Our work.
We thrive when we work with clients that share our values. We work with challenger brands that are looking to progress, innovate, push the boundaries and take things to deliver better
Gemporia.
Black Friday
November 2024
Brief.
Gemporia, a long term client of ours, is a jewelry and lifestyle brand. For Black Friday they were looking to achieve breakthrough sales performance and we put forward a multi channel proposal to make it happen. Historically, Black Friday has been one of the most competitive moments in retail, so it was essential we crafted a strategy that not only drove traffic and reach but also converted into sales.
With a focus on digital performance marketing, we developed a multi-channel strategy encompassing multiple digital touchpoints across Google, Bing, Pinterest, TikTok, and Meta to ensure maximum reach and engagement across our target audiences.
What we did.
We looked at historical performance data to identify our best performing channels and the most impactful channels and audience segments for Black Friday sales. Then we implemented specific creative tailored to each channel, with multiple Black Friday offers to drive interest, engagement and action.
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For each channel we ran campaigns across the full purchase funnel, nurturing users down the funnel to conversion. We used a mix of engaging short form video for story telling with harder working product ads and promotional search ads with ad extensions where applicable. We also drove frequency with retargeting to drive home the sales on offer.
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Once activity kicked off, we monitored daily the creative and target audience performance, up and down-weighting budgets in accordance with results. We used analytical tools to see performance across the full channel mix and see the impact at channel and campaign level reallocating spend for maximum ROI.
Results.
The Black Friday campaign was a record sales period for Gemporia with 2024 also being their best year yet for e-commerce, thanks to increased marketing activity within digital channels. The highlights were a 131% increase YOY for revenue. 81% increase in average order value and a 41% increase in YOY transactions. We also achieved a blended ROAS of 10, smashing the ROAS target of 6 during the Black Friday period.
South & City College Birmingham.
Summer Enrolment Campaign
June - September 2024
Brief.
​Support South & City College in maximising enrolment numbers for their September 2024 intake through a digital campaign to drive online applications. The campaign’s main objective was to focus on reaching prospective ‘school leaver’ students, aged 15-18, either directly or via supportive parents across the summer months when they are actively in the consideration phase of their education journey, and push them down the funnel to make a completed online application.
What we did.
Raising awareness and driving conversions required a layered approach with a multi-channel campaign. We ran activity across three key platforms; with Meta and Google being our primary channels, driving both awareness and applications, supported by lower-level TikTok activity to increase awareness and frequency of visibility.
The College offers a broad range of courses across a multitude of entry levels, subjects and campuses. Digital activity therefore needed to educate as well as create impact and ensure cut-through amongst competition. A blend of campaign assets (video and static) and ad copy variations were created and tailored to suit the channel and stage of the decision-making journey.
With such a wide range of courses to promote, activity across both Google and Meta was delivered via an ‘umbrella approach’, where courses were grouped into vocational categories. This approach allowed us to successfully target using a combination of phrase and exact match keywords to reach interested parents & students, and was a more efficient use of media spend. A Performance Max generic ‘catch all’ campaign was used to take advantage of ‘in market’ interests and additional placements, and was designed to supplement the more segmented search campaigns.
Regular monitoring of ad performance and client check-ins meant that we could keep close to our metrics, most crucially the number of online applications. Activity was then tailored in realtime to focus in on and support specific courses or campuses that were struggling more than others. Spend, messaging and CTA was also adapted to reflect the timeframe and key dates, accommodating the exam period, school holidays and results day.
Results.
Over the months of June-September, we drove over 4 million impressions and 45k clicks to the South & City website, with an overall CTR of 1.12% (Google incl. Performance Max alone had an impressive CTR of 20%)! Total application numbers reached 1227 resulting in a blended ‘click to course application’ conversion rate of 2.7%.
ProCook.
Kitchen Favourites
October 2023
Brief.
Launch the new Kitchen Favourites campaign fronted by BBC’s Matt Tebbutt across social channels Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Rework above-the-line creative to make it relevant for each social platform, to ensure cut through and engagement. In addition work alongside Matt Tebbutt to maximise the exposure and reach through a series of paid partnership Instagram campaigns.
What we did.
This brief wasn’t as simple as having a 15 second edit shot vertically for social - we needed to bring the story of the Kitchen Favourites campaign to life. Using the raw footage we identified four key stories that could be at the heart of the social campaign. The four stories gave the social users something different and were drip-fed throughout the six week campaign period, in the lead up to the core Black Friday trading period. ​
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To create a cohesive approach, we also created four hero stories for Matt Tebbutt to post on his social channels as part of the paid partnership element of this campaign.
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Finally, we aligned with relevant creators across TikTok and Instagram to create their own Kitchen Favourites using ProCook products to bolster the campaign further.
Results.
Delivered over 1 million organic impressions and a 3.27% engagement rate (including the most viewed piece of TikTok content on the ProCook relaunched TikTok channel). Social attributed conversions increased by 267% and revenue by 239% on the lead up to Black Friday (these results exclude the Black Friday trading weekend)
Selfridges.
Bringing Barbie to Birmingham
July 2023
Brief.
Bring to life the in-store activation of #BarbieatSelfridges to increase footfall and awareness of the branded partnership with one of 2023’s must-see films!
What we did.
We got creative and created a native style video which captured the in-store activity across Selfridges. The content focused on the amazing ‘Playtime’ Barbie dedicated areas in-store with the view to drive customers into the store to engage with the interactive elements.
Alongside the in-store activation, we also highlighted the key Barbie products on sale and obviously the iconic Birmingham Bull being turned pink for the collab!
Results.
We delivered over 900k organic social views and contributed to a 6% increase in footfall to the Barbie Playtime activation over the film’s opening weekend.
Gemporia.
Delivering Better PPC Performance
July 2023
Brief.
Gemporia’s paid search activity had been delivering a consistently strong ROAS, however, there was an appetite to deliver more and as an Agency we could see that the opportunity for Gemporia to dominate across paid search was huge. The account needed to be restructured to ensure that it was maximising highest ticket items and categorise and become more fluid and flexible depending on seasonality.
What we did.
Through initial BETA testing, we could see that Performance Max was going to be a huge driver for Gemporia and sit at the centre of the account structure. To ensure that we could be agile from a budget perspective and bid efficiently on top performing campaigns and ad groups, we created product specific Performance Max campaigns based on top selling and high-ticket products categories (i.e gold and diamond). We overlaid this with traditional search campaigns, DSA and retargeting to ensure we were delivering a full funnel approach where audiences were most active.
Results.
The results have been better than ever imagined with 155% increase in conversions, 128% increase in revenue and 136% increase in ROAS YoY. All of this was delivered with a 3% reduction in spend
ProCook.
Re-strategised to Deliver Better
September 2022
Brief.
Realign the ProCook social strategy to the wider business strategy and ensure it stands out from the competition. Assess where the ProCook customer is most active and which channels hold the biggest opportunity for ProCook to grow its social presence and make more impact.
What we did.
The ProCook social channels had become too cluttered and they were becoming saturated. They were posting on feed every day and not tailoring the content to suit each channel and its core user.
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We analysed the market across a range of primary, secondary and tertiary competitors to review ProCook’s position and where they could make the most impact. We then devised three core content pillars to ensure that all social content delivered one of the following key attributes: show awesome results, ease of use or passion for cooking.
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Alongside the three key pillars, we implemented a hero, hub and help approach to delivering content across the business and delivering against the business’ commercial objectives.
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Finally, we realigned the content to ensure the product was the primary focus to convey the excellent quality, value and expertise behind every ProCook product. The content strategy focused on a native video-first approach in order to gain wider reach and higher engagement levels.
Results.
From October - December the new strategic approach delivered 114% increase in reach, 554% increase in engagements and 162% increase in videos views compared to the previous period. We also saw a 168% increase in revenue directly attributed to organic social.
University College Birmingham.
Delivering Better for Birmingham Students
2022
Brief.
University College Birmingham (UCB) briefed SHC to devise, run and optimise an integrated digital campaign for the new academic college intake. The campaign needed to reach prospecting students aged 15 – 16 and drive completed applications.
What we did.
As Google restricts targeting under 16s across the platform, we needed to create an integrated approach which targeted not only students but also their parents to allow us to leverage core conversion tactics across the Google network. .
The media plan focused on a full funnel approach and from a channel perspective, we focused parents’ activity to deliver across the Google, Meta and Spotify and student activity across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Spotify. As a workaround for targeting students across the Google Network, we used an education specific platform, Educate, which used mobile data to target under 16s with display and YouTube ads.
To ensure that we were driving both students and parents down the application funnel, we ran cross-channel retargeting activity to capture engaged audiences from awareness-focused platforms such as TikTok and Spotify and retarget them with conversion tactics through the Meta network, where we saw students more in converting.
Results.
Overall the campaign delivered 4640 completed applications which is 23% uplift YoY against a target of 10% uplift. In total there were 1538 enrolled students against a target of 1300, which proves the campaign delivered a higher quality of applications year on year. Alongside these commercial figures, the TikTok creative was also selected by TikTok to be featured on the Creative best Practice platform as a top performing ad example.
VOLA.
Icelandic Elemental Living
May 2022
Brief.
As an iconic Danish design brand, VOLA needed to establish a high presence on Pinterest where architects, interior designs and specifiers are active. VOLA briefed us on creating a hardworking business-as-usual strategy, with overlaid spikes of innovative campaigns.
What we did.
We started by realigning the business-as-usual Pinterest activity to have an SEO approach of matching Boards, Pin titles and descriptions to users' search behaviours.
Once this was nailed, we then layered campaign activity, starting with a design and heritage-focused campaign, centred on Iceland.
The campaign ran across organic and paid activity using static and video creative formats to help build awareness of VOLA across key markets and drive quality traffic through the newly launched 'On Design' section of the website.
Results.
The organic restructuring of the VOLA account led to a 57% increase in organic impressions and 76% increase in engaged users.
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The Iceland campaign not only exceeded all targets but it smashed Pinterest industry benchmarks by delivering a 140% more efficient CPM, 94% higher CTR and 80% lower CPCs.
Olivias.com.
Home Envy Guaranteed
April 2022
Brief.
Deliver a brand campaign which positioned Olivias.com alongside established retailers such as Dunelm and Wayfair. Devise a creative campaign where Olivias.com appeared to be everywhere and that was fully trackable.
What we did.
We identified the core Olivias.com audience as female aged 25 - 45 who are heavily active on Instagram and Pinterest. When delving deeper into their media habits, we noticed existing customers thrived from gaining gratification from sharing their Olivias.com purchasers with their social following; this led us to create the 'Home Envy Guaranteed' creative hook.
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From a media planning perspective, we defined a paid media approach across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. We ran brand uplift studies across Facebook and YouTube to track the brand recall and uplift to understand the true effect of the brand campaign.
Results.
Overall brand uplift for Olivias.com during the campaign period increased by 815% and consideration for buying directly from Olivias.com increased by 3x.
Buxton Crescent.
The Water's Waiting
June 2021
Brief.
Buxton Crescent launched in September however due to the pandemic, had to close its doors again shortly after in November 2020. We therefore needed to devise a creative campaign to launch Buxton Crescent for the second time and drive bookings and revenue for the key summer period in 2021.
What we did.
Buxton Crescent sits at the heart of a natutal spa town and the building itself has been a spa since the Roman times. Playing homage to Buxton Crescent’s history we played on the notion that the world might have paused, but nature never stops and created ‘The Water's Waiting’ campaign.
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We amplified the creative concept through a well-crafted media plan which combined increasing overall awareness with direct response conversion activity.
To launch the campaign we upweighted the media budget to the awareness phase and as the campaign progressed increased the weightage of budget behind the consideration and conversions phases to drive bookings and revenue.
Results.
The campaign exceeded targets and delivered a blended 4.5 ROAS. Buxton Crescent was fully booked during the 2021 summer period.