Wear Your Personality Inside Out
Whatever you’re into, TeePublic is, too. Cute things? Cool! Satanic things? Yup. Cute satanic things? TeePublic’s got you.
With a focus on customer retention, the creative team was tasked with creating an integrated campaign that would not only create a memorable, emotional connection with the audience, but incorporate compelling data points that proved success in customer conversion.
My Role
ϟ Creative strategy
🗨 Creative direction
↗ Data & research
✎ Copywriting
☁ Concept & brainstorm facilitation
⁂ Team cohesion
The Outcome
Meet Grandma P, Dark Deb, and The Roommates. They know what they like. But haven’t exactly figured out how to express it, or if it’s even okay to? Enter: TeePublic. No matter what you’re into, we’re into it, too. All it takes is a search.
Just because you’re a grown adult with your first real apartment, doesn’t mean you can’t have space dogs flying on tacos as your sofa cushions. Celebrate your inner weirdo and wear your personality inside out.
How We Got There: The Challenge
TeePublic is an online retailer where people can shop the most unique designs on the internet, from mainstream pop culture to obscure sub-genres. They’re printed on hundreds of products including apparel and home goods, all created and sold by indie artists. The artist is paid with every purchase.
Often when customers find a product through Google shopping, they press ‘purchase’ without even realizing what site they were just on. We wanted to tackle this challenge through a marketing campaign that will speak to customers who are already somewhat familiar with TeePublic, but haven’t fully digested the nuanced aspects of our marketplace.
We worked with our data team to dive into metrics that were proven to lead to customer retention. What do we know for sure brought customers back? We took that data and integrated it into messaging about our value prop - whatever you’re into, no matter how niche, the TeePublic marketplace will have it.
Search high and low.
At TeePublic, we incorporate data into everything we do including, of course, design and marketing. Our data scientists have collected a ton of information about what seems to captivate customers. We dug into that data to find ways to apply it to this campaign.
One major discovery was the search bar: when a shopper lands on a page with a prominent search bar (as opposed to say, a product page where it is less prevalent) they are 11x more likely to buy something! We have a few theories as to why this is the case, one of which is that only when a customer searches will they understand the immense breadth and depth of designs sold on TeePublic. This got us thinking that the campaign should exemplify behavior we want the audience to replicate.
Note: The exact data has been edited in the graph to the left for privacy. The relationships remain accurate.
Not All Heroes Wear Capes
With a deceptively simple concept in the works — show a customer searching the site! — we needed to feature intriguing heroes that our target customer would relate to, as well as the diverse search terms they’re typing.
This is where once again, data led us on the right path. We examined our target customer, their needs and wants, as well as top-selling categories. We explored everyone from a big burly lumberjack of a man who secretly loves knitting to a Kardashianesque influencer who is obsessed with extreme horror.
We then took this one step further and researched the categories we see most often in 2nd and 3rd purchases.
If retention was our focus, we needed to expand our thinking beyond what we know draws in a first-timer. What brings them back?
We were careful not to use stereotypes or make fun of anyone. That is antithetical to TeePublic’s values. Even if what someone is into is deemed weird or uncool by societal standards, it’s A-okay with us. If the ads felt at all malicious, we’d be sending the wrong message.
We landed on characters we truly loved and connected with.
Note: The exact data has been edited in the graph for privacy. The relationships remain accurate.
The Roommates
Late 20-something dudes who are moving into their first “adult” apartment. Think Abed and Trey from “Community”. They’re still into all the nerdy things they loved as kids but are feeling pressure to grow up. Well, we say never grow up: it’s a trap.
Grandma P
Sweet old lady sitting on her plastic covered couch, surrounded by tchotchkes and quaint ephemera. But not is all as it appears with this Grandma. Yea, she loves cute things but she also has a darker side…
Dark Deb
Speaking of a dark side, Dark Deb’s whole life is a dark room. She’s a weirdo, a true goth. And has an image to uphold. But when given permission, she might just reveal her secret inner desires.
Press
“Delightfully odd.”
- ADWEEK
“Appeals to the weirdo in all of us.”
- Campaign US
Project Credits
Kate Melvin - Creative Director / Jillian Fisher - Art Director / Alex Hitchcock - In-house Producer / Agency - Makeout / Director/Cinematographer - Everett Ravens / Lead Producer - Jen Leahy