How to drive engagement through the use of video and collaboration with macro-influencers
Over a commendable span of three decades, luxury shoe brand Steve Madden revolutionized the shoe industry merging years of experience with unique and creative designs.
The brand’s foray into the Middle East markets had experienced enviable growth given its innate ability to innovate and inspire with unique designs.
However, the brand was now facing a new challenge – launching an all-new Holiday Collection amid a pandemic and gain mileage for their latest edition.
Launch Steve Madden's Holiday’21Collection in a unique and creative manner
Help the brand’s latest collection standout and get noticed
At a time when outdoor activity was restricted adding to one’s footwear collection wasn’t really on top of people’s minds.
Considering the limited opportunities for social interaction the task was to make customers aware of the new launch and its fashion significance.
After all, it was the launch of a Holiday Collection in a phase when people were discouraged to go outdoors without a valid reason, let alone a much-needed holiday.
Despite unprecedented times, the global footwear market is projected to witness a CAGR of 3.54% during the forecast period (2020-2025). The rising demand for limited, fashionable, yet comfortable footwear across age groups is a key factor driving the global footwear industry. This is observed among all age groups, particularly among the millennials and Generation Z.
The proliferation of smartphones, e-commerce, and mobile internet connectivity is also propelling the sales of footwear all across the world. The Middle East continues to enjoy the reputation of being a fashion hub as well as a dynamic market with optimum use of digital connectivity.
Digital Consumerism was probably one of the leading laterals that experienced a positive impact amidst COVID-19 disruption.
With more time spent on the internet, consumers explored the world of brands and searched for engaging content related to their favorite brands, influencers, and trends.
Research showed that social media users were spending more time than ever getting to know their favorite influencers, and discovering new ones.
Keeping the challenges and the shift in consumer psychology in mind, the agency thought that the right way to connect with the audience directly would be through channels that they can connect with and influencers they can relate to.
Tactic: The agency targeted five relevant and popular bloggers from the region and put the spotlight on five unique designs in the collection.
Goal: Create a buzz around the latest Holiday Collection to communicate the styles and focus on fashion within movement restrictions.
Rationale: The content created by the influencers could be further leveraged via the brand’s social media handles so that it reaches a targeted demographic that’s truly interested in the brand’s offerings.
Along with the brand’s marketing team, we chose five popular influencers (English and Arabic) and focused on five key designs from the Holiday Collection that would be highlighted by the influencers. With these influencers, we engaged in barter collaborations and NOT commercial partnerships. The agency wanted all five video campaigns to look more organic, natural, and honest.
The key tasks for the agency were to brief the bloggers for the campaign, share a detailed style edit with the influencers, maintain a calendar to ensure the posts were going live at the right time, compile an influencer report for every individual blogger engagement at the end of the campaign to measure the buzz created and response received.
Conceptualised and developed a unique storyline that involved the effective use of influencers to launch the brand’s collection.
Based on the requirements for every style category, the agency designed a plan for the influencers to decide what kind of posts would create the right impact – videos, static posts, stories, contests, etc.
English and Arabic macro influencers participated in Steve Madden’s Holiday’21 campaign.
Influencers created primarily video content to promote and showcase the collection.
Over 100,000 views on Instagram
Over 40K likes & comments on Instagram
Over 1.4 Million potential reach on Instagram
The team at Matrix PR is always a pleasure to work with. They are creative, dedicated, and professional. The Holiday Collection which is a label given to our Autumn Winter collection was launched in a very unique and clever fashion. The entire idea conceptualized by Matrix PR created a lot of buzz on social media. The Matrix PR team has been working with the brand for over 9 years now and understands the core values and essence of Steve Madden. Together, we hope we create more magic and successful campaigns in the future.
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