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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Hearst Global Solutions was tasked to relaunch the Air Max Verona nearly 30 years after it was introduced. Our challenge was to pay homage to Nike’s first sneaker designed exclusively for women and inspire their target audience through stories of women who define their own future using innovative formats.
SOLUTION: Taking ELLE’s credentials in style and female empowerment to the next level, our idea was to create a unique, standout interactive experience that would excite the target audience and feature Nike Air Max Verona in authentic yet innovative content.
HEARST X NIKE AIR MAX VERONA
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ACTIVATION + RESULTS
ACTIVATION/STRATEGY: Understanding that innovative formats are attractive to Gen Z in particular, we reinvented the traditional profile piece and anchored our solutions in interactive features including video and social polls that encouraged users to take an active part in the exploration of the content. The partnership, anchored by two interactive video profiles, invited audiences to guide the interviews themselves—via questions in our they could choose to ask talent in the videos. These immersive experiences allowed the individual to discover a creative journey of their own that natively featured the Nike Air Max Verona throughout.
Having a significant amount of first party audience data, as well as audience insights from our previous Nike partnerships, our targeting was highly refined to ensure that we were well positioned to engage the right audience for Air Max Verona. And our centralized audience development team was able to quickly adapt learnings from each market and apply them to the global campaign so we delivered on goals efficiently and effectively.
RESULTS: The Hearst Global Solutions and Nike Air Verona Max partnership reached over 36 million women in the span of one month across three markets (U.K., France and Germany) with a 76% total recall of the campaign. But beyond the millions of impressions and video views, our brand study proved that ELLE global audiences had overwhelmingly positive sentiments about Nike Air Max Verona and planned on taking action as a result of their engagement with our content.
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Launch the new BOSE Frame product across the UK, Germany and France. Build credibility and desire amongst high propensity buyers by adopting fashions’ collaboration culture and celebrating moments where leisure and expression collide.
SOLUTION: Knowing that solution based content from our editorial experts performs extremely well for our brands, we created a guide to summer holiday packing tips for our readers via videos running across Men’s Health, while ELLE featured an article on packing tips from three global editors.
HEARST X BOSE FRAMES
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
ACTIVATION/STRATEGY: Men’s Health partnered with a global fitness/style influencer to create a 49 second video centred around what to pack for a summer city break. With a focus on social, we created a series of three different carousel ads promoting different moments of the story with the stills used.
ELLE engaged editors from the UK, France and Germany to create a co-branded article featuring their top items to pack on a summer holiday. A shoppable gallery was featured on the article page, allowing purchase of the BOSE Frames and other items featured within the article.
This activity was supported across social by ads driving to the article and carousel ads that highlighted the talent and product.
Leveraging first party data we were able to reach users with an interest in headphones as well those engaging in seasonal summer content across our sites.
RESULTS: The campaign drove over 20K article views in each market, exceeding dwell time benchmarks by at least 1.5%. The video drove over 692K views across all three markets with view completions rates exceeding benchmarks for videos over 30 seconds. Overall the campaign delivered 12.2 million impressions across all formats in all markets.
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Hearst Global Solutions was tasked with elevating the brand perception of The Ritz-Carlton and reinforce its key mission “to inspire life’s most meaningful journeys” among key luxury hotel consumers.
SOLUTION: Through data-driven audience targeting and expertly crafted scripted video storytelling, Hearst Global Solutions were able to reinforce The Ritz- Carlton as a premier hotel destination that connects guests to carefully curated and personal experiences around the world.
HEARST X THE RITZ- CARLTON
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19 countries participating
5 Final scripts
5 short films shot in The Ritz-Carlton locations—Geneva, Grand Cayman, Lake Tahoe, Hong Kong and Al Khaimah
RESULTS:
Consistent over-delivery on views, VTR and ATS with both video and on-site content
Successfully increased the Ritz-carton awareness among all visitors
Double digit percentage increases in positive brand perception among frequent luxury hotel consumers including: Visitation intent, Likelihood to recommend rewards program, Provides me with memorable experiences
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: For its 10th year anniversary, The Outnet wanted to bring their luxury curation to life with a focus on style that wasn’t dependent on the season and encourage visits to a capsule collection on the outnet.com.
SOLUTION: Taking inspiration from a successful BAZAAR editorial feature, we created a series of three candid video interviews with influential women who shared their style secrets and their favourite pieces from The Outnet.
HEARST X THE OUTNET
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
ACTIVATION/STRATEGY: To focus on the mobile consumer first, video assets were distributed on social— leveraging the power of BAZAAR’s handle. We sequentially retargeted user throughout the campaign to reengage viewers as each new video was released. The final CTA on each video drove viewers to discover the secret, curated shoppable edit on theoutnet.com.
RESULTS: The campaign drove key awareness of The Outnet edit among 4.7 million highly-targeted style consumers in three markets and drove 18.5K clicks to the secret, curated shoppable edit on theoutnet.com.
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SOLUTION: Leverage audience insights to identify audiences and content alignment.
HEARST X TOURISM IRELAND
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
Research + Instant Insights: Research and Instant Insights helped us pinpoint our program anchor sites. We were able to see what sites indexed the strongest against their target audience (Esquire, Elle, Town & Country, Road & Track, Runner’s World). We ran Instant Insights polls to help inform our content strategy by honing in on our readers travel interests.
Data Studio: Using the research and information our Data Studio was able to create two custom audience segments using proprietary Lonely Planet segments, travel buy button behaviour, search intent data, and demo targeting. Through this capability we are able to effectively target the two distinct audiences, which we are doing across multiple media channels including Instagram vertical video, on-site rotational media, and pre-roll.
Audience Focused: When developing the content ideas, we leaned heavily into the two audience profiles - the ‘social energisers’ and the ‘culturally curious’ - while staying true to each of our sites editorial POV, ensuring that the content would resonate. A mixture of syndicated research and Instant Insights helped narrow down content themes for each site (fitness, food and drink, luxury and style).
Visual + Video Storytelling: Our solution is a series of content utilising a mix of custom shot and asset supplied features that showcase the magic of Ireland.
Finding Flexible Solutions To Work Within The Timeline: Most of our custom concepts require shooting on location - and due to weather in Ireland - these pieces were pushed out to the Spring. However, we wanted to kick-off the campaign sooner and get the existing assets up and running. In order to do so we launched with the non-custom shot pieces. As the custom shot videos aren’t launching until May, there was a need to have video content in market as soon as possible so we created two re-styled videos using client supplied video assets. From the supplied assets we created 5 pieces of sponsored content and 4 pieces of custom co-branded content live across ELLE, Esquire, Town & Country, Runner’s World, and Road & Track as well as launching the videos at a Tourism Ireland event held at Hearst Tower.
Focus On The Engaged User: Our audience expert identified and targeted the most receptive audiences by starting with Hearst’s proprietary, first-party data to serve sponsored posts to recent site/social platform visitors. We then garnered insights based on performance and built on them with look-alike audiences modelled off of the most engaged visitors. As distribution is managed centrally, we continue to optimise by applying local market learnings to our global partners and A/B testing for best results. This always on audience amplification guarantees that we are driving the right reader to the content at the right time!
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Men’s Health AND FitBit tasked our intrepid field reporter, Clint Carter, with a number of unimaginably difficult situations in this editorially- driven franchise, The Adventurist.
HIS MISSION: To meld life-hacker and speed learner as we sent him on a collision course toward the most dangerous of scenarios. In partnership with Fitbit, we crafted a three-part franchise giving Clint a week of speed learning how to walk a 60-foot highline, ski jump in Utah, and BMX ride through the streets of New York City.
HEARST X FITBIT
Award-winning feature
OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Position Carrera as an iconic brand designed for stylish, bold women who stand out and connect with readers in an authentic way.
OVERVIEW: ELLE took Carrera’s brand position of “Be Bold” and translated it into a captivating piece that not only showcased the sunglasses in a gorgeous way, but also shared an incredible story that our readers loved.
HEARST X CARRERA
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
We secured three talented and beautiful pilots to share what it’s like to work in a profession dominated by men. The trio not only stand out from the crowd because of their gender, but also their social media footprint reaching over 870k followers.
The feature came to life through a fashion-forward custom shoot that natively integrated the eyewear and engaged readers through personal storytelling plus social extensions across the influential pilots’ Instagrams.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Average time spent: 3.3 min
Shared over 6x more than any other custom pieces in the campaign
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Online personal finance company, SoFi (Social Finance, Inc) wanted to connect with their target HENRY (High Earning Not Rich Yet) audience and drive awareness in a fun and engaging way.
OVERVIEW: Cosmo took the typically dry topic of finance and made it relevant and accessible for our millennial readers with Fun Fearless Money.
HEARST X SOFI
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
Cosmo took the typically dry topic of finance and made it relevant and accessible for our millennial readers with Fun Fearless Money– a movement that empowered millennial women to take ownership of their finances. Themed around money, career, and relationships, the program extended across print, digital, and social platforms—culminating in a live event experience in New York City.
Branded articles that addressed the financial topics millennials are interested in from how to ask for a raise to paying off student loans
Video of panels and fireside chats from event featuring financial experts and inspiring entrepreneurs plus Facebook Live with Elisa Benson and SoFi exec answering reader-submitted comments and questions
Finance-themed Snapchat takeover
Editorial alignment around relevant content (i.e. How to Make 6 Figures in 5 Years)
Funny branded memes and GIFs on Instagram
HIGHLIGHTS:
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THE CHALLENGE: License to be creative gave our editors the flexibility to align Stella Artois with a “digital detox”—a cultural trend that resulted in a highly- visual, multi-platform campaign. *Perfect for global distribution as it relies on imagery, not words to tell a story.HEARST
X STELLA ARTOIS
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
This was the second year that Stella Artois has partnered with Hearst surrounding the BAZAAR icons event.
As the luxury crown jewel of ABI’s portfolio, this is the largest investment that Stella Artois has ever made with a fashion property.
By tapping into the right cultural trend (one that triggers an emotional response for the reader) we found that we were able to result in social engagement that outperforms typical fashion video.
Engagement was so terrific on the social assets featuring the video that we saw 4x the average CTR within the fashion category.
This cross platform buy of was the first time Hearst reverse published and used assets from our digital shoot in-book in BAZAAR. This program was themed around the motif of “breaking up with your phone” and was filmed on real film (vs. digital) with a custom score composed for the videos.
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Increase Awareness Build targeted awareness of the Piaget Possession collection among affluent Harper’s BAZAAR audiences leveraging editors’ authority.
Build consideration Leveraging audience engagement with custom editorial, showcase the Piaget Possession collection in styling features, and funnel the target audience to Piaget websites for further product information/purchase opportunities.
HEARST X PIAGET
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
When Piaget approached us with a global partnership with Harper’s BAZAAR we knew we had the right audiences but we wanted to make sure our approach was tiered so as best to capitalise on targeting within a short flight. We began with a simple “market” story that focussed on the products themselves through the lens of our editorial authority (basically editor picks) to reinforce the alignment between BAZAAR luxury and Piaget products.
Then we moved into a deeper, more custom storytelling that included custom photography and video with a broader styling thematic that organically positioned Piaget products as the finishing touch to multiple “looks”. This allowed us to broaden targeting by retargeting users exposed to the market piece and lookalikes while continuing to build engaged “Piaget” audiences among BAZAAR visitors. Video played a unique role as we optimised towards engaged viewers and then sent them to the site to read a fully-fleshed out feature.
And finally, we capitalised on the best performing visual assets and created social-first content (Canvas ads and Carousel ads) with the purpose of bringing it full circle with a focus back on individual Piaget products and a drive to their ecommerce. By focusing on exposed (and onboarded) audiences (the latter from Piaget’s CRM)—we honed in on the most prominent sales prospects for Piaget.
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OBJECTIVE/THE CHALLENGE: Increase Awareness Prada came to Hearst looking to build awareness of the Ouverture Collection among affluent Harper’s BAZAAR, Town & Country and ELLE audiences leveraging our editor’s style influence.
Build consideration Leveraging audience engagement with custom editorial, showcase the Prada Ouverture Collection in articles celebrating the Bauhaus Art Movement, and funnel the target audience to the Prada website for further product information/to purchase.
HEARST X PRADA
ACTIVATION + RESULTS
Content Analysis: We began by identifying readers highly engaged with articles about the brand, designer bags, art and fashion. We overlaid behaviours such as purchase intent – readers clicking out of our content via ecommerce links and to products on a similar category and price-point.
Engagement Analysis: Pushing the target audience through to editorial we then gathered further information about who was engaged and showing a higher intent to purchase (clicking through to the Prada website from the article).
Overlaying Customer-related Data: Overlaying information gathered from the shared pixel we could further refine our targeting. Visiting the website through the article, adding product to cart, past buyers that had already visited any of our brands allowed us to add another level of information around purchase behaviour that informed further targeting.
Product Focused: When developing the content ideas, we leveraged the centenary of the Bauhaus movement and the revolutionary new design of the Ouverture bag in order to create a tribute to and celebrate both Prada and the design movement.
Service Oriented: The result was 3 different pieces of content created out of our two content studios in New York and Milan that positioned the Ouverture bag as the new ‘must have’ bag.
Visual Storytelling: As key visual elements of our celebration of Prada and Bauhaus, we created custom shot still life imagery of the bag styled with a nod towards Bauhaus. This enhanced the visual storytelling and solidified the connection between the new bag and the design movement. We were able to leverage the different images across the content and social.
Focus On The Engaged User: We analysed the users who were most engaged with our custom content and then re-messaged them with social content designed to drive to Prada’s website.
Optimised Traffic: Through pixel sharing, we were able to optimise for conversions, engaging in-market consumers and providing them with impetus to make a purchase.
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Keren.Blackmore@hearst.co M +44 (0) 7813 211 162