How Canadian Tire Leveraged Snapchat for "Big Red Event" Success

Celebrating Summer at Canadian Tire

Founded in 1922, Canadian Tire is a popular retail company with locations throughout Canada. They offer customers a wide variety of products across categories, from automotive and hardware to sporting goods and home decor. For their Summer Big Red Event, Canadian Tire partnered with Snapchat to build a campaign with the goal of increasing both awareness and in-store sales while promoting the Summer Big Red Event sale. The key challenge was ensuring that the campaign not only reached a broad audience on Snapchat but also translated into measurable store visits — boosting sales during the event as a result.

A Snappy Strategy: Ads, Auction, Authenticity

To achieve their goals, Canadian Tire opted for a combination of Snap Ads, Story Ads, and three consecutive First Commercials. Additionally, they used targeting strategies — including Snap Auction and goal-based bidding to optimize for impressions — to reach English-speaking, Canadian Snapchatters over the age of 18.

Snap Ads and Story Ads within the auction also enabled Canadian Tire to reach users across the app. These ads supplemented the initial Commercials by communicating additional messaging that reinforced key information about the Summer Big Red Event.

First Commercials were key to driving both reach and awareness, as this ad format is non-skippable for up to six seconds and places Canadian Tire’s campaign as the first ad experience that a Snapchatter sees on a given day. This placement boosted exposure for those who may not have been reached due to targeting parameters or auction dynamics. Finally, Canadian Tire tapped into the growing trend of featuring authentic creators and consumers in content to help get Snapchatters excited about the sale, leveraging a mix of creator and user-generated content (UGC) style assets, as well as animated and static ad creative.

Big Red, Big Wins

Canadian Tire’s Summer Big Red Event campaign on Snapchat was a huge success! It outperformed their goals, driving 158,000 store visits, at an efficient cost per store visit that outperformed the benchmark by 7%.⁴ Additionally, the campaign drove a 4% behavioral lift among new customers who had not visited a Canadian Tire in the last 12 months. The three consecutive First Commercials specifically achieved a 6-point lift in ad recall, proving the campaign was memorable for Snapchatters.

By leveraging a mix of ad products across the app, efficient auction media, and thoughtful strategy, Canadian Tire ensured their campaign would not only resonate with Snapchatters but also amp up the excitement surrounding the Summer Big Red Event.