Online marketplace newcomer Jet.com considers itself a different kind of e-commerce player, so it’s not surprising that it chose an offbeat approach to demonstrate customer appreciation and garner some attention: Cart celebration.
What, exactly, is cart celebration? Well, for Jet.com, which launched in July, it included confetti, a barbershop quartet, an animated pig, an improvisational comedy troupe and more in various combinations this week to create personalized videos based on the cart contents of Jet shoppers.
The creative team—Jet worked with agency SS+K—received information about a Jet shopper’s cart, scripted a vignette, filmed it and shared it within hours on Jet’s YouTube channel and across social media with the hashtag #JetSpree. Jet also emailed the video to the shopper to enjoy and share, a company spokeswoman said.
For example, a cart from Andrea inspired a “poem” recited by a turtle next to a palm tree. There’s a haiku inspired by shampoo bought by “Anu.” A double-dutch jump rope team calls out another shopper’s order of nut butter, bubble gum, a cookbook and coffee. A barbershop quartet sings the praises of responsible parent “Maria” for buying a car seat.
Jet made videos for 50 of 379 shoppers who opted in to the JetSpree promotion when they bought items on Jet.com between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. Shoppers were asked if they’d like to submit their cart contents for a chance to have a video made about those products.
“Every time you save money it’s a celebration,” SS+K creative director Armando Flores told Internet Retailer. “When we first started working with Jet this summer, we knew they had a unique shopping experience online, and the more you shop, you shop smart and save money.”
Jet did not disclose the budget for the JetSpree promotion, but Flores said compared with production costs for a typical 30-second ad, Wednesday’s video sessions would generate more than 50 pieces of unique content to share in multiple ways, including YouTube, Jet’s website and social media. It also was fun for the creative team and required almost no effort for consumers to participate, he says.
“Social campaigns often ask people to go beyond their normal routine. This was just clicking an extra box (at checkout) and you get something really cool and fun. It took nothing else out of the (consumers’) day,” Flores says.
Jet, which charges members a $49.99 annual membership fee, lets consumers buy from select retailers on the platform. Retailers can adjust the price of goods they offer based on such factors as order size, shipping time or the distance their products are being shipped, and retailers pay an unspecified commission on sales. Retailers also can lower prices if shoppers agree to waive the right to return the products, thus saving on restocking costs.
On the day of the event, Jet said it had more than 2.2 million post impressions on Facebook, with 509,342 video impressions (including Facebook auto-play), 38,635 video completes and an engagement rate of 22.6%. Video impressions from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube totaled 1.4 million on Wednesday, while post impressions from Facebook and Twitter totaled 3.6 million, according to Jet. Impressions are counted as the number of times content is displayed. Video impressions are the number of times a viewer saw the video or social media content on #JetSpree, Jet said.
As of 9 a.m. Thursday, there were 419,329 total views on YouTube, Jet said.
Feedback seemed positive on social media. One customer tweeted “My @Jet order made it into #JetSpree! Check it out: https://youtu.be/Or8hR4MZNFY.” Another fan tweeted, “This is pretty awesome of @Jet. Totally crazy to do these all day for random customers, but awesome.”
But not everyone loved it. Scott Emalfarb, founder of Fresh Content Society, a social media marketing agency in Chicago, said, “The videos are cool, but I’m not a fan of brands that try to be corny-funny. I love the integration of the consumers and tying everything back to the brand, I love the host of the videos, but I just don’t find yodeling funny. I’m a little lost when someone buys tanning oil (I can think of a million funny tanning oil video concepts) and a barber shop quartet is singing about it, but I love that they tied in the consumer to the song. Not hating on Jet, and the videos are great for a lot of people, but it doesn’t inspire me personally to shop on Jet.com.”
The yodeling reference referred to a cart celebration video for “Noah,” who bought dog nail clippers, dog waste bags and a skillet, with a woman yodeling.
Expect to see more such marketing from Jet. It has launched a national television advertising campaign that features characters from medieval times bartering, purple smoke exploding from their heads. The ad then flashes forward to modern times where Jet consumers buy products at low prices and purple smoke plumes burst from their heads, with the tagline, “The biggest thing in shopping since the barter system.” That commercial had aired nationally almost 500 times as of Friday, according to iSpot.tv, which tracks TV commercials, movie trailers and show promotions in real time across leading networks.
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