Social & Branding
Leading SEKONDA's biggest re-positioning across social
Brand.
Sekonda is the no-nonsense watch brand you’ve probably seen on TV, social media, or even own one of the watches yourself.
At the end of 2021, Creative Insights agency Cite was commissioned to bring the biggest re-brand and re-positioning in Sekonda’s 100-year history, ‘No Time For Nonsense’, to life across social.
I joined for content ideation, social planning and content creation. After two months, showing a strong aptitude for social media, I became Social Lead & Account Manager for the brand; the first point of contact for Sekonda’s Brand Manager, planning quarterly strategies, continuing content creation, training SEKONDA’s social team, working with x3 creatives and being responsible for £190,000 of budget. All of this at just 21.
Context.
• Role: Social Account Manager
• Squad: x1 AD, x3 design
• Date: Nov 2021 - Dec 2022
• Agency: Cite
BRIEF
SEKONDA has been selling watches for over 100 years, several times being crowned the UK’s bestselling watch brand. They faced two challenges - an ageing audience and an e-commerce-first world. To combat this, they launched a huge re-branding and re-positioning.
It was our task to now roll this re-branding onto social media; increasing followers by at least 10,000 by the end of 2022 and reaching and developing a community within the C1-D demographic, all while converting new leads on their newly released e-commerce store. A lot to do - I know.
RESPONSE
We defined 6 content types which would steer our strategy:
TIME - Clocks going back, etc
CULTURAL - Christmas, Mothers Day, etc
PRODUCT - National Fitness Day (Smart Watch), etc
NTFN - Tell a Lie Day, April Fools, etc
BRAND PILLAR/IRREVERENCE - National Tongue Twister Day, etc
PERSONAS - Football, Sports, TV shows, etc
Then, mapped these to x4 measurable KPI’s:
Engagement 📈
Tapping into cultural moments/trends, outstanding community management, conducting fun competitions, getting engaged with influencers and fans.
Conversions 💰
Setting up Social Commerce on Facebook/Instagram so fans can shop while browsing content, running paid-ads and posting a variety of lifestyle and aspirational content.
Reach 🌎
Collaborating with large and small influencers, continually testing new audiences through new product launches and running our content alongside TV placements.
Followers ❤️
Introducing the ‘Win It Wednesday’ concept, sharing a mix of UGC to encourage fan participation on social and just creating simply great content (like their watches).
CAMPAIGN
Besides the obvious (a master social plan, meetings, quality reporting, and sh*t like that) we got creative with our approach to Sekonda, even to the smallest detail.
Standout product launches
Every product launch for Sekonda was a big deal - as it should be. They were in the process of streamlining their product range and every time new collections were released via eCommerce, it was down to us to work collaboratively with their in-house team to give it a huge splash.
Combining assets pre-created by Sekonda with our own ideas, we would publish introduction stories to hype the product up, share various lifestyle shots, do ‘This or That’ polls on Instagram and tie the watches into what’s going on in the world.
Nurturing a community
One of the key ways we planned to nurture and develop our community of followers was through user-generated content.
Millions of people wear a SEKONDA watch every day, and a large percentage of those same people share it on social. We ran ‘As Seen On You’ every other week, where we’d share our favourite watch/outfit photos when we’d been tagged.
Not only did this encourage others to get involved, it gave us new avenues of brand awareness and inadvertently made thousands of people advocates for the brand. By audience members sharing photos with their watch on their feed, it allowed us to reach their followers indirectly.
Introducing competitions
In addition to our paid-ad plans, we began a recurring community-led competition called ‘Win It Wednesday’, which was aimed at generating new followers, engaging our existing fans and creating a buzz on a weekly basis in the community.
We dedicated a small amount of our budget towards this campaign and targeted a younger demographic to the current Sekonda audience, running social ads on Facebook and Instagram and encouraging page likes/followers to get involved. Once a customer had liked/followed, they’d stop receiving the ads and were in the prize draw for a watch. Each week, we would announce a new winner into the ‘Winners Circle’, where we shared their profile on our story to re-generate the excitement and encourage further sharing - it also allowed us to get more UGC (user generated content) for our feed. Win win!
Working with influencers
Influencers are an extremely effective way to tap into relevant audiences and convert them to your brand. Over the year working with SEKONDA, we collaborated with a number of influencers (big and small) during key product launches or seasonal trading moments.
In addition to the influencer sharing content, we would engage with their audience during the period of peak engagement, giving us the opportunity to truly standout and build connections.
Reaching new audiences
With the assigned budget available, we ran paid ads on Instagram and/or Facebook, pushing various creative routes to new audiences, A/B testing and carefully adjusting the spending to maximise potential. When targeting was successful (and the audiences were now aware of Sekonda) we handed these segments over to the paid team so they could target them with a different ad format which was more conversion-focused - and then we (the brand team) could focus our budget on testing for new people and getting the brand in front of new younger audiences.
This exercise was much more than just reaching new audiences; it helped us identify new growth areas for the brand, drove new traffic to the website who may not have visited (or been interested) beforehand and either provided conversions or useful insight.
Crafting content that’s relevant
Think of a mainstream trend, we’ve probably done a spin-off.
From Spotify Wrapped to the likes of WORDLE and Top Gun, there’s something we tied into watches. It was always fun being commissioned to be this fun and creative for a brand; often cropping watches onto dogs, thinking how we can be cheeky on Valentine’s and take the mick at Christmas. This ‘fun’ approach was all to target a younger demographic and change perceptions on the brand.
Social Commerce
Instagram and Facebook Shopping have become the norm for many people on social media in recent times, particularly adventurous younger people.
In an effort to support the e-commerce-first approach of SEKONDA, we assisted with the setup of a social shop on both platforms, and then used it as a place to drive our customers to with product tagging.
BIG MOMENTS
Alongside our social strategy work with SEKONDA, we also worked very closely with them on smaller activation projects. One of which kickstarted the ‘No Time For Nonsense’ campaign originally.
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Nonsense Pit
ROLE: Social Media Support
ABOUT: The Nonsense Pit is a direct response to support Sekonda’s campaign messaging of ‘No Time For Nonsense’ at the end of 2021. It was a micro-site, that can be reused in future, created for users to drop what they felt was nonsense into a digital black hole, and then vote on other people’s nonsense. It was quite therapeutic!
CAMPAIGN: We ran paid ads across social to promote the ‘pit’, got people engaged via Instagram Stories and incentivised people with a watch if they signed in using Facebook. It was found, pretty fast, that the User Flow was causing barriers to entry - which were fixed and tested as the campaign was ongoing. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to enter & vote on other nonsense.
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Watch Match
ROLE: Project Lead, Social Media Content
ABOUT: Panicking about what to get your Dad on Father’s Day? You can’t go wrong with a Sekonda. To get our audience engaged, we built a fun and interactive quiz which determines what type of Dad you have (and which watch they’d best suit). Not only was this a great way to encourage conversions, it also gave us further insight into the audience of Sekonda (by their results) and was generally a fun/shareable tool to people.
CAMPAIGN: We ran x4 different paid campaigns around Father’s Day, x2 were focused on conversions (a separate objective) and x2 around our game. Our team tested x5 audiences; new parents, Etsy, Boots, MoonPig and LastMinute. The aim was to offer people an alternative to the usual Father’s Day gifts.
RESULTS
We supported SEKONDA in their long-term plan of re-positioning as a brand, made their new smartwatch range contribute to 80% of their overall sales consecutively and set in motion the tone of voice for the future.
