With the pandemic, who hasn't felt like redoing their interior to feel better at home? As we spend more time at home, our interest in the Home & Living sector has continued to grow. Redecorating your living room in cosy mode, redoing your old-fashioned kitchen, arranging your balcony to make it more pleasant, etc. Brands in the Home & Living industry have been able to run Influence Marketing campaigns that have further fuelled our desire to redo our entire interior. We have selected 5 of them for you!
UK home furnishings and decorating brand, Made.com, has evolved its influencer strategy to focus on projects with more impact than just product drops.
Lauren Spearman, Head of Consumer Communications and Social at Made.com, further explained to The Drum that social listening has revealed that customers are becoming jaded with traditional gifts and paid influencer marketing, and are looking for more meaningful content: “This is the evolution of what influencer marketing should look like – it should be based on consumer behaviour, be more impactful and more memorable […] But also create positive change and really contribute to society,” it was reported.
So Made.com decided to create the “YouTube Madeover” series in which the brand collaborates with influencers through home improvement or decoration videos. A dedicated page has also been created on the brand’s website to enable internet users to easily find all the products featured in the various videos.
Made.com has collaborated with content creators such as the French KOL Salima Aliani (562K subscribers on Youtube) who has redecorated her entire living room with furniture and decorative objects from the Made.com website. The video has been seen by more than 230K people and has generated many comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOz-8oIslyA&ab_channel=SalimaAliani
Made.com’s strategy for this YouTube campaign was to offer more dedicated content than a simple photo posted on social networks. Also, to activate both macro-influencers, such as Sophdoeslife (more than 1.3M subscribers on Youtube) and micro-influencers such as Bij Bonnie (40K subscribers on Youtube) or Aimée van der Pijl (62K subscribers on Youtube). In total, 9 KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) were activated for this campaign and the 9 videos produced generated over 1M views on Youtube.
A change of direction that has largely proved its effects. Indeed, at the beginning, about half of Made.com’s budget was dedicated to product donations and part to experimenting with more global influencer marketing campaigns: “Paid publications and donations are a very traditional way of working and every year we move away from this strategy. We are now deliberately moving towards long-term paid projects that benefit audiences.”
Since changing her strategy, Lauren Spearman has seen an increase in brand engagement and positive sentiment and has seen a 30% increase in social media content mentioning Made.com.
In 2019, Swedish giant IKEA implemented a successful Influence Marketing strategy by creating its own Spanish “ambassador club” with the aim of opening up to new audiences in an authentic and unfiltered way. The agency Good Rebels, a partner in this project, explained that: “the objective was to obtain maximum visibility on social networks while respecting the values of the IKEA brand with a real, close and authentic tone“.
So IKEA and Good Rebels chose to collaborate with Spanish micro-influencers. Although their community is smaller, they have a closer relationship with their audience, which means that their followers trust their opinions more. To keep their influencers motivated, the two retailers created a dedicated online digital community for them and rewarded them with perks such as free products or free trips. They also offered content creators the opportunity to share their ideas to co-create together.
The results of the ambassador campaign helped IKEA to see an 11% increase in shop visits and a 5% increase in sales. The 9,000 pieces of content created by the ambassadors also generated 63M impressions in total.
In 2019, US-based Bassett Furniture wanted to dust off its brand image, becoming more modern and fun, while maintaining its heritage as a luxury home brand. To do this, the company enlisted the help of influencer Jenni Holmes of Dear Lillie Studio, a popular interior designer with a 270K following on Instagram.
Together, they took a highly personalised approach, bringing Jenni into the Bassett Furniture factories so she could design custom furniture for her own spaces. Jenni documented her entire experience and showcased the brand’s products through unique content in four detailed blog posts (1, 2, 3, 4) and several social media posts where she was able to reveal the various custom products.
The campaign, which ran from August to December 2019, created strong engagement on social media and generated significant traffic to Bassett’s website. The brand also achieved a notable increase in ‘Find a Store’ enquiries on its site.
The campaign was praised by The Drum Marketing Awards USA, which named ForwardPMX, the agency that ran the Influencer Marketing campaign for Bassett Furniture, as a finalist for its 2020 awards.
Freedom Of Motion (FOM) is a brand that specialises in modular furnishings. New to the market, the brand decided to rely on influencer marketing to increase awareness, increase visits to its website, boost engagement and most importantly, increase sales of its products in its target markets.
In 2020, for its Influence Marketing campaign #MyFOM developed on Instagram (40%) and YouTube (60%), the brand activated different profiles of content creators carefully selected to fit the 3 categories defined for this campaign. These correspond, in fact, to the 3 main personas of FOM consumers:
Various KOLs were able to share photos of their interiors featuring FOM brand products on their Instagram accounts, such as Californian content creator Allegra Rose (56K followers on Instagram), whose post generated 5% engagement, or New Yorker Katy Bellotte (179K followers on Instagram), who achieved a 5.4% engagement rate with her carousel post.
The campaign also took place on Youtube in order to reach a maximum of potential customers through different social networks. The American Youtuber Jair Woo (453K subscribers on Youtube) published a video dedicated to the brand which was seen more than 145,000 times. Thanks to the link to the FOM website shared in the description, the brand has seen a large increase in traffic to its e-commerce site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5rV20qNJw&ab_channel=JairWoo
A branded hashtag #FOMVirtualShowroom was also used to help potential customers find inspiration and discover their products.
Wayfair has found success working with mega-influencers. In 2020, online furniture retailer Wayfair made singer and TV personality Kelly Clarkson (5.7M followers on Instagram) their latest brand ambassador.
For their “Home: You Got This” campaign, the artist published various messages on her social networks and also co-created her own collection with the brand: “Kelly Clarkson Home”.
The collaboration aimed to highlight how Wayfair makes it easy to buy furniture online. Through the campaign and the various publications, Kelly Clarkson was able to unbox Wayfair products and show her subscribers how to incorporate new pieces into their home decor. Clarkson said, “I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Wayfair to connect with their customers and show them how simple it is to make their home as special as they are”.
The content produced as part of this #kellyclarksonxWayfair collaboration received more than double the amount of engagement than the singer’s usual content. Her content also received the highest number of engagements and media value for Wayfair, with her posts totalling £312,000 in media value.
Using micro-influencers or celebrities, co-creating collections, identifying the most relevant KOLs for one’s brand are all elements that allow professionals in the Home & Living sector to boost their sales through Influence Marketing.
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