#Hashtag Asia Awards 2021 highlight: Sunglass Hut disrupts its social marketing tactics with Xiao Ming

When the pandemic struck Singapore, Sunglass Hut’s usual footfall and drive-to-store tactics were hit hard by circuit breaker measures. Working with Onyx Island, Sunglass Hut launched a social media campaign titled “Shades of Xiao Ming” to connect with their audience. The attention-grabbing and highly engaging campaign on Instagram helped Millennials rediscover Sunglass Hut’s intrinsic value and was so impressive that it clinched the silver award for Best Social Media Channel Campaign and a finalist position for Best Use of Influencer Partnerships at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Hashtag Asia 2021 Awards.

Challenge

With the pandemic hitting the retail industry hard, Sunglass Hut, with no eCommerce sites to speak of, was unable to pivot online like most businesses were able to do. Sunglass Hut’s usual drive-to-store tactics were no longer feasible in a circuit breaker environment. In addition, the greater amount of time spent indoors due to the circuit breaker and other pandemic measures also led to sunglasses becoming unnecessary.

A major challenge that Sunglass Hut faced was that due to strict restrictions from its parent company, Sunglass Hut was unable to run marketing campaigns on its Facebook and Instagram channels without bureaucracy slowing timelines further despite having a significant number of followers on both social media platforms.

Sunglass Hut also faced tough competitors. According to an Amazon study in 2020, more than half of Singaporeans surveyed revealed that they consciously shopped local. Thus, when homegrown brand and leading optical retailer, Capitol Optical shifted operations online, Sunglass Hut lost a significant portion of its customers to them. Meanwhile, brands such as OWNDAYS added to the competition by re-emphasised their fast fashion model during the pandemic.

Sunglass Hut also faced the challenge of engaging its target audience of male Millennials and “webroomers”. Traditionally, Sunglass Hut focused mainly on female shoppers with male shoppers being relegated to gifting occasions in the assumption that most men would be gifted sunglasses by their female partners. However, according to Rakuten Insight Market Research conducted in 2020, the ratio of male to female Millennial shoppers was almost equal during the pandemic.

A 2019 Statista survey revealed that 67% of Singaporean shoppers had a habit of "webrooming", the practice of first browsing items online before making a purchase in-store. Sunglass Hut had to take this behaviour into consideration when deciding on its campaign strategy.

Solution

To address these challenges, Sunglass Hut decided to prioritise influencer marketing and focus on just one influencer in particular.

Sunglass Hut chose Xiao Ming, CCO and co-founder of Hepmil Media Group which runs popular digital content platforms SGAG and MGAG. As a well-liked male Millennial himself, Xiao Ming had a strong following and high engagement rate with Sunglass Hut’s core target audience. In addition to producing some of the region’s most viral, organic and award-winning content on his platforms, Xiao Ming was never seen without his shades, wearing sunglasses while creating funny and engaging content was his most distinct social media personality.

Given that Sunglass Hut’s social media content and marketing tactics were far from disruptive or innovative, working with Xiao Ming would refresh the company’s brand image and content.

Execution

To ensure that Sunglass Hut’s campaign helped its target audience recognise its intrinsic brand value while emphasising the need for sunglasses as a key facet of one’s visual identity, the campaign idea was to take away Xiao Ming’s sunglasses, the iconic accessory that gave him his personality. Without his sunglasses, Xiao Ming seemed to lose his signature confidence and skit ideas.

The campaign was structured over three phases:

1. Awareness
To garner attention, an interesting narrative was created. Would Xiao Ming still be himself when he lost his shades? This got users involved from the very start of the campaign journey and Sunglass Hut became integrally involved when a media drop revealed a sponsored sunglass kit.

2. Engagement
Users were entertained with a series of Instagram stories and posts on both Xiao Ming’s and the official SGAG feed. To get users involved in Xiao Ming’s decision-making process, Instagram Polls were used. Given Sunglass Hut’s social media restrictions, a campaign landing page was created for Xiao Ming to drive users to. Both Xiao Ming’s social media posts and the campaign landing page showcased the full range of high-end designer brands carried by Sunglass Hut – a unique differentiator from other price-sensitive competitors.

3. Conversion
Finally, Xiao Ming has settled on his new look which is a distinct pair of shades from Sunglass Hut. With his new sunglasses, he went back to his usual confident self. Sunglass Hut offered exclusive promotions and discounts to users who were heavily invested in Xiao Ming’s journey. Vouchers were sent to users in the form of EDMs which helped Sunglass Hut keep in touch with this new set of audience. With the vouchers only redeemable in-store, footfall from core audiences and webroomers increased. The campaign landing page was also amplified through the use of Google Display Network banners.

Results

Upon the initial announcement of Xiao Ming losing his shades, other local sunglass brands also jumped at the opportunity to sponsor him. Many followers also left comments with suggestions for sunglasses that he could purchase. This encouraged his pool of users to follow the campaign journey all the way to the end to find out what he would eventually purchase.

Although the “Shades of Xiao Ming” campaign lasted only 22 days, it reached about 200,000 new users via Instagram posts alone and the average impression of each post surpassed the initial projected figure of 50,000. The significant number of link clicks via Instagram stories showed that many users were keen to discover where they could purchase the featured sunglasses as well as to redeem exclusive discounts.

Furthermore, the campaign even attracted the attention of local veteran actor, Mark Lee, who joined in the fun by putting on a pair of shades and posing as Xiao Ming in an Instagram story. This was later reposted by Xiao Ming and local artiste Chio Huey and piqued further interest among users in the social media space. The positive response and high engagement rate from the audience also prompted Xiao Ming to create additional Instagram stories to interact with his users.

Ultimately, the campaign was able to help Sunglass Hut to pivot away from its traditional store-first approach and achieve its goal of reaching out to its new set of target audience.

Photo courtesy: Shutterstock