Campaign: Back to School '24

Something about back to school always evokes such nostalgia. So for OLLY’s Back to School ‘24 campaign, we went back—way back. 

Think gel pens, Tamagotchis, jelly shoes and all sparkly everything everywhere. Back to when you had to turn on the family desktop with your big toe so you could surf the World Wide Web and stay up way too late talking to your friends on Instant Messenger—all without leaving the “computer room.”

The Task

Back to School is one of OLLY’s most important (and fun!) tentpole campaigns of the year as we delight consumers and help them prepare for a busy school year ahead. 

The goal every year remains the same—to deliver a fresh, cohesive campaign; build OLLY’s brand recognition; and lean into the relatability of the chaos this time of year to drive sales.

  • The Back to School campaign is in the unique position of building off previous years’ learnings, but with that comes the challenge of making sure we stay relevant and return with a smarter, more effective campaign.

    For Back to School ‘24, we threw it back to the 90’s, which hit a sweet spot for two different OLLY consumer groups: nostalgic millennial parents and trendy Gen Z students.  

My Role

As channel lead, I met with Product, Marketing and Brand stakeholders to learn what worked last year and what didn’t. I stayed close with channel owners to understand best practices and worked in tandem with my design counterpart to tailor channel content that fit our overall campaign. Our small but mighty team delivered on 58 Briefs in 16 weeks. That's a 28% growth in brief intake vs PY, with the same headcount.

  • Our creative team examined last year’s ways of working and implemented production optimizations and design system updates prior to campaign start. This made it possible for copy and design to seamlessly concept and iterate in parallel, expediting timelines and maintaining version control.

    The 90’s had so much slang, which, rad, but had the potential to go too far out. I went on several copy explorations to fine tune what retro references would connect without being dated (or induce eye rolls).The 90’s had so much slang, which, rad, but had the potential to go too far out. I went on several copy explorations to fine tune what retro references would connect without being dated (or induce eye rolls).

    I established a copy hierarchy that balanced nostalgia with our message: OLLY supplements make getting back into a school year routine easy peasy. We’d use this system to iterate across different channels and writers, a total lifesaver when executing for Paid Social.I established a copy hierarchy that balanced nostalgia with our message: OLLY supplements make getting back into a school year routine easy peasy. We’d use this system to iterate across different channels and writers, a total lifesaver when executing for Paid Social.

Dot Com

Inspired by Geocities and everyone’s budding passion for graphic design, we really went for it on our landing page. The tubular background and shiny holographic stickers were in line with the campaign’s overall look-and-feel. And it wouldn’t be an authentic 90’s website without paying homage to a certain Operating System’s application windows and chatty mascot. ;) 

Remind you of a certain mascot?

View static webpages here: Launch, Refresh 1, Refresh 2 and 3

To balance the rad design, copy focused on conversion by speaking to product benefits. We peppered in that flippant 90’s tone throughout the page, leaving Easter eggs on the windows modules, but prioritized on the need state of each supplement to entice readers to click “Shop.” 

As the campaign progressed, we had three copy refreshes total to evolve with the: preparation, purchase and post school year phases. For our last iteration, aimed at college students, we completely updated the website, from copy to graphic design and product offerings.

Gen Z Activation: Tinder & Chegg

“Back to school” includes college. With the campaign’s late-90's-meets-Y2K art direction, we had the challenge of connecting with our secondary audience who weren’t even conscious during this decade. No problemo, dude.

Visually, we struck a vibrant graphic treatment that balanced both nostalgia (for millennials) and trend (for Gen Z) and let our headlines shine. We bet big on bold, current and meticulously pointed copy that felt native to the users on our placements: Chegg (a study support website), Tinder (targeting adults in their early 20s) and Reddit.

The results? People couldn’t stop swiping right on OLLY. Between our Tinder branded profile card and a native display card, we garnered:

  • 3.5MM impressions (203K added value, ~5% AV)

  • Our branded profile card earned

    • 2.9% engagement rate. Tinder benchmarks are 1.5-2%

    • 50% message open rate, on par with top end of benchmarks 40-50%

  • And our native display card earned

    • 2.9% engagement rate. Tinder benchmarks are 1.5-2%

    • **3.7% engagement rate specifically for 18 year olds**

Paid Social: Motion & Static

OLLY’s Back to School TV spot was the bomb dot com. So we absolutely repurposed it for our paid social ads, which are just mini commercials if you think about it.

To follow best practices and avoid creative fatigue, we applied the following parameters on our motion and static ads on Meta, Snapchat and Pinterest:

  • Three different audiences: New to Brand, Retargeting and Remarketing

  • Two messaging tracks and design treatments per funnel placement

  • Three creative refreshes (both visual and copy)

  • Videos were cut into :30 sec and :15 sec each

For our paid static assets, we leveraged still and on figure photography, product vectors and graphic design to create variety and avoid the dreaded creative fatigue. This incredibly inventive and resourceful approach made:

  • 64 motion ads

  • 285 Meta static ads

  • 30 Pinterest static ads

  • 5 on-ad polls

  • and the countless social share captions our copywriters wrote for each.

Launch: OLLY Brainy Chews

OLLY stays at the forefront of wellness innovation by changing the way we see and consume supplements, whether it’s with delightfully tasty-and-effective vitamins that fit seamlessly into your routine, or by demystifying the science behind our products. OLLY delivered once again with the launch of Brainy Chews, an expansion into the Nootropics space as well as a brand new format—a tasty, portable soft chew. 

OLLY Brainy Chews debuted with three hero products: Focused Thinker, Chill Thinker and Energized Thinker.

With 84% of adults reporting they’re distracted at work¹ and 60% reporting fatigue and burnout², each chew was meticulously researched and developed as an effective but nostalgic (Starbursts, anyone?) solution to an average millennial’s day-to-day struggles in cognitive areas like focus, stress and fatigue.

The Task

A launch is always a multi-pronged effort, and the Brainy Chews line was no exception. In addition to introducing a new-to-market cognitive supplement, OLLY had the additional challenges of: differentiating each Chew’s individual benefits and use-cases; conveying the new product format to the consumer; and educating them on nootropic supplements. And this was while creating a campaign that hit all of OLLY’s pillars of relevance, efficacy and delight. 

My Role

As campaign lead, I first dove into the research provided by OLLY’s Insights Team to get an understanding for the “why” of Brainy Chews. Throughout ideation and execution, I worked closely with Product and Marketing stakeholders to ensure everyone was aligned on business goals and priorities for launch. I led campaign concepting and messaging with my design counterpart to establish the story we wanted to tell and the creative direction and strategy that would lead us there. Together, we conducted competitive analysis, ideated and brainstormed visuals and copy to make sure both aspects were in sync with each other to tell the big message: ‘Chew This’ and the supporting line ‘No fluff, no gimmicks. Just cognitive supplements.’  

Just a small glimpse into my mind during initial brainstorms as I explored different territories and possible creative directions.

I established a tone of voice and messaging hierarchy that could quickly—and wittily—communicate: what nootropic supplements are; the benefits of taking them; and the differentiation between each Chew. To balance the playful and ethereal art direction, copy took on a more cerebral, snappy tone to educate without losing OLLY’s trademark humor. In order to tell a cohesive story that provided distinct moments, each Chew received its own narrative to establish different product highlights, hero ingredients and use-case scenarios.

After getting stakeholder buy-in, I led a team of six talented creatives in executing this vision. I became copy’s messaging touchpoint to bring all campaign assets—from web, email, paid and beyond—to life. Together, this small but mighty team delivered on 93 Briefs + 18 Video Requests in 18 weeks.

Dot Com

We launched a bright and brainy campaign website that celebrated each Chew without sacrificing shoppability or conversion.

Between its colorful and evocative look-and-feel and sharp, concise copy, the landing page was where we told a story about the need for these cognitive chews, the efficacy of their science-backed ingredients, and how they fit into your life. 

To ground readers without overwhelming them, we used bullet points to mimic a to-do list that laid out relatable need states that arise during work and play. In addition to establishing credibility with education and some real stats on millennials’ current state of mind, each chew received a story that spoke to both their benefits and the impressive ingredients that make up their expert formulation.

Paid Audio

Listen to a Brainy Chews ad on Kelly Ripa’s podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera.

The best way to spread awareness is still word of mouth. We placed a series of ads introducing OLLY’s new Brainy Chews and L’OLLY Pops across Spotify, Sirius XM and several podcasts.

I wrote all of the ad spots, focusing on letting millennial parents know within :30 seconds (and less!) that OLLY was here to support their family’s brain health with new cognitive supplements.

Paid Social

We launched a robust paid ad effort across: Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest to drive awareness and engagement.  

To create variety, we conducted two A/B tests for carousel ad units. The first slide was an experiment in design treatment, type and product photography. The second slide tested which on-image copy would entice the viewer to click—benefit copy that spoke to efficacy; or ingredient copy that highlighted the science-backed “goods inside.”

This resulted in 113 bespoke assets for both paid and programmatic media, both static and motion, that lived across different platforms and HTML5 ads. 38 of these units would be optimized due to good performance and further learnings.

ECOM

OLLY’s Brainy Launch was two-tiered, with an exclusive soft launch at Target in April, and a rollout across all national retailers in October.  

We worked closely with Target’s internal creative agency to guide them on the Brainy story so their creative assets were true to the Chews look-and-feel and in-line with the OLLY brand. This entailed creating 22 assets, including: toolkits, brand pages, ads and videos—not including what we made for in-store sampling signage, product displays and end-caps.

With Amazon becoming an increasingly important partner, we optimized our learnings from Target to create assets that leveraged our best messaging and design treatment. This resulted in 91 total assets including: video ads, assorted banners, brand pages, ATF and BTF tiles, and Amazon device screens (Kindle, Fire TV, Alexa).

These are just some of the Amazon banner ads we created.

CRM

To let OLLY fans know about this exciting nootropic headed their way, we launched an email campaign to pique their interest and drive excitement about Brainy Chews and L’OLLYs. 

While Chews and L’OLLYs are both cognitive supplements, they’re intended for different target consumers. To differentiate the two lines without alienating the other, we strategized how to structure content it was dedicated to the joint Brainy platform or separate products: for design this meant creating distinct guidelines and templates; for copy this meant establishing messaging and product hierarchy. 

This ensured a cohesive campaign that established Chews and L’OLLYs as distinct products within OLLY’s cognitive collection. The result was 7 individual emails that followed launch timeline from: teaser to announcement, benefit and use-case education, and consumer reviews.

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¹Gitnux.org
²USCCG.com