David’s Bridal has been selling dresses since the 1950s.
But the brand, built through legacy television, didn’t say “yes” to social advertising until 2019.
David’s Bridal uprooted and reorganized its media and marketing team in 2019, and it hired Kelly Cook as chief marketing officer and IT officer to lead the team.
“There was no social media department when I got here, and that was stalling the company,” Cook told AdExchanger. “People on LinkedIn fall in love, too.”
Now, David’s Bridal only buys digital media, one-third of which is on social. And TikTok is the clear favorite.
David’s Bridal started focusing heavily on TikTok this year. Last year, less than five percent of the retailer’s social media budget went to TikTok. Now, that number is pinned at 50%.
On blast
Live shopping on social media is one area David’s Bridal tested this August, when the brand held its “First Annual NashBlast” live shopping event.
About a quarter of David’s Bridal customers shop for something other than wedding apparel, Cook said, from homecoming dance dresses to ball gowns. So the retailer invited influencers to sell non-wedding wear, such as jackets and jumpsuits, live on the platform from a venue in Nashville (which is apparently the country’s “bachelorette capital“).
Although the company tested its “NashBlast” live video shopping campaign on a platform called Bambuser in April, its eyes were on TikTok all along, where the August event debuted.
Live video shopping gets mixed messages, though, at least in the US. It’s not on par with the market in China by a long shot.
“Bambuser told us we shouldn’t expect to make more than $5,000 in online sales,” Cook said. “We made $100,000.”
And with that result, David’s Bridal decided it was ready to add live shopping to its TikTok agenda.
Sphere of influence
David’s Bridal made its pivot into social because it needs engagement and sales more than it needs brand awareness. And social excels at engagement and sales.
“We actually do very little brand building because we have a gigantic market hold in the US,” Cook said, who noted that 92% of brides in the country visit David’s Bridal at some point between their engagement and the wedding.
The company first started moving budget to TikTok at the end of last year. Once the #DavidsBridal hashtag got 23 million hits in early 2022, the retailer started getting serious about creating original content for the channel.
“Influencers are an extremely powerful part of scaling our marketing strategy,” Cook said. One-quarter of the brand’s social media budget is allocated to paying creators.
David’s Bridal works with thousands of creators across the country, including the stylists and tailors that work in the retailer’s 300 US stores.
Combined, those creators produce about 5,000 videos a month for TikTok.
“If a company’s media strategy on TikTok is just to place ads there, it’s going to waste money,” Cook said. “The formula that works for TikTok includes branded and original content – and influencers.”
#DavidsBridal is now up to 132 million impressions.
Ode to Meta
There’s another reason David’s Bridal prefers TikTok over other social media: It’s cheaper.
Facebook, especially, isn’t looking too good.
Meta was upended by Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework. Advertisers are shoveling spend anywhere else, and Facebook jacked up its rates as a result.
“Marketing officers like me are in the hot seat because our [Facebook] ads are getting less efficient just by means of the platform’s rates going up,” Cook said.
Good timing to shift spend to TikTok.
Coming together
Now that David’s Bridal only spends digitally, its TikTok strategy makes more room for retargeting across the open web.
For retargeting, David’s Bridal mostly relies on customer insights from its Diamond Loyalty Program, which it rolled out last summer.
The program credits “points” to brides that refer their bridesmaids to David’s Bridal to buy their dresses for the big day. Most bridesmaids shop for a new dress rather than repurpose whatever’s hanging around in the closet.
Brides that accrue 5,000 points get a free honeymoon, Cook said. The promise of a free honeymoon was enough for the program to attract two million members.
Once bridesmaids sign up for the program through a referral, David’s Bridal targets them with branded content on search and social, like listicles (e.g., “the 10 shoes to bring with you on your wedding day”). Once those bridesmaids make their appointments with David’s Bridal for their own wedding, the retailer targets them with ads for specific products to drive sales.
What about TV?
David’s Bridal has moved on from linear, but it didn’t do away with TV entirely.
Whatever TV budget remains goes into connected TV (CTV).
CTV allows for more granular targeting than linear.
“A billion impressions on the weather channel at three in the morning is nice and all, but it’s probably not where the bride is,” Cook said.
CTV also offers scale, which David’s Bridal still finds valuable to build up its brand messaging – particularly since the retailer sells dresses for events other than weddings. To be fair, not everyone would assume a company called David’s Bridal also sells dresses for bat mitzvahs and quinceañeras – but it does, in fact, sell nonwhite special occasion dresses.
Wedding dresses are not a spontaneous purchase, Cook said, but when it comes to the retailer’s other clothing lines, live video shopping on TikTok is the next foray.
