What you need to know:

• Archies Footwear's investment on high quality social content is paying off handsomely.
• Its campaign creation, Yanderas Janderis a champion masseur and foot lothario, has transformed into social media super star with the campaign videos having been viewed 35 million times across all channels.
• It has also driven strong engagement – and a tonne of sales.
• The team knew they were on a winner early and that was confirmed with strong Black Friday sales last year.

It took less than a week for marketing boss Ruben Thompson and his team at Archies Footwear to realise that their innovative Yanderas Janderas video campaign had hit the mark.

Launched in the second half of last year, the campaign was based on videos produced for the brand by ODV and was built around a character created by the team named Yanderas Janderas (played by New Zealand actor Anthony Butters), foot masseuse extraordinaire (and six times Golden Foot Champion.)

“Within a week, we knew people loved it,” said Thompson. “The positive sentiment was overwhelming. People weren’t just liking it, they were commenting, they were tagging friends, they were sharing it to their own walls.”

“To me, a share is as high a level of engagement as you can get. That video received thousands of shares, which is crazy. I've worked with very high levels of ad spends before that ran into tens millions of dollars. And I've never seen that type of reaction, which is exactly what we were after.”

The impact was significant and sustained.

"We saw an increase on our average post engagement jump over 30 per cent on this campaign. Most notably each episode receiving not just thousands of comments, but thousands of reshares," per Thompson.

"In addition to that we also saw a significant uptick in unique reach from this campaign."

Overall, the campaign has had 35 million views across all platforms. Archies Footwear's Yanderas & Hans Sprutzman commercial built on the success of the previous two videos, Foot Masseur Yanderas Janderas, and Yanderas Motivational Speaker.

Ironically, given the engagement on Youtube, it wasn’t even part of the initial media brief.

“Most of the placements were put across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. That's where most of the impressions were served. And Youtube, we didn't promote it on that channel,” adds Thompson.

It was only when he checked the Youtube analytics that he realised what was unfolding. “People were looking for the commercial, which really meant people were typing in ‘Archies Footwear commercial’. So certainly, they'd seen it on Instagram or TikTok, they laughed, and they scrolled past. But now they wanted to show their friends. That was a really positive signal."

Awareness

“We didn't just want to sell our product. We wanted to introduce ourselves and give some value to people out there in the audience. Further down the line, we can present our product offering.”

While it was initially difficult to assess the business impact of the campaign, Thompson believes that it certainly fed into the successes the brand experienced around the Black Friday sales last year.

“There are always high expectations around Black Friday and we experienced significant growth. And a lot of that was attributed to having introduced a lot more people to the brand [via the campaign].”

He said these were people who might not have converted when they first saw this video, but who were left with a positive impression of Archies. “When it came to Black Friday, they [consumers] recognised us and instead of scrolling past us, they saw the brand, paused, then looked at the offer and took action.”

Creative team

Thompson first encountered the work of the creative team behind the Yanderas Janderas videos during a stint working with Two Dudes, a New Zealand men’s bathroom products brand.

“I was working at an agency, and they had just come on for a very brief stint. And then one week, they showed up and said, ‘Hey, we've got this really good video, we think it's doing really well.’ And they didn't fully understand the ad manager metrics. When I looked I was like, 'wow, blown away' by the performance. Even before I saw the video I saw the metrics.”

He made a mental note at the time to follow up with ODV in future, and it was about a year later, having landed the role with Archies, when he finally called them in.

The creative executions were a big step up in quality for the brand, which previously shot low-fidelity content on iPhones. “That still works great for us, but this was something different. This was a big leap for us,” said Thompson.

He also credits the willingness of the leadership to take a chance, but admits to the usual jitters having got his way.

“I was so excited about the idea of getting it across the line, but once you get sign-off, then it becomes a reality that it's the biggest investment we've made into video production. You think, 'I really hope it's executed well,' and that the day goes well because they're long days and a lot is happening.” 

Those low-fidelity phone-shot vids are a different beast to a production shoot with 15 to 20 people on site, he said.

“Seeing it in post-production, that was when we got really, really excited. Seeing what they had pulled together.”

Value exchange

ODV co-founder Matt Dawson told Mi3 that humour can be a great form of value exchange.

"The way I like to think about it is, if you're asking people to watch something, you're taking up their time. The least you can do is give them something in return, which is funny or entertaining or interesting and that makes it worth their while."

Dawson said people don't feel like they're being advertised to when you tell them a story or make them laugh. 

"That's what we've been trying to do with the videos we make for our clients. We create this fun engagement that helps customers really enjoy the advertising you're putting out. And because they're enjoying it, they've given you permission to advertise to them."