In 2019 Apotek Hjärtat launched Spot Stop, a new range of skin care products optimized for sensitive and oily skin – in other words perfect for teenagers. However, teenagers have proved to be a really difficult target group to reach for Apotek Hjärtat. Hence, we needed to find a relevant cultural context and a way to interact with our target group in an era where ad blockers are as common as oily teenage skin.
Our assignment was to create a campaign that made teenagers aware of the new product range and interested in testing the new products themselves.
The main objective was to create a campaign that could break through ad blockers and advertising fatigue into the minds and lives of the teenage target group. Furthermore, it was essential that we got our target group to test and experience the new products.
Describe the strategy
The main business challenge for Apotek Hjärtat was to reach and interact with an extremely hard to reach target group (teenagers). With this in mind, we set out to find a solution where we, in a credible and appealing way, could interact with our target group and get their attention for the newly launched skincare range Spot Stop.
Gaming was identified as a strong cultural context and by researching this further we found studies showing that long hours in front of the monitor’s blue light can cause stress to the human skin and the blur light could also disturb our sleep, which affects our hormones, that, in turn, creates more acne.
This was the strategic foundation of the campaign, but now we needed to add some creativity and sparks and identify the best suitable platform for our campaign.
Describe the execution
Gamers love to express themselves through skins, but collecting skins also results in a lot of basic items that fills up your inventory in games. Our creative idea and execution was to turn the biggest gaming and skin trading platform there is – Steam – into an advertising channel for the new skincare range.
During four weeks the campaign enabled people to improve their skin (with Spot Stop) for the cost of a skin. Gamers could offload their most basic skins and get our new skincare range sent to them instantly. By utilizing the mechanism and functionality of the Steam platform we managed to engage our target group in an amazing way.
To keep the cultural relevance we worked closely with influential twitch profiles within the gaming community. The campaign was also activated on YouTube, Instagram and during Dreamhack Winter 2019, the world’s largest e-sport event.
List the results
Our insights, creative strategy and creative solution created an arena where Apotek Hjärtat could meet their desired target group and interact with them in a way that not only helped to promote the new product range, but also changed the perception of Apotek Hjärtat in this hard to reach and skeptical target group.
The campaign got massive traction and our Spot Stop products ran out of stock in just a few days. The campaign was shared by twitch profiles within the gaming community and people started to interact with Apotek Hjärtat. A few people even tried to hijack the campaign, tricking people into sending their skins to them instead.
Results:
300% ROI
53% click-through-rate
285% increase of our sales target