Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2014 - 37

IKEA: understanding life at home.

on the sofa, to cellphones at the table. IKeA
re-purposed some of the house rules captured through social channels to create
dynamic content for outdoor digital billboards. The content changed regularly as
the conversations continued.
For metrics, Lloyd was looking at
the overall lift in brand sentiment and
awareness, plus engagement and earned
impressions-which reached the highest
levels seen for an IKeA Canada campaign to date. "You want to create shareable content that has the potential to
scale," Lloyd says.
canadian tire: promoting how we
all play

Like SportChek, Canadian Tire mobilized a major campaign around Sochi.
While connected with the Olympics, the
campaign, called We All Play for Canada,
has broader branding and social cause
marketing goals throughout 2014.
"It's the idea of celebrating and enabling the values of play, for the country, communities and individuals," says
Susan O'Brien, Canadian Tire's Vice
President, Marketing.
The highest profile element was a TV
spot featuring Jonathan Toews of the
men's hockey team. It highlighted 300
members from his Winnipeg community who had some part in supporting him
and his hockey dreams.
Social and digital played a key role. On
weallplayforcanada.ca, Canadian Tire
housed a dozen "digi docs" on some of
those supporters, from the guy who flooded
www.retailcouncil.org/cdnretailer

Finding the sweet spot
What role can social media play for retailers? "it can truly be
a great retailer's best friend-amplifying the impact of customers sharing positive experiences," says darren yada, partner and
national director of digital strategy at Rethink Canada in vancouver. "on the flip side, social media gives retailers a chance to
stay great, with the means to reach out to, and hopefully resolve,
customers sharing negative retail experiences."
yada and his creative agency have worked with clients such as
sobeys, shaw, Molson Canadian, Mr. lube, a&W and Coast Capital
savings. he shares two thoughts about what retailers should learn
in order to fuel successful social marketing campaigns.
Q: What is the starting point for a campaign?
a: "understand the sort of content customers actually want from
you. Find that intersection of what people like about your brand or
store and what they actually talk about and share in social channels.
Create content for your campaign from this sweet spot and you're
heading down the right path."
Q: there are so many social media platforms-Facebook, twitter,
youtube, instagram, pinterest, etc. What are the best potential uses?
a: "no retailer has time to stay on top of all of the latest social media
techniques, tactics and tricks. Follow the retailers you admire offline
within the social media channels you want to be in online. Make note
of the types of content from these retailers that engage you-the
content that stops your thumb as you scroll feeds, the content you
actually like or even share and, most importantly, the content that
annoys you. over time, you'll develop good instincts towards the
best and worse uses of the social media sites you want to be in."

lesson #8:
Soft sell it. ikea's lloyd says campaigns like #houseRules lose
authenticity if there's overt selling. "you have to trust that the
campaign itself will generate the sales you expect. you wouldn't
invite your friends to a party and then sit them down and try
and sell them something. the same applies to social media. if we
execute the campaign well, we can feel that we hosted a good
party, and that it might make people think of us a little more
fondly when the time comes to make purchases for their homes."

holiday 2014 | canadian retailer

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http://www.weallplayforcanada.ca http://www.retailcouncil.org/cdnretailer

Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2014

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