17 Ideas To Maximise ROI For Your Campaign Shoot
It’s the biggest investment your business will make – shelling out thousands of advertising dollars on locations, influencers, photographers and stylists to create a winning campaign.
With growing competition from online retailers – and 3.6 million Google searches performed each minute – your brand now needs a robust editorial plan to cut through the noise.
Storytelling is the most powerful way to share ideas with the world. The role of content is to entertain and connect with consumers on a deeper level. By maximising opportunities on campaign and lookbook shoots, you’ll have more chances to connect, influence and drive market objectives through call to action.
The best way to boost ROI is to team up with a content specialist who can unlock your company’s potential – so, we enlisted the help of Prue Lewington of PL Creative to produce a content checklist that’ll help you uncover more ideas to feature across the homepage, EDMs, social media, in-store and print.
When US giant, Calvin Klein, unveiled its new campaign in January 2018, it made news around the world. Media outlets including WWD, News.com and US magazine reported on the ad which featured the Kardashian and Jenner family posing up in a rustic barn. The same month, Kim Kardashian, shared a ‘never have I ever’ video that was super relatable.
Whether it is relatable, bizarre or aspirational, content is:
Emotionally connected
Instructive
Service-journalism
Amplified across social media
Creates a sense of community
With almost 2 billion users, content is shared every minute of the day. During shoots, your brand can cultivate new editorial opportunities to service consumers, entertain, inform and promote upcoming competitions.
1. COMPETITIONS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
Take the opportunity to shoot great imagery or video for upcoming competitions and giveaways. Focus on a high-impact visual narrative. Contemporary brand, Pepper Mayo, produced a fun video to promote its sale through a fun give-away.
2. OFFER LOYALTY & REWARD PROGRAMS
Find an opportunity to create imagery that inspires customers to make repeat purchases. To get it right, think outside the box because shoppers are always looking for perks. Here is how retail chain, Country Road, connected with its conscious customers.
3. INSTRUCTIONS
Short videos that entertain and inform can deepen the brand experience. LEAFtv produces great lifestyle video content with attention-grabbing ‘how-to’ headlines.
SNAPCHAT
Even if millennials aren’t the demographic buying now, engage the group to future-proof your business. Give this target audience a full experience behind-the-scenes access with tips and inspiration.
1. OFFER TIPS
It might be obvious to those who work in the industry, but fans love insights from the creative teams pulling each look together.
2. INSPIRATION
Use all Snapchat’s features to share the experience and build your following especially when on location shoots.
3. BEHIND THE SCENES
Supermodel, Karlie Kloss, does it best. The Kode With Klossy founder, regularly gives fans a sneak peek into her glamorous life backstage at cover shoots, concerts and fashion shows. The bite-sized videos are entertaining and fun to watch.
Since the launch of apps including Swipe to Shop in 2011, brands have been able to monitor sales made through Influencer posts (more on that below). Now the platform is more powerful than ever. With 800 million people using the app make sure you include up to seven hashtags per post.
1. KNOWLEDGE BOMBS
Image knowledge bomb by @mishbridges
Offer readers tip and facts that can also be turned into 60-second video.
Video knowledge bomb by @mytheresa.com
2. INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
An easy way to add extra dimensions to your brand’s personality.
Inspiration courtesy of @ellehalliwell
3. BOOMERANG VIDEOS
Easy to make and fun to watch. Subtle movements tend look best.
4. VIDEO Q&A’S
Candid interviews with brand ambassadors and Influencers are a great way to capture the essence of your brand’s DNA.
Insta interview with Victoria Lee by @camillaandmarc
5. QUIRKY FLAT LAY IMAGES
Flat lay product imagery can literally jump off the screen as user’s scroll through the feed.
Stop motion flatlay by @mytheresa.com
WEBSITE
To ensure your visual narrative is in sync with your target audience, set the tone on your homepage with a cohesive aesthetic across main features, sub-stories and social media. It should be service-driven and updated with new snippets and galleries each week.
1. TREND GALLERIES
Go beyond campaign imagery with curated trend galleries that are aspirational like this ‘Rose all Day’ magazine-inspired shoot by J.Crew.
2. CITY GUIDES
Here’s your opportunity to entertain and inform an audience who will want to come back for more. Take the MR PORTER journal for example.
3. SERVICE JOURNALISM
Sub-story briefs and videos can offer your audience a step-by-step guide from experts in the field like this one from Leaf.
4. FLAT LAYS
Luxury e-tailor, My Theresa, publishes flat-lay editorials that drives consumers to a well-edited capsule.
5. HOW-TO’S
Whether it’s bizarre or relatable…
6. BUDGET STORIES
Help customers find discounted clothes with easy-to-read percentage categories like Farfetch has done with a banner on their homepage.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Influencer marketing should be part of a fashion brand’s strategy regardless of stage or size of company – and finding the right name can make or break your campaign.
Since 2011, apps including Reward Style have tracked millions of dollars in retail sales made through bloggers’ posts – so the right collaboration can be worth its weight in gold.
As a general guide, Influencers under 20,000 followers can cost around $75-$300 while over 500K is upwards from $1200. General Assembly instructor and Shop You co-founder, Emma Sharley, says it’s a quick and cost-effective way to reach an audience.
“Almost fifty per cent of brands have increased their spend this year, because on average this types of partnerships deliver a return on investment 11 times higher than traditional channels,” said Sharley.
At Shop You, Sharley collaborates with over 100 micro-influencers that have been handpicked based on six key demographic measures.
“We feature them in-app as part of our Style Inspiration section. It’s a win-win and provides the influencers with exposure to a new audience on a daily basis, and our users love it as the images are personalised, real and relatable,” Sharley said.
Before teaming up with a blogger, brands need to do their due diligence.
Research tools including Influencer DB and Scrunch are good ways to support your research to ensure you’re not working with influencers with low-engagement or fake followers. The right blogger will be a natural extension of the brand, and deepen the connection with consumers.
To create a strong social eco-system, the editorial line-up should be amplified content across all platforms.A good example of this is top blogger, Elle Ferguson’s recent collaboration with surf giant, Billabong [below]. After the imagery was shared across the 32-year-old’s social network, 78 per cent of stock sold out globally within a week.
WORDS BY PRUE LEWINGTON
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A MORE PERSONALISED CONTENT STRATEGY WE RECOMMEND GETTING IN TOUCH WITH PRUE VIA HER WEBSITE PRUELEWINGTON.COM OR INSTAGRAM @PRUELEWINGTON.
PRUE LEWINGTON’S CAREER SPANS OVER TWO CONTINENTS AND INCLUDES MAGAZINE, TV AND NEWSPAPER TITLES. SHE BEGAN HER CAREER IN NEW YORK 20 YEARS AGO AT US HARPER’S BAZAAR.
FROM THERE SHE JOINED FASHION MAVEN, PATRICIA FIELD, TO ASSIST THE WARDROBE TEAM ON HBO’S HIT TV SHOW, SEX AND THE CITY. IN 2002, SHE RETURNED TO PRINT MEDIA TO CREATE CONTENT FOR PUBLICATIONS INCLUDING NYLON MAGAZINE, IN STYLE, THE DAILY NEWS AND THE NEW YORK POST – WRITING A WEEKLY COLUMN ON EMERGING TRENDS. BEFORE RETURNING HOME, PRUE MOVED TO BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA. STYLING TV COMMERCIALS FOR BANDS INCLUDING US BRAND, NIKE.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS AS FASHION EDITOR FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, PRUE HAS LAUNCHED PL CREATIVE – A DIGITAL CONTENT CONSULTANCY SPECIALISING IN FASHION, BEAUTY AND LIFESTYLE.
BANNER IMAGE CREDIT: MARNI SS17
