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E-commerce brand created that blasts cats off into space, gaining with skyrocketing social media presence.
The pandemic was a dark time. With so much negativity, we wanted to help spread some positivity and joy, to break up the monotony of lockdown. Armed with that thought we launched an e-commerce brand, Spacecat – and it took off!
The brand produces unique products, adding a fun and playful twist to the experience. By featuring beloved feline friends exploring space. The playful nature quickly captured the attention of cat lovers and its Instagram following rockets to new heights.
In its first year, Spacecat gained 11K followers on Instagram with a 12% engagement rate (3x industry average). The e-commerce store offers a range of products such as Bespoke space cat picture, t-shirts, hoodies, and posters featuring the brand’s signature cat space-blasting designs and even appeared on the Piccadilly Circus lights.
But how did we do it?
Deep dive
Every great project starts with great research. Recognising cats and space are at the epicentre of internet culture (being two of the highest most keywords searched in internet history). We set out to create a brand that embodies the charm of cats and the allure of space, to promote happiness and joy.
1.Identity
We created the brand by drawing inspiration from people’s attraction to cute cats and the mysteriousness of space. This was combined with deep personalisation. Offing people the chance to see their cats really took off. Who wouldn’t want to see their cat sipping from a flying saucer?
The design took cues from the beloved character Hello Kitty, but with a less gender-focused approach, which proved to be a hit. To complement the logo release, 40 selections of clothing were created and sold on the spacecat e-commerce store website.
Website
A major focus of this project was The Spacecat e-commerce store. It was designed to embody the theme of the logo and leverage the power of WordPress and the Elementor plugin. However, creating an e-commerce store requires more than just a content management system and a page builder. To enable sales and collect purchase data, the team added the WooCommerce plugin as a point-of-sale system.
When the Spacecat website first launched, it had a slow site speed with a GTmetrix Grade D. To address this issue, we implemented key changes such as using the Smush plugin to compress and lazy-load images. For an added boost, we optimised the website by minifying and combining the CSS and JS files, improved CSS delivery, and loading JS was deferred with the WP Rocket plugin. These improvements increased the website speed to a GTmetrix Grade A. Improving web performance, customer experience and ranking potential.
2. Sharing the joy
Despite the niche and unconventional nature of the brand, it quickly gained traction on Instagram, attracting over 11,000 followers in the first year. This was largely due to the brand’s ability to create a sense of community and inclusiveness, encouraging followers to send pictures of their cats to the Space cat astronauts. They would then apply Photoshop magic, to blast the cats off to space and share the images with the customers and followers, who would then repost and forward to their friends and family, increasing brand awareness, driving engaged web traffic and social media into orbit! Ultimately, this led to increased leads, sales and revenue for the business.
Green Grow created a strong social media strategy for Space Cat with a consistent posting schedule of five times a week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. It also took part in many facebook group communities where the space cat pictures created a visual impact, getting people talking and delivering an ever growing number of leads.
3. Paid advertising
With the success of its organic growth, Spacecat aimed to accelerate even further. To achieve this, we created seasonal PPC campaigns targeting popular holidays such as Halloween and Christmas, promoting the Space cat merchandise.
4. PR – getting the name in lights
To further enhance the brand’s authority and expand its reach, Green Grow collaborated with Spacecat to target media outlets and secure brand features. As a result, they were featured on popular platforms such as Buzzfeed and The Dodo and also received a contra deal with The London Cat Show. To top it all off, Spacecat partnered with The Peoples Picture to appear on the Piccadilly Circus lights, with the aim of spreading positivity during the challenging times of COVID-19.
What does it all mean?
Spacecat was able to gain massive brand awareness, through its social media strategy, website implementation and marketing effort, this resulted in:
11,000 instagram followers
12% impressions x3 the average
Piccadilly Circus Lights billboard
259 Space Cat pictures
