Launching and activating a revolutionary marketplace for tattoos
Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Co:Create was first imagined as an API-first loyalty platform.
As part of a series of studio projects, the company launched Co:Create Ink in November 2023, a platform dedicated to elevating tattoo art, allowing members to access a range of exclusive collections from a curated roster of founding artists.
The Growth team at Move78 were tasked with planning and executing a launch strategy for the platform, focused on building and activating a waitlist, supported by an acquisition program across key social media channels, incorporating owned, earned and paid tactics.
Art
Industry
2023
Year
Services provided
- Value Proposition Design & Testing
- Growth Strategy
- Social Media Management
- Paid Media Management
- Email Marketing
- Landing Page A/B Testing
- Analytics & Reporting
Challenges
Co:Create offers a unique perspective on tattoo art that distinguishes it from other marketplaces. The platform was designed to emulate the aesthetic of an art gallery, elevating the artists and their work, in contrast to the highly commoditized approach adopted by most others in the space.
The question was how to frame that value proposition for different audience segments in a way that inspired waitlist signups, and ultimately purchases.
We also had to find ways of coordinating our founding artists to maximum effect, leveraging both their creative output and social media presence. This was complicated at times by their markedly different communication styles (!)
Lastly, our research suggested that the Web3 element of the proposition (digital twins et al), was a great value add for some prospective users, but actively off-putting for others. We had to find a way of communicating this part of the proposition in a way that did not alienate a large part of our target audience off the bat.
Approach
Launch: Owned & Earned Social Media
With Instagram stars like Kat Tat, Cleo Kinnaman and Dillon Forte on the books, it was clear from the start that the founding artists were a huge asset. The early growth strategy for Co:Create Ink was premised on leveraging their work, and activating their fan bases to build an audience for launch.
The Move78 team set out building a comprehensive content strategy to support that initiative. Based on extensive research into the tattoo space on social media, especially the premium end of the market, we established a series of themes and creative formats that we thought would resonate with the kind of user the platform wanted to attract. Our founding artists’ back catalogue provided a wealth of quality material to work with. Using this as our foundation, the team built out a distinctive brand identity and corresponding visual language through a series of workshops, and a program of creative iteration. We were regularly in touch with the founding artists for feedback, which proved to be an invaluable resource.
With this foundation in place, the team built out daily design briefs, leveraging existing content and working directly with photographers and videographers to generate new content for brand and artists channels. Using only owned and earned media, we were able to generate more than 3,000 waitlist signups for launch.
Approach
Growth: Paid Experiments
The next step was to accelerate growth via paid media. Co:Create Ink serves the premium end of the market, with tattoos in the range of thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars. In that sense we saw it as more of a B2C lead generation brief, than traditional e-commerce.
Working with the Co:Create team, we extracted three different target audience segments from the research, and developed three corresponding messaging frameworks aimed at tapping into their distinct motivations and aspirations. These were then deployed against a control group of general tattoo interests, in a series of multivariate tests.
We also tested various creative approaches, covering elements ranging from the general subject matter of posts, through to more granular considerations like the fonts.
Approach
Results
As a result of our program, Co:Create Ink were able smash their launch targets, generating over $20K of revenue on day one (with one artist selling out entirely), then quickly scale their membership to thousands of users. In addition, dozens of artists have now asked to join the platform. From our point of view, this has been a rewarding, and creatively fascinating project to lead on, and we look forward to growing the membership to new heights in 2024.
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