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By Natalie Mortimer | N/A

November 26, 2014 | 4 min read

Health food chain Holland & Barrett is hoping a £600k ad campaign for its ‘weird and wonderful’ snail gel product range will boost its popularity among a younger audience and help the brand feel more modern.

The integrated campaign featuring Louise Redknapp, which rolls out on Thursday (27 November) during an ad break for I’m a Celebrity, comes as Holland & Barrett celebrates the one year anniversary of the launch of its snail gel range, and will feature new products which include serums and hand creams.

Speaking to The Drum chief marketing officer Lysa Hardy, said the campaign will lean heavily on social for the first time, signalling a change in marketing strategy for the 94-year old brand as it looks to engage with a health savvy, younger demographic and capitalise on its unconventional product range.

“We’ve got some slightly unusual products that you can’t buy anywhere else on the high-street, and there is a younger consumer now who is much more educated about health and well being. They are more interested in what’s going into the products that put on their skin and these weird and wonderful products really resonate with them.

“What we’re trying to do is find the right mediums and media to reach those customers and tell them about Holland & Barrett and perhaps get them to come in and discover something about us that they didn’t know.”

The 15-second TV spot follows Holland & Barrett’s wider animated strategy, and features animated snails in a “short and snappy” ad which takes a playful tone.

Hardy revealed that the brand is hoping to ramp up its social media activity and has spent the past few months testing out its reach ahead of the campaign, which will lean hard into the medium. Holland & Barrett has created what it is calling Good Life Insiders to chalk up greater engagement and offer consumers the chance of testing products ahead of their release.

“We’ll be taking the same approach with snail gel,” she commented. “The campaign is actually running for several weeks and so over those weeks we’ll be changing the focus. We’ve got Louise Redknapp that we’ll be featuring, but we’ll also be doing some competitions and using some of the Good Life Insiders who have been trailing the new products to talk about them. Hopefully it will be a fairly engaging and evolving campaign.”

The idea behind the Good Life Insiders comes as Holland & Barrett puts plans in motion to “beef up the content” on its website and provide a more cohesive and integrated approach for its offline magazine Healthy.

“There is a lot of great content in there [Healthy] so we’re trying to get more integrated with what we’re doing in our campaigns and what’s in Healthy and bring that together in a digital forum for people as well. Having our own customers generate some of that content is a great situation for us.”

Hardy previously spoke to The Drum about Holland & Barrett’s Store for the Future drive in October, and revealed that the a new concept store will open in the north of England and look to “push the envelope” in terms of the technology and experiences it will offer consumers.

The campaign kicks off a series of Weird and Wonderful adverts, the second of which will launch in February next year.

Concept Store Holland & Barrett Integrated Campaign

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