Despite celebrating Thanksgiving last month, Canadian brands aren’t skipping out on the U.S. retail tradition of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And, as consumers plan to spend big, many brands also plan to drop a lot of cash – on social advertising. Toronto-based accessory designer Vitaly has turned to Facebook and Instagram to promote holiday shopping.
According to Joe Cornfield, marketing manager at Vitaly, the company puts a significant amount of thought – and money – into its Black Friday promotional campaigns.
And not without reason. According to internal data from Facebook’s IQ Page, between Nov. 1 and 8, approximately 19 million people worldwide had close to 40 million holiday-related interactions on Facebook, with Canada coming in at #3 (the U.S. came in at #1 followed by the U.K.). The data also shows that conversations are led by millennial women.
Founded in 2011, Vitaly is a unisex accessories brand with seven retail stores in Canada, more than 300 international wholesale partners and an online sales platform. Cornfield says ecomm is its biggest sales channel during the Black Friday weekend, while its two biggest marketing channels for the weekend are CRM and paid social advertising.
“CRM is how we access our existing customers and make sure they know when and what to expect from our Black Friday promotion,” he says, explaining that the company sends “teaser emails” to its existing customers and subscribers.
To support its CRM efforts, the company runs what Corfield calls its “biggest paid social budget of the year” between Nov. 22 and 27, which is primarily focused on Facebook and Instagram.
The brand will be leaning almost exclusively into video content, which Cornfield says provides a consistent visual aesthetic across all of its channels, including Facebook, Instagram and email.
He adds that the campaign includes “lots of animated video creative as well as dynamic ads” on Instagram and Facebook Stories.
Cornfield says the decision behind using video was based on consumer insight. “We find that our audience engages much more with video than static content on our paid social channels.”
“We like to keep visual content dynamic wherever possible, sometimes that means animation… native vertical video for Stories [or] widescreen 16×9 video formats,” he notes, adding that, on top of seeing the positive result of this strategy in its CPMs and engagement rates, “it’s cooler for our customer to see.”
Cornfield describes Vitaly’s target as a young, brand-focused consumer interested in fashion, culture and music.
Vitaly’s Black Friday campaign runs internationally, with all creative, media buying and strategy being executed in-house.
