Building Mental Health Awareness with Vans
CLIENT OBJECTIVE
Execute a global campaign inspiring and supporting mental wellness using creativity as an outlet for mental wellbeing. Vans Checkerboard Day is an annual day dedicated to philanthropic messages from the brand and engages athletes, musicians, artists, etc. within the Vans Family to express how they support the initiative.
SITUATION
Checkerboard Day is not a new campaign as this is an annual effort Vans engages in, and the challenge was to create energy for the message through a new or unique outlet.
SOLUTION
GP Generate worked with Vans Global Team to ideate, negotiate, and execute the first, simultaneously global initiative Vans branded TikTok campaign. The campaign supported 2020’s initiative of mental wellness using creativity as an outlet for mental wellbeing. Each region launched a Hashtag Takeover Challenge where users could directly participate with VCD and submit their own video interpretation. Each region was also supported with paid tactics that amplified awareness of VCD and the Hashtag Challenge, such as 100% SOV takeovers, prominent placements promoting the hashtag itself, and more than a dozen native TikTok Creators (influencers).
RESULTS
947,000 video submissions across the globe showed how users ride, paint, sing, and play to express themselves and resulted in over 4 billion video views featuring the hashtag #VansCheckerboardDay.
For comparison to some other top trending topics, Vans surpassed #NBADRAFT = 1.3B and even #MOVEMBER2020 = 264M. Awareness scale of our challenge is in closer proximity to seasonal cultural moments and activities such as #HOLIDAYSOURWAY at 1.9B and #BAKINGSZN = 1.6B.
Vans exceeded TikTok paid media benchmarks across all regions in different areas from impressions (eCPM was 988% more efficient than the estimated, planned eCOM), creations, and engagements. For the US specifically, the brand hit all benchmarks with less than half the budget typically allocated to achieve the same results.