American Rag, a fashion brand for millennials available exclusively at Macy's, wanted to drive awareness of their 2016 holiday collection of onesies and ugly sweaters. With funny graphics like "Jingle My Bells" and "Bae It's Cold Outside," adorning the product, there was a unique opportunity to turn the holiday tradition of gag gifting into a shareable, social experience.
American Rag is available in Macy's department stores, but its target audience doesn't actually go to the mall anymore. Instead they go to their social channels for inspiration and trends. To get the product in front of American Rag's target, we teamed up with high-profile influencers Liza Koshy, David Dobrik, KrispyShorts, and Matt Cutshall to share the collection organically in their own feeds. Since the product featured a variety of satirical graphics, short videos proved to be the perfect vehicle to position it as a must-have. Our four main influencers were tasked with creating comedic vignettes featuring the onesies and sweaters and promoting the partnership. Additionally, we sent oversized holiday gift boxes in the weeks leading up to Christmas to a group of fifty influencers, comedians, and celebrities alike to surprise them with ugly holiday gear and ultimately get them to show it off to their followers.
Our influencer video activation relied heavily on the abilities of Liza Koshy, David Dobrik, KrispyShorts, and Matt Cutshall to develop and execute storylines that were true to their personal brands, while also making our product shine. The resulting holiday shorts showed off the breadth of product and spread our reach way beyond American Rag's own channels. And it delivered huge results—2,211,416 video views, 588,894 engagements, and a 3% increase in Instagram followers—and even prompted the comment: "Best sponsored ad by anyone, ever. 😂" Additionally, we saw great engagement with our holiday gift boxes. American Rag onesies and sweaters were featured in the feeds of Logan Paul (10+ million social followers), Lele Pons (14+ million social followers) and many others. The holiday collection was a huge success for American Rag, selling out before the end of the season.
