Over the past 10 years, Aerie has been the industry leader in showcasing real, unretouched bodies. For holiday 2023, Aerie sought to build brand equity and acquire new customers through a message of empowerment and comfort. But as marketers know, the message is nothing without the medium. Aerie partnered with Ovative experts to break through the holiday advertising clutter and reach audiences in their natural environments.
Ovative built the “Give REAL, Get Aerie” media strategy to support Aerie’s overall customer marketing strategy for the season to:
Bring Aerie’s cozy vibes to everyday life by creating the “coziest spaces in the busiest places” via an OOH activation.
Ease the pain of holiday shopping by making gift giving easy, targeting gift givers with high-impact media showcasing Aerie’s must-have gifts.
Break through mindless scrolling and capture attention by owning exclusive media space with premium, custom content on and integrations into GenZennial’s most-loved apps.
The “Give REAL, Get Aerie” campaign goals were to:
Acquire new, high-value customers with a focus on gift givers.
Engage audiences early and often throughout the holiday season and encourage repeat purchases.
Build brand equity with GenZennials aligned with confidence, comfort, and inclusivity.
Ovative orchestrated a two-pronged approach for Aerie’s “Give REAL, Get Aerie” campaign from September 28, 2023 to December 26, 2023 to effectively capture attention and engage audiences.
Prong 1: “Give REAL”
“Give REAL” created “coziest spaces in the busiest places” to provide consumers with real comfort where their holiday stress peaked. Ovative disseminated this message via Nativo native ads, TikTok Max Pulse ads, ad-free Spotify listening sessions gifted to consumers, and more. This message was also activated via experiential OOH activations, including a cozy airport pop-up.
Prong 2: “Get Aerie”
"Get Aerie” made holiday shopping less stressful and made Aerie synonymous with holiday gifting. To achieve this, Ovative facilitated Aerie becoming the first mono-brand fashion retailer to execute a Meta Moment Maker strategy to maximize product exposure. This message was also activated across Kargo via store-locator units, Nativo sponsored content, and more.
By leveraging premium placements across multiple strategic partners, Ovative enabled Aerie to break through holiday clutter with a seamless user experience. The “Give REAL, Get Aerie” campaign was uniquely born to speak to GenZennials, or Aerie’s Gen Z and Millennial target audience, utilizing engaging creative built for their most-loved platforms. The creative showcased Aerie’s brand values and made it easy for consumers to easily share what they want with loved ones with the message “Hint Hint, I Want Aerie!”
In developing and executing the media strategy, two key challenges had to be overcome:
Differentiating from Competition: Aerie has always recognized the unrealistic body expectations put on younger generations by other brands and social media. To continue its legacy of empowerment, Aerie partnered with Ovative to challenge these unrealistic norms and stay true to the brand’s differentiators. Through this campaign, Aerie showcased that its products make the holiday season a little more comfortable while giving consumers a confidence boost.
Bringing REAL to Life: Aerie knows the holiday season can bring stress in various ways. Ovative’s creative team asked the question “How can Aerie bring coziness to consumers outside of their homes?” This inspired the idea of the “coziest spaces in the busiest places,” where Aerie brought comfort to the holiday season’s most hectic touchpoints. Based on Ovative's design and in partnership with CSM Sport and Entertainment, Inc., Aerie created a cozy pop-up in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport that provided weary travelers a relaxing oasis.
Goal 1: Acquire new, high-value customers. Goal 2: Engage audiences and encourage repeat purchases.
Exceeded campaign goals:
718M impressions (+18% to goal)
135M clicks (+146% to goal)
Beat sales goal (+24% to LY)
The success of the KPIs above was instrumental in supporting customer acquisition and repeat purchaser targets.
Exceeded channel goals:
Meta: Aerie was the first mono-brand fashion retailer to execute a Meta Moment Maker, an audience saturation strategy to maximize exposure. Aerie reached 55% of women ages 18-34 (+110% to goal), driving the highest attributed omnichannel ROAS in its Meta history.
Spotify: 3.9M unique users reached (+102% to goal).
Kargo: Over-indexed on CTR by 163% and drove online and in-store traffic by targeting last-minute gift givers with store locator units.
Nativo: Last-minute gift ideas sponsored article surpassed time on content benchmark by 1.3x and increased CTR to Aerie’s gifting landing page.
Pop-up: Drove 3,750 unique visitors and 1,500 loyalty program sign-ups.
Goal 3: Build brand equity with GenZennials.
TikTok: Aerie saw an 8% lift in ad recall and 4% lift in brand association with holiday gifting.
Meta: Increased average SOV to 55% among competitor set, driving a 38% conversation volume lift.
