How American Girl Used Mavrck to Promote Its Cultural Celebration Collection

The Challenge

The iconic dolls, accessories, and stories from American Girl® embody a spirit of adventure, imagination, and childhood. AG’s 2021 Cultural Celebrations campaign aimed to take all the uniqueness that makes the world special by celebrating a variety of religious and cultural holiday celebrations with its Truly MeTM Doll.

To promote its Cultural Celebrations collection and drive traffic to its website, AG leveraged influencers to generate repurposable holiday content using the hashtags #AGCulturalCelebrations and #MyAmericanGirl. The end goal was to encourage purchasing decisions among consumers.

But AG’s influencer-generated content (IGC) didn’t come without some considerations. For example, there needed to be a quick turnaround of content creation ahead of Diwali, the biggest and most important Indian holiday of the year. There also needed to be strict sourcing parameters and an emphasis on cultural sensitivity. AG made it a priority to partner with influencers that had an organic, genuine connection to their featured holidays.

The Idea

Before AG and Mavrck began sourcing creators for the 2021 Cultural Celebrations holiday campaign, they needed to determine their target audience. AG wanted to reach mothers of young girls who celebrated Diwali (November 4, 2021), Hanukkah (November 28-December 6, 2021), Christmas (December 25, 2021), or Kwanzaa (December 26, 2021-January 1, 2022) with their families.

As such, it was imperative to promote an authentic connection by partnering with creators whose families observed various religious and cultural celebrations. Because of the importance of the sourcing process, the Mavrck team spent substantial time up-front searching for a wide range of creators. In addition, due to the holidays taking place across several months, Mavrck approached the campaign sourcing in scheduled waves.

During the sourcing process, AG and Mavrck asked about the creators’ families and their connection to the various holidays, including their traditions; this gave the teams a preview of how each would speak to each holiday and develop their content. They also worked with influencers to ensure that they were appropriately representing each culture. Because AG wanted to be sure that their creator partners had an aesthetic that matched its brand style and vision – in addition to possessing a strong following and engagement rate – this dialogue was especially vital to creator selection.

The Activation

In order to fulfill AG’s vision for on-brand, reusable content, the final creator cohort was asked to produce evergreen, relevant content that could be repurposed for future holiday seasons. This strategy allowed the AG team to plan ahead for future holidays, while extending the content shelf life over many activations on AG’s organic channels.

At the end of the 2021 campaign, AG had partnered with 20 influencers to produce 123 pieces of content for the #AGCulturalCelebrations campaign on Instagram. These influencers helped AG achieve over 360,000 impressions, more than 27,000 engagements, and an engagement rate of 7.5%.