The Curious Case of Daniel Wellington

Daniel Wellington, a Swedish brand selling basic quartz watches with minimalist designs, has skyrocketed from a $24,000 business in 2011 to a multi-million dollar watch empire now earning nearly $180 million annually. I've developed a keen fascination with the brand, after having seen the social media explosion brought about by its clever marketing strategy both on Instagram and on Facebook.

Daniel Wellington's #DWPickoftheDay Instagram hashtag campaign raised significant brand awareness in social media.

Honestly speaking, the company introduced nothing new or innovative to the market - after all, affordable yet classy-looking, minimalist watches (Daniel Wellington's current selling point) could be found almost in all fashion retailers worldwide anyway. Yet, curiously enough, whenever I browse through my social media accounts, I would always see at least one person wearing a Daniel Wellington watch. The brand managed to dominate the world of social media seemingly overnight -they were practically everywhere!

The company's marketing tactics were clever in its simplicity - using the power of social media and social media influencers to increase brand awareness and, eventually, sales. Daniel Wellington understood the huge potential of social media influencers in marketing. What it did was send these influencers (accounts with thousands, if not millions, of followers worldwide) free products as gifts, with the only requirement being, that they need to post at least one photo of the product on their feed.

Soon enough, Instagram became flooded with Daniel Wellington photos from social media celebrities. This, then, created a huge buzz around the brand (even I Googled Daniel Wellington watches after seeing several photos on my feed), translating into sales which reached millions of dollars worldwide. Daniel Wellington also used the #DWPickoftheDay hashtag to encourage its followers to post creative photos of them wearing Daniel Wellington watches, thus giving the brand a massive boost in popularity amongst not only the brand's followers, but also the followers of its followers.

All in all, what made Daniel Wellington's marketing campaign a huge success was its clever use of social media and its ability to recognize the power of social media influencers - and at a very little cost to the company, at that. Knowing the millenial mentality of following the hottest trends on the Internet, the huge hype Daniel Wellington created translated almost immediately into sales. Banking on the power of social media "magically" transformed Daniel Wellington to a small watch company to an instant hit among teenagers, university students and young professionals. The fact that they only had to employ hashtags and send out free watches as gifts just proved that creative, effective marketing need not be expensive, as long as you can recognize the right trends and use the right tools to promote your brand.