This is the story of how Argos’s Spring Summer 2017 brand campaign – ‘80 Days of Argos’ – adopted an effective communications strategy that took its well-established ‘Go Argos’ creative platform up a gear, enabling Argos to own ‘today’ as no retailer has ever done before. It’s the story of how, in an industry first, we turned traditional TV advertising on its head and delivered a campaign that drove tangible short and long term impact for the business and brand.

BACKGROUND

By early 2017, iconic British retailer Argos had been championing the speed of its market-leading Same Day Delivery service in brand communications through its ‘Go Argos’ creative platform for the best part of two years. Yet due to hard held beliefs and the nation’s nostalgic love of the catalogue, it had been a challenge to radically shift perceptions of the brand, whilst driving sales.

STRATEGY: OWN TODAY

To embed Argos as a modern retailer that understands its customers’ needs, we adopted a fresh strategic approach for Spring Summer 2017: rather than just talking about being ‘fast’, we set out to ‘own today,’ ultimately creating a big, bold and bionic data-led campaign.

IDEA: 80 DAYS OF ARGOS

Instead of developing a typical 30” TV campaign, we created 80 unique date-stamped 10” ads for individual days of Spring and Summer and, in an industry-first, we updated them daily across TV, VOD, social and digital channels.

To ‘own today,’ each ad was crafted for the day it aired, keeping Argos in the cultural conversation all Spring and Summer. Data-driven product selection ensured each ad featured the product most likely to be popular each day of the campaign, whilst creative executions tapped into events in the nation’s calendar, making our simple message ‘Want it today, Get it today,’ even more relevant.

RESULTS

Highly effective, the campaign blasted through its objectives, driving long term and short term impact for the brand.

SHORT TERM IMPACT

- Supported by its highly relevant message (66%, +6 pts vs ‘Go Argos’ average), the campaign was more persuasive than any previous ‘Go Argos’ campaign, persuading almost 7 in 10 customers to shop. (Source: Savanta)

- Customer purchase frequency increased by +18% YOY, and as a direct result, we achieved a +248% sales uplift from Brand TV YOY. (Sources: Savanta and Sky Media)

LONG TERM IMPACT

- The campaign significantly improved perceptions that Argos is a brand that understands customer needs to 77% (+9pts vs ‘Go Argos’ average), and accelerated perceptions that Argos is fast, innovative and up-to-date. (Source: Savanta)

- It contributed to long term directional increases in brand consideration amongst non-customers too, thereby laying the foundations for attracting new customers with opportunity for future incremental spend. (Source: Savanta)

All in all, by adopting the strategy of ‘owning today’, '80 Days of Argos’ effectively reminded UK shoppers of Argos’s relevance in their lives today, driving short term impact, whilst also contributing to the brand’s long term growth by successfully re-establishing Argos as part of the nation’s today.