“Heureka” it out!

Summary

Last year, due to the pandemic situation, many people had to change their shopping behaviour and shop more online. Together with Heureka, the largest shopping advisor, we were the only e-commerce entity that have opened up the topic of threats the inexperienced customers may face when shopping online. During the most intense shopping period of the year, we complemented the massive ATL campaign with a PR campaign – in the form of a gift advisor, informative articles, online advisory services and media appearances, we advised people on how to handle Christmas shopping as safely as possible. With more than 200 outputs, we have helped thousands of people save money.

Challenge an goal

Heureka has long been fighting against fake discounts, which are abused by a number of e-shops during the strongest shopping periods. However, the year 2020 was marked by the coronavirus pandemic and, due to closed shops, also the area of e-commerce grew by 40 % year-on-year. This increase led to an increase in new e-shops already during the first wave of the pandemic. Some of these new e-shops abused the situation and ignorance of new online customers. We knew that in the strongest period before Christmas, this trend would get worse. We responded with an educational campaign full of useful advice.

Strategy and plan

The aim of the campaign was to inform people about the possibilities, but also the threats of unwary shopping on the Internet. In 2020, the e-commerce and shopping behaviour were rather specific, so based on data analysis, predictions and an online questionnaire, Heureka created an analysis of pre-Christmas shopping behaviour, which provided us insights for the campaign. The analysis showed that despite the fact that more than 90 % of people buy gifts online, their knowledge of the rules of safe and cost-effective online shopping needs improvement.

Execution

In the run-up to Christmas, Heureka launched a gift advisor on her website and a commercial spot on TV. We supported the ATL campaign with an educational PR campaign involving various media formats for the biggest impact:

1. Press Releases

During the campaign, we made 8 press releases, informing the media and readers about the strain being put on e-shops and courier services, the latest time for placing order so they are delivered in time, how to return unwanted presents and, particularly about how not to be tricked by fake discounts. All information was updated in real time, based on the anti-pandemic measures.

2. Cooperation with news agencies

In cooperation with news agencies TASR and SITA, we published 34 paid outputs in order to address and reach a wide target group.

3. Cooperation with Refresher.sk portal

In order to address young people as well, we published an article on the refresher.sk portal and a quiz on its Instagram page. Thanks to this cooperation alone, we have reached about 50,000 people.

4. TV

Apart from the fact that Heureka’s boss Tomáš Braverman personally gave useful advice in the morning shows of TV Markíza and TV JOJ, we also appeared spontaneously in the newscasts of three TV stations with 5 news reports.

5. Online advisory centres

We prepared an advisory centre available to anyone visiting the online portal feminity.sk or listening to Fun Radio broadcast.

Results

Thanks to our campaign, Heureka was the only one to “adopt” the topic of online shopping security and thus strengthened its position as the most trusted e-commerce expert. The campaign was particularly significant for its unpaid part: we recorded more than 40 questions from journalists, and 200 spontaneous outputs were released. In online advisory centres, we received more than 30 questions from readers, which we helped solve in real time. Heureka appeared in the news of three Slovak TV stations. And last but not least, we helped thousands of Slovaks who trusted Heureka to advise them well.