Case Study
Jet.com
Creating a last-minute holiday campaign
Context
Jet.com was an e-commerce company that was sold to Walmart in 2019.
Our 2017 holiday OOH campaign was supposed to be a big, splashy moment for the brand, which was envisioned as a friendlier, more human alternative to Amazon. Unfortunately, the photo shoot wouldn’t be done until a few weeks after the ads had to ship — so we had to think fast.
Process
The majority of our inventory was on train platforms, where people could stand and read. So, since original photography wasn’t an option, I pitched the idea of centering the ads on copy alone.
I started by coming up with a list of scenarios related to holiday shopping: looking for gifts for family members, office Secret Santa, etc. Then I took simple, functional holiday-themed lines — like “Give the perfect gift. Shop curated gift guides at Jet.com” — and used them to bookend specific, detailed storytelling aimed at our target persona (“Lizzy,” an urban millennial). Our bet was that leaning hard into voice would give us a way to set ourselves apart.
The rush of short, quick sentences was designed to evoke the anxious energy of holiday shopping.
Brand awareness was still low, so every ad built to the crescendo of a call to action containing our URL.
To make the campaign feel local, I wrote from the perspective of a harried New Yorker. (Which I was.)
Outcome
It worked. The holiday season went well for us, and there was a ton of buzz around the campaign. People were posting photos of the ads on Instagram, and I heard through the grapevine that agencies were talking about the work.
“Ray has great creative instincts, and his work on this campaign was brilliant. He brought a strong concept to the table, got buy-in from leadership, and worked tirelessly with my team and I to bring it all to life quickly. The copy-only approach could easily have fallen flat, but Ray pulled it off in style. As a writer and creative partner, he just gets it.”
Eurie Kim
Ex-Jet.com, now Director, Global Marketing UX & Creative, Shopify
