Case Study 2: T.J. Maxx Maxxinista

T.J. Maxx (T.J’s), who promise “fashion direct from designers and savings directly to you,” has definitely sparked my interested recently.

About a year ago I started noticing their ads on TV coining the new term, maxxinista – a cleaver play on the word fashionista – and it got me wondering, should I be a maxxinista? Here’s an example of one of their TV spots: Maxxinista Commercial.

Since the Maxxinista Campaign launch in 2010, the company’s online social media presence has increased ten fold. Although I couldn’t find an exact source describing the success, there are a lot of sites (like this article) crediting the Maxxinista Campaign as one of the best. For instance Vered DeLeeuw, Social Media Consultant and Online Blogger, says the campaign “is a great example of how a brand can effectively use social media to enhance its general marketing message” and I couldn’t agree more.

Here’s an overview of their social footprint:

• Twitter – T.J.’s utilizes Twitter to help narrow the gap between the company and consumers exceptionally well. Today, alone, they tweeted a total of 46 times and I only anticipate that number to continuously grow since the night is still young. As you can see in the image below, the majority of the content stems from replies to their followers.

This is extremely effective for two reasons: 1. as previously stated, they are bridging the gap between company and consumer by directly interacting with consumers each and every time someone tweets at them. This also proves that they are really listening to consumers and responding to their comments. 2. By having a lot of consumer generated content, they are utilizing Twitter the correct way. Instead of trying to fit Facebook posts into a similar, shortened Twitter post they using the medium as a two-way conversation between brand and consumer. These efforts have definitely paid off; the proof is in the numbers. As of today, T.J.’s Twitter page has 6,398 tweets and 43,651 followers.

• According to compete.com – the T.J. Maxx Homepage has seen an overall incline of visitors over the past year and a total of 614,756 unique visitors.

The Web site also includes a Maxx Finds page that encourages consumers to post images of the products they’ve found at various stores nationwide.

This is a great way to engage consumers who aren’t necessarily on Facebook and Twitter but are just as brand loyal and want to experience a similar relationship with T.J. Maxx online.

But their Facebook page has, in my opinion, really launched the Maxxinista campaign. With 887,213 likes and 16,111 talking about it, T.J.’s does a great job of transferring the Maxxinista campaign to social media.

What immediately caught my attention was the Maxxinista heading at the top of the brand’s new Facebook timeline.

Right away, the page invites visitors to explore “Photos,” a “Spring Style Guide” and a “Maxx Finds” located in the navigation bar. This does a great job of allowing users to explore what the Facebook page offers and eventually leading them back to the homepage.

The content is broken down into 4 main categories:

1. Promotional Contents
2. Fashinista Recommendations
3. Style Suggestions
4. Event Reminders

Each content category generates over hundreds of likes per post and a wide range of comments and shares. Surprisingly, the Fashinista Recommendations (which consist of advice from Fashion Stylists) generate the least customer interaction with somewhere around 100 likes a couple of comments. The Promotional Content and Style Suggestions generate the most feedback.

The Promotional Content visualized above asks fans what they would do with $1,000 gift card. With the opportunity to win an actual gift card T.J.’s generated 267 likes and 736 comments – pretty impressive for a single post.

The Style Suggestion posts utilizes Facebook images to create a discussion around various seasonal styles. The example above generated 556 likes and 42 comments.

Both are great examples of content that truly connects with this fashionista theme portrayed throughout the entire campaign. The content of their Facebook thrives around style, fashion and the affordable prices T.J. Maxx is known for – driving everyone to become a Maxxinista.

Overall, I’ve learned a lot about how T.J. Maxx was able to converge traditional and nontraditional advertising. I also think T.J. Maxx has done an excellent job utilizing social media to improve a cross-channel shopping experience.

With that I encourage other retailers to mimic this case study. By generating content appropriate for the various social media platforms, brands are able to create essential conversations and connections with consumers across many different online outlets.