ABOUT

Creative Leadership.
In the role of Brand Agency of Record, we're helping European WaxCenter set their overall Creative Vision (which we call the core creative idea, or CCI). The CCI is a roadmap that spans two years and encompasses just about everything that involves branding, marketing, advertising, and digital.

Marketing, Commerce, and Beyond: From day one, our work has laid the foundation for a brand transformation that spans the entireEWC ecosystem and elevates their ability to drive bookings, sell products online, drive loyalty, and pursue their business goals. We started with a massive research program, audience segmentation study, and complete re-brand—crucial groundwork for far-reaching brand and marketing evolution.

Today, our scope includes developing brand strategy, primary research, messaging strategy, and both content and support for avast array of media and touch points at national and local levels—everywhere and anywhere that the EWC brand exists, online and offline.

Connecting with a changing audience.
To create content and deliver experiences that can elevate the entire EWC ecosystem, we needed to get completely reacquainted with a rapidly evolving audience.

Our Research
Our internal research studio, Curious, undertook a massive, customer research program to identify key segments, behaviors, and attitudes, and identify how those line up with expectations and perceptions regarding EWC, EWC’s competitors, and the category as a whole.

Our Key Insights
We confirmed that we needed to shift from our focus and celebrate the idea of confidence while speaking to a broader range of ages, genders, ethnicities, and interests—not a diffusion of focus, but a shift toward a more inclusive voice and message. These insights formed the basis for our content pillars and narratives

Turning fresh insight into reimagined content.
We knew we had to be inclusive and speak directly to a broader range of ages, genders, ethnicities, and interests. On top of that, we had to think in terms of content ecosystem that travels through many channels and places—TV, digital video, and social media platforms.

Our content studio, Wander, gathered both video and photography for four key content narratives envisioned through our research-based personas.We also managed both vendor-based talent (e.g., models and on-location videographers) and in-house talent—a huge logistical effort amid tight budgets and tight timelines.

Our Planning
Efficient production was a key objective for us, so we gathered all requirements and mapped out all executions before we took the lens caps off. In addition, we aimed for reusability and interchangeability. In other words, we were able to strategically cut our content down to short clips, or stitch it together into anthem videos. No matter what we needed, we could create it, because everything was able to connect.

In addition to saving budget and time, our approach gave our campaign executions tremendous cohesion, and our pillars (i.e., confidence and inclusion) resonated in everything we did.

Our Executions
As mentioned, we composed four key story lines that we could blend into an anthem video, intended as a 30 spot, or cut to :06 clips. Though digital first, they were suitable for any medium—YouTube, TV, etc. Our photography laddered up to the overall story, and could serve the ends of digital advertising, editorial, e-commerce, educational content, and a wide variety of needs overall.

Our Messaging Strategy
We used a full-funnel approach to messaging that took into account the widest possible range of customer journey moments, touch points, objectives, and key brand sentiments: disrupt, connect, educate, incentivize, and reinforce, remind, and advocate.

The channels we incorporated throughout the funnel drew from national print,OOH, macro-influencers, micro-influencers, Video, Audio, partnerships, banners (in-market, retargeting, location), paid social (IG, FB, conquesting),organic social, regional media (print, digital, audio), emails, owned digital, in-center, guest communications.

Hotline Ping!
With their physical locations closed due to Covid, EWC had a brand and business problem, to put it mildly. They needed to find new ways to help their customers embrace DIY beauty care on a new level. And as trusted wax experts that customers count on, EWC had an opportunity to step in and help.

Our solution was Hotline Ping—a name that referred to both the“emergency service” we were creating and the digital channels where it would live. In terms of tone, we wanted to create a breath of fresh air and positivity in a stressful time. “You deserve the best, by the best” was our tagline.

We developed a visual direction and editing formula, complete with custom music and sound design, to ensure consistency. We then built a comprehensive rollout plan, including audience engagement cadence, posting schedule, and content calendar. Finally, we created detailed briefs and shooting guidelines for our experts so they could film their own content safely. Once this foundation was in place, we sent out a call for questions on our social channels—and they came pouring in.

Results:Each episode has hit between 2K to +10K views on Instagram alone.