Staying Relevant: How brands adapted strategies in response to social and consumer shifts

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Quick Case Study #1: How FMCG brand’s co-creation marketing sold out 250 units in 6 weeks by leveraging the power of community

TBô Clothing is an underwear brand that launched in 2017.

BEFORE – The traditional industry approach

“As the holiday shopping season approaches, major U.S. retailers from Dollar General to Walmart and Macy's could be saddled with too much stock for a second straight year, according to a Reuters analysis, jeopardizing retailers’ profit margins and generating steep discounts for shoppers,” Ananya Mariam Rajesh and Savyata Mishra reported on November 13, 2023 in the article US retailers stuck with excess stock offer bargains as holiday season nears.

To buck this industry trend, TBô Clothing built its company around a co-creation model.

AFTER – Co-creation in retail

‘The consumer knows what they want and when they want it. We just need to listen.’ This is one of TBô Clothing’s core values.

To act on this value, the underwear brand makes consumers part of the development and designing of products to minimize retail ‘dead stock’ and move products fast and efficiently.

“[We] utilize our community, hosted on a site called DeCommerce, to gather ideas about which products they want to see,” said Sumarie Engelbrecht, head content creator and SEO specialist, TBô Clothing.

Creative Sample #1: TBô community

 

Once they identify a product that has been asked for multiple times, the team creates a survey that people can complete to give more refined feedback.

Creative Sample #2: Survey question for recently launched limited-edition underwear

The last question in the survey is a call to action – ‘If you want to get notified on development and when these Limited Edition go on pre-sale, please leave your email here:’

For this survey, the team had 300 respondents – which is lower than they usually get, but it was a very niche product. The number of responses informs their decision on how many final products to make and launch.

The design team creates a prototype based on the community responses. Prototypes are sent out to community testers for feedback.

Feedback from community testers

The team creates a ‘room’ where community members can enter and join in on the conversation. When prototypes are ready, they put out a notice that they are ready for testers and ask community members to let the team know if they are willing to give feedback.

Through this process, they usually choose three to six members of the community – usually the most active ones in the discussions – and send them the prototype. The team is mostly looking for qualitative data in this phase, so they only give rough guidelines. For instance:

• How does the design compare to your current favorite (usually from other brands, or from a different TBô range)?
• What are some of the things you like most?
• What are some of the things you would change if you could?
• Do you foresee any issues with different body shapes than your own?

With The Ballsy Pirate Black Stripes Brief, this phase found that people mostly enjoyed the product. But the team did identify a few small areas for improvement, and made the following changes based on tester feedback:

• Made the pouch more compact for comfort
• Reduced the bandwidth of the brief
• Added the TBô logo on the waistband

Once the design changes are made, they create the product and launch it. By following this process, the team launched The Ballsy Pirate Black Stripes Brief.

Here’s an example of community feedback for the latest limited-edition undergarment.

Creative Sample #3: Feedback example

Currently, they don’t compensate testers and have found that community members are just interested in being part of the design process. “Consumers know what they want, it's just up to brands whether or not they choose to listen. Members are happy to participate without any additional compensation,” she said.

However, the team has been rolling out NFTs for the community which reward community members with badges when they contribute.

Creative Sample #4: Community NFT badges

The team plans on continuing with this to encourage and empower consumers to help create the products they are using daily. They are also starting a new initiative in 2024 – online focus groups with community members to discuss designs the team is working on and get feedback in a face-to-face session.

RESULTS – Product sells out

The Ballsy Pirate Black Stripes Brief launched with only 250 units of stock (based on survey responses) on November 10^th, 2023. All 250 units were sold by December 23^rd, 2023.

“We have managed to create a process where demand is generated BEFORE launch, therefore, the products are sold out in record time,” she said.

In addition to following sustainable fashion practices – “Our products are all OEKO-TEX & BSCI approved,” Engelbrecht said – ensuring that quantities are aligned with the actual demand of the customers (despite it taking longer to conduct the research) is a way for the company to be eco-friendly and sustainable. Since limited editions are usually sold out within three to six months of being launched, the company has never disposed of a single garment in the landfill.

“Fast fashion focuses on attempting to predict trends. Think of places like Shein, H&M etc. At TBô, we investigate demand before ever going to the production phase,” Engelbrecht said.

Quick Case Study #2: How independent physician group achieved a 25% year-over-year gain in new patients despite data restrictions

Esse Health is an independent physician group with more than 100 medical providers, based in St. Louis.

BEFORE – Distinct pediatric practices

The group has six pediatric offices with 20 pediatricians, and although these practices fall under the Esse Health umbrella, they operate with six different names which made promoting the offices as a group challenging. It also meant St. Louis parents didn’t realize the connection to the Esse Health brand, which was a challenge for any advertising, public relations or branding campaigns.

“Up to this point, our marketing primarily consisted of online display and local print advertising around announcements, such as a new pediatrician joining a practice,” explained Matt Curtis, Marketing Manager, Esse Health. “With birth rates decreasing in the area, acquiring new patients was getting more competitive.”

And while Esse Health had launched a new website that year, web traffic was sluggish.

Creative Sample #5: Sample physician ad

AFTER – Unified branding and real-time responsiveness

The solution to the medical practices’ branding challenge was to unify the practices under a single, consistent brand.

“To maximize Esse Health’s ad budget, we needed a new naming convention to consolidate the brand,” said Kim Gamel, Account Strategist, Werremeyer Creative (Esse Health’s healthcare marketing agency). “Moving forward, each office would start with ‘Esse Health Pediatrics’ followed by its current name, for example, ‘Mason Road Pediatrics’ became ‘Esse Health Pediatrics Mason Road’.”

With its new naming convention set, Esse Health launched its first Google Ads campaign. The goal of the paid search campaign was to increase new patient appointments.

“The team continually optimized the campaign focusing on the most effective keywords, managing the keyword bid strategy and making sure we had a clear call to action on the landing page,” said Curtis. “We also adjusted the ad copy to increase our click through rate to effectively reach the new parent who might be searching for a pediatrician.”  

Creative Sample #6: Google ad

Data restrictions pose targeting challenge

Another tactic of the digital strategy was to execute email blasts to expectant women who were likely choosing a pediatric office for their soon-to-be newborn.

Here’s a look at the initial eblast targeting expecting women.

Creative Sample #7: Initial email

But as the first email was set to launch, the email vendor pulled its mailing list due to an abundance of caution regarding potential privacy issues. Roe v. Wade had just been overturned and targeting patient conditions, like that of pregnancy, was under scrutiny by a number of states.

The team quickly changed tactics, replacing the email campaign with targeted display ads reaching new moms where they were reading content rather than behavioral targeting using cookies to protect patient privacy.

Here is a sample of the revised display ads and the corresponding landing page that featured a New Baby Handbook for download.

Creative Sample #8: Display ad

Creative Sample #9: Landing Page

The digital ads ran from late October to mid-November. To track the new patient campaign’s effectiveness, the team ran a year-over-year comparison of new patient numbers for this time frame. The net gain of new patients for the campaign period was a 25% increase.

PR opportunity surfaces

Mid-November 2022 saw an early rise in Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases which is a serious threat in infants. “Parents were concerned, rightly so, about how to protect their young children, so we pitched Esse Health pediatricians as local experts on the disease,” said Gamel.

Creative Sample #10: The RSV pitch 

 

That effort resulted in a two-minute interview with an Esse Health pediatrician on the St. Louis Fox News affiliate.

Esse Health promoted that interview on its website and in an email blast to parents with children aged 0 to 3.

Creative Sample #11: Email sharing TV interview

Boosting Google reviews

In honor of National Pediatrician Day in January 2023, Esse Health emailed its current pediatric patients asking them to honor their physician by leaving a Google review of their respective office. This initial email was followed up with two additional review requests over the next two weeks.

The subject line was ‘It’s National Pediatrician Day and Esse Health Pediatrics want to hear form you!’ and the from field was ‘Esse Health Pediatrics.’

Creative Sample #12: Google Review Email

Prior to the request, the six Esse Health Pediatric offices had a combined 16 Google Business reviews with an average of 3.75 stars. After the request, Esse Health gained an additional 60 new Google reviews – all of which were 5 stars.

RESULTS – More new patients and web traffic

By the end of the yearlong brand awareness and patient acquisition campaign, Esse Health Pediatrics saw:

• Web traffic increase by 600%
• New patients increase 25%, year over year
• 5-star Google reviews grow by 375%
• Pediatricians interviewed in 3 local TV news segments on children’s healthcare

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