The Challenge

River Island is a forward-thinking fashion retailer which lives and breathes fashion. The challenge was to drive awareness of their new SS16 seasonal collections, build on their brand credibility and to clearly position River Island in consumer’s minds.

The Idea

Tapping into Grazia’s fashion obsessed audience, River Island used native content that was written and created from an editorial brand perspective, allowing River Island to fit into graziadaily.co.uk as a piece of editorial would. The aim was to showcase their new SS16 collection in a useful and interesting way, knowing that as much as the Grazia woman loves fashion, she also seeks out information, and hacks and tips to make her life easier. The content needed to reflect this.

Using Grazia’s distinct tone of voice, five native content articles were produced, inspiring the Grazia audience with key wardrobe trends, from festival clothes to wedding outfits all linking in with River Island’s SS16 collection.  Simple product shots were produced and brought to life through premium summer GIF video guides.The GIF guides focused around key pieces and how to mix and match them with accessories and shoes appealing to the fashion savvy Grazia audience. This combination of native content and GIF guides ensured Grazia showcased a wide range of the River Island collection in a fun, engaging and relevant way.

Each of the content pieces ran a social feed for a bespoke River Island competition. Using the #GraziaxRI and #ImWearingRI, Grazia encouraged users to tweet and insta images of themselves wearing River Island SS16 pieces, with the prize being a River Island spending spree. This gave River Island further interaction with the Grazia audience, as well as an opportunity for data capture through an opt-in box.To drive viewers to the native content the activity was supported with weekly newsletters, directional media, as well as native and social traffic drivers optimised across the Bauer Women’s lifestyle portfolio.

The Results

• 1.8 million native impressions across the Bauer women’s lifestyle sites, Grazia’s Facebook, and Twitter. Benchmark exceeded by 16%
•  Average click-through of 2.84%
• 1min 37sec average dwell time across all articles
• 21,000+ page views across all articles. Benchmark exceeded by 43%