Leading costume brand ‘dresses up’ their campaign strategy to drive awareness and consideration
Family-owned and -operated for over 65 years, Rubie's Costume Co. is one of the world’s largest designers and manufacturers of costumes and accessories. Rubie’s offers a vast selection of products that help people around the world celebrate holidays and special occasions, from Mardi Gras to Halloween, and everything in between.
Since 2020, Rubie’s has partnered with digital agency Labelium in Spain to grow their business on Amazon Ads and increase sales in their brand Store. With clients worldwide, Labelium has focused on online retail strategies since 2001.
Rubie’s wanted to reconnect with existing customers and reach new ones after a challenging 2020
As a brand who primarily sells costumes for in-person occasions, 2020 was a challenging year for Rubie’s, with a huge number of events either cancelled or moved online. In October 2020 Rubie’s wanted to find a way to both reconnect with their existing customers in Spain and engage new audiences.
Rubie’s teamed up with Labelium, Labelium Play, and Amazon Ads to run a full-funnel campaign, with the goal of raising awareness and driving consideration of Rubie’s main costume categories, driving traffic to their brand Store, and ultimately increasing sales.
To help them stand out, Rubie’s, Labelium, and Labelium Play needed flexible creative formats that were versatile enough to run a variety of seasonal brand messages. It was also important for them to engage audiences everywhere they spent time in brand-safe environments via trusted channels.
For the first time, Rubie’s leveraged upper-funnel video formats in Amazon DSP to boost lower-funnel display activity and sales
Rubie’s used Amazon Ads’ audience insights and planning tools to reach high intent, in-market shoppers at the right moments in their purchase journey.
At the start of the campaign, they leveraged the creative tools in Amazon DSP to create compelling video assets to engage audiences and drive product consideration. The Video Creative Builder enabled the brand to quickly and easily create videos that promoted the wide variety of costume categories. The creative was then updated and optimized throughout the campaign based on seasonal moments, to drive the most relevant experience for shoppers.
"Running video campaigns helped us increase awareness of Rubie’s as a brand and reach new audiences throughout the customer journey. Thanks to the full-funnel strategy, we achieved great results using new formats.”
— Mónica Dinarés, Brand Manager, Rubie's Spain
Next, Rubie’s and Labelium Play ran an always-on strategy to complement the video campaign, using Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display to drive discovery and sales in the brand Store. Rubie’s and Labelium Play also used the Amazon DSP to deliver display formats wherever customers spent their time. For the latter, the campaign upheld brand safety standards through the use of placement reports and blacklisting options.
“Working with Amazon Ads allowed us to combine multiple different ad units and strategies, and as a result take this Rubie´s campaign to the next level.”
— María López de Garayo, Head of Retail, Labelium Spain
The campaign outperformed against benchmarks for return on ad spend
By leveraging new video formats, Rubie’s ultimately exceeded their campaign goals.
Across all sponsored ads, the brand’s return on advertising spend (ROAS) was 358% higher than the category benchmark.1 For the video ads run through Amazon DSP, Rubie’s achieved a 50% increase on ROAS versus standard display campaigns.2
These results are not surprising given the video completion rate was over 70%, with cost per thousand impressions (CPM) 42% lower than the category benchmark.3 By ensuring the ads appeared on premium placements wherever customers spent their time, viewability rates were at 67% versus the format benchmark at the time of 60%.4
“Amazon DSP video campaigns have helped us to increase the effectiveness of our lower-funnel formats, as seen through a strong ROAS increase of +50%.1 The ability to leverage highly flexible tools like Video Creative Builder played a huge role in the campaign’s success.”
— Patricia Lozano, Head of Strategy, Labelium Play
1-4 Amazon internal, Spain, 2020-2021