How Shopify’s first ever brand campaign helped it become a household name

Shopify is part of the B2B zeitgeist now. But just five years ago, that wasn’t the case.  

After being founded in Ottawa, Canada in 2004, the e-commerce platform expanded its offerings from cloud and software solutions for e-commerce businesses to include more tools targeted at entrepreneurs like branding, online advertising, and point-of-sale solutions. It had an IPO in 2015, and then it wasn’t until 2019 that it launched its first brand campaign. 

This week, Case Studied explores how Shopify’s first campaign helped establish it as a household name after nearly two decades of helping entrepreneurs globally sell online.

The Brief:

Consumer awareness was the big goal behind Shopify’s first campaign. It had done a bunch of performance advertising that focused on specific new products, specifically on digital channels previously but the goal of its 2019 campaign was to elevate the Shopify brand as a whole. 

“We want to be a household name people associate with entrepreneurship,” said Jeff Weiser, CMO of Shopify. “This is the first big salvo in that attempt. The targeted ads and more constrained product messaging works, but it’s not the only way to build a household name. The campaign is an overarching statement about our mission and objectives, which should be evergreen, in that it’ll be true a year and five years and 100 years from now.”

Weiser said the company didn’t do a huge amount of consumer research before launching. They just focused on the premise that “Shopify is the difference between making something and making something a business.” 

And it didn’t just aim to build awareness: it aimed to build an aspirational brand. 

The Execution:

Shopify partnered with agency partner RG/A to execute the campaign, in addition to their own internal creative team. The campaign ran from April to July, spanning 12 key markets in the U.S. and Canada. It came to life on television, radio, digital video, social media, and out-of-home (OOH) ads. 

The messaging behind Let’s Make You a Business encourages people to turn their business ideas into reality and positions Shopify as a trusted partner who can support the process. 

High-quality ad copy helped send this message home. One ad that read, “No partner will take your funny t-shirt business more seriously.”  Another said, “Let’s make your family proud. Or prove them wrong. We don’t know what kind of relationship you have.”

“Our brand is all about using commerce to help people pursue independence,” Weiser said. “There’s a lot of people caught in a corporate wheel, but when they start a business with Shopify and act on their dreams, it’s a freeing experience for them. Reminding them that they can turn the thing they are sitting on into a business felt like the insight to capitalize on.”

The OOH execution called “That Storefront” tapped into vacant retail storefronts and promoted the businesses that hadn’t been started (with Shopify) yet. The windows had ads saying “That business you think could be huge, could be here” and “That business you’re not sure how to start, could be here.” 

One even had a “You Business Hours” box on the window that said:

Mon: whenever you want. 

Tue: For as long as you want. 

Wed: Start early, or end late?”

The videos, directed by Traktor, aligned with the same message. This one gave a visual depiction of people opening up empty products before saying, “The world could love your business but first, it needs to exist.”

The Results:

Shopify was already bringing in over $1 billion in revenue at the time and working with over 800k small businesses when the Lets Make You a Business campaign launched. But this campaign helped them elevate even further. 

Shopify said that subsequent tests indicated a near doubling of unaided awareness of Shopify among the target audience in cities where the campaign was run. New brand health measures showed a marked increase in the number of small and mid-sized businesses saying they “will definitely try” Shopify. 

That success certainly translated into earnings. In 2019, fourth quarter revenue alone was $505.2 million, a 47% increase from the same quarter in 2018. Total revenue for the full year in 2019 was $1.578 billion, which was also a 47% increase over 2018. 

While the company didn’t release specific data on the campaign’s performance, it’s safe to say it augmented Shopify’s success at a time when its growth was already skyrocketing. 

“It feels like the brand is at the precipice of a tipping point anyway, and this is the nudge to top it over the edge,“Weiser said. “We have the credibility in the market to make the ad ring true.”

The Takeaways:

Shopify took an interesting approach to its first big brand campaign. Here are a few takeaways:

1. Don’t sleep on brand awareness

Shopify’s campaign is a great example of the transition brands need to make as they scale from one focused on performance marketing to a brand that understands the role of brand awareness.

While both performance and brand awareness play a role in a marketing mix for a business the size of Shopify, even smaller brands should consider experimenting with branding initiatives, perhaps starting in small geographies, to determine if that has a net positive impact on the rest of your marketing efforts.

Set aside a small budget each quarter for ideas that reinforce your brand, but might be a bit more challenging to measure direct ROI against and observe if that has an impact on your bottom line come next quarter.

2. Slow and steady wins the race

One of the coolest parts of the Shopify story is that it didn’t happen overnight, like many Silicon Valley startups would like you to believe. With the campaign launching in 2019, it took the brand 15 years to get to the point where they could justify bringing in a big agency and running a mass campaign across North America.

It’s easy to look at other brands and envy their capabilities or reach, but it is important to remember that those milestones are only achieved by building companies brick by brick, often taking much longer than you imagine.

3. There is a world outside of digital

If an ecommerce platform can find success with channels like OOH, Radio and TV, it’s apparent that perhaps we have course corrected too far towards digital channels.

Despite being a digitally-native business, Shopify is a great example of marketing where your customers are and understanding that not everyone consumes all of their media or marketing online, and sometimes you need to build a new channel mix to reach them.