2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Level Shoe District, a new, luxury retail brand, opened its doors with the promise to fulfil every shoe lover’s desire within one, unique concept store. Yet to begin communicating online - with no website, creative assets, content or brand heritage - it needed to create an audience, and what better way than around a shared love of shoes. From extensive social-listening, we identified that Level’s target audience were trendy, tech-savvy and Generation-Y early trend adopters, who wanted to shop socially with their wider networks, via their mobiles. Our challenge was to build in real-time online brand equity; user-generated content; drive footfall to the store, and digitally promote the Level brand in a unique way, to emphasise its bespoke concept.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We created a densely knit social-ecosystem and strategy to promote Level as a new and unique luxury brand. The concept had to be social to create new audience and content, and relevant for its luxury brand positioning to remain. This centred on an Instagram competition that was launched with the hashtag #ShoeLoveisTrueLove. Level was the curator and invited its audience to take, share, tag and snap picture on their passion for shoes Images of users’ favourite shoes, desired shoes and shoes to make all their dreams come true, created original content, engaged users and generated strong brand affiliation.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In just under three months Level had gained a user following made up of its desired, niche audience. Through the idea of a shared shoe obsession, interactive digital media, and in particular the hastag competition #ShoeLoveIsTrueLove, engagement rose 9% on Facebook, 21% on Instagram and the brand had over 25,000 unique engagements on Twitter. The Level digital ecosystem that was created surpassed all client benchmarks and overall achieved 96% organic growth month-on-month on our social channels, to firmly positioned Level as the shoe connoisseur.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Knowing our young, niche and savvy target audience, our digital brand launch needed to be as fast paced and social as they were. It had to be interactive, mobile-led and generate user content in real time, so we created an ‘always-on’ paid media strategy that focused on all things SHOE! Through numerous Level social presences and media, applications, emailers, in-store activities and sales, we built a solid and unique online brand identity and launched Level into the digital and luxury marketplace.