In June 2021, I moved out of my Newcastle Uni house and moved down to London in a whirlwind of a week which included meeting my new, entire team of colleagues, finding and moving into a new house with new housemates and finding my feet in the city of London.
My first day in office was amazing, I'm working within the Digital Marketing Team under Jess Hewson - the Creative Director for Chelsea Peers and Adison Clarke who has also recently started as Chelsea Peers' Digital Director. The office is situated on the riverside by Hammersmith Bridge, directly above The River Cafe - which turns out to host a wealth of celebrities every other day! E.g : Elton John, David Beckham, Rick Astley and Gary Lineker - just to name a few!
Chelsea Peers has a small team, led by founders Tom and Lara Pyne . We have a production, design, logistics and ECOM / digital marketing teams. As Jess's assistant, I've already been given a lot of responsibility and have truly been thrown in the deep end in terms of learning on the job! It's really made me learn and work hard to achieve the best results. I've also loved getting to grips with the industry, my different aspects of my job and creatively pushing myself.
During the first month of my work at Chelsea Peers, I quickly found out that the team trusted me with a lot and let me lead both creatively and logistically in how I wanted to work and this pushed me to work hard and made me proud of what I was doing. During my first month I completed the below :
Planned and assisted the launch of our SS21 Wellness Collection . Holding creative brainstorm and creative organic content plans, to design and create an entire collection of organic content across all platforms - IG, FB, TW, PIN, TT. I Curated and launched the teaser campaign for the collection including interviews with the Design team getting an insight and exclusive details about the SS21 Collection. Our teaser campaign ended up driving a 2.75% Engagement Rate and over 600 likes over a 2 day campaign. Alongside the organic content, I also created, designed and wrote all Paid Social ads for the Wellness Collection for all audiences - cold, hot, gender specific, age specific, buying habit specific etc - again for all social platforms and google display. I also curated ads for our brand partnerships e.g. Klarna.
During my first month, I founded 'Chelsea Peers Loves' - a weekly organic story featuring influencers/customers wearing our current collection 'Summer Pop', featuring links to our website and incentivising the act of posting - to be featured.
A couple of the gifted influencers I've worked over the past few weeks are:
And here's some fun UGC which I've created with influencers!
I undertook extensive research to find 100+ influencers to gift our Wellness Collection too. I'm keeping spreadsheets containing all relevant details from the influencers and information like content plans, shipping dates, preferred garments etc. Once signed off from a brand and marketing perspective, I completed all outreach and communications per individual, detail logging and order processing, content receiving and logging into correct Dropbox files and re-posting, follow up messages to continue communications and relationship building. I've been communicating and working many influencers, but a couple of my favourites are listed below!
I also took ownership of all Brand / Influencer collaboration emails - leading communications between CP and brands and negotiating deals and agreements for paid content. During my creative sessions for organic and paid content, I developed my skills in InDesign and Illustrator - growing my knowledge of marketing and content creation. I sometimes feel it takes me a while to grow these skills and remember processes/shortcuts for creating content through Adobe Software but I'm sure it's a process that comes with time! Finally, I also attended some ECOM shoots this month working with the team and models to create BTS and TikTok's - developing my creative direction skills and professional persona with outsourced clients.
Some examples of paid ads I created which we also used on organic stories for IG:
JULY
During July, our main project was the role out of SS21 Wellness Collection. I oversaw and led the launch of Wellness SS21 over all social platforms, completing all posting, community management and continual organic posting and content creation. We launched new styles and prints, including introducing our newest fabric 'Modal'.
During July, we also planned for our launch of our first ever Menswear Collection - curated with my own creatives, organic content and gifting research/outreach. In sessions like this, myself and Jess would map out how we wanted to demonstrate the new collection, how we're going to market it and how we're going to do that through visuals, copy and influencers. We also held castings for our Menswear modelling - which I picked the models for our upcoming Menswear ECOM shoots. We ended up working with @jackwaldouck
I also launched our CPNY Influencer Program - self selecting Influencers both new and from previous collaborations for a new paid collaboration program. I curated, designed and signed off the official document and started circulating it to the select ambassadors we wanted to work with the following month, working on many individual creative content briefs, ensuring content and brand guidelines were met and up to standard. This ensured we were receiving content for specific platforms and which met our brand pillars and topics of conversation that resonate with each individual platform demographic. Here is a screenshot of our Influencer Program Strategy Spreadsheet.
July was also a month where I've been asked to improve and grow our database of outsourcing contacts for example photographers, stylers and make up artists. I also undertook extensive market research into our brand, our competitors, our industry and its current trends to assist mapping our Chelsea Peers new marketing slogan 'Made for Modern Lounging'. This enabled me to gather a deeper knowledge and insight into the industry I was part of. As part of this new slogan, myself and Jess mapped out and held weekly think-tanks to creatively use our new slogan for the rest of the seasonal year.
During July, in-line with the industry, I worked on and lead the creatives for our End of Summer Season Sale ads - working with PUSH our creative agency - on all paid assets for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube and Google - creating new formats for all audiences, e.g. Cold, Hot, Family, etc. I also created and designed the USA shipping launch ads which launched at the end of July and we also re-issued new creatives for the Wellness Collection - including new formats and editing new wellness video content for organic and paid social. Some of the ads created are listed below:
Swimwear
New in : foils
Best sellers
Sign up to newsletter : 15%off - women's, kid's, mens', maternity, curve
Loungewear
Just arrived
Modals
Video - new prints, modal, summer sale, Klarna
Women's & Men's fabric and quality focus
TikTok video ads - fast edit, spin, jump, bts and prints focus
Summer sale - ends midnight, flash sale, video, 25% off
This developed my skills in InDesign and Premier Pro. I also kickstarted our Youtube gifting strategy, completing research into Youtuber's, completing outreaches and data collection plus gifting orders and content briefs. We worked on mainly, the haul aspect of Youtube videos with personalised UTM links to our website and discount codes for their communities to aid our sales and reach new customer demographics. Example here
As I attended more ECOM shoots and grew more competent of the shoot processes, I've been passed on the role of organising and communicating the ECOM photoshoots. This role includes creating shoot plans via InDesign, communicating with our E-Commerce team for shoot lists and sending out call sheets to models, creative teams and photographer.
Other noteworthy mentions are I pitched and created a new series of weekly stories, where I used our positive Feefo reviews into organic stories for Instagram - showcasing our reviews and encouraging our customers to post, in a hope to be featured.
I also started our exclusive monthly competition 'Monthly Modern Lounging' for influencers and our customers to enter for a chance to win a £200 gift card if they post an image with #modernlounging - in an aim to increase marketing awareness of our new slogan and lifestyle brand image and boost levels of UGC created.
AUGUST
August has been another super busy month! Seeing in he launch and role out of our first ever Menswear Collection! The launch was super successful on socials! For example, our launch TikTok got 20k views with our account still having a small following of under 1k. We also worked with @chrisbeviere on some BTS trending TikTok's which you can see here , here and here. It was super fun to work with Chris - he had a lot of energy and brought some fun ideas to the table!
Over on Instagram, we ran Q&A's and Discover our Collection stories to provide a deep insight into the new range of products. We focused on Organic Cotton, Statement Prints and Cosy and Durable as marketing points.
UCC for Wellness had started to come through at a decent rate by August, we had some great performing posts, for example:
Orange Satin Leopard PJs - 4.23% engagement rate, 818 likes, 67 comments and 138 saves
Navy Satin Zebra PJs - 2.93% engagement rate, 349 likes, 21 comments and 79 saves
Positive Affirmations PJs - 1.85% engagement rate, 342 likes, 9 comments and 54 saves
We also saw a large following increase of 2.4k in a month, which was driven by increasing influencer relationships.
I redefined our gifting and influencer relation strategy into a new Spreadsheet to allow for better mapped our relations and to allow us to redirect our partnerships back to our brand, our values and core marketing pillars. Linking to this, I've developed our Influencer Program more during this month, working with several influencers on a paid basis to create content that links to our brand image and values. A couple of examples are below:
@sophiasellwood reel featuring our long best seller PJs
@alicelucybradley reel featuring our new loungewear
I continued paid asset content creation for our Summer Sale - Google Display in particular - and as part of our organic support, I came up with a trending TikTok content idea, executed the influencer gifting and brief and posted the video, which gained the most traction the channel has ever seen - generating 4k likes and 314k views with an average watch time of 4.3seconds. This was in an effort to promote our sales communications in a fun and trending way.
As AW22 approaches, we've been spending a lot of time generating plans for both paid and organic content for our first AW Collection - Mystic Opulence. This collection is focused on women empowerment, luxury fabrics and magic. Jess really allowed me to take the reins and allowed me to fully pitch all concepts and marketing ideas which I brainstormed. Many of them are being taken forward and used including tag lines, image selections, video edits for paid ads and the general socials direction and gifting plans. The collection is being slightly pushed back due to stock arrivals but this has given us more time to fully plan and make sure every aspect is covered.
We've also completed the ECOM shoot for all of the AW21 styles which I led all the BTS content creation - posting polls and Q&A's during the shoot, using these to map out all the exclusive sneak peaks we released. This series of BTS content was the most interacted with to date (2000-400 interactions per story slide) and received a lot of praise both internally and externally. I created this TikTok video which was also used in IG stories and feed.
Other notable story successes were the continuation of posting TOT's - a print focused TOT generating over 1200 interactions per slide and hundreds of link clicks to our site. Along with AW21 content planning, I also created the teaser and launch ads for Mystic Opulence, using my own creative copy - 'Fall Under the Spell' and 'Reveal Your Inner Goddess' visuals. Some of the different ad formats are below:
Carousel female, male, luxury, quality
Collection x3
Drop 2
Google Display
Pinterest
Details
Group
Fall Under the Spell
Mens
Video ads
I was handed another responsibility this month in the form of conducting and creating our weekly social media reports. These reports feature out weekly analytics- including follower growth, average engagement rate, story engagements such as click forward rates, impressions and views. From this, I've been able to identify and map out positives, negatives and actions for the following weeks. This really developed my drive and direction for socials.
A sad note to the end of August is that Jess (my manager) will be leaving at the end of September! She's moving onto another job more suited to her skill set in design, which truthfully has knocked me a little. It's a little scary to be faced with no manager and no creative assistance! At the moment, I'm feeling a little uneasy in my position and working longer hours to manage the workload and extra control I now have.
SEPTEMBER
Looking at September, it's been the hardest month to date and has proven to be a lull for the entire industry. I felt it was a harder month for socials as engagement dried up and our account was under performing. Our monthly average engagement rate dropped to 1.94% with many posts bringing in around 1.5% which is much lower than preferred. Over the month, we've seen a slower growth of 1k followers, which is good but I was forecasting higher with our previous success through summer.
As an answer to this, I identified a need to show our community more BTS, so I created and posted one of our top performing reels to date, featuring a Day in the Life of a Social Media Assistant for Chelsea Peers. I filmed, edited and shared it via Instagram and TikTok and we ended up getting a lot of engagement for it! The reel received 14.9k views on Instagram. and over 200 likes, 24 comments and 10 saves. This gave it a 19.5% engagement rate which is amazing! Another couple of anomalies, to our slow month is a UGC post driving a 2.32% engagement rate, 300 likes and 45 comments and a UGC TikTok featuring our Wellness PJs and focusing on mental health. I think with AW approaching, this topic of conversation resonated with our audience and pushed the views, resulting in 4k views.
With a slower month online and internal issues with stock deliveries meaning weeks of delay for Mystic Opulence delay, I've been focusing on the following :
Novel Collection gifting - approaching family bloggers and classic print lovers with our more wacky prints and family sets. This has been in a hope to drive sales from high levels of stock and keep socials sales coming in, alongside generating fresh content that resonates with our brand pillars.
Fine-tuning Teaser / Launch of Mystic Opulence
Generating 100 plus gifting strategy for the upcoming launch
Organising press packages and I wrote the press release for our press launch. This was the first press release I've ever wrote and it came back with no amends or adjustments, so was super happy!
A large focus for September and milestone, was our Christmas Campaign Shoot! A full on day on location, at Lara's mum's house - a stunning house in Surrey. We had a huge team on board, with 3x teams of make up/hair artists, 15 models and all of Chelsea Peers team. I organised all of the BTS and captured it on the day. I assisted the videographer with content capturing and helped on tasks such as steaming and hosting the models. Overall, it was a super super fun day and the shoot went really well. We shot a mixture of our Mystic Opulence range in a family/friends setting for campaign flow and our entire Christmas range. Some of my favourite shots of the day are below.
OCTOBER
October has been a super busy month and a successful one! We've finally launched Mystic Opulence and I'm super happy to see it live and getting the love it deserves! It was super fun rolling out the teaser and launch campaigns and also the launch of our first ever Instagram Filter! Some of my favourite assets from both campaigns are attached below.
Since the stock has arrived, gifting could also be sent out, so all the data I had collected (sizing/delivery) was processed as over 80+ orders in the exchange for content. All of this process is done by Shopify, a channel which I now feel 1000% happy with.
Influencers of note for this collection are:
Some fun gifted content I organised is below:
Similar to other launches and daily work I undertake, I oversaw all community management and content production - from creation to posting. This month I planned and organised two sets of content which were new to Chelsea Peers channels:
Running the first ever IG Live with @jakiyathiawbrown talking about self empowerment, strong women and her self empowerment tips. This was a big step for me, as I'm really not a lover of public speaking, live camera talking or general presenting! However, I went live and it was a successful session!
Organising and writing a collaborative blog feature on our photographers @chrisandruth - including sending them the clothing, a content brief and Q&A style brief. The blog can be found on our website, which I did multiple organic posts supporting. Chris and Ruth were brilliant to work with and super interesting for our community to engage with.
I also organised and posted the following
Mystic Giveaway - largest response to a Giveaway this year, with 2000+ likes, 921 comments and 454 saves. We had thousands of story re-shares and a total 6.68% engagement rate!
Halloween Giveaway - my own idea, buying a Fortnum & Mason hamper and shooting the images in office. Also super successful, with over 2000+ likes, 2.2k comments and 1k saves. This giveaway turned out to be more successful than the Mystic Opulence one, which is great!
Monthly Seasonal TOT series
Star Sign Lounging
Halloween Flash Sale organic supporting stories - I also designed the website sale assets which went live over Halloween
New website launch supporting content
Seasonal themed content
So, our October feed ended up looking like this :
Top performing posts include :
@its_sophielew UGC post showing our PJs worn as a night out outfit - the perfect example of modern lounging! This post brought in a 3.11% engagement rate, 470 likes, 18 comments and 25 saves
Campaign photography bringing in a 3.35% engagement rate, 900 likes, 54 comments and 241 saves
Launch campaign posts bringing in a 3.38% engagement rate, 338 likes, 200 comments and 146 saves
Giveaway post (Mystic) bringing in a 6.68% engagement rate, 2k likes, 900 comments and 454 saves
More top posts can be seen here :
And our stories included :
By the end of the second week of October we had hit a large milestone of 80k followers! This was super exciting and really regarding to see, as when I joined we had 65k.
Since Mystic Opulence was up and running, as a team this month we're concentrating on Nordic Hideaway, our next collection launch, set to go live in October/November. This includes, like before, all of the research, creative brainstorms and gifting strategies for the new collection. Since this collection was more focused on the outdoors and nature, I was approaching a whole different caliber of influencers in contrast to Mystic Opulence - which had been focused on strong empowered women- I was now researching more family based, nature lover, travel blogger style influencers. also brainstormed and created Nordic's organic content plan, paid ads and copy for both.
I edited and re-formatted Nordic Look-books for Youtube, website and ads usage. I created a family edit and a Nordic Hideaway campaign video.
I also created the paid ads for IG, FB, Pinterest, Snapchat and TikTok.
In terms of our Paid Influencer Program, the only larger campaign I worked on this moth, was with @jordaneasha which you can see the creative brief and content generated below:
Towards the end of October, Nordic Hideaway has gone live! It's looking really autumnal and seasonal and it's the perfect introduction into the colder weather and seasonal feels which are dominating the social marketing at the moment!
Throughout November, I've also been factoring in time spent on developing and perfecting the content calendar, paid and organic social, influencer collaborations and gifting outreach/research for our upcoming Christmas launch. As this is such an important launch and one of the collections which drives a majority of our yearly sales, we've been putting a lot of creative hours into the campaign plan.
Overall, October has been a great month, I've really felt in control and happy with all the work, I've been able to complete more work in the same time period and balance my schedules better. Looking at our monthly performance, we're at a 3.12% engagement rate and have brought in 7.5k likes, 1.3k comments, 6.2k following increase!
NOVEMBER
As the run-up to the busiest time of year begins and the countdown to Christmas is truly in high gear November has been a super busy one! I kicked off the month by posting a 'It's The First of The Month' series which proved the most successful so far with around 700 votes per slide! I also continued our Nordic Hideaway organic content calendar featuring topical and seasonal content such as 5 Outdoors Activities for Kids, Affirmations for the colder months, The Ultimate Guide to Bonfire Night and so on!
We've been featured in Zoella's stories twice this week, on their website and within a reel - which has been super exciting and great for our socials! We've had a previous relationship with Zoe and the team in previous years and we recently got back in touch with our Christmas PJs and this turned out to be a success!
On the 5th we launched Vintage Christmas - our Christmas range of PJs for women - including curve and maternity, men, kids, babies and dogs!
I was, as usual in charge of rolling out all of the organic campaigns across all social platforms. Our whole online persona switched to Christmas and Vintage Christmas was now at the forefront of our marketing. Our launch feed brought in an average engagement rate of 2.52% over three days and 600 likes. I also launched our Christmas Lookbook over on Youtube which gained 2.1k views (previously edited in October).
I started outreach to the 150 influencers who I'd researched and wanted to use for our campaign. I kickstarted another message, detail collection and processing gifting orders process. A couple influencers of note for this collection include:
We also included a last minute gifting push, specifically for our Fairisle PJ's, so I researched and added on an extra 80+ influencers - specifically family/couples.
As the first week of November drew to a close, I ran a small organic series of content focused on dogs in the office - featuring our team pooches Ollie and Fred in a partnership with BARC London and a Get to Know our Models from the Vintage Christmas Shoot - this was done by conducting mini interviews with each model and showcasing them on our stories in an aim to promote our inclusivity in gender, race, age and size.
We had a final ECOM shoot in November, featuring family matching PJs. I captured all the BTS footage, signed off images from a website perspective and assisted with steaming and model assistance.
During mid-November, I organised and ran a partnership with SWOON, which we did a collaboration giveaway on Instagram. It drove a healthy interaction with 1.5k comments and 650 likes. I managed everything from the content shoot, communications and social marketing boundaries and guidelines.
Instagram was featuring a mixture of Nordic and Vintage UGC, campaign images and stories focused on winter health, best selling pjs, Christmas gifting and a solid push on our Fairisle Christmas Print. These weeks were also jam packed due to the last minute ad changes for Black Friday. I created over 75 different style ads for all social platforms, including Gif formats, videos, static - carousel and collection and moving graphics for Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest and Instagram. This was for early access 25% off, 25% off, 40% off and final 24hrs 40% off. The Black Friday Ad creation week was hectic and time consuming but very rewarding.
I supported Black Friday Sale with our new layout of organic stories featuring TOT with new sliders which out performed polls. I also approached our most loyal followers and around 60 re-posted our BF promotions. This is down to the strong, respectful and fun relationships I believe I've maintained and grown with our influencers.
