Brand Campaign Case Study – Remarkable Rush Q4 to Drive Brand Awareness & Sales
Table of Contents (Click to show/hide)
Monthly
Active User Rate
Daily
Campaign Budget
Increase
Click-through Rate
Growth
Return on Investment
Customer
Segmentation
Prioritisation of
Limited Resources
Competitive
Responses
Consumer
Change
Q4 Remarkable Rush Project Delivers 12% Sales Increase with ATL Advertising
Remarkable Outdoor Living is a leading Australian luxury outdoor furniture retailer. With 7 physical stores and an online operation, Remarkable Outdoor Living specialises in offering quality, unique outdoor furniture to Australia. The rapidly growing business often finds its products in some of the most luxurious builds in the country.
Remarkable Outdoor Living wished to capitalise on the peak furniture selling season in Australia – August to January. With a budget of $100,000 AUD, they tasked me with driving brand awareness and increasing sales in the last peak quarter. I could spend this budget how I saw fit, provided I delivered the increased sales that Remarkable Outdoor Living wanted. This cash was spent, mostly, on ATL (Above the Line) marketing. Ultimately, my efforts saw Remarkable Outdoor Living enjoy an increase in sales of 12% over the defined sales period, with a 16% increase in the number of people who were aware of the Remarkable Outdoor Living brand (Brand Lift survey).
This case study will look at how I accomplished the results for Remarkable Outdoor Living. I will take you through each element of my process, demonstrating the understanding that I have the skills, and knowledge, required to deliver the results clients need. This project was named 'Q4 Remarkable Rush'.
Q4 Remarkable Rush's Objective
In Australia, the key sales period for furniture, particularly outdoor furniture, is Summer. This runs from August to January, or Q3 & Q4 every calendar year.
To benefit from this key sales period, Remarkable Outdoor Living wanted more people to become aware of their brand. This meant bringing people into the earliest stages of the marketing funnel – awareness. They also wished to increase sales for their brand, which meant that a percentage of the marketing budget would also need to be allocated to the second stage of the marketing funnel – consideration.
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The measurement metrics would look at the increase in brand awareness, as well as the increase in sales over the key sales period.
I was tasked with putting together a marketing campaign that would meet Remarkable Outdoor Living's marketing objectives.
The Process
Once assigned the project, I began work on the Remarkable Outdoor Living marketing strategy right away. This was a large project that required a wealth of movement parts to work in tangent with one another. Due to the marketing method, I opted for, Remarkable Outdoor Living's marketing project would require major planning in creative design, ATL advertisement placement, and devising a system to measure the increase in sales.
The Budget
Remarkable Outdoor Living assigned me a strict $100,000 for this project. $85,000 of this would be spent on ATL advertising, with $15,000 in reserve. The reserve cash would be used for a multitude of purposes. This included providing extra funds if I found a great deal on marketing, reserve cash if a publisher's advertising package was more expensive than anticipated, and extra cash that could be used for Google search advertising, which would have helped to fulfil the 'consideration' part of the marketing funnel.
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Above-the-Line Advertising
The goal of the campaign was to introduce more people to the Remarkable Outdoor Living brand. I, alongside Remarkable Outdoor Living, wished to boost brand awareness and draw people into the earliest stage of the marketing funnel. We wanted to make people aware that there was a premium luxury outdoor furniture retailer close to them, or available online. Our goal was to draw people away from other furniture retailers and bring them to spend their cash at Remarkable.
As brand awareness was our overall goal, we decided to spend most of the marketing budget on Above the Line (ATL) advertising. We knew that by casting a wide net through billboard, bus, newspaper, and media buy advertising, we could introduce people to Remarkable Outdoor Living. The careful selection of locations to run this advertising would bring in the largest possible number of customers. Our goal was to ensure that those who had money to spend and may have been considering purchasing outdoor furniture at the end of Q4, were the most likely to be exposed to the ads.
Location Selection
Due to my wealth of experience in ATL advertising, I understood that you couldn't just push an ad out there and hope for the best. While the goal of ATL is to cast a wide net and generate brand awareness, you must understand exactly where that net needs to be placed. This meant that a great deal of effort during the earliest stages of the Remarkable Outdoor Living Q4 campaign was focused on location selection.
We decided that the budget would be spent on advertising in both New South Wales (especially in Sydney) and Gold Coast. There were many reasons for this, including:
- Access to the target market for the brand. Many of the locations are frequented by professionals with extra cash to spend on more luxurious outdoor furniture.
- Locations closer to competing businesses.
- Areas proven to have a high sales record for other businesses.
For digital billboard ads, further consideration was given to when the ad would show. We wanted to ensure that the adverts would be displayed, most prominently, at times when the target market would likely see the advertising. For example, during the early morning work rush, as well as late evening. We preferred for advertisements to be displayed on digital billboards after dusk, as there was a greater chance they would be seen.
For on-bus advertising, we opted for routes that would pass through areas with a wealth of young professionals, as well as those areas that would provide the greatest exposure for the advert i.e. the areas where potentially hundreds of thousands of people would end up seeing the advertisement.
Print advertising focused on local newspapers/magazines, as well as magazines dedicated to those who enjoy interior design, the ideal market for outdoor furniture.
Billboard Placement
As most of the Q4 Remarkable Rush budget was to be spent on billboards (a total of 44 billboards across NSW and Gold Coast), special attention needed to be placed on where the billboards would be located:
- 50% of the billboard placements would be close to Remarkable Outdoor Living's competitors. The intention was that many of those who were heading to a competitor could potentially see a billboard highlighting Remarkable Outdoor Living, and potentially introduce them to a new company for their furniture considerations.
- 40% of the billboard placements were in areas that have had previously high sales for Remarkable Outdoor Living. These areas, traditionally, would have some of the highest spenders in the country. The intention behind the billboard campaign was to introduce the brand to more people who have historically spent a lot on furniture.
- 10% of the billboard placements were close to Remarkable Outdoor Living stores (8km, maximum). This was, mostly, to give people a final push toward Remarkable Outdoor Living. These billboard placements were not required as much for brand building but could assist with the 'consideration' part of the marketing funnel.
Prior to the campaign launch, I spent a wealth of time breaking each area of NSW and Gold Coast into LGAs (Local Gov Authorities) to determine the best position for the billboard placements. This was broken down into town/city, and postcodes. For example, since Sydney accounted for 14.3% of the sales for Remarkable Outdoor Living in NSW, more budget was allocated there. Darling Point (postcode 2000) had around 30% more sales than other nearby postcodes, which indicated there was a need to promote Remarkable Outdoor Living there too.
The list of postcodes/areas with sales was provided by Remarkable Outdoor Living.
Billboard Measurement Metrics
- REPETITIONS
- Achieved is how many plays were played
- Planned is what we had planned for you
- Performance is how the campaign performed etc 113% means we actually gave you 13% more plays on the screens that were booked.
- Variance is the planned vs. achieved in %
- IMPRESSIONS
- Achieved is how many contacts/impressions were achieved. This is based on MOVE data from OMA as our screens are audited
Source: Audience Measurement Tool: MOVE - Measurement of Outdoor Visibility & Exposure by OMA
Product Selection
Remarkable Outdoor Living has over 900 SKUs available. As the Q4 Remarkable Rush campaign would be very locally focused, I wanted to showcase products that would have a high chance of selling in the advertised areas. I worked closely with Remarkable Outdoor Living to ascertain the following:
- Products that were in stock in certain areas. For example, I would not market a product in NSW if there was limited stock available in the NSW stores.
- Products that would play into the interests of the local area. For example, Sydney-focused ads often featured products that were much more elegant in design. Certain images used for Gold Coast advertising could potentially feature water in the scene, playing into the lifestyle of Gold Coast residents.
- Products that were exclusive to Remarkable Outdoor Living.
- Products that heavily emphasised the options that Remarkable Outdoor Living had. This meant that there was a greater focus on luxury furniture items. As we were promoting during the key summer season, many of the selected products really highlighted the heat, lounging around in the sun, etc.
Working closely with Remarkable Outdoor Living, we came up with ideas for products that would be richly featured in Q4 Remarkable Rush ATL advertising. We also established which products may not perform well in their respective markets.
Creative Design
With the products and billboard areas chosen, I could begin work on the creative elements of the campaign. For many people, these creatives would be the first encounter they had with Remarkable Outdoor Living, and we needed to ensure that it would be the best impression possible.
Since there is a lot of designs here, the goal is to resize, resize, resize. Minimise workload by using existing designs to fulfilling sizing needs. I.e. portrait → horizontal, horizontal → portrait, GIF slide → static, etc.
With billboards, you have very limited time to communicate your message. From experience, I understood this meant two things:
- That the product should be the focus of the advertisement. Products selected from Remarkable Outdoor Living were chosen based on how well they emphasised the brand's product selection. I wanted images that conveyed luxury.
- The Remarkable Outdoor Living tagline needed to be short and to the point. There needed to be a strong call to action. The intention of the 'Call to Action' was to drive more people to research the Remarkable Outdoor Living product selection.
Advertising taglines varied depending on the location of the billboard/advertisement:
- Advertising close to competitors would have the word 'Elegance' crossed out, followed by '(Location) Prefer Remarkable!'. The (location) section would vary depending on where the advertisement was placed, although I eventually opted to use the word 'Aussies'. The idea behind having the location was twofold. Firstly, I wanted to create a local connection to the advertisement. I wanted people to feel as if the Remarkable Outdoor Living brand was part of their community. I also wanted to highlight that Remarkable was a better brand than the competitors. I wanted to demonstrate that people had alternative choices to the competitors and, in many cases, people preferred Remarkable Outdoor Living. While these advertisements were very much focused on the elegant nature of the brand. They had a much naughtier/playful feel to them. I wanted to call out any competitor claims about them having the best options. We needed to introduce Remarkable Outdoor Living to as many people as possible.
- Other advertising would have the words 'Good, Better, Best' scratched out, followed by "It's Remarkable', highlighting that the products offered by Remarkable Outdoor Living were the best around.
CTA would vary depending on the creative. Much of the time, it was the URL for Remarkable Outdoor Living's website, but some advertisements also actively encouraged people to search for Remarkable Outdoor Living in their favourite search engine, with the creative having a search bar to indicate this.
Product image selection was always based on what I highlighted previously. This meant images that showcased the luxury, summery feel of Remarkable Outdoor Living furniture.
The Campaign
The Q4 Remarkable Rush campaign ran from August 2023 to January 2024. In addition to various print advertisements, PR campaigns, and search campaigns, we ran the following advertisements:
- 3 buses. Two in NSW, and one in Gold Coast.
- NSW - Metro Back
- NSW - Showcase
- Gold Coast - Portrait
- 2 local newspapers. One in NSW, 1 in Gold Coast.
- 2 national magazines - Inside Out & Country Style Magazines
- 44 billboards in carefully selected locations across Sydney & Gold Coast.
- 1 News Corp website display media buy.
The breadth of the campaign in carefully selected locations and print magazines ensured that the people who needed to know about Remarkable Outdoor Living would have as much exposure to the brand as quickly as possible. The goal was to increase sales for Remarkable Outdoor Living right away, not months (or years) down the line.
Throughout the advertising campaign, we continued to release press releases to continue to drive attention to Remarkable Outdoor Living and drive awareness of the brand.
In the meantime, we also had a healthy chunk of the budget dedicated to search advertising, which would help the 'consideration' part of the marketing funnel. We knew that people searching for outdoor furniture (or similar words) would likely be in the mood to buy, and we wanted to put Remarkable Outdoor Living at the forefront of their minds.
Results
Early in the process, I had to establish the best method for analysing the results of the Q4 Remarkable Rush. Since this was an ATL campaign, we couldn't use traditional online measurement techniques. We had to go directly to the customer to ask how they came to find Remarkable Outdoor Living. We ran these customer surveys throughout the campaign, and in the 2 months after the campaign.
The surveys indicated that 16% of those subscribing to the Remarkable Outdoor Living welcome offer had discovered Remarkable Outdoor Living because of the ATL marketing push. 12% of those who then went on to buy something from Remarkable Outdoor Living only knew of Remarkable due to our carefully placed ATL advertising.
These metrics only consider the people that made a purchase during, or shortly after, the ATL campaign. It could also only include those who answered the customer survey. There is no doubt that there will be many people purchasing in the future who only discovered Remarkable through the ATL campaign.
An increase of 12% in sales indicates that the ATL campaign was a rousing success for Remarkable Outdoor Living, and demonstrates that my skills and experience were enough to craft a major advertising campaign that could deliver almost immediate benefits to the company. This is something I specialise in, whether it is for Remarkable Outdoor Living, or one of the many other companies I have worked with. I can deliver results.
If you wish to discuss your marketing campaign, feel free to reach out to me. I would be happy to share my expertise and work with you to design a campaign that could lead to a rapid increase in sales, just like the Q4 Remarkable Rush delivered for Remarkable Outdoor Living.
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