The objective of this partnership was to make KAY Jewelers a top choice for Zillennials looking for holiday shopping inspiration. Historically, KAY Jewelers has launched its holiday messaging during a major broadcast television event. In 2024, as the brand shifts focus to connect with a younger audience, this strategy needed an update. Rather than relying on broadcast, KAY decided to focus on social feeds, identifying a key moment that would dominate users’ feeds with holiday inspiration and spark shopping behavior. To enhance this branded entertainment moment, KAY also created a curated, shoppable collection to bring a key endorsement to life in a meaningful way for Zillennial holiday shoppers.
What KAY, and all of us, know is that the holidays don’t start until the Queen sings.
The strategic goals for this campaign was to borrow the cultural relevance and reach of a national icon while providing her audience with meaningful brand additions to a moment fans flock to. Once this celebrity and opportunity were identified, the goal for execution became to create a big splash in pop culture – one that could put the brand at the center of the holiday shopping season, drive sales, and make the brand impossible for their key audiences to ignore.
KAY Jewelers partnered with Mariah Carey and her annual “It’s Time” social media video, which has historically generated more US media attention every year than any other pop culture moment, aside from the Super Bowl. Every year at 11:59PM on Halloween, Mariah Carey publishes this video to usher in the season she has personally crowned her own, symbolizing the end of Halloween and the beginning of the Christmas. The video, featuring fun, glamourous set pieces, also features Carey’s record-breaking hit, “All I Want for Christmas is You.”
While Mariah Carey has posted an “It’s Time” video for the last 4 years, this is a first-of-its-kind brand collaboration. This partnership authentically wove KAY Jewelry into multiple touchpoints to elevate this past the point of product placement and create a full ecosystem of collaboration between KAY Jewelers & Mariah Carey. Branded elements for this partnership include Mariah being adorned with two different KAY Jewelers looks – for both the Halloween and Christmas set piece. Additionally, KAY branded boxes and bags were strategically placed throughout the set while KAY diamonds glittered on Mariah’s Christmas tree. Mariah ended the video by blowing a kiss to camera as a nod to KAY’s iconic “Every Kiss Begins with KAY” kingle. Finally, #KAYPartner was used within Mariah’s social copy as well as on-screen during the first 5 seconds of the video.
The ”It’s Time” video was posted organically from Mariah Carey’s Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X. KAY Jewelers was able to share across all their organic social handles, on KAY.com, and within paid media on Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube Shorts.
Lastly, adding a shoppable component, Mariah Carey curated her top holiday gift picks from KAY Jewelers, creating a direct connection between the brand and her fans. “Mariah’s Holiday Gift Picks” lived online at KAY.com from Nov 1st – December 31st and was promoted on the brand’s organic and paid social channels. This curation elevated KAY’s offerings by aligning them with Mariah Carey, providing a personal endorsement that resonated with shoppers.
KAY Jewelers was looking to maximize reach, engagement, and pop cultural impact with this partnership - and the success was undeniable. With more than 149MM+ organic-only total video views across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X, and 1.3B+ earned media impressions across sixteen different outlets including Good Morning America, People, The New York Times, Billboard, Rolling Stone, and more, this campaign became the single most successful digital campaign in the brand’s history. Across paid media, the “It’s Time” and “Mariah’s Holiday Gift Picks” assets were the top performers of all paid assets in rotation during this time across Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest – driving an additional 100M+ paid impressions from KAY handles. This campaign also saw overwhelmingly positive social sentiment at 78%+ on Instagram, raised brand favorability by 27%+ (benchmark 5.6%), consideration by 30% (benchmark 6%), and purchase intent by 37% (benchmark o6.7%), and was responsible for driving more than 44% of the brand’s total website traffic during launch week.
Moreover, success from an investment standpoint was groundbreaking. Although the investment level was only $1.65M, the Estimated Media Value was a whopping $7M.
