Entries to the Digital Impact category of the 2021 Good Retail Awards have showcased many impressive examples of retailers using innovation to succeed in what has been an incredibly challenging year.
We would like to take the time to say thank you to all who entered. The number of inspirational stories shared by so many retailers made it a privilege (and a real challenge!) to narrow them down to the final shortlist.
The Digital Impact award is open to retailers who are using the digital space to create engaging and innovative marketing campaigns.
Modern Retail is delighted to announce the official shortlist for the Good Retail Awards’ Digital Impact Award.
The shortlist is as follows:
Fuzzballs
Fuzzballs is a kawaii brand that has created a series of online comics and merch to show the adventures of a cute cat, silly tiger and mischievous bunny. Created and run solely by Marc Sach, his digital marketing campaign has seen the business grow rapidly, finding ways to promote the business without needing to invest much money.
Marc decided to turn his animations and comics into social media stickers that would be available for free. Using his self-taught knowledge of drawing, animating and social media, these are available for free on platforms including the Apple App Store, Facebook, Instagram, Line, Twitter, Giphy, Android and more. With the objective of spreading joy and positivity, more than 200 million Fuzzballs stickers have now been sent around the world on social media.
The Fuzzballs brand continues to grow in popularity, with more engagement every day. Currently, around a million Fuzzballs stickers are used daily, resulting in a growing demand for Fuzzballs products that can be purchased online.
Eatsleepdoodle
Eatsleepdoodle wanted to get across the messaging that their products were washable, reusable and sustainable, explaining these benefits to a wider audience.
Planning each aspect of their brand that they wanted to communicate, they produced a detailed brief and worked with a professional animation company to create engaging and informative video content. Implementing a YouTube ad campaign, as well as uploading the animation video onto all product pages on their website, eatsleepdoodle also ran social media campaigns to boost awareness of their fantastic products.
As well as increasing brand awareness, this campaign has also worked to improve brand understanding, grow eatsleepdoodle’s social media following and increase website traffic and sales.
Hoogaly
Hoogaly launched a large brand awareness campaign designed to solidify their core brand values, developing this into a full digital marketing campaign that takes customers through a ‘life cycle’ of awareness, engagement, consideration, conversion and retention.
Aiming to promote wellbeing and community throughout challenging times,Hoogaly looked to engage their audience during lockdowns while marrying this up with some of the positive feelings of lockdown, such as productivity, improving the home and being able to feel relaxed and cosy.
Hoogaly’s approach has seen the brand deliver engaging and visual social media content to capture their audience’s attention organically, utilise paid-for social media to reach specific demographics, create content including SEO-optimised blogs and regular, topical content, distribute blogs to the press and create lead magnets. This comprehensive digital marketing strategy has worked to successfully increase Hoogaly’s reach, sales and interaction, as well as receiving great feedback from the community.
CJ Wildlife
CJ Wildlife aimed to build a community of nature lovers, as well as giving a practical and sustainable solution to help people’s mental health. They re-thought their marketing strategy to give value to customers and spread their message far and wide.
Reinventing their marketing emails to be more regular, reliable and engaging, they adapted their approach to be more content-led, suiting an audience of ‘beginner’ wildlife enthusiasts. To achieve this, CJ Wildlife shared advice and top tips as well as infographics, interactive bird song charts and much more. Encouraging interaction, CJ Wildlife used their social media channels to build a community, as well as signing up the ‘Urban Birder’ influencer David Lindo.
The results of this campaign have been significant, increasing website visits as well as having more than 100,000 individual transactions throughout 2020. Selling more than 75,000 new bird feeders and 18,000 new nest boxes, this has worked to help nature as well as people, with customers sharing their stories of wellbeing and enjoyment, watching birds from the comfort of their homes.
The Shirt Society
Subscription menswear brand, The Shirt Society, created a digital campaign to launch their service to a wider audience with the objective of signing up new members and growing brand awareness.
Designing a custom-built web platform to perfect user experience, the development team worked to create a website that allows users to sign up within just 30 seconds. Basing their campaign around the ease and convenience of purchasing shirts, the marketing campaign used targeted advertising as well as slogans such as “get shirt done”, reflecting the no-nonsense nature of the Shirt Society brand. Organic social media also played a vital role in this campaign, offering an insight into the business while engaging customers.
Alongside their digital marketing campaign, there was also a successful digital PR push, resulting in the brand being featured in many media titles such as the Daily Mail, Drapers and more, boosting their SEO ranking through backlinks. This digital marketing campaign saw membership grow by over 200% in just six weeks, enabling them to secure a second round of investment.
Furniture Village
With over 50 stores throughout the UK, it became clear that Furniture Village had to pivot their strategy to place a greater focus on their ecommerce offering. Having partnered with NHS doctor and sleep ambassador, Dr Ranj, for ‘Sleep Well Live Well’, the campaign focused on helping customers find their perfect night’s sleep.
As the COVID-19 pandemic meant that anxiety impacted many people’s sleep quality, offering smart sleep tips and practical advice worked to inform people throughout the UK, creating a conversation around the best ways to achieve optimum sleep health and boost wellbeing. Combining PR, content, social media, search and paid media to create a consistent story around sleep in the times of the pandemic. Furniture Village monitored search trends around sleep problems to offer relevant advice, as well as surveying 2,000 adults via One Poll and streaming messaging across video, DAX and Spotify.
This wide-ranging digital campaign resulted in major sales, informing customers and reinforcing Furniture Village’s positioning as a trusted UK furniture retailer.
For more information on the Good Retail Awards, click here.
Holly brings a wealth of experience in both print and digital publishing. As Modern Retail’s Content Editor, Holly is passionate about helping independent retailers to thrive in today’s ever-changing market.
