Craghoppers is a global outdoor apparel brand that is on a mission to design the most sustainable and innovative outdoor kits for every adventure and environment. The brand was founded in the UK in 1965, and has since become known for its high quality kit and high quality values — proudly standing against the gender pay gap and modern slavery, and for sustainability, mindfully made products, and corporate responsibility.
Craghoppers puts this strong set of values at the center of everything it does, including influencer marketing. In the article below, Becky Brooks, global social media manager at Craghoppers shares how her team used creativity and the love of the outdoors to garner buzz and attention for their brand and products.
How Craghoppers Built a Creative Influencer Marketing Campaign with Traackr
Developing the Creative and Value-Driven Influencer Marketing Campaign
“Intention and audience expertise were both at the heart of our creative process for this awareness campaign. Craghoppers stands for sustainability, so we knew we would never do a mass gifting campaign. Instead we wanted to do something that both our consumers and influencer partners would be truly excited about, and, of course, get them to what really matters — the great outdoors.” — Becky Brooks, global social media manager at Craghoppers
Becky and her team wanted to build awareness for Craghoppers and create excitement and engagement amongst their target audience ahead of their autumn 2023 collection launch. The team knew they wanted to break away from the status quo and try something new, exciting, and fun. In order to figure out what type of campaign made most sense for their brand, the team:
- Did an audience content analysis. They asked themselves: what do our consumers care about? What do their lives look like, what makes them excited? How does our brand and products fit into their lifestyle?
- Outlined the goals and objectives that they wanted to achieve with the campaign. This included “standard” goals, like # of mentions, impressions, video views, and average engagement rate. But the team also set qualitative objectives for themselves — for example, they wanted a campaign that would convey Craghoppers’ values around sustainability and inclusion.
- Scouted out and brought in relevant partners. In this case, the team decided to partner with Northern Monk, a local brewing company. Not only did Northern Monk make sense due to its adjacent industry (many UK outdoor folks love a cold beer after their adventure), it also gave the team the opportunity to get more reach and impact from their campaign without breaking the bank.
Based on all of this, the team came up with their “This Is Our North” influencer marketing campaign: 20 hidden golden tickets, 20 thrilling outdoor locations, and a variety of fun prizes to be won, including bespoke cans of Northern Monk beer, vouchers for Craghoppers’ kits, and a holiday Lake District, a popular mountainous national park in North West England.
Launching the Influencer Marketing Campaign
“We wanted to partner with influencers for this campaign in order to ensure it reached a wider audience. Using Traackr’s influencer marketing platform, we found a few new, local influencers to add into our existing network. We also kind of stretched the term ‘influencer’ in ‘influencer marketing campaign’, because we asked Craghoppers and Northern Monk employees to help with hiding a few of the golden tickets! In a way this fit perfectly with the theme of the campaign — local outdoor enthusiasts going where they love to be the most!”— Becky Brooks, global social media manager at Craghoppers
Although Becky and her team already had a few influencers that they had worked with in the past, they wanted to partner some new influencers for this campaign. So, the first order of business was to find and vet 10 great influencer partners. To do this, they used Traackr’s influencer marketing platform to evaluate:
- Brand affinity. In terms of influencer types, the team looked for outdoor enthusiasts who could have a natural affinity for the Craghopper brand. Using Traackr, the team could identify these folks by searching through past content with specific keywords.
- Locality. For the campaign, the team needed influencers who were located in Northern England and Scotland. Traackr’s influencer marketing platform allows marketers to search for top influencers by location (also their audience’s location).
- Performance metrics. The team then narrowed their influencer list by evaluating each potential partner's past content performance, focusing specifically on engagement and video view rates. The team was less worried about audience size, as they felt that smaller tier influencers are often better at engaging their audiences in an authentic way.
Once Becky and her team confirmed their list of influencers, they reached out to each of them letting them know that they wanted them to be paid partners. Every influencer that agreed to the partnership was then sent:
- Gifted Craghoppers kits, so they could incorporate the products into their content (though this was not a requirement).
- 1 - 2 physical golden tickets to hide in a location of their choosing. Becky and her team told each influencer that they could pick any outdoor location that meant something to them, as long as it was in the North of England or Scotland.
- Short campaign briefs that included the details of the campaign (how long it would run, when they needed to hide their tickets by, etc), the campaign hashtag #ThisIsOurNorth, and some light campaign messaging in order to ensure alignment across content.
Measuring Influencer Marketing Campaign Success
“We were so delighted with the results from this campaign! In addition to its incredible performance on social, we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from both the influencers and consumers. We saw folks traveling quite far to find the tickets, and many of them said that the campaign made them feel like a kid again.” — Becky Brooks, global social media manager at Craghoppers
Starting off with a bang, the Instagram Reel that Craghoppers posted to announce the campaign quickly became their highest performing Reel of all time. In terms of overall performance, This Is Our North became Craghoppers’ highest performing social campaign of 2023, resulting in:
- 260K+ video views during the campaign period
- Average engagement rates of 7%+
- 200K+ impressions on influencer content
Also, with in two days:
- All tickets were found — influencers hid tickets on Friday and all of them were found by Sunday night.
- The brand’s partner, Northern Monk, sold out the specialized line of beers that had been developed for the campaign. The beer sold out during the treasure hunt weekend and had to be restocked the following Monday.
Last, Craghoppers used this campaign as a way to drum up consumer interest for UGC (user generated content). On the back of each specialized Northern Monk can was a prompt for each consumer to take a photo, and then post it on social media with #ThisIsOurNorth in order to win £500 of Craghoppers products.
Given the massive success that the team saw with this inaugural campaign, they plan to do it again next year. In the meantime, if you want to stay up to date on the amazing work that Becky and her team are doing at Craghoppers, follow the brand on Instagram at @craghoppers.