Havas Media won Best Point of Sale and Retail at The Drum Out of Home Awards 2019 for its ‘Ready, Steady, Sparkle!’ campaign for Swarovski. In this case study, the agency reveals the challenges faced and the strategies used to deliver this successful project.
The challenge
Personalisation is a trend that is sweeping across the jeweller industry. Swarovski wanted to educate their audiences on the personalization approach to their Swarovski Remix collection, and in turn, drive increased footfall and sales in key locations.
The strategy
The opportunity for Swarovski with this collection was to drive an on-trend and everyday product story. The fun and appealing nature of the collection lent itself more to a younger audience, than the slightly older typical Swarovski sweet spot.
We had to differentiate Swarovski from their competitors. We also knew that these competitors were all acting from a media perspective in a similar way – investing heavily into ATL channels such as TV to drive awareness.
When looking at media consumption across this audience, we knew that Outdoor was a key channel to reach them. They spent their weekends at the shopping centres or retail destinations. Finally, we knew that big impact outdoor was most likely to drive awareness, but more tailored experiences and activations would drive lower funnel conversions and help motivate footfall to stores.
Our annual strategy was to bring sparkle to everyday fashion moments, using Swarovski’s most recognizable and ownable brand trait to help us communicate the fact that Swarovski products are in fact designs for everyday wear.
For Remix specifically, our audience were slightly younger (25 – 34-year-old women). Research demonstrated that they were always looking to have fun and that the best way for brands to engage with them was through tailored experiences. We also knew that our audience were more likely to purchase from a brand if a brand delivered meaningful experiences.
The campaign
While ‘Sparkle’ ensured the product was at the heart of the campaign, the ‘Ready, Steady’ aspect of the strategy allowed us to have fun with the product to truly engage our audience on a deeper level and gamify the campaign. To do this, we used experiential outdoor as our key media channel.
Activity was focused in three key locations, identified using Swarovski sales data on strongest performing stores from both a sales and footfall perspective. The campaign ran simultaneously in London Westfield, Glasgow Buchanan Galleries and Manchester Arndale Centre.
In the highest footfall areas of three of the UK’s largest malls, we created an interactive game. We created a bespoke fully integrated app in which consumers could play a fruit machine. The area was fully branded to engage audiences and ensure our activity was unmissable.
Brand ambassadors were on hand to invite them to design their own unique Remix bracelet, selecting five of their favourite Swarovski charms. A user would design their bracelet on an iPad which was connected to the large digital OOH site opposite, showing everyone’s unique design in real-time. Once their design was complete, they were ready to play the game, Ready, Steady, Sparkle! The aim was for a user’s personalized design to exactly match the randomized selection of charms on screen, just like a fruit-machine! If it matched, they won a bracelet.
As the OOH sites were connected with sound, once a user hit ‘Go’ on the iPad, the speakers would play music reflecting the sound of a spinning fruit-machine. The loud and intriguing sounds then enticed even more people to play. If a user was lucky enough to win, speakers would play fanfare music creating excitement and buzz.
Once a user had engaged, brand ambassadors were on hand to give each participant scratch cards. Each scratch card had a different incentive including £5 or £10 off or a free charm – encouraging users to go directly into the store to redeem.
The results
Results were impressive across all three locations:
• London: footfall and sales +58%;
• Manchester: footfall +161%, sales +16%;
• Glasgow: footfall 78%, sales 91%.
These uplifts were measured against the same weekend the previous year, providing a fair LFL comparison.
Across the weekend we saw 667 bracelets designed and 336 sign ups to the Swarovski mailing list.
The activity was shared repeatedly on social and we had overwhelmingly positive comments from participants. We set out what we achieved to do, drive sales and footfall by bringing the Swarovski Sparkle to shoppers in a fun and engaging way. We did this through a media-first approach and something that had never been done before, driving earned media through PR! Swarovski loved the activation so much they created their own Remix fruit machine in their flagship Oxford Street store!
Finally using lookout-technology on the screens we measured sentiment. Across the weekend there was a 12% increase in people who were happy having seen the campaign and a 7.5% decrease in people who were unhappy. This was measured against the previous weekend.
This campaign was a winner at The Drum Out of Home Awards 2019. Click here to register your interest in next year’s event.