Zalando has long built collaborations with influencers. In its communication it prizes the greatest possible diversity and speaks to a range of audiences, from the mainstream to minorities. This is how it shows that its offer is broad and has something for everyone, regardless of background, social status, taste or lifestyle.
Brands and e-commerce platforms always fight fiercely during seasonal sales. They are all chasing the same consumer base, competing over who offers bigger discounts and launches a campaign with a greater share of voice.
So at Zalando we took a different route and combined the traditional sale campaign with a birthday celebration and, above all, with influencers. The primary goal of the influencer collaboration is to inspire the target audience and motivate them to buy. Together with them we invite customers to a “sale-ebration” of fashion diversity, unique styling and great deals.
We built the 5th-birthday campaign both on long-term collaborations with Leoš Mareš and Luboš Kulíšek and on new faces.
We took the influencer-marketing route on Instagram and TikTok because we wanted to get as close as possible to the target audience and reach them authentically. The resulting videos and photos were shared by the influencers in their feeds, stories and reels on their own profiles. The aim was maximum credibility and for the target audience to identify with the Zalando brand and its values — which we achieved.
We picked influencers who are as varied as possible. While Leoš Mareš appeals to mainstream society and people who bet on the classics in the form of casual elegance, Luboš Kulíšek from the gay community is, by contrast, a symbol of an independent lifestyle.
Bringing inspiration from the pop-culture world is Monika Bagárová, who also embodies timeless women’s fashion; Not So Funny Any represents a very narrowly defined community with a “pink view of the world” and personifies a confident style that doesn’t worry about body proportions.
Ela Yababy together with Lucki Linh mirror Czech minority communities with an emphasis on local sustainable style.
In the second phase the biggest challenge was getting the execution right; production was handled by our partner agency FINAL_2. Dynamics, colour and editing effects, together with playfulness and spontaneous on-camera performance, balance the ratio between styling and the influencers' own naturalness. The result is videos with visual elements that reflect current social-media trends.
The whole campaign didn’t focus only on influencer marketing and social media; Zalando also supported it in out-of-home formats and in print.
It’s also worth noting that we shot the campaign in unconventional Prague locations such as Grébovka park, the Botanical Garden, the Prague Congress Centre, the ramparts at Vyšehrad and the Vietnamese SAPA market. These places have their own genius loci, they aren’t obvious choices, and the target audience likes to spend its free time here and in similar places across the country.
The metrics tracked on Instagram were mainly the follower engagement rate and the resulting CTR. For the six influencers mentioned, the total number of impressions during the campaign was 841,899 and likes 12,276. The overall combined CTR was 6.86 %.
On TikTok, the campaign ran with three influencers — Ela Yababy, Lucki Linh and Luboš Kulíšek. It reached a total of 13,382 views and 1,020 likes.
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