Apparel and accessories brand Draper James celebrated its first birthday by becoming an early advertiser on social media application Timehop, including a link to purchase along with a discount code.

Actress Reese Witherspoon’s designer brand Draper James recently reached its one-year milestone and partnered with Timehop to broaden its awareness, where users were greeted with a video and a discount code. The ad included a native link to browse and purchase products on Draper James’ Web site, with a coupon for free shipping.

“Trending and popular media properties can be an effective channel for brands, like Draper James, to engage, reach audiences and measurably drive sales,” said Michael Becker, managing partner at mCordis. “Timehop is one of these properties.

“With over 15 million users near the end of 2015 and most certainly climbing it has a reasonable reach,” he said. “People have become increasingly comfortable and accepting of applications like Timehop to use advertising to monetize the service, especially when it is done tastefully.

“Time specific advertising, such as SyFy’s promotion of its time travel program 12 Monkeys or in the case of Draper James promoting its first anniversary makes perfect sense in a medium like Timehop. Timehop’s community is a perfect target for these brands and the advertising fits within the theme of the Timehop experience.”

Hoppy birthday
A cheery Ms. Witherspoon greeted Timehop users who opened the app on Thursday in a video discussing Draper James’ birthday. On the year anniversary of its opening day, the brand shared the video to expand its awareness to the substantial number of users on the app, who often check it everyday.

The Timehop app features a curated feed of posts taken from users’ connected social media channels, from that day in history. The app congregates a new feed everyday of previous posts from other years on that specific day, a theme that fits well with the Draper James birthday celebration.

The video showed Ms. Witherspoon explaining the big day, and then turning away cakes that were not quite big enough to celebrate the milestone until musicians appeared with a banner and large cake with sparklers. A link to the Draper James site was located underneath for shoppers to browse and purchase the various items, which is likely to have caught the eye of numerous users who had not known about the brand before.

Using the code TIMEHOP during checkout, customers were able to get free shipping for one day only. The Timehop integration ran for the full day and ended Friday morning.

Draper James also shared the experience on social media by reposting the video on its Instagram with the caption “today’s our first birthday y’all, join us and Reese Witherspoon for an all-day party with Timehop.” The post also prompted users to click the link in its bio to get in on the free shipping action and shop its featured feed.

Social media advertising
Kohl’s similarly ramped up sales for a new handbag collection by leveraging social influencers and handing out free samples in New York, encouraging women to show off their personal take on accessorizing with the bags (see more).

Also, Alex and Ani continued its omnichannel shopping strategy with ads on Facebook and Instagram promoting an in-store gift-with-purchase offer and featuring a Mother’s Day-themed video and a button that clicks through to a store locator for convenience (see more).

“In mobile media people have little patience for convoluted messaging, having a clear call-to-action, incentive and link to purchase are most certainly a best practice,” Mr. Becker said. “Marketers want always to be mindful to minimize the steps of engagement from exposure to purchase.

“In this case, they seem to be doing a very good job,” he said.