Ralph Lauren and Smartly Serve Aces by Personalizing the Wimbledon Shopping Experience

Being Campaign-Ready for All Possible Weather Outcomes

Polo Ralph Lauren is the official outfitter of the Championships, Wimbledon. As many Wimbledon fans in the United Kingdom know all too well, the London weather is often susceptible to dramatic change throughout the event’s fortnight. Therefore, Ralph Lauren identified that for their advertising campaigns, they needed to be prepared for any weather scenario.

But offering a personalized shopping experience to Wimbledon fans is easier said than done. Ralph Lauren not only needed to surface different looks based on the numerous Wimbledon matches and local forecast, but also desired a simplified way to exclude certain looks in real time when weather conditions changed.

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Smartly.io’s Automation Suite to Streamline the Process

Ralph Lauren worked together with their agency, Zenith, to tap into Smartly.io’s creative and automation tools. First, they adopted a modular creative approach to build their Facebook and Instagram video assets. This allowed for the generation of all combinations of weather variations (sunny, cloudy, or rainy), sections of the draw (fourth rounds, quarterfinals, semifinals, finals, and in between matches), and formats (9:16 and 4:5) without any heavy lifting. This method was able to further personalize creatives by pulling in only the relevant Ralph Lauren looks based on each asset’s specified weather condition.

Next, they leveraged the power of automation for the campaign creation process. This started with the ability to quickly build out all the ad sets and ads at scale. After launch, Smartly.io’s automation of ad status ensured that any live ads would show accurate weather-based looks according to the local forecast for each match of Wimbledon. This removed the possibility of human error that the wrong ads might be shown to spectators and fans. Ralph Lauren was then able to drive home their theme of “Timeless Spectator Style”. For instance, sunny forecasts would populate creatives with sunglasses, sandals, shorts, and a tote bag; cloudy forecasts would display creatives with a long-sleeve shirt and pants; and rainy forecasts would showcase a poncho, hat, and rain jacket.

Game, Set, Match

By pre-building creative asset variations and then leveraging weather data to automate campaign creation and ad status, Ralph Lauren and Zentih suited up as champions. The campaign was a success, as 30 video variations were produced for Feed and Story with the entire campaign being launched in under an hour. Prior to this collaboration, this type of personalization at scale would never have been achievable without massive amounts of manual work. Not only did the teams save time in the process, but they were able to maximize reach against their audience with highly personalized creatives and looks for each Wimbledon match on Centre Court.