As 2020 rolled into 2021, there was still uncertainty in the air around certain industries bouncing back after almost a full year of lockdown in certain places. Retail was one of the most affected, with locations shutting down, taking safety measures or downsizing their capacity. Thankfully, the next few years turned into the right challenge for the retail industry: consumers wanted to visit malls, shops, markets, but they had too many options.
This was the moment when retail acknowledged a more diverse differentiation approach was needed, in order to attract regular customers, but also the newer generation, who starts their research online.
One of the ways retail engaged with online shoppers was through influencers. After all, – influencers of all sizes are primarily content creators, especially the nano- and micro-sized ones. This is what the retail industry is investing in: the unlimited and unique point of view of creators, to put the products and services in a new light.
Influencers are seen as trustworthy by their followers. At the same time, brands want more control over the content that is being produced by them, which makes content creators’ tasks more challenging. They have to rely more and more on storytelling, to integrate the products into their daily lives, for them to appear genuine. This is their unique point of view.
Both sides understand this, as authentic partnerships drive success and generate lasting brand love and potential retail loyalty for that brand. After all, if you’re only competing on price, it’s a death spiral to the bottom. You need to provide an in-store experience and show it off in creative ways.
When done right, influencer marketing benefits everyone involved, from the influencer to the marketer, brand, and consumer – throughout the entire buyer’s journey. Effective influencer marketing happens when consumers feel they’re connecting with real people who share their values. This makes content more engaging and long-lasting.
Once the campaign is done, the content needs to be repurposed in other channels, to increase its value. This requires a large-scale brand awareness campaign.
Winning brands employ an omnichannel approach. It’s gotten simpler to launch campaigns on multiple mediums. But the challenge is to repurpose the best content from one platform into another. And making sense of all the data combined, to reveal the true value of content.
Planning the campaign requires dedicated people, if not an entire department, to handle tasks like:
The next step is to create the designs:
Launching the campaign is a step that everyone waits for, as the follow-up to all the efforts dedicated thus far. The issue here is that classic banner formats remain low in Clickthrough Rate and don’t provide deep insights into people’s perception of the brand or products.
By now, as a retail brand, you’ve already worked with an agency and/or a platform to find and filter the right influencers. Then waited for the campaign to finish to have access to UGC. Then planned media together with a programmatic solution to launch the bigger brand awareness campaign. Reporting is the last step in the process.
This would take a minimum of 2 months, without any guarantees on results or past examples of success.
Flaminjoy and Ringier are here to change that. Flaminjoy is an influencer marketing leader, building an innovative platform that makes it easy for retail brands to collaborate with the right vetted influencers.
Once a content campaign is created and UGC is generated and gathered in the platform, Ringier, our publishing partner, is there to take over. It is the biggest media company in Switzerland, operating in Europe, Africa, and Asia with more than 120 publications, printing facilities, radio and television stations, and more than 80 web and mobile platforms. This gives it not only a truly global reach but also specialized targeting expertise.
Social Display is the innovation born out of the partnership between these Flaminjoy and Ringier. We combine User Generated Content from influencers, with innovative display formats and distribute it in the publisher network, with laser-focus targeting. The Brand Lift measurement ensures that Social Display impact goes further than measuring Impressions and Clicks. The average results for brands running these types of campaigns are a Clickthrough Rate of 4% (10X higher than the industry average for classic display) and 8.65% for the Brand Lift.
There are multiple benefits for retail brands:
The incredible growth of the service from its first year provided trust for more brands to see its innovative nature, including some of the retail brands mentioned below.
Mega Image was looking to promote its new campaign, featuring discounts for the Coco-Mat line of products.
Content from influencers was filtered and the best pieces were selected to be repurposed in Social Display. The beauty of these new display formats is that they’re created with storytelling in mind. We capture not only the images and videos from User Generated Content, but also:
The large boost in Brand Lift (6.1%) and a high Clickthrough-Rate (3.6%, 8.6X higher than the industry average) meant the campaign was seen and engaged with by a large percentage of the targeted audience. The combination of great content and precise targeting made this campaign a resounding success.
Morphy Richards is a British brand, focused on creating stylish, easy-to-use home appliances that make home time even more inviting, from kettles and slow cookers, to irons and vacuums.
The campaign focus was products that could be used to make breakfast a delightful experience, such as toasters. Influencers came up with unique ways of bringing to life the “Breakfast in bed” idea. Content was bright, visually appealing and the associated captions told personal stories of intimacy, life at home and couple routines.
These sort of stories really hit home with followers, as reactions and comments kept flooding in. And more and more people wanted to find out more about the brand and try its products.
The campaign paid off, resulting in a 4% CTR and a Brand Lift of 7.1%. These results came by selecting pieces of content from the 50+ generated by the 8 micro-influencers. The guaranteed Reach in paid media meant the brand knew what to expect and was pleasantly surprised by the over 5.000+ interactions from the initial influencer marketing campaign.
Storytelling goes a long way and manages to put small appliances in a new light, turning utility into a slice of life.
Differentiation and brand building was at the top of Profi’s mind as they were designing the new types of retail locations, with a focus on the “fiiGO” element. This symbolizes a place where you can be curious when you’re having a boring day or an explorer when you’re in your daily routine.
Fresh products, different product lines, self-service coffee and tea station complete the already successful store presence.
Working with 7 influencers, who generated 50+ creative pieces, Profi looked at authenticity through storytelling. That meant the content needed to be integrated into the content creators’ daily lives, showing the new stores’ look and feel and what the products are like.
The results spoke for themselves:
After trying this innovative campaign type, it’s hard to go back to basic display formats, with brand-owned content. The future means guaranteed reach, engaging ads and content built with storytelling in mind.
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