Ambitious Storytelling and Daring to Grow Pays Off, Adroll Shows Us How

Scott Gifis

December 4, 2018

Successful marketing requires more than seasonal promotions and eye-catching creative. As consumers are interacting with brands across more channels than ever before, expectations for personalization and relevance continue to rise. Especially now, connecting with and retaining your customers is never a done job. To truly stand out your campaigns must embrace the audacious, become ambitious, and sometimes this means making tough choices.

We saw this play out in the recent “Dream Crazy” campaign from Nike. Regardless of your point of view, there’s no doubt that the essence of the campaign was both bold and ambitious. Less dubious are the data points, this forward-thinking campaign generated significant buzz and brand awareness, already generating a 30% increase in online sales.

It’s the same mindset that drives us as marketing professionals to help businesses of all sizes reach their full potential. I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time meeting amazing marketers and hear their incredible growth stories. From learning how they competed on the big stage against overwhelming odds to how they realized growth with fewer resources, limited budgets, and lofty revenue goals.

These stories include one from Nav Salimian, Marketing Director for the fashion retailer, Claudio Luigi. Nav grew up in fashion, where his father’s mission as a business owner was to turn stuffy clothing into vibrant and fresh garments— building the UK fashion brand from the ground up. Four years ago, Nav overheard his parents talking about how they may lose their last brick-and-mortar store. He took a risk, left his job in music, and stepped in to help save the family business. Nav wanted to take the business online to share their clothes to the world, but he needed a platform, beyond a website, to get their brand seen and story heard.

Being relatively new to the digital environment, Nav stepped up to the challenge and worked with AdRoll to build out a digital-centric marketing strategy. Claudio Lugli’s first marketing campaign drove a 27x ROI. The brand now has its own warehouse, a private showroom, presence in countless retailers, an online community of 20k followers, a burgeoning e-commerce business, and are a favorite of celebrities and professional athletes such as Manchester United Forward, Alexis Sanchez. Without taking the risk to move to digital, Nav believes Claudio Lugli may have simply faded away as opposed to becoming the thriving, global brand it is today.

Another inspiring story comes from Adam Lasky, Director of Marketing for TeePublic. The NYC-based e-commerce brand sells art, apparel, and accessories from independent artists directly to customers. When Adam was tasked to drive TeePublic’s global holiday marketing strategy and grow year-over-year revenue by 20%, he knew he would need smart insights and strategic counsel to help him meet this steep goal.

That’s when AdRoll came in. With technology rich in data, insights around target audiences, where to reach them, at what cadence, and budget thresholds, Adam doubled his sales benchmarks for November and December. Daring to grow with AdRoll gave Adam the confidence he needed to set and exceed more ambitious goals.

Lastly, there’s a story from Rich Krolikowski, e-commerce manager for Sunski. The sunglasses and lifestyle apparel brand launched on Kickstarter to create an affordable, polarized line of shades.Sunski is a member of 1% For the Planet that donates a percentage of its revenue to environmental non-profit organizations, in addition to organizing charitable events and initiatives.

They had already built a strong following among hikers, surfers, and skiers. However, they needed to expand their reach online so that more people could go from the boardroom to the surfboard wearing their shades. Sunski put a lot of resources behind a rebranding initiative and Rich knew that broadening their digital presence was going to be a huge component of this project. Leveraging AdRoll, Sunski’s rebranding campaign delivered a 2.4x ROI—driving tons of website traffic, spiking online sales, and helping Rich shine internally.

As you can see, there are multiple ways to discover that “dare to grow” moment both in your personal and professional life. Once you encounter yours as a marketer, it’s important to keep these five tips in mind as demonstrated in the stories above:

Be open to change
Don’t be afraid to invest
Embrace social media
Trust the process
Above all, don’t lose sight of your customer’s needs

If you’re looking for more inspiration check out the #DareToGrow page at adroll.com/stories.

Scott Gifis

Experienced executive and advisor with a proven track record of developing and successfully executing go-to-market strategies, scaling world-class teams and processes globally, and driving sustainable revenue growth from zero (or near zero) to $100MM+ in new and hyper competitive markets.