Ever since lockdown forced us inside and gave us too much time to scrutinise our choice of cushion covers, the homewares category has been booming.
The category has exploded in recent years, with social media and digital channels providing an influx of direct-to-consumer brands competing against new category lines from existing fashion brands as well as the already crowded cohort of established retailers.
With so many players all vying for consumers’ attention and the onset of the cost of living crisis, Spotlight needed a new strategy to connect and engage with consumers. The challenge was to go beyond the value and product-based messaging that the brand was already so good at, and instead focus on engagement and relevancy.
Jason Wolff, general manager of marketing, e-commerce and customer care at Spotlight Retail Group, told Mediaweek the brand wanted to position itself as the destination for quality homewares.
The home and craft retailer worked with long-term partner, News Corp, to identify and execute the new strategic approach, which incorporated a greater focus on integration, creative content and tapping into trends and events to gain relevancy and drive sales.
Ari Petropoulos, head of client strategy and solutions at Newsamp VIC Consortium said: “Whilst we do a lot of their work with day-to-day amplification of retail messaging in print, display, and some video, what they looked to us for was more of an integrated partnership to help them drive consideration and preference for the brand itself, as opposed to just a value and product based messaging.
“We started to riff on trying to understand the climate of the market – that people are very price sensitive, and how we could tap into consumer or household trends to fuse the content that we were creating and make Spotlight relevant in that.”
Petropoulos said the strategy drew from insights and incorporated a mix of content, performance reviews, as well as regular refinement and reinforcement. One of the main focuses of the strategy was shopability, and ensuring consumers could engage at every stage of the funnel.
“Heavy integration was another major element – how do we use our print vehicles to have Spotlight heavily integrated into themed editions of things like At Home? More broadly we focussed on native content, helping to drive that consideration element across the campaign.”
Wolff credits News Corp Australia and Newsamp with driving “a strategic shift in our organisation.”
“Their diverse team and unique strategic and creative approach stood out immediately. Through our collaboration, we aimed to position Spotlight as the top destination for quality home products, and the results exceeded expectations. With significant lifts in consideration and purchase intent, Newsamp has assisted our brand in gaining market share in a competitive space.”
Petropoulos added: “There was two times [the] message association for positioning around an incredible range of quality products at affordable prices, which was one of the main priorities.
“We increased purchase consideration against all core audiences by 8%, we increased perception of offering quality products at affordable prices by 12%. We had a three-fold message association amongst women, which was a priority audience for us as well.”
Reflecting on the campaign, Petropoulos said some of the biggest takeaways for the Newsamp team were that “relevance is key” and the power of utilising trend-based data.
“We were helping them demonstrate their proposition of value and quality products. I don’t think that they were conveying that with their TVCs, however, longer form content works extremely well when trying to convey or demonstrate brand product quality if you can’t get it all into a 15-second ad slot.”
For future campaigns, Petropoulos tells Mediaweek that the partnership between News Corp and Spotlight will demonstrate how Newsamp harnesses cultural context for its clients’ brands.
“When you think about news, we’ve got over two billion data points that can be leveraged to create specific content plans for a bespoke audience that can then tap into both cultural and category trends.
“I think that’s the formula that works for Spotlight, and one that we will do for clients moving forward. That’s what will separate us from other content and publishers.”
Last month, Nunn Media won Spotlight’s $90m media account.