As we approach Ramadan 2020 in strange and uncertain circumstances, I find myself curating this website to tell my story, motivated by the fact that due to Covid-19 I am no longer in full time employment. At a time of the year when we celebrate reflection it has been interesting to look back and revisit some of my career highlights.
Most appropriately I found the content from the campaign I worked on at this time last year with Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.
Although Victoria’s Secret had been established in the Middle East for nine years, historically only the smaller, beauty-led concept stores would celebrate Ramadan and Eid. Having built a predominantly Arabic speaking team, their cultural understanding and knowledge was fundamental to being able to create a much more prominent in-store story; increasing visual merchandising elements and including windows – as well as latterly designing limited edition packaging for three variants of ‘The Mist Collection’ and ‘create your own’ lantern-style gift boxes.
External communication had always been extremely careful to avoid any openly provocative content using primarily beauty and sports apparel imagery for posts during the Holy Month. In 2018, a 30-day digital quiz ran throughout Ramadan on social to increase and maintain engagement, achieving a participation rate in excess of 50,000.
By 2019 it was felt that there was a general acceptance of the Brand being present during this time, if managed correctly, it could therefore be possible to implement a more overt campaign both in-store and via our communication channels. There were a few provisos to consider within the external campaign creation process: a) any campaign had to be relevant to a new affluent fashion-led customer (across key Middle East markets); b) it needed to tell a story and keep her engaged for four weeks (using You Tube and Facebook research as validation) and: c) it needed to build towards supporting our Eid gift with purchase – which for the first time was a satin robe from the sleepwear collection.
I reviewed potential partners and identified Harper’s Bazaar Arabia as a platform which could deliver high quality film across print, social and online and appropriate content for VS channels. Also, the print version is sold in the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman covering 50% of my markets. Their readership aligned with our newly defined target audience: ‘High-spending Arab and expatriate women aged 20-years-old and upwards, they are affluent, educated and discerning. They embrace both local and international designer fashion, are regular travellers and have exceptionally high personal grooming and beauty standards’. The publication’s credibility ensured that relevant, inspirational and influential women from across the Arab world could be recruited.
The brief centred around the black satin robe ‘gift with purchase’ – each ‘influencer’ would wear the robe in the shoot to support them in telling their personal Ramadan story as well as discuss female empowerment at this time of year in the region. Each ‘Influencer’ would be asked to wear an item from the current collection under the robe to strengthen brand and product awareness.
The results surpassed expectations with a total campaign reach in excess of 1.5 million and engagement at 805K across channels. The reach was concentrated across the top three key sales driving markets – Saudi Arabia at 49%, UAE at 22% and Kuwait at 17%. The high reach and engagement ensured the campaign was well below its CPA target at 0.03KD.
During the campaign the VS Facebook page gained 12,187 followers (vs average weekly gain of around 1454). The Instagram account also saw similar gains doubling the usual weekly follower count to 2438 per week. In-store, the ‘gift with purchase’ robe achieved an 88% sell thru.
And on e-commerce, direct traffic revenue doubled with sales generated from social, quadrupling during the period. Also, in the Affinity Categories, ‘Fashionista’ sales doubled and for the first time Luxury Shoppers entered the Top 5 with a high ATV demonstrating that the campaign achieved its target audience objectives and confirming the right choice of partner.
Susan Hewlett 