BACKGROUND
Halo Heritage is the leading creator of luxurious natural haircare and fine fragrances, crafted for the modern African woman. Boity Pink Sapphire by Halo Heritage is a proudly South African, premium, first of its kind Eau De Parfum.
In September 2020, we conceptualised and executed a multi-channel launch for Halo Heritage, which included publicity, influencer engagement and a digital media campaign, with focus on organic social media reach and engagement and a paid media campaign.
The campaign objectives included positioning Halo Heritage as the leading creators of luxury, celebrity-led afrocentric haircare and fragrance, creating awareness and excitement for the first product to market and inspiring women to engage. A key performance indicator for our team was to drive traffic to the e-commerce site.
Directed at black females and Boity Thulo fans, the campaign also looked to engage those with a keen interest in luxury beauty products.
CHALLENGES
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and strict global lockdown restrictions in place, traditional campaign strategies needed to consider the health and safety of all relevant stakeholders. Additionally, any physical engagement would require strict protocol to be followed, which included social distancing, wearing of masks and limitations on the number of people allowed in a room at any given time.
Despite the challenges, the client’s goal was for us to create a celebration for Boity and her fans, key media and beauty influencers.
Usually, when launching a fragrance to market, the opportunity to conduct mall activations is a reality. For us, this was not a viable route. No one could smell the product (e-commerce only).
INSIGHTS & INNOVATION
Digital Focus
As a partner in Halo Heritage, Boity Thulo is one of South Africa’s biggest and most-loved celebrities with a collective following of more than 7 million across her Instagram and Twitter platforms. As such, our campaign was almost entirely digitally focussed, leveraging Boity’s online presence and social media influence. And…of course, we could not ignore that Boity is well connected so we needed to leverage the social following of her celebrity friends.
Agenda Surfing
In the midst of our plans, a global haircare brand made headlines and took social media by storm. The brand, in an advert, labelled ethnic hair as “dry and brittle” and caucasian hair as “normal.” In addition to a social media outcry and political protests, this brand was pulled from shelves at certain stores.
Knowing that we had an ethnic haircare range in our midst (due to launch just a month after the Eau de Parfum), we created a series of discussions (Halo Diaries) on natural hair, leveraging major local celebrities (who all participated, at no cost) to create a huge positive media and social aha-moment for the brand.
EXECUTION
Social Media Approach
In addition to a robust paid social media strategy and execution, we implemented several organic launch tactics on social media:
- A launch announcement on Boity’s and Halo Heritage’s platforms with a beautifully shot campaign videoÂ
- Virtual fragrance launch on YouTube for Boity’s fans, influencers and mediaÂ
- An IG Live conversation post the virtual event between Boity and Maps Maponyane Â
- Creation and release of a 3-episode series, Halo Diaries with major SA celebrities uniting to discuss their hair journeys (and throw forward to Boity Haircare range launch)
- Creation and release of an Instagram FilterÂ
- Creation and release of Boity Pink Sapphire GIFsÂ
- Social competition (win a signed bottle)
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Publicity Approach
To launch Boity Pink Sapphire to market, we created several campaign beats, implemented between 12 -28 September.Â
- An exclusive radio announcement on 94.7 Breakfast Show
- Physical and zoom junkets with leading, relevant media outlets
- Physical intimate fragrance launch with Boity’s celebrity friends, which garnered an exclusive feature on eNCA TV’s Style Syndicate
- Fragrance drop to 50 media and celebsÂ
- Fragrance samples in the October issue of Glamour to drive accessibility and trialÂ
RESULTS
pieces of earned media coverage
AVE
Reach
Engagement
page views
website sessions
Instagram engagement rate
Click-through-rate
(industry average 1.16%)
