As marketers, it’s never to early to start thinking about the holiday shopping season.
When planning your holiday engagement strategy, ask yourself these two questions:
- What will be iconic to our brand?
- What will customers remember?
The right answers can lead to memorable experiences for your customers and loyalty for your brand.
One of my favorite campaigns, ever, answered these questions, wrapped in some mobile technology, and showed up in qualitative and quantitative tracking for driving increases in customer retention.
Here’s the scenario:
We had just successfully launched a rebrand for the largest privately held wireless carrier in the US with an integrated, multi-media campaign and wanted to extend the campaign to include a holiday TV spot.
We wanted to be able to use the spot year after year and have it become as iconic for our brand as the holiday Hershey’s Kisses TV spots.
As part of the rebrand, we had also launched an industry-first loyalty program called PERCS Rewards.
And, as a wireless carrier, we had permission to send text messages to our entire customer base.
And, here’s the creative, tech-driven solution:
Working with our agency of record, Y&R New York, we developed a new TV spot that used the same branded visual elements of our launch campaign.
What made it different — and memorable? We built in a loyalty component and 1:1 text messages that were coordinated with our holiday media buy.
At the end of the spot, the “customer” gets a text message with a visual “gift” from the company.
At the same time, customers received the same text message, customized with their name, that delivered PERCS loyalty points. The text messages were delivered in flights by DMA to coincide with our spot placement in holiday programming.
It was a “WOW” experience for customers. For months afterward, customers in our retail stores commented on how much they loved the spot and getting the “gift” via text. And, our predictive analytics platform showed the spot/gift to be a key factor in customer retention.
We continued to use the spot and varied the “gift” and ending of the spot each year to keep it fresh.
Take a look at the spot and consider these questions as you map out your holiday plans.
Lisa Jordan 