Cotton On

* Results above are compared to Cotton On's previous performance campaigns in early 2022

The Objective

Courting sales for Cyber Weekend

Cotton On is an Aussie-born global fashion and lifestyle retailer boasting over 1,500 stores worldwide. Offering a collection of high-quality and versatile pieces, the brand has amassed a strong presence amongst Australian consumers and is quickly gaining traction in new markets.

The retailer jumped on TikTok in 2021 and has maintained a strong organic presence through videos that feature trending and native content including product hauls, outfit inspos, and behind the scenes content. Outside of organic activity, Cotton On has also dipped their toes into paid activity which had delivered promising results. Across both organic and paid, it quickly became clear to the Cotton On team that TikTok was an integral part of their online media strategy given the quality of audience interactions and the engaged community they built through their content.

It was therefore a no brainer to bring TikTok into the mix to drive online and in-store sales during the 30% off Black Friday & Cyber Weekend sales period in November 2022.

The Solution

Converging brand and performance objectives

To drive awareness and consideration towards their 30% off site wide and in-store sale over this highly competitive sale period, Cotton On opted for a full-funnel paid strategy that focussed on audiences, key ad objectives and creative.

For starters, their audience targeting broadly captured males & females in the 18-35 age group to reflect the audience characteristics of their target audience on TikTok. Then, to create hype around the sale, Cotton On tapped into upper-funnel Reach & Frequency Top Feed activity, which was supplemented by reach, traffic and conversion campaign objectives to push users further down the funnel. Audience retargeting also supported with keeping the sale top of mind and driving users towards making a complete purchase.

What allowed the campaign to be especially engaging was the range of creatives that spoke closely to the target audience due to their TikTok-native quality. For instance, the ad creatives included platform trends, sound bites, text overlays and creators armed with green screens. The campaign also uniquely used different ad creatives at specific stages of the marketing funnel in order to nudge users closer to a complete purchase.

To support the creation of these ads, Cotton On turned to the people that knew their brand the best, their own staff. By tapping into the creativity of team members that lived and breathed TikTok, the retailer not only minimised their costs but more importantly, ensured that the campaign spoke to on-platform conversations.

The Results

Cashing in on full-funnel success

Cotton On delivered a best-in-class campaign that pulled in a nearly 4 times higher ROAS and Conversion Rate, with a substantially reduced CPA when compared to previous performance campaigns run by the brand in 2022. Aside from generating impressive online sales, the campaign also supplied key learnings for the retailer, including the effectiveness of tandem brand and performance campaign objectives and the role of reach campaigns in building hype and excitement at the upper funnel. Additionally, it once again proved the importance of using TikTok-specific features and content in the retailer's ad creative to engage and convert users on the platform.