2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

With a strong heritage from the 70s, Exotica was a brand that won the hearts of consumers over the years as a luxury flower shop. However, it wasn’t able to evolve with millenials in terms of communication and product offering. To do so, we created this campaign to mainly connect with the consumer through a social media experience that speaks to our target and strengthens their bond with the brand. It was not a one off campaign but an on going experience that the brand could own on social media when communicating plants.

Background

Exotica is an upscale plant and flower shop established in the 70s that mainly appeals to an older generation. Most young people consider the brand a bit too out of reach and intimidating. We needed to engage with that target audience and rejuvenate our brand, with the goal of eventually increasing our sales.

Describe the creative idea.

We quickly realized that a lot of online content shared by millennials is related to pets. This opened our eyes to the fact that millennials love pets: they love owning them, talking about them, and posting about them. Since we sell plants, we decided to position plants as the new pets for millennials.

Describe the strategy.

Millennials spend a lot of their time on social media, so we decided to reach out to them in their natural habitat. Our main channels of communication were Instagram and Facebook. We knew that if we were going to make plants appealing to young people, we had to speak their language. That’s why our content was witty and fun, while being tailor-made to our chosen platform. Crucially, we wanted our campaign to clearly show the many joys of owning a plant while making the content entertaining and enjoyable.

Describe the execution

We set up an unbranded Instagram page called Pet or Plant. It was filled with fun content that initiated a debate amongst young people: are you more team pet or team plant? The page created a lot of buzz, with young people joining the conversation and posting their own content. In parallel, we asked young influencers to help spread the word on our page. Eventually we made our big reveal: from Pet or Plant, to Exotica’s Pet a Plant. We showed millennials all the benefits that come with owning a plant in a light-hearted way: they’re super cute, they’re great companions and something you take care of. We combined entertainment with informational content. This came in the form of plant profiles, which told people everything

List the results.

We were able to reach our goal, which was to communicate with the youth and provide them with engaging content they could relate to. We received an overwhelming number of user-generated content, as well as direct messages on social media. • Sentiment: 100% Positive Sentiment • Engagement: 600% higher engagement rate than industry standards (source: https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/2018-social-media-industry-benchmark-report/) • Impressions: 1M+ Impressions with a $350 online media budget. With a very limited campaign budget, we garnered an impressive increase in sales: Sales/Revenues: 66% increase in online sales revenue – 1.5 times the amount spent online. 93% increase in online sales vs the same period last year- we almost doubled the online sales of plants, and for each online sale, the amount spent was increased by 1.6, with a higher basket every time.