Shokz powers 45% increase in sales with omnichannel activation

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Turning a major cultural collaboration into broad brand awareness 

Shokz is a global pioneer in open-ear sports headphones, known for products designed around comfort, movement, and everyday listening. In Japan, the brand saw an opportunity to expand beyond its core sports and running audience. To do so, it launched a major collaboration around its OpenFit 2+ product with a prominent Japanese musician and influential figure in contemporary music, fashion, and culture. 

The collaboration created a valuable cultural moment for the brand. The challenge was scaling beyond existing Shokz customers and reaching consumers throughout their daily lives — from Tokyo transit hubs to premium digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens to connected TV (CTV), digital audio, and the open internet. 

Shokz and its agency, Meetsocial, needed a strategy that went beyond generating reach. The campaign had to build awareness, engage music fans and affluent urban consumers, and drive measurable interest on the company’s website. 

The goal was to maximise awareness of the celebrity × Shokz collaboration while proving that upper-funnel media investments could also contribute to meaningful lower-funnel actions. 

SOLUTION 

Orchestrating brand moments across physical and digital environments 

Shokz and Meetsocial developed an omnichannel campaign designed to reach high-value audiences across both physical and digital touchpoints. 

The strategy combined large-scale awareness formats with more precise audience and contextual targeting. DOOH placed the collaboration in prominent Tokyo locations, while CTV, audio, display, and online video (OLV) extended the campaign across premium digital environments throughout the day. 

The campaign used The Trade Desk as a centralised platform to manage activation, pacing, frequency, and optimisation across channels. 

This approach included: 

• Activating premium DOOH across high-traffic Tokyo districts, neighbourhoods, and commercial hubs 

• Running CTV and OTT across popular Japanese streaming environments 

• Reaching music listeners and commuters through streaming audio platforms 

• Extending reach through display and OLV across premium local publishers and open internet environments 

• Using contextual targeting to engage consumers in music, entertainment, sports, and lifestyle environments 

• Applying view-through attribution to understand how upper-funnel exposure contributed to site actions 

• Running a Happydemics brand lift study to measure incremental impact on brand metrics

The team used a dual-track audience strategy. Broad music-fan targeting generated efficient scale, while contextual targeting engaged audiences in higher-consideration environments. This allowed Shokz to balance reach with quality while supporting both awareness and performance goals. 

The campaign surfaced valuable channel insights. Subway station screens outperformed outdoor billboards in driving lower-funnel engagement, likely because longer commuter dwell times created more opportunities for consumers to engage on mobile devices. CTV delivered stronger conversion performance than on personal devices despite higher CPMs, reinforcing the influence of premium, larger-screen environments on consumer intent.

RESULTS 

Connecting cultural reach to measurable action 

The campaign showed how omnichannel media can translate cultural relevance into measurable business outcomes, helping to drive both brand growth and lower-funnel engagement. 

Across the campaign, Shokz achieved: 

• 45% increase in conversion rate (sales) with omnichannel vs. single channel 

• 54% uplift in add-to-cart rate 

• 19% uplift in brand awareness 

• More than 5 million DOOH impressions 

• More than 6 million audio impressions 

• More than 14 million display and OLV impressions 

The campaign also demonstrated the performance value of coordinated omnichannel exposure. Upper-funnel exposure was linked to stronger add-to-cart, checkout, and purchase behaviour, highlighting the value of connecting awareness channels with performance measurement. The strongest omnichannel mix — combining audio, display, native display, CTV, and OLV — achieved a 5% household conversion rate. Adding audio and CTV also contributed meaningful incremental growth in conversion rate, reinforcing the value of combining high-attention channels across the consumer journey. 

Brand lift results further validated the team’s strategy. A brand lift study showed positive lift across multiple brand metrics, including consideration, brand image, familiarity, and preference. DOOH performed especially well in driving consideration and brand image, while audio generated strong lifts in consideration. 

For Shokz and Meetsocial, the campaign proved that upper-funnel channels can do more than build awareness. When orchestrated across premium environments and measured through a full-funnel framework, CTV, DOOH, audio, and open internet media can also drive meaningful engagement and conversion behaviour. 

The approach established a scalable blueprint for future product launches — one that unites physical and digital touchpoints to help drive both brand impact and performance. 

Discover how adopting an omnichannel approach can help you drive real business outcomes. Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk.