Rothy’s: Site-wide Campaigns

To create a promotional campaign on the Rothy’s website, I wanted to be sure that customers would see and understand the promotion regardless of their entry page. The Landing page would describe the campaign in full, and serve as the primary landing place for customers clicking to the site via campaign marketing in email newsletters, ads, and social media posts. The Homepage, Category page and PDP would highlight the promotion without deterring customers from making a purchase. I adapted this format for several campaigns.

To read more on my approach of how I structured the concept and set the foundation for the first Rothy’s cross-channel campaign, see “Rothy’s: Efficiently Creating a New Campaign”.

Campaign 1:
Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The goal of the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners campaign was to sell through inventory on two specific shoes. To encourage shopping, a percentage of sales from these shoes would be donated to the non-profit partner.

When approaching the design, I wanted to ensure consistency with the rest of the website and remain within the Rothy’s brand guide. I designed the pages in a way that worked for the current campaign’s needs, while thinking about how the elements could be a template for future site-wide needs (alerts, bading, promotional messaging, landing pages, etc). The landing page was the first of its kind on the site, and my goal was to create a template that could be designed and coded quickly, and easily modified down the road if needed.

I researched the partner in order to explain what they do, find pull-quotes for scannability, and testimonials to showcase the heart of their brand. I incorporated stock photography which captured the sentiment of the partner and campaign theme, while remaining in line with the Rothy’s brand guide. My goal was to create an emotional connection to this sensitive topic in a way that captured ease and empowerment rather than sadness, and build trust in the partner who would be receiving the customer’s money.

The hierarchy of the page was designed to give “just enough” information at the top, so that customers didn’t need to scroll the whole page if they weren’t interested in diving deeper. The top of the page stated a summary of the campaign, with immediate access to shop the shoes for customers ready to make a purchase. For customers interested in reading more, the next section revealed information about the partner, and what the company believes in. If this resonated with the customer, next I wanted them to know how they could contribute to the cause—either through connecting with the non-profit directly, by shopping the promoted Rothy’s shoes, or by taking a light-weight action of spreading the message by sharing with friends.

Campaign 2:
Giving Tuesday

Rothy’s has a company policy of never discounting inventory. In order to do something special for Black Friday weekend that would make customers feel good (rather than be upset about the lack of a sale), they decided that a percentage of site-wide proceeds would be donated to a non-profit partner, 5 Gyres, all weekend long.

The structure of this campaign was slightly scaled back from the BCPP campaign, since the entire catalog was featured rather than just a few specific shoes. The Homepage promo banner was still used, as well as the “Welcome Bar” message in the global header, but the icons and alerts were not necessary on individual shoe placements.

The Landing page layout was modified to best communicate this campaign’s needs. The imagery and content incorporated partner photography and stock photos in a way that was in-line with the Rothy’s brand guides, with the goal of emotionally connecting with the customer.

The primary focus was on educating customers about who the non-profit partner is, and why they do what they do, rather than explicitly on shopping (it was Black Friday, customers would be shopping anyway, and would now feel proud to shop knowing their money was being put to good use). I researched details to summarize what the non-profit partner does, and found quotes and statistics that captured an emotional reaction and were hard to ignore. I wanted customers to easily connect with the partner if they chose, promoting this before shopping to help the page feel more genuine (which it was). A few featured shoes were promoted to help customers remember their purchase makes a contribution, and a lightweight share module again implied people could easily get the word out.

Campaign 3:
World Oceans Day

The World Oceans Day campaign was a way to bring awareness to a cause that Rothy’s supports—fighting plastic pollution in the ocean. When merchants analyzed inventory, they found a number of styles were not selling to the anticipated projections, and decided to run a promotion similar to the BCPP campaign where proceeds of the profits from these shoes would be donated to a non-profit partner, 5 Gyres. Since this campaign featured a select amount of shoes rather than the whole catalog, the site integration would be similar to the first BCPP campaign.

The goal for this was to make it easy for customers to shop the select styles, and give more information about plastic pollution rather than diving deep into who the non-profit partner was, since this time the focus was on the ocean.

In regards to imagery, I once again utilized on-brand stock photography, but I also wanted to do something a little different—I wanted to shoot new photos of the shoes as a collection to help showcase them in a way that felt a bit more rich than their product shots alone could convey. These photos could also be used in marketing materials to promote the campaign.

The hierarchy of the page was to encourage shopping. It led with a beautiful photo of the collection, a shocking statistic which generated an emotional connection, followed by product thumbnails to shop without leaving the page. In order to safeguard against the notion that Rothy’s was encouraging buying a plastic shoe while stating that plastic pollution is bad, I wanted to showcase how much the company believes in combating pollution and waste. This page was all about the Rothy’s commitment to the ocean, with a summary about the non-profit partner at the bottom, again followed by an easy way to help your friends become informed.