The use of digital and physical elements creates online and offline consumer touchpoints. Social media allows for the companies “to get better value for their marketing investments” (Leppäniemi & Karjaluoto, 2008, p.50). The Ganni Copenhagen Fashion Week show provides “physical engagement needed to purchase deep products” (Zhang, 2022, p.166).
This combination creates a multichannel approach to engage with more consumers that enhances commerciality.
“Instagram [is] the top and emerging social media platform” (Mou, 2020, p.6). A strength of this campaign is their use of popular social media platforms to reach a global audience. Levi’s soft-launched teasers from the Copenhagen fashion week show on Instagram. The snippits created pre-drop consumer excitement, which is evident in the comment section. This soft-launch engagement as consumers were able to interact with the percevied “exclusive” content before the product officially dropped (Thorbjørnsen, et al., 2015). The globalisation of social media has increased campaign accessibility to a wider audience. Internationality of Instagram has allowed for effective transnational flows (Ngwainmbi, 2019). This is a major strength as the collaboration commercially benefits from cross-culture and global interactions since global popularity of social media creates a space where a community can engage with the campaign.
(Instagram, 2022)
Full potential of the campaign’s social media implementation is not utilised to the best of its ability. Ganni and Levi’s platforms across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are saturated by the same promotional video. The repetitive tone appears as though their implementation methods are an afterthought. The lack of engagement is due to a lack of excitement within the digital media that was implemented. “Advertisement…is negatively related to repetitive [promotion]” (Verma, 2009, p.221). The dull nature of the campaign roll-out has impacted negatively on a commercial basis by limiting audience reach and ignoring the different needs for engagement of different cultures (Forbes, 2014). Redundancy feels unauthentic and out of touch with their core values of originality and limits the campaign’s full potential.
Brands can create authenticity through real life touchpoints. In such a tech infused world, Gen Z consumers are starved for ingenuity. Authenticity is one of the main messages promoted throughout the campaign. An opportunity to enhance this could be to create more in-person experiences. “Post-pandemic, Gen Z shoppers are looking for more physical ways to engage with people and brands” (Faramarzi, 2021).One idea is to install a gigantic vegetable exhibition. This is a quirky way to promote the campaign, like a physical implementation of the campaign video. An element of the digital could come into play as the installation can be made “Instagramable” with a certain hashtag attached to the installation. Furthermore, QR codes can be provided that will take shoppers directly to the online shop. Both offline and online elements allow for a more culturally diverse audience to be targeted and in turn will increase profits commercially.
Instagram post mock-up:
Online implementation methods bear the risk of cyber-attacks.
“During the third quarter of 2022, internet users worldwide saw approximately 15 million data breaches, up by 167 percent compared to the previous quarter” (Statistica Research Department, 2022).
Online campaign rollouts are victims to account hacking and data leaks. If Ganni or Levi’s Instagram were to get hacked, distrust could form in the minds of consumers. Technophobia (the fear of technology) is common in less developed countries and this increasing distrust will prohibit the number of consumers engaging with the campaign (Hopwood, 2019). Central Asian and African countries will be impacted the most as they are the least developed in terms of technology (United Nations, 2022). Cultural exclusion plays a role as some international audiences are being excluded. Consequently, the probability of profitability will be limited.
(United Nations, 2022)
Although ‘Grow Up’ uses popular social media platforms to promote the campaign, relying solely on digital implementation is a weakness. From a technological standpoint the lack of fresh content has limited campaign engagement. An opportunity that presents itself is real-life consumer touchpoints due to the limiting factor of technophobia and cyber-attacks that accompanies technology. An omnichannel approach towards implementation for ‘Grow up’ is needed to create a more organic communication process.
Global awareness is necessary not just for successful implementation, but for creating a message that is authentic with the objective to communicate and create genuine audience relationships. To take one more step closer to inclusivity.
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REFERENCES:
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