Influencer Marketing Awards: Best Fashion and Style Campaign

ITB Worldwide & UGG - 'Feel' EMEA Influencer Campaign

Objectives & Goals

When we started our work with UGG, for the everyday consumer the brand was ubiquitous with early 2000s celebrity – all comfort, but lacking style credentials and cultural relevance. UGG recognised this as a challenge they were facing globally and, therefore, needed to create a concept that would elevate the brand perception. UGG has always been an emotional brand because of the way it makes you feel and so from this they created the concept of #FEEL_. 

Shifting perceptions away from UGG only being about comfort, we needed to drive brand heat by showcasing how the brand makes people FEEL and how they can embrace themselves through UGG’s products. It was time to bring influencer to the story – emphasising the core values of courageous spirit and diverse style, embedding the brand in the culture of today.  

Our strategy, as the EMEA lens, put people rather than product at the heart of the campaign, focussing on self-expression, individuality, and human-centric narratives. In AW21, real peoples’ stories were brought to life under various themes. To have synergy with the global activation, we utilised the overarching campaign hashtags – #FEELYOU #FEELGOOD – galvanising a movement and building an emotional connection with the UGG brand. 

It was essential our work reflected UGG’s human-centric story, showcasing a truly diverse and inclusive representation of the brand’s creative spirit. 

– As such our goals and KPI’s for the AW21 campaign were: 

– Shift perception and centre UGG in youth culture by aligning with diverse creatives and tastemakers, producing a wealth of on-brand and innovative content with positive sentiment. 

– Build awareness targeting 5.5M impressions and 4.2M reach. 

– Drive consideration and generate conversation, targeting 630K engagements and an average of 4% engagement rate. 

– Amplify further conversation and awareness of the UGG brand by engaging influencers who get media attention. 

Planning

Having worked together for a year already, in planning for AW21 it was important for us to build more targeted awareness and cement the vision of UGG as a brand with fashion authority. Using our influencer technologies – Creator IQ and Influencer Intelligence – we were able to vet all talent to ensure they aligned with the brand values, target audience (by market and demographic) and were guaranteed to perform against key metrics.   

By closely collaborating with the client, we were able to ensure that processes ran smoothly with feedback being relayed at least twice a week. This allowed us to keep on track with reaching our goals, making suitable changes, aligning with the overarching global campaign and keeping a good rapport with the client. An agenda was sent ahead of each call containing discussion points, any ongoing negotiations, content approvals, budget updates etc leading to highly productive meetings and ensuring we were always working at pace. 

Another of the goals for the AW21 campaign was showcasing UGG as not just an indoor shoe but shoes you can do whatever you want in – come rain or shine. Almost immediately, we noticed this was a challenge we were going to have to overcome, with the majority of talent submitting content all shot from the comfort of their homes. Immediately briefs were amended to reflect this goal, ensuring they were clear and directive. Visual mood boards for each influencer were also created to allow their own personal style and creativity to flow whilst keeping this particular goal in mind. 

Execution

The project required ITB to engage Influencers to drive conversation around four different campaigns including Transition, Feel Good, Feel You & Holiday. In addition, there were continued efforts to reach the DE market as well as UK. 

Continuing the narrative to boost UGG’s perception as more than just a footwear brand, but a lifestyle brand, each campaign was successful in providing emotive and style focused content which invited consumers into the world of UGG. In yet another challenging year, each creator exceeded their usual engagement rates when sharing UGG content, a testament to the talent cast and their investment in creating striking image and video led storytelling. 

We engaged 39 high quality influencers and creatives to produce 117 pieces of engaging and on-brand content to be used online in paid ads, social, web and across the surfaces of the influencers Instagram and TikTok. 

We ensured a diverse and inclusive cast with an average of 80% BAME talent in addition to the inclusion of individuals from the LGBTQI+ community, those with both non-visible and physical disabilities and those of diverse age and body type.  

Talent with different interests and backgrounds were cast – art, creatives, fashion/style-first influencers and more – each receiving an overwhelmingly positive sentiment from their audiences across all their UGG content. From the likes of celebrities Peggy Gou and Beebadoobee to cultural conversationalist such as Mia Regan and Denai Moore, all talent were very carefully chosen to align with the objectives and goals of the campaign and brand. Engaging talent who are part of the culture zeitgeist and able to drive buzz helped boost the perception of UGG as a ‘must-have’ piece in your wardrobe. 

Results

Statistically, the project exceeded the target KPI’s with great content across all four AW campaigns, in addition to continuing to position UGG as a brand with purpose, cultural relevance and style authority to a wide range of audiences. 

Each campaign included talent with both narrative and fashion credentials, ensuring that purpose-led messaging was front and centre but still true to the talent’s tone of voice, working to be authentic and relatable, while still having commercial appeal to entice potential customers and drive desirability.  

We exceeded all our KPIs – delivering 7.4M impressions (35% over target), over 910.7K engagements (44% over target) with an average engagement rate of 17% (over 4 times the target). 

The ‘FEEL YOU’ campaign exceeded all expectations and performed the best, with over 2M impressions and over 500K engagements. The engagement rate for this narrative piece was the highest yet at 23.14%. 

Our top performing influencer, Mia Regan, who matches all UGGs brand values, saw an engagement rate of over 173%, proving that brand-influencer match-up is crucial for executing a successful campaign. 

Due to the foundations of cultural relevance being established early on by UGG’s marketing initiatives, ITB was able to amplify this further through the power of influence. UGG is now considered culturally relevant and style credible, becoming not just an active part of the cultural and fashion conversation, but a leader and trend-setter. #UGG has been used more than 8 million times on Instagram and viewed more than 182 million times on TikTok and the brand has received consistent press coverage in top tier fashion and media titles. The content created by influencers for the brand continuously exceeds our performance targets and their standard engagement – demonstrating a strong desirability and consideration for the brand. The boots are back, for good.