Role
Ad Management, Copywriter
Client
Costco Wholesale (HQ)
Platforms
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest
Focus
Customer Engagement and Brand Awareness
THE CHALLENGE
When Costco Wholesale was first started on social, the team was small. But over time, demand became overwhelmingly high. Social was originally seen as experimental.
As buyers learned about the free placements, it became a necessity for big brands such as Driscoll’s, Kimberly-Clark, and P&G. Email and Costco.com were charging for placements, but we didn’t have a system yet.
Due to vendor and buyer requests for both regional and national warehouses, our content calendar included up to 7 posts per day.
THE STRATEGY
To reduce demand, my coworker and I built an ad-buying program.
Each ad spot required a minimum spend of at least $100,000. In front of the 75+ buyers and leaders, I presented social media as a new, bright and shiny option for brands. Paid and dark posts could target our Costco member list and Lookalike audiences while being geotargeted, something our other channels couldn’t do.
As more groups within Costco learned about the benefits of social, we developed richer advertising campaigns for our ancillary sectors such as Costco Services, which included Auto & Home Insurance, Life Insurance, Bottled Water Delivery, Costco Travel, the Costco Auto Program, and Payment Processing.
Developing campaigns for Costco Services required extra content Costco.com didn’t have. I partnered with the ecommerce team to revive the long-lost blog. Third-party partners worked with me to create educational blogs for our members.
Membership sign-up campaigns were created for new warehouse openings. I ran regional ads, which were a mix of short-form video from inside the warehouse and still imagery showing exclusive products. We built auto-renew campaigns, posted Quick & Easy recipes, and wrote COVID-19 emergency comms. I also built and executed the first ever special membership campaign on social media for Costco.
THE IMPACT
Our team generated 25 million dollars in ad-buying gross profit in the first year, which quickly grew as the program popularity increased. Over 780 ads were written and deployed, driving in-warehouse and online purchases. Our content regularly went viral when we promoted cool products (e.g., giant unicorn floatie; full-body hooded blanket) or when I interviewed members about meet-cutes in the warehouse.
On the educational blog, we tracked over $10M in attributable ecommerce sales.
