Success for Clas Ohlson

Have you ever needed a gadget? You can be pretty sure you'll find it at Clas Ohlson. From the Swedish bicycle repairman Clas in 1918 when he started the mail order company Clas Ohlson, the company has grown to 200 stores, 4,700 employees and a large online store.

- "Clas Ohlson has worked a lot on product quality in recent years, and we now offer both good prices and even better quality. We didn't communicate this well enough, and we saw that traditional banner advertising had clear limitations," says Ina Kristin Haugen, Online Sales And Marketing Manager at Clas Ohlson, and continues: 



- We worked with a theory where we wanted to isolate the communication around specific products to see if we could see results on sales. At the same time, we wanted to test out content marketing/native ads to see if this was something for us.

Good match for target group and products
DinSide is Norway's largest consumer website and tests many products every month. Clas Ohlson's products have been named test winner several times. Haugen says that the chain often notices a clear increase in sales when a Clas Ohlson product comes out on top.

- "We wanted to test a platform where we could still communicate digitally, but in a larger format than a banner ad could offer, and where we could choose which products we wanted to promote. Native ads on DinSide felt very right for both our target group and our products," says Haugen. 



Together with Linn Aukland, customer manager for Clas Ohlson on DinSide, a plan was set up with four native ads campaigns from May to December 2015.


Linn Aukland, Ina Kristin Haugen and Sebastian Gamman.

Behind the scenes 

The campaign kick-started in May with the case "Car wash". 



- Here we set aside a whole day to thoroughly wash our own car while taking pictures along the way. We had let the car get really dirty, so we wanted to get good "before/after" pictures. We also had some user errors along the way that we believe made the article more credible," says Thomas Strzelecki, content producer in Dagbladet 's commercial department.



The second part of the campaign dealt with solar cells. Here, content producer Thomas took the solar cells home and tested the product in his own garden: 



- We set up 14 solar lights in front of and behind our townhouse and focused on taking atmospheric photos in the evening. Some of the lights didn't turn on until around midnight, so we had a few late nights.



In August/September, a case was run focusing on gaming. Then it was the commercial department's own "hardcore" gamer who got to test a gaming package for less than a thousand dollars for about a week.

Credibility 

- The Clas Ohlson articles were some of the very first content we produced, and for us, credibility was important. We solved this by taking our own photos and thoroughly testing the products. The images taken followed the same style as the DinSide articles and therefore fit in well with the DinSide universe. The content was laid out in the same way as the traditional DinSide content, with an emphasis on surprise, "how-to" tips and some user errors. We felt that this combination increased the credibility of the articles," says content producer Thomas Strzelecki.



In the last installation of the campaign, the focus was on Black Friday and Christmas tips. 



- Throughout the campaign, we had the opportunity to quickly turn around and reorient and optimize things according to the weather and wind to achieve the best results. That's what's fun about this solution," says Account Manager Aukland. 




Good results 

The figures from the campaign speak for themselves: the case has been a success, with products that have struck a chord with DinSide readers and generated a lot of attention. In total, the campaign has generated over 14 million impressions from the DinSide front page and readers have spent just over two minutes on each article. During the campaign period, Clas Ohlson doubled sales of several of the products involved.

- We didn't really have much expectations for the campaign, but I was very positively surprised by the results. When you have almost 80 stores and an online store, it's often difficult to see sales peaks. It has often been difficult to say "look, this worked", but with the native ads solution on DinSide, we have seen a clear boost, Haugen explains, and reveals that Clas Ohlson is looking into the possibility of new seasonal campaigns on DinSide also in 2016.



Sebastian Gamman, digital advisor at Clas Ohlson IUM's media agency, is also pleased with the campaign:


- The traffic that has been received has been of good quality and better than expected. The cases have created a range of interest that we have been able to use to generate retargeting and sales afterwards. A lot happens even after the campaign. 



- For us, this case has become a success story. When the customer notices an increase in sales and at the same time wants to look at new campaigns, we can be sure that we have done something very right together. This is a great example of the value of content marketing and how it works very well at DinSide. I look forward to the continuation in 2016," concludes Linn Aukland.

Would you like to talk to Linn about how your advertising opportunities can be solved, or do you have questions about native ads? Send an email or call 938 42 522.