The Zalando 2015 #WhereverYouAre campaign is an example that still offers serious lessons for Hungarian agencies and client-side marketers today.
With the annual marketing spending shifting towards online platforms, advertising agencies are increasingly emphasizing catchy buzzwords to their current and potential clients such as: keyword, continuous optimization, interest-based targeting, remarketing, lead generation, conversion tracking, influencer marketing. But what does this look like in practice?
What is Zalando?
Zalando is an online fashion store operating in 15 countries, headquartered in Berlin, delivering products from major brands to homes in Western Europe, the biggest competitor of Amazon and Asos. In 2015, Topshop signed a contract with them instead of Asos, making one of the largest British fast fashion brands available even to fashion enthusiasts living in a small German town.
The #WhereverYouAre campaign structure
Alongside traditional, reach-focused tools ? TV, print, radio ? Zalando launched one of the largest and most professional personalized message campaigns on Facebook. The face of the campaign was model Cara Delevingne, who attempted to pronounce the names of small towns in France, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, and the Netherlands correctly in over 60,000 different videos – emphasizing that Zalando thinks of everyone and delivers everywhere.
Using the targeting tools provided by Facebook, the brand then advertised the „own” video of the residents of each small town, so that residents of Pinneberg heard the name of their own town in the video, straight from the model's mouth.
Results
The campaign brought enormous success to Zalando, with 180 million impressions on Facebook, of which 40% were organic, thanks to user shares. Topshop sales increased by 54%, and total orders from the entire market grew by 17% at Zalando.
The secret of success
But what made the campaign so successful? The incredibly good and ambitious idea, precise execution, and certainly Cara Delevingne.
Cara Delevingne significantly contributed to the success of the campaign. The model is known for her wild nature and bold style, fitting well with Topshop's image.
The idea of the campaign is brilliant in itself because it combined the buzzwords mentioned at the beginning of the article, which are so often echoed in our profession, without imposing any limitations on it.
However, what is even more important is that the right tools were associated with the idea by the Kemmler Kemmler agency. The Facebook algorithm alone is capable of pinpointing very small user groups with precise geographical targeting, but editing more than 60,000 videos and manually setting the targeting is an impossible task. For this, the Wonderlandmovies Infinitizer toolwas used, which allowed for the automatic mutating of videos and the automation of targeting.
But what can we do?
In most campaigns in Hungary, the budget of Zalando is likely only a fraction available to both the client and the agency. So what can we do to ensure that Zalando's campaign is not just a pipe dream? In the advertising hide-and-seek, the marketer is the seeker. But what can they do to truly find the target audience, wherever they may be, and, more importantly, tell them what they want to hear?
The most important thing is to change the mindset. Instead of the „this is what we usually use” formulas, the goal and the creative idea should define the tools. Zalando aimed to reach the masses. However, alongside the traditionally used tool for this purpose, TV and general TV spots, they knew they would need something groundbreaking. Instead of refining the TV spot, they chose another tool, another format.
Zalando's secret lies in the willingness to change. Perhaps that's all it takes for success. One must dare to change.
