As part of Influencer Month, Socialites showcases how authenticity creates a connection to the community and is the key to driving engagement through social media.
It’s Somersby not Summersby
There’s no denying that cider is a summer drink. Relished by the masses over the summer months, whether it’s BBQs, beachside parties, or music festivals cider has become notorious for being refreshingly perfect. But, in social media we like to turn things on its head and especially when your client has set the challenge of increasing sales in winter.
Please enter: it’s Somersby, not Summersby campaign. Think about it – getting people to buy cider in winter is a big ask and we had to encourage people to completely rethink their behaviour.
Somersby put the stake firmly in the snow by sponsoring the Audi Quattro Winter Games in stunning Wanaka giving us a platform to build our campaign from….but that’s just the start of the journey! We still had to convince people that cider is a sensible winter beverage.
Our campaigns are often convoluted with much depth and the Somersby challenge was no exception. We needed several steps to ensure its success and we certainly zigged when others zagged. The steps included;
- An Influencer campaign
- Owned content
- Super smart content targeting
We brought our campaign proposition to life by crafting engaging content by real people enjoying Somersby in the Snow. The best platform to showcase this is of course, on social media, specifically Facebook & Instagram – the playground for our target audience.
When we select our influencers, it’s not a popularity contest – they have to authentically connect with the brand. So, we selected five of the best-fit influencers to partner with and leveraged their reach and engaged audiences.
An Influencer can be Handee
Paper towels are an everyday, household item and let’s be honest, not the easiest to create content out of. Handee has a super strong brand (and product), see what I did there?! 😉 There is so much opportunity in this category because simply put, there’s not many thinking outside of the box.
The marketing team for HandeeNZ (Anne Lindsay and Donna Wafer) are talented and always happy to take on new ideas. So, we collaborated and came up with a super successful and powerful social campaign; Handee Hacks
Leveraging the double meaning of Handee (Handy), we saw a huge opportunity to deliver a campaign that brought emotion and inspiration to the Handee brand, illustrating the joy and benefits that Handee offers.
By building an engaging storytelling platform and delivering on an Influencer campaign we delivered content that appealed to and resonated with our target audience. Our goal was to go beyond Handee’s functions, focusing on the benefit to the customer and the experience we’re enabling them to have to evoke emotion and build deeper customer connections.
Like any successful campaign – it needed layers and phases to garner real reach and engagement. Influencers such as Happy Mum Happy Child, How To Dad and Rebecca Kiel are the ultimate Influencer professionals. They bring their own flair to story-telling and were chosen specifically because they connect with the Handee brand. Sharing their own Handee Hacks kicked off a seriously engaged, warm and friendly online community who also wanted to share their own Handee hacks. Success!
It’s all about the humble brag and humans who innately want to share good news – so we knew this would work. And it did – it went crazy! 100s and 100s of Kiwi’s shared with their community in a short space of time.So, we had a crazy amount of UCG content and built a rich, positive and engaged online community from scratch.
This campaign made humdrum daily chores fun and useful and we totally cleaned up, smashing all of our targets and inspiring household shoppers across NZ. The campaign is no flash in the pan, it’s got legs and Handee can now own it for many years to come.
New World Go-To Campaign
It’s always a bit of a pinch-me moment when you start working on an iconic Kiwi brand like New World, and have the opportunity to work with some of the most talented marketers in the nation. Zania Guy (marketing manager – digital and direct) and Pippa Prain (head of New World & CX) are something else and it’s such an honour working closely with them to shine a light on New World across social media.
A complex and layered strategy, our approach to the New World campaign was to leverage foodie content creators who could bring it all to life in their own channels.
Part of our strategy was essentially based on whether our influencers could become real ambassadors for our New World brand. As we’re not an influencer agency, we’re agnostic meaning we can source our talent directly or through a handful of agencies giving us more scope and choice. We’re not about one-hit wonders and we support our influencers to stay true to their own content style.
We teamed up with four foodie influencers to share New Worlds own Go-To recipes. Just like an old recipe book, influencers had the flexibility to put their own spin on a meal that they would usually cook for the family at home.
Influencers wove key messages into drool-worthy content, helping to spread the world of New World’s Go-To’s to pockets of foodies around New Zealand and inspire them to head into their local store to try the recipes for themselves. As New World was new to Instagram, the success of this campaign was hanging in the balance but it was an absolute hit!
Everything came together seamlessly and with 10’s of thousands of engagements. 100,000 kiwi’s reached and nearly 7,000 story views this campaign was the perfect start to a very successful partnership with NW digital marketing team.
The Warehouse – The Bargain Edit
Our newest Influencer campaign is for The Warehouse. Literally just kicking off this month, the Socialites team have pulled together a mammoth content series celebrating the awesome homewares and Head to Toe ranges. Hold tight for something incredibly exciting that will hit all social platforms in the coming months.
This story is part of a StopPress series examining influencer Marketing. To read more on Influencer Marketing, click here.
