are often a few decision makers that need to weigh in, so make sure that there’s time built in for approvals to ensure there are no scheduling mishaps.
- Where will the content live and will it be boosted with paid support? Best to agree in advance what platform(s) the content is going to be shared on and whether it will get an advertising boost to reach more consumers.
We love collaborating with brands to produce creative campaigns that yield results. Interested in learning more about how our celebrity talent can help reach your marketing goals this year? Email us at [email protected].
