Case Study: How Iceland Groceries Used Influencer Generated Content to Fix Their Brand Perception
In this case study, learn how Iceland Groceries changed the focus of its advertising to appeal to their average target consumer – namely, mommy influencers.
Iceland Groceries is a large grocery chain based in the UK (despite its name) focusing particularly on frozen foods. Despite its large scale, they had a glaring problem - only 10% of consumers gave them a positive approval rating.
Big-name celebrities were once used by Iceland to sell its products, but these campaigns were failing, and failing fast. Desperate to generate proper ROI, they turned to influencer marketing.
Iceland came to understand that the failure of celebrity-based advertising initiatives was due to the absence of relatable, genuine, customers – much like we’ve discussed before in other campaigns. Iceland quickly changed the focus of its advertising to appeal to their average target consumer – namely, mommy influencers.
The Strategy Iceland came up with a 12-month plan in which it collaborated with everyday food and mommy influencers to produce some fantastic user-generated content. If you want to see how you can leverage UGC beyond just the organic campaign level, head over here to learn more.
Additionally, they used paid social ads to spread the word effectively and scale their efforts, with the campaign's main objective was to strengthen consumer relationships with Iceland products in order to increase frozen food sales.
The Outcomes
Iceland had the difficult task of making frozen food enticing and seductive. But Iceland struck gold when it partnered with 50 micro-influencers. Iceland observed the following after seeing a variety of regular individuals utilizing their products:
Facebook videos have a retention rate of 55%. (and 59% on YouTube), not to mention their level of favorability rose from 10% to a staggering 70%.
Due to the success of this campaign, Iceland launched The Power Of Frozen, a second influencer marketing effort that targeted a fresh group of micro-influencers.
How You Can Replicate Their Strategy
Iceland focused heavily on YouTube mommy influencers to get genuine reviews and relatable UGC for their brand. Finding the right YouTube influencers can be easy if you follow our simple strategy.
Smartfluence’s comparison profile based algorithm could help you find influencers similar to your ideal creator in a manner of seconds. Take Channel Mum for example, a YouTube channel used by Iceland in their campaign. All you have to do is plug in their name under comparison profile and filter for female influencers and female audiences and wait for the platform to provide you a list of moms ready to work with you.
The key here would be to find relatable influencers among this cohort, making sure they aren’t too big such that they’re still trustworthy enough in the eyes of your target consumers. We recommend using multiple moms in the same campaign. While Iceland used 50, we’d suggest a minimum of 10 posting at the same day, same time, driving traffic to your brand en masse.
Turning the best performing videos you receive into video ads, with permission of course, is how you’ll be able to scale the same way Iceland did. By targeting your ideal audience on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, your video ads showcasing the best reaction videos and reviews you’ve received coupled with relatable influencers are sure to outperform your traditional paid social campaigns. Be sure to A/B test creative and audience just as you would your regular campaigns and you’ll be building a powerhouse brand with high approval ratings just like Iceland!
