The pandemic saw us glow up for zoom calls, show up at virtual concerts, and wish-list based on what we watched on Netflix. If we learned anything, it’s that regardless of what life throws at us, self-expression and pop culture prevails and stays on-trend. Klarna needed a way to both celebrate and stay relevant in this disrupted shopping context – and amidst all the drama, continue to strive toward fame.

The brief was to take Klarna’s unique shopping data and use it to claim its position as a thought leader in shopping trends – continuing to connect with consumers on an emotional level while driving the functional benefits of Klarna as a shopping destination. The objective of the campaign was to increase brand recognition and engage the shopping community.

Going beyond boring trend reports and taking our audience on a gamified journey enhanced the storytelling around Klarna shopping data.

By embedding our data into Instagram stories, feed posts and AR filters, as well as paid placements, influencer content, user-generated content and co-marketing assets, we gave Klarna a reason to speak and our audience a reason to spend time with Klarna.

In the context of global lockdowns, sharing our data on social media demanded a strategy that could cut through a lot of noise. We chose to focus on Klarna’s biggest shopping categories: Beauty, Loungewear, Sneakers and Gaming to give context to our data and make it digestible for our audience.

We gathered relevant pop culture moments and historical data to support our storytelling and crafted interactive Instagram stories to highlight our deeper insights, asking our audience their opinions along the way.

Behind our Instagram feed and story posts, we harnessed paid media – using trend-specific paid audiences as well as asset and copy variations to AB test and optimize every day of the campaign. We also activated market and trend-specific influencers, user-generated content and co-marketing assets – enabling us to expand our reach and drive relevant communities to our content.

The two-week campaign was launched on Instagram on February 8th, 2021 across eight markets in Europe and again on March 15th for the Australian and US markets. Instagram stories, feed posts and AR filters, as well as paid placements, influencer content, user-generated content and co-marketing assets, were harnessed simultaneously to drive our audience to engage and play for a chance to win the most coveted items of today.

Our paid tactics enabled us to test, monitor and optimize several times a day throughout the entire campaign – allowing us to make real-time adjustments at an audience and ad level and ensuring maximum performance and cost-efficiency. Customized audience targeting according to trend category served us well and we were able to adjust mechanics for our filter audiences to reduce audience overlap. We also implemented successful follower lookalike audiences in the latter part of the campaign to push the campaign further.

Top of the Carts met and exceeded all KPIs. In the European rollout, we surpassed Reach and Engagement by 118% and 199% respectively. In our US and Australian activations, we paced at 99% and 190% against our Reach goals, and 154% and 300% against our Engagement goals. In addition, Top of the Carts gave our audience a reason to spend time with branded content. Throughout all activations, users spent over 10,000 hours (that’s 416 days!) with Klarna.

28.1 million People Reached

1 million Engagements

1.8 million Seconds of Gameplay

10,000 hours spent with Klarna (416 days!)

7.42% Average Engagement Rate

14,600 Game Shares