Golf apparel and gear brand J.Lindeberg creates products that bridge the gap between sport and fashion, the better to provide clothing that “feels natural, aspirational and aligned with the modern consumer who moves fluidly between sport, city and lifestyle moments,” said Mandy Sa, Ecommerce Director for North America at J.Lindeberg in an interview with Retail TouchPoints.
But how best to ensure this message reaches J.Lindeberg’s target consumers, not to mention does so when and where they are most likely to be influenced by it? Sa revealed how J.Lindeberg is leveraging CTV to answer these questions.
Retail TouchPoints: J.Lindeberg ventured into CTV to break beyond “traditional channels.” Which channels or platforms had you been using prior to this?
Mandy Sa: Prior to CTV, we heavily focused on Meta and Google. While effective, we were eager to explore channels that would allow us to be impactful and reach new audiences without needing to create different types of content. CTV was a great answer to that, as we were able to repurpose our existing campaign videos and reach people via a completely new medium for us. We understood that most of our customers discover our brand through sports, and they were already engaged and watching sports on their TV or streaming device — and with the MNTN CTV platform we can get in front of those customers with compelling visuals that keep their attention.
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RTP: Which CTV value props were most important to J.Lindeberg?
Sa: The largest value prop of CTV was the concept of marrying rich media content on large screens with targeted audiences and behaviors. With traditional TV buys, you’re buying with a network and targeting a specific time segment, and trusting that their user demographics align with your brand. With MNTN’s targeting capabilities, we’re targeting specific behaviors and interests, and our content is served to users who match that, no matter what it is they’re watching. Maybe they’re watching a golf tournament or tennis match, maybe they’re watching The Real Housewives. As long as they’re in-market for golf apparel and fall within whatever other targeting parameters we’ve selected, our ads will reach them.
Additionally, we aim to be as personalized as possible. We’ll take our golfer and run through what a day might look like for them. They might be traveling a lot, going to yoga class, meal prepping, etc. Taking ancillary interests into account really opened up business opportunities to get our products out there. We have a full collection of off-course items as well — we understand our audience loves the versatility of J.Lindeberg products and we found that the use of video allows us to demonstrate just how versatile our products can be and how the customer can incorporate them into all aspects of their active lifestyle.
RTP: Given that versatility, how does J.Lindeberg balance the fashion and performance aspects of its products?
Sa: It’s quite easy to balance when our products themselves embody that concept. Our approach often starts with innovation in fabrics and the actual design. Every piece is made to meet the demands of an active lifestyle, engineered for movement and performance without compromising on aesthetics.
This philosophy extends to every part of our creative direction. We focus on the technical innovation behind our products while keeping fashion at the forefront, integrating sport-focused elements into our fashion and vice versa.
RTP: Are there specific parts of the MNTN offering that are helping J.Lindeberg communicate these messages to the right people?
Sa: When we first launched on MNTN, MNTN Matched [an AI-powered keyword matching solution] wasn’t yet available. As it rolled out, we agreed to test it within some of our prospecting campaigns and found it to be successful for us. We were able to incorporate keywords for interests that we wanted to target, such as “golf apparel” and “performance outerwear,” and MNTN generated expanded keyword lists for us to choose from.
It felt like we were combining things we loved about the other channels we were working on with the existing parts we loved about MNTN, and helping us to reach an even more refined audience who would be in-market for our product. Moving forward, we plan to continue using MNTN Matched for our prospecting efforts.
What’s great about MNTN in general is that we didn’t need to create content specifically for it. We were able to use what we already had and lean into the retargeting tools that MNTN provided. Brand awareness continues to be top priority for us, namely for our prospecting campaigns. Our retargeting campaigns are also starting to really see a boost in performance, so now we’re looking for organic ways to funnel our CTV efforts into our overall digital strategy.
RTP: How are you continuing your test-and-learn approach to push the creative limits of CTV and move the brand forward?
Sa: We did quite a bit of creative testing with MNTN last summer during our Team USA Olympic Golf sponsorship. We tested [things like] ad length, featuring ambassadors vs. models, product focus vs. general branding, you name it. After we had a significant amount of data to draw conclusions from, we would scale the winning creatives and incorporate them into any new campaigns we launched.
RTP: Do you have any recommendations for peers who are either early in their CTV journey or are considering using it in the future?
Sa: As cliché as it may sound, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Test, test, test. Test everything. And most importantly, give it time.
