Jewelry retailer Pandora saw an ideal opportunity to raise the branding stakes during Britain?s Mother?s Day holiday this past weekend by unrolling a cohesive social media campaign that included sponsored Snapchat geofilters and a Twitter contest.

The accessories chain sought to increase brand awareness leading up to and during Mother?s Day weekend, a time during which many consumers were hunting for the perfect piece of jewelry to gift to their mothers. Pandora opted to use a multi-platform approach for this holiday sales push, leaning on sponsored geofilters and a Twitter selfie sweepstakes to keep the brand at the forefront of shoppers? minds.

?Pandora?s multi-platform social media play is a clever approach to help grow its user and fan base for both Twitter and Snapchat,? said Ken Morris, principal at Boston Retail Partners. ?Contests are a great way to engage consumers with the brand and create awareness and interest for Pandora?s products.

?Gamification is a technique leveraged in a non-gaming context to engage the customer to become one with the brand and this is a great example of how to do it well.?

Pinpointing ideal customers
This past weekend, Pandora became the first British-based retailer to leverage Snapchat?s sponsored geofilters during a partnership that culminated on Mother?s Day.

The jewelry giant wanted to highlight the similarities between mothers and their daughters by inviting Snapchat users to take a picture with their moms over the holiday weekend, and embellish the photo with Pandora?s exclusive geofilter, featuring a branded ?Mothering Sunday? message.

To complement that strategy, Pandora also gave users the opportunity to receive a shopping spree ? worth five hundred British pounds ? at its flagship store. Entrants were asked to upload their favorite selfie featuring the Pandora geofilter onto Twitter via the #JustLikeMum hashtag. The brand?s official Twitter handle, @Pandora_UK, also had to be included in the post.

Additionally, in the days prior to Mother?s Day, the chain tapped the talents of five mother-daughter blogging duos, including We are Twinset and Gemma Talbot, to share posts and videos describing their relationships and promoting Pandora?s 2016 Mother?s Day collection.

Social influencers have been transformed into marketing mavens for many top brands, especially those seeking to target millennial customers.

Strengthening Snapchat strategies
Leveraging sponsored geofilters has been a sought-after advertising tactic for many marketers in a slew of industries. 

McDonald?s was one of the first brands to use Snapchat's geofiltering stickers in a bid to fuel consumers to send more photos from the chain's restaurants and create sponsored content that appears non-promotional to recipients (see story).

Although the Mother?s Day geofilter was only available to residents in Britain, Pandora has been angling to bolster its Snapchat audience in a big way this year ? most notably, by enabling consumers to read snippets from its magazine.

Last May, Pandora saw upbeat results from a trial of a new ad format offered by Hearst Magazines UK that provided a range of interactive features while combining storytelling with a mobile native user experience (see story).

The brand has also used Snapchat to showcase its latest products.

?As an active Snapchat user, Pandora is also leveraging the latest geofilter tool, which enables it to send targeted Snapchat messages when fans are within a geographic proximity to its stores,? Mr. Morris said. ?When shoppers are near a store and receive the Snapchat promotion, it makes the choice to visit a Pandora store more likely.

?The cohesive social media strategy around Mother?s Day is a perfect strategy for Pandora, as many of its products make great gifts for this holiday. This will be just another arrow in the marketing quiver for Pandora that it can continually leverage around holidays, current events, etc.?