Great Clips teams with Twitch superstar on app sweepstakes

Brief:

Great Clips partnered with Tyler "Ninja" Blevin on a sweepstakes to boost downloads of the salon chain's mobile app, according to a company announcement. Ninja is the top gamer on Amazon's Twitch streaming platform, with nearly 12 million followers. Fans can enter by downloading the Great Clips online check-in app by Nov. 22.
The grand prize, for one fan and a guest to meet Ninja in person, will be available if users collectively download the app at least 300,000 times during the contest period. Great Clips is also offering about 300 prizes in addition to the grand prize.
Lisa Hake, VP of marketing and communications at Great Clips, said the gaming market aligns well with the Great Clips target customer. The chain has more than 4,300 salons throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Insight:

Great Clips' promotion with internet personality Ninja could be an effective way to reach young adults who are more likely to consume content on streaming platforms like Twitch than traditional media like TV and print. Ninja has become a multimedia celebrity with a large online following and multiple appearances on TV, including a segment on "The Ellen Show" that's been viewed on YouTube 13.9 million times.

Social influencers like Ninja are part of a fast-growing trend in marketing, with 65% of multinational brands planning to boost spending on influencer campaigns in the next year, per a study from the World Federation of Advertisers. While Instagram is the most popular platform for influencer marketing, Twitch is quickly becoming a key channel, averaging 15 million daily active users, a number that rivals top cable networks. Viewership has surged 51% to 45 billion minutes a month in 2018 from a year earlier, and the number of individual broadcasters has jumped 61% to 3.2 million, according to Twitch data.

The sweepstakes is Great Clips' latest effort to drive adoption of its mobile app. The salon chain last month updated its app with a "haircut reminder" tool and an integration with Siri Shortcuts, a feature in Apple's new iOS 12 that lets iPhone users activate a series of actions with a single verbal command. Previously, Great Clips launched a Snapchat Lens that lets users virtually try on three "wacky" hairstyles to demonstrate the company's fresh focus on incorporating mobile technology into its marketing strategy.