Client: Vero Moda

Channel: Online

Period: 2009 Q1

Country: Sweden

Digital Planer: Christian Ullmark

BACKGROUND

A lot of brands out there are stuck in the past, shouting at their

consumers.

BACKGROUND

But we wanted more than that, we wanted Vero Moda to go beyond the forward thinking brands who start conversations, we wanted Vero Moda to show that they were listening to the discussion as well.

We wanted Vero Moda to be part of a discussion

Best practice, when speaking with consumers, is meeting them where they are not forcing them to go to a campaign site. However, for fashion brands in Sweden the target audience is very fragmented, surfing on blogs, niche fashion sites, social networks and corporate fashion sites.

Thus, we decided to build our own platform.

BACKGROUND

Since we were working with extreme budget restrictions we didn’t want to build a platform that was going to be used as a campaign site, we wanted one with a longer shelf life that could also be exported to other markets giving it scalability.

BACKGROUND

in a dialogue…AND show that

we are listening?

So, how do we engage the consumer…

The 10 finalists were chosen by the consumer.

The designer was chosen by Vero Moda.

The tank top will be sold in ALL of Vero Moda’s boutiques.

BACKGROUND

We ENGAGE the consumer by giving them the chance to AFFECT the company in a REAL way.

For our first conversation we asked the consumer to HELP Vero Moda’s designers.

We asked them to design a tank top that they thought Vero Moda should sell and asked them to upload it to the site. Not at small task!

Then the conversation continued with tank tops being voted on and commented on by the consumers.

The next step is getting people to the site.

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND

A lot of CMO’s have the mentality, “If you build it they will come”.

This is almost always FALSE, unless you have something that is viral.

An unfortunate aspect of virality, however, is a short lifespan. Thus we needed to find a way to drive traffic to the site in order to assure success.

PROBLEM! How do we drive traffic to the

site with a media budget of O.OO SEK?

The first channel to use, one that is often neglected, but extremely relevant, is the

companies own channels. (Plus it’s free )

Vero Moda has 87 stores in Sweden, almost all of which have young women working in them.

The first campaign started with a soft opening, inviting the retail staff to contribute to the site

before anyone else got the chance.

Strategically this was a strong move because it helped energize the staff and once the “real”

consumers visit the site there are already uploaded contributions, which gives the site credibility and avoids the “I don’t want to be

first” mentality.

BACKGROUND

We also sent out en email to their 187,000 member strong Vero Moda Club

BACKGROUND

We talked about the site on their own homepage www.VeroModa.com

BACKGROUND

We also used PR to get some free press.

BACKGROUND

We used facebook’s new technology, Facebook Connect, to spread the word.

Facebook Connect allows users to sign in to our site using their facebook password and user name.

When a person logs on to our site with facebook connect it appears on their facebook profile page and thus shows up on their friends news feeds. The same process occurs when they make a comment on our site.

With an average friend list of 182 this is a lot of new people being exposed to the brand and the site in a credible way since it is not advertising, it is “news”. (see appendix for a closer look)

However, this alone is NOT ENOUGH to drive the traffic needed.

In order to drive enough traffic to the site we needed a large banner campaign or a lot of fashion bloggers with enough traffic to link to our site.

The problem is that bloggers in Sweden are paid for talking about products and banners cost a lot of money and we had NO media budget.

A

THE SOLUTION?

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND

Give powerful bloggers exposure on the site with links to their blog.

Give the bloggers the honor of being considered a Vero Modaexpert.

Give them a role on the site so that they have something to talk about on their blogg. In this case giving “expert” advice on what the visitors should think about when designing their own tank top.

All of which, not only drives traffic to the site, but gives it the credibility that it needs for the target audience to take the site seriously.

We got 8 bloggers with large reach to contribute to the site.(See appendix for more information)

Results

934 individuals designed a tank top and uploaded

it to the site

1 700 members

28 322 unique visitors

252 999 impressions

3 min 34 sec: average time spend

4 of top 5 traffic driving sites were the expert bloggers we collaborated with:

Pause.se

Moderniteter.devote.se

Izabella.devote.se

Rikauteliggare.devote.se

Linnea.blogg.se

992 comments

419,000 unique browsers read our bloggers post about the site

(48% reach in target audience, women 15-29)

The results only reflect the first of many conversations. The platform will live on throughout 2009 and most likely into 2010.

To put the results into perspective we can take a look at the My Starbucks Idea case, seen as one of the better campaigns in the USA.

My Starbucks Idea had 70,000 submissions their first year. With a target audience of around 200,000 million. That is a submission rate of 0,035% and all the user had to do was upload text.

Your Moda on the other hand had 934 submissions from a target audience of 870,000 which is a submission rate of 0,11%. That is three times better than Starbucks and achieved only in Q1 neglecting results from the rest of the year. One must also look at the difficulty of making a submission, which consisted of designing a tank top and uploading it to the site, a formidable task to ask of the consumer considering the time and energy needed to complete the task.

Soft Results

Girls would blog and twitter about their tank tops in order to get votes and their readers would comment on what they thought.

“Really nice tank tops!”

“Super cool”

“I would definitely buy these if you wone!”

“All three are great but I like the first one the best.”

“Great!”

Girls would blogg about the site to show that they are in the “know”.

Girls would go into bloggers with a lot of traffic and make comments trying to get people to vote on their tank top.

“I saw that you were one of the experts. I just wanted to show my tank top…” “on blondinbella)

“Hi, I am part of the Vero Moda design competition. I would be super happy if you voted for my tank top.” (on engla’s showroom”

The competition got people talking.

The concept of “your” moda was understood by the consumer.