Right Hook Jab: Short Form Video to Knock Out Results

THE CHALLENGE

We’ve seen it in every sports film: the long-standing champion is beaten by the new, more agile up-and-comer, forcing them to train harder and learn to adapt. For Elverys, Ireland’s oldest sports retailer, a critical gap in their social media strategy had allowed their competitors to make massive strides on META and TikTok. While they had access to a wealth of high-quality assets from their parent company, Intersport, these TV-style ads were failing to resonate with Irish audiences on META and TikTok, where viewers were scrolling away before the 2-second memory threshold.

The lack of optimisation for platform-native behaviours limited engagement and drove up cost per view, making campaigns less efficient and impactful. Elverys needed to reimagine their social creative approach, adapt assets for maximum relevance, and establish practices that could consistently increase performance. The choice was clear - it was time to put in the work.

OUR STRATEGY

We teamed up with Elverys to reimagine their social creative approach, ensuring that they could stand toe-to-toe with the competition. Our strategy centred on developing content pillars rooted in the interests and behaviours of their core demographic (women 35+), while also tapping into trending, platform-native formats on META and TikTok to maximise cultural relevance.

Our pillars were Heart & Humour- as our research showed that women of this demographic engaged the most with content that both tugged on the heartstrings, as well as humorous, relatable content. To bring this to life, we created social-led video content with those motives in mind alongside the Elverys team, and re-edited their current content and enhancing it with AI to optimise the viewing experience on social media platforms, hitting audiences with a 1-2 punch of highly targeted content.

INNOVATION USED

To compete for viewers’ attention, we needed to stand out against the 1,000s of videos that they could encounter in one scrolling session. The use of AI, in-platform and video optimisations allowed us to hook and hold that attention from Elverys’ key audience.

Use of Keyword Data and Social Listening

In the ideation stage with the Elverys team, we were able to identify trends we were seeing on TikTok. The Keyword Tool was able to give us quantitative data showing us that specific trends were being searched for on Meta, TikTok, and Google. Social listening also allowed us to see the conversation around these trends.

In-platform optimisations

Added unique visual hooks to entice the viewer to continue watching, leveraging the automatic looping feature on TikTok and Reels for a satisfying visual effect.

Video optimisations

Verbal hooks within the script itself helped to keep audiences engaged longer and sparked interest, e.g., “Which one of these shoes will help you hit your next pr?”.
Combining on-brand colours with platform-native captions for audience retention and brand recognition
We ensured all of our clips were below 3 seconds, our transitions were snappy, and the video felt diverse to increase viewer retention.

BUSINESS GROWTH

How do you measure the success of short form video? At Wolfgang, we measure success in 3 ways - Catch (cost per view), Hold (video views to 25%) and Retain (video views to 100%)

Catch: -20% lower cost per view, reaching 24% more viewers with the same budget.

Hold: +48% increase in people watching the start of the video (25%) proving that we were catching their attention.

Retain: +39% more viewers watched to the end, adding 80 extra hours of full-video viewing which increases Brand recall.

Additionally, we saw a +58% uplift in sales vs original videos demonstrating that improving creative assets translates into business gains.

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Sales business results

What our clients say

Don’t just take
our word for it

"In the past, we struggled to find the right hook to engage our audience and keep them watching our social content. Working with Raven and the Wolfgang team gave us valuable insights into how to utilise trends, editing techniques, and audio elements to capture attention, retain viewership and boost engagement. These lessons are shaping how we approach all our in-house content, and we’re confident this style will have a big impact on our future campaigns.”

SS

Simon Staunton

Social Media Manager, Intersport Elverys

Selected work