#LEAwards 2021 highlight: Kate Spade scores with flappy bird-inspired game for new season launch

When the pandemic hit, many retail businesses, including Kate Spade, had to adopt a pure digital approach. With the release of Kate Spade's Spring Summer 21 (SS21) collection, Kate Spade wanted to reach its fans and target consumers. The brand leveraged Conten.Tech's research on the competitor landscape and past campaigns by other brands to launch a game in Southeast Asia that was able to operate seamlessly across various digital devices and platforms.

Conten.Tech is an immersive production agency focused on advanced media and web experiences for brands, such as AR, VR, and gamification. Kate Spade's and Conten.Tech's swift adaptability to changes in the retail business impressed the judges and secured them the silver award for Best Use of Gamification at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2021.

Challenge

One of the challenges faced by the luxury brand was to deliver its SS21 messaging to a larger audience. While reaching views can be easily increased by spending more ad dollars, engaging users will require appealing to the new digital generation by bringing gamification and other web touchpoints to deliver the latest season launches.

A global brand going digital presents its own set of problems - in essence, Kate Spade had to deliver an experience that works in the target market - millennials and existing fans of the brand - while ensuring it remains aligned with the core brand. This was a new leap by the brand and has never done this before in the region.

With the gradual ease of social restrictions, Kate Spade and Conten.Tech also wanted to drive footfall to Kate Spade stores in countries that are recovering from the pandemic. To this end, Conten.Tech wanted to increase the level of engagement, consumer data, as well as traffic to Kate Spade's SS21 collection.

Strategy

Conten.Tech realised that when it comes to gamification, using a web mini-game works better than AR games on social media for brands that want to use call-to-action features such as data collection and redirecting to the product preview or eCommerce site.

The agency kickstarted campaign works by conceptualising a mini-game for Kate Spade's SS21 collection. The campaign needed to have a summer theme with a quirky, vibrant, and energetic messaging that appealed to female consumers between 15 to 39 years old. At the same time, Kate Spade wanted a game that is intuitive and addictive at the same time. Thus, Conten.Tech arrived at creating a "Flappy Bird" inspired game using the icon of the season - Bee Bag.

In its developmental and deployment stages, Conten.Tech laid down the main priorities for the tech. The game had to be accessible across all digital devices, browsers, and in-app browsers, as well as light enough to load quickly. The game for each country was also separated by domains to better manage the data, traffic, and push-ads strategy.

Execution

Kate Spade and Conten.Tech primarily marketed the game by using social media ad buys with a focus on Facebook, Instagram, Grab, TikTok, and Shopback ads as they deduced that these platforms had the best penetration rate for Kate Spade's target audience. Prior to the launch, Conten.Tech focused on simplifying and reducing the game size to achieve a multi-access experience. Putting performance before ideation paid off for Kate Spade as the entry to the game was effortless and aligned with the target audience - users on social media can simply swipe up and play.

Results

The campaign ran from 10 May to 30 June 2021 in Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore saw more than 76,000 unique visitors, and over 71,000 of whom were new consumers. The top two platforms were TikTok (73.3%) and Facebook (15.8%), and users each spent an average of 43 seconds in the game. Meanwhile, Malaysia saw more than 93,000 unique visitors, over 89,000 of whom were new consumers. At least 40% of users accessed the game directly through Kate Spade's site, while about 53%% of users accessed it via social media. Kate Spade also saw users in Malaysia each spend an average of 58 seconds in the game