Shoebuy.com steps into national TV land with its first commercial
A multimillion-dollar TV advertising campaign that launched last month on NBC’s Today Show and other NBC and cable TV programs coincided with an 80% year-over-year boost in traffic to Shoebuy.com, CEO Scott Savitz tells Internet Retailer.
The commercial, which marks the e-retailer’s first national TV campaign, shows a parade of people stepping in a conga dance line through an office complex. “There’s a movement afoot—Shoebuy.com,” the commercial’s voice-over begins. It goes on to point out that Shoebuy offers more than 500,000 products from 400 footwear brands and offers free shipping and free returns.
Shoebuy, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, doesn’t release figures on sales or conversion rates, but the ad campaign coincided with a continued high conversion rate along with the surge in traffic, Savitz says. The campaign debuted on Monday, July 23, and that week’s traffic to Shoebuy.com rose 80% over the year-ago week, Savitz says.
“We’ve been extremely satisfied with the response to our first foray into national TV,” he says, adding that he believes the Internet is still in its infancy as a consumer market. “The response exceeded our expectations. We’re seeing healthy increases in traffic from our existing customer population and new customers.”
Shoebuy is using Boston-based advertising agency MMB to handle the commercial’s creative work and Mullen, also in Boston, for media buying. The conga commercial refers only to Shoebuy’s footwear products, even though Shoebuy.com now also sells activewear apparel and handbags. It also operates a separate handbag site, BagsBuy.com. Savitz isn’t ruling out future commercials for these other product lines, he says.
IAC, No. 104 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, acquired Shoebuy last year and did not break out revenue for it in its recent financial report for the second quarter ended June 30. IAC’s retailing revenue, representing just under half of the company’s total revenue, rose nearly 1% in Q2 to $701.4 million from $696.2 million in the year-ago quarter, the company says in the quarterly report.
IAC also notes that online shopping grew at a double-digit rate in the quarter, and it singles out Shoebuy as a strong contributor to retailing revenue. “Revenue growth was driven by strong gains at Shoebuy and slight growth at catalogs, partially offset by a 1% decline at HSN,” IAC says in the report. HSN, formerly known as Home Shopping Network, is a TV and web (HSN.com) retailer. IAC owns more than a dozen retail brands in all.
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