Superdry successfully shifts users from brand lovers into online and offline customers with YouTube
About Superdry
Global fashion brand
Headquarters: Cheltenham, UK
Founded: 2003
Goals
Promote key sales category during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas period
Engage consumers at all stages of purchase funnel
Drive online and in-store sales
Approach
Used TrueView for shopping and in-stream formats to maximise on-site conversions
Integrated YouTube store visit and offline conversion measurement
Assessed impact of creative and targeting on brand sentiment and search lift through Brand Lift survey
Results
TrueView for shopping ads accrued over 4.8 million views achieving 50% lower cost per view than retail benchmarks
Campaign achieved 58% increase in ad recall, 10% increase in favorability across key age demographic, 228% increase in branded search lift and fourfold multichannel return on YouTube investment
Fusing iconic vintage Americana and high-impact Japanese graphic imagery with a British twist, Superdry is a truly global fashion brand. Having launched in 2003 with an initial collection of five t-shirts, today it offers seasonal collections comprising thousands of items and over 500 distinctive logos. In planning for the peak trading period of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, Superdry wanted to shake up its approach for its key sales category, jackets.
With Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas proving peak trading moments for retailers, Superdry wanted to shake up its approach for its key sales category, jackets, and created the “This is the jacket” campaign. The campaign aimed to engage consumers across all stages of the purchase funnel and was built around a key insight on our customers: in winter a consumer spends so much time wearing their jacket that it becomes part of their identity.
We turned to YouTube as a platform that could not only reach the desired audience, but could also do so in a cost effective manner. It was also key for us to be able to understand the full impact that online video advertising had both online and in-store, something the team believed only YouTube could facilitate.
“Consumers don’t distinguish between online and offline”, observes Tom McEwan, Superdry Performance Marketing Manager. ”They move seamlessly between the two. So understanding how our online ads impact customer journeys holistically is not only necessary, it’s a complete game changer.”
We used YouTube TrueView ads as a means of achieving both brand engagement and direct response objectives. The TrueView in-stream format allowed us to optimise performance to a clear cost-per-view metric while benefiting from the incremental watch-time and reach efficiencies that skippable video ads allow.
We also made use of TrueView for shopping campaigns, making the video ads interactive by connecting viewers directly to our rich Google Merchant Centre data. In this way, the team could surface product-specific imagery, detail price points and bring prospective purchasers directly to relevant product pages.
“Consistently showcasing the same hero products across all channels resulted in significant sales uplift,” Tom says “Additionally, the traffic driven off the back of the YouTube activity ranked highly in terms of user behaviour metrics, no doubt aided by the engaging shopping cards.”
The campaign accrued over 4.8 million video views with the shoppable TrueView creative, delivering over 154,000 hours of content consumption. Thanks to regular continued optimisation of targeting setting and effective reduction of bids, the campaign delivered a cost per view that was 50% lower than the retail benchmarks. Thanks to regular in-flight optimisations, the campaign delivered a cost per view that was 50% lower than the retail benchmarks. This was a key reason behind the overall success of the campaign. By focusing on driving down cost-per-view metrics, Superdry were able to find incremental video views, which in turn inspired consumers to make store visits and purchases.
“YouTube supporting in-store measurement has resulted in it becoming a key part of our channel mix. This campaign exceeded industry benchmarks while also driving a significant amount of visitors both on and offline. This campaign demonstrated its full power, targeting granular audiences to drive maximum awareness, through to multichannel acquisition”
– Lauren Tiplady, Digital Marketing Manager
The creative itself proved a hit with Christmas shoppers. Superdry achieved average view-through rates of 38%, which were double that of retail benchmarks. To better understand the impact the creative was having on our target audience’s perceptions and behaviours, we ran YouTube Brand Lift surveys, which showed that the campaign delivered a 58% increase in ad recall, a 10% lift in favourability across the key demographic age group and a 238% increase in branded search lift.
It was in terms of return on investment though that the YouTube activity really stood out. By integrating Google’s store visit conversion measurement with location data, we were able to assess the impact of the video activity on footfall and sales, and to quantify the full value of YouTube across the seasonal branding push. Measuring average in-store purchase rates, average basket values and the blended return on investment attributable to the YouTube campaign, Superdry ultimately demonstrated that our YouTube investment delivered a fourfold multichannel return on their YouTube investment..
Following these successes, we are reevaluating YouTube’s role in supporting and augmenting our core online and offline objectives. Superdry Content Editor Abbey Jones affirms, “YouTube will continue to play a central role in our key seasonal campaigns, which are anchored in storytelling and building cultural moments.” And according to Tom, “Off the back of the results we achieved for our ‘This is the jacket’ campaign, we’re now looking at ways of using YouTube to support our wider business-as-usual performance marketing KPIs.”
