Leading Irish lifestyle store Brown Thomas was selected to be the exclusive stockist for the debut fragrance from the popular boy band One Direction. With the product's launch date set, Brown Thomas needed to create a big splash in a short timeframe. The brand produced a 40-second TrueView video ad to introduce the fragrance, then targeted users interested in pop music and those searching for One Direction videos on YouTube.
Approach
Created a 40-second video ad to introduce the One Moment fragrance
Targeted users interested in pop music and those searching for One Direction videos on YouTube
Goals
Achieve impact in a short timescale to promote the launch of One Direction's debut fragrance
Build awareness among followers of the band and fans of pop music
Drive traffic to brownthomas.com
Results
In two weeks, campaign achieved 41,631 engaged views
Average cost per view was €0.03
Generated 2,571 cost-free clicks to the Brown Thomas website
With four locations across Ireland, Brown Thomas is a leading lifestyle store that is home to an unparalleled range of designer brands in menswear, womenswear, accessories, beauty and homewares. Brown Thomas was selected to be the exclusive stockist for the debut fragrance from the popular boy band One Direction. "Our marketing goals were to create impact and awareness of the new fragrance and convey the message of it being sold exclusively at Brown Thomas," explains the retailer's Digital Manager, Orla Deane. With the product's launch date set, Brown Thomas needed to create a big splash in a short timeframe. Its agency, Wolfgang Digital, immediately went to work on a plan.
TrueView ads are extremely cost effective and the targeting features are granular enough to allow us to advertise to only relevant users.
Bringing the story to life
"Given that the product was targeted at a young demographic and featured one of the most successful boy bands, YouTube was an obvious channel for the campaign," says Wolfgang Digital Account Manager Brendan Almack. "The pricing mechanism is extremely attractive and based on our experience with previous TrueView campaigns we were confident that a really cost effective cost per view could be achieved, so for a modest budget we could gain phenomenal exposure."
A 40-second TrueView video ad formed the centrepiece of the activity. TrueView gives users control over whether they want to view an ad or not, and Brown Thomas was charged only when a viewer watched at least 30 seconds of the ad. Meanwhile, a banner ad remained to the right of the ad even when a user chose to skip the TrueView video. By clicking the banner, users would go to brownthomas.com, but any clicks of this kind were free of charge.
Wolfgang Digital set about reaching users interested in pop music and those searching for One Direction videos. "We used in-search and in-stream formats, and selected these solutions because we felt that they would allow us to capture a highly relevant traffic segment," Brendan explains. "Understanding your targeting is critical with this form of advertising. We were able to target users based on their specific interests, and these interest target elements of the campaign delivered the most video views."
Sweet smell of success
The YouTube activity produced exceptional outcomes. "The campaign used a balanced mix of display on the Google Display Network, search, remarketing and YouTube," reveals the agency's CEO, Alan Coleman. "However, as the campaign matured we could see how valuable YouTube was and the client was flexible enough to allow us to redistribute budget based on performance. Cost per view was extremely low for the campaign and we also achieved an impressive click-through to the website from video views. Over the course of the campaign, which was only two weeks, the video ad was viewed 41,631 times and the average cost per view was only 0.03."
So did YouTube help achieve the objectives? "It certainly did. It drove a large number of highly relevant users to the client's website. Other ancillary benefits included follow-on views of other videos on the client's channel as well as channel subscribers." With results like these, Alan reports that YouTube is becoming a vital part of the Wolfgang Digital toolkit. "It's extremely cost effective and the targeting features are granular enough to allow an advertiser to advertise to only relevant users. In addition, the data collected during the campaign allows advertisers to make optimisation decisions based on data-informed insights.
