Advertiser: FOOT LOCKER
Agency: PHD
Category: Best Use of Mobile Devices
Advertising campaign: KICKSTAGRAM
Art Director: Alex Martineau (BBDO)
Account Director: Andrea Montano (Phd)
Director Of Brand Connections: Matthew Schade (Foot Locker)
Manager/Digital Marketing/New Media: Matt Mcnichol (Foot Locker)
Account Executive: Nick Robbins (BBDO)
Mobile Supervisor: Alexandra Haack (Phd)
Assistant Strategist: Ben Gold (Phd)
Manager/Brand Connections/New Media: Bobby Krauss (Foot Locker)
Integrated Brand Marketing: Francine Feder (Foot Locker)
Account Director: Janelle Van Wonderen (BBDO)
Strategy Director: Ji Kim (Phd)
Strategist: Beth Kahn (Phd)
Creative Director: Chris Beresford-Hill (BBDO)
Vice President Brand Marketing: Jed Berge (Foot Locker)
Digital Strategist: Rohit Thawani (BBDO)
Mobile Director: Sal Candela (Phd)
Digital Supervisor: Shannon Wilcox (Phd)
Copywriter: Tom Mandel (BBDO)
Strategy
Footlocker was the home to hot kicks (sneakers), but brand favorability was on the decline!We needed to reverse the decline in brand favorability for Foot Locker by celebrating and publicizing the target’s love of sneakers. Foot Locker’s target, Sneaker Expressionists, like to show the world who they are by what they’re wearing. The strategy was to celebrate and publicize Sneaker Expressionist’s love of sneakers through visual storytelling and boost brand favorability for Foot Locker, the ultimate sneaker creator. We identified Instagram as the pillar platform to our campaign, and then took it a step further. Before Foot Locker, no one had cracked the code on how to reduce the steps required to follow a brand from an ad. If Foot Locker could make the experience of uploading photos and following the brand fun and easy, perhaps brand favorability would stop declining and show signs of improvement.
Execution
The idea was get Instagram users or anyone who talked about Foot Locker or their competitors on social media, to tag pictures of them wearing their favorite kicks using #kickstagram and @footlocker. If users uploaded their photos with a #kickstagram tag, Foot Locker would pick their favorites to feature on their Facebook page. We created the first to market “double tap to follow” mobile banner ads and activated it with the help of our technical partner AdTheorent. Consumers could instantly open the Foot Locker Instagram page from the ad and easily follow the brand. On iOS and Android smartphones, the message was delivered to people who checked in to Foot Locker or competitive retailers on FourSquare, tweeted something in reference to the NBA Finals or shared an Instagram photo with “@FootLocker” mentioned.
Effectiveness
In thirty days, Foot Locker’s followers tripled. The click through rate on the double-tap-to-follow functionality was almost four times higher than the standard banners (0.62% vs. 0.16%). 35,000 #kickstagram photos were uploaded generating an extra 11 million earned media impressions.After a year of decline, brand favorability grew by two percentage points. By July, 48% considered Foot Locker their favorite brand; far ahead of Dick’s Sporting Goods (36%) and Sporting Authority (35%) who spend between two and four times more in media. Due to the success of the “double tap to follow” technology, it soon became a top selling unit across a variety of advertisers looking to leverage the Instagram phenomenon that was taking shape in the US.