The Challenge

The North Face is operating in a highly competitive market, particularly as more consumers have taken their shopping journey online. Success depends upon making sure the brand is found when its target clientele are searching for their next favorite purchase. Using digital marketing channels like Google Shopping Ads is an ideal way to keep the North Face top of mind among consumers, but it requires having highly accurate and up to date product feeds from the brand’s product catalog.

Like many brands, The North Face depends on strong partners such as its media agency, PHD Media, which not only runs its digital ad campaigns but continuously looks for opportunities to enhance performance, results and return on investment (ROI). PHD Media wanted to see if it could make The North Face an even stronger competitor in its space, not only in North America but across Europe.

The Solution

PHD chose to collaborate with Highstreet.io to enrich The North Face’s product feeds with performance data from Google Merchant Center as well as the brand’s own eCommerce data. Highstreet.io synchronized the data into single feed that would allowed PHD Media to dynamically assign values to a subset of The North Face’s products within their Google Shopping feed.

This subset of products was updated automatically based on price competitiveness and sales data, which meant the North Face was marketing products that have a higher likelihood of converting to sales based on their popularity and competitive price.

The Results

After initially using Highstreet.io’s updated performance feeds, The North Face’s Google Shopping campaigns saw a 20% higher Average Order Value (AOV), a 127% increase in cost with a 163% increase in Revenue and an overall 16% Increase in Return on Ad Spend (Year over Year).

The brand has only continued to see the benefit as time goes on, including:

Double and in some cases triple-digit increases in clicks and impressions

In markets like Germany, Spain and Poland, the North Face has been enjoying significant gains in visibility.

Based on an analysis covering a 90-day range comparing performance from 2023 to 2024, for example, The North Face saw impressions in Poland rise more than 546%, and a boost in clicks of more than 438%.

In Spain, impressions grew by approximately 380% and a 75% boost in clicks. Germany’s impressions rose more than 72% and clicks were up more than 17%.

Increased interest in key product categories

The product feed Highstreet.io helped set up not only helped attract more clicks and impressions overall but a rise in clicks in specific category pages for some markets. This means consumers might be exploring deeper within the North Face’s web site after being exposed to the brand through digital advertising.

In the U.K., for example, clicks for Home and Garden products rose 278% over the 90-day analysis period, while clicks for Luggage and Bags product pages were up 8.4%. There was a similar trend in France, where Home and Garden clicks rose 431% and Luggage and Bags rose 28%. Clothing and Accessories clicks, meanwhile, skyrocketed to 412% in Poland, 73% in Spain and more than 15% in Germany.

Reduced manual effort for PHD and responsive service

Traditionally, the team at PHD Media had to be very hands-on in terms of updating product feeds to run The North Face’s Google Shopping campaigns. Working with Highstreet.io’s managed services feed up those employees to focus on other areas. When feed issues arise, meanwhile, PHD Media has celebrated Highstreet.io for being quick to reply and minimize disruptions when updates need to be made.

Feedback from PHD

“I would recommend working with Highstreet.io for product feed management. They were quick to accurately configure the feeds and they actively participated in discussions on how to construct the feed in a way that would give us the results we were looking for. It felt like a true partnership where our common goal was to provide The North Face the best Google Shopping results.”
– Alex Martin De Nicolas, Global Activator Director at PHD Media