Digitec Galaxus mixes up the advertising market

Since May, Nina Hoss has been dedicated to external advertisers.

In terms of advertising and marketing, Digitec Galaxus has so far been known primarily for the fact that all campaigns are largely created in-house. With some success - as also shown by a study conducted by Werbewoche in collaboration with Marketagent.com: Among the population, the company is known for attracting positive attention in connection with advertising. You can read more about this in the upcoming print edition of the Advertising Week (11/12 2019, Dec. 17).

Own team dedicated to external advertisers

Now Digitec Galaxus is going one step further, opening up more to external advertisers and tapping into a new business area. To this end, a separate team was founded in May, headed by Nina Hoss. It's a kind of in-house agency that is based in marketing and works with various departments within the company.  

The quasi-agency, which operates at least internally under the name "Digitec Galaxus Agency," combines media services with the roughly ten-strong creative team as needed.

Digital campaigns and package inserts

Online campaigns are run on the one hand, while package inserts are offered as an advertising channel on the other. The basis for all media services is the extensive data set that the company has at its disposal. "We were repeatedly asked by external clients how our data could be used for campaigns," explains Nina Hoss. "Now that we have our own point of contact for external clients, we can devote our full attention to them." Something that wasn't possible before, she says, because the company's own Digitec and Galaxus campaigns always took priority over external campaigns.

Digitec Galaxus recently implemented a campaign for Mattel and played it out across various channels.

Digitec Galaxus has a lot of customer data and can form clusters of people who are interested in a notebook, for example, but haven't bought one recently. Corresponding targeting is therefore possible - not only for classic online campaigns, but also for package inserts. "We can automatically enclose flyers on a scaling basis according to criteria such as product type of order, age, gender, language, business or private customer, or geographic area. Unlike IP addresses, this data is very reliable because it's real addresses," Hoss explains. "A packet has a 100 percent open rate," she adds with a laugh. In addition, she says, recipients open the parcels with a positive emotion and engage with the content - ideally including the inserts. Digitec Galaxus has always used this channel for its own brands as well. "However, we enclose a maximum of two advertising materials, so we are not a flyer slinger."

Extensive campaigns are dreams of the future

In addition to media handling, Digitec Galaxus will now also take on the creation of advertising materials - if requested by an external customer. However, Hoss says he does not want to compete with creative agencies. "We don't want to poach any customers from them; we wouldn't have the resources for that," she says. For the time being, they want to concentrate on creating online advertising materials and package inserts - everything else is up in the air. Will Digitec Galaxus one day create extensive 360-degree campaigns for external customers? "Of course, we would find it exciting if things went in that direction," says Nina Hoss.