GEEIQ
Coach
How Coach created a multichannel virtual strategy with GEEIQ
The challenge
Coach is a modern American luxury brand, known for its craftsmanship and distinctive New York style.
When their team approached GEEIQ, its goal was to capture the attention of Gen Z women and position the brand as an innovator.
The brand’s timing aligned with the launch of its Find Your Courage spring campaign, which aims to empower self-expression. Virtual worlds, with their emphasis on digital wearables and avatar customization, were an ideal marketing channel for this message.
The challenge was creating a data-driven, agile strategy in a virtual landscape where measuring ROI and engagement is difficult.
The solution
Coach worked with GEEIQ to build a brand-first strategy reinforcing the Find Your Courage campaign’s focus on empowerment and self-expression. GEEIQ’s virtual experts identified Roblox and ZEPETO as the most aligned with Coach’s Gen Z target audience and messaging around self-expression.
After all, millions of Roblox users update their avatar weekly and 91.5% of ZEPETO users have stated that avatar fashion is ‘very important’ or ‘important’ to them.
Carolina Nasr, who worked on the project and also advised brands like H&M and Max Mara on their virtual activations, elaborated on the thinking behind this strategy:
‘By integrating into established, fashion-focused experiences on Roblox and interactive areas in ZEPETO, Coach was able to reach its target audience immediately. This approach saved the brand the time and cost of building a community from the ground up with an owned experience. Integrations into existing experiences are generally more conducive to time-limited, campaign-based virtual brand activations. They offer a lower barrier to entry and a more predictable ROI.’
So, how did it work?
In July 2024, with GEEIQ’s platform and team of experts, Coach launched three key activations across Roblox and ZEPETO:
1. Coach entered Fashion Klossette on Roblox
The brand integrated into Roblox’s Fashion Klossette experience, created by GEEIQ partner COPPER, the agency that manages Karlie Kloss.
Here, players could style their avatars with featured Coach items and compete with other players on a runway. In the first weekend of the integration, Coach received 470,000 visits in Fashion Klossette, increasing visits to Karlie Kloss’s experience by 1,756% compared to the previous period.
2. Coach integrated into Fashion Famous on Roblox
Another of Roblox’s most-visited fashion experiences, Fashion Famous, has had 2.3 billion visits since its launch in 2016. Players put together Coach-inspired looks and even participated in a cross-experience scavenger hunt that allowed them to win virtual Coach pieces. Through this integration, Coach tapped into 729,300 visits in the first weekend of the campaign, a figure that grew to 11.5 million visits across the integration period.
3. Coach created a video booth in ZEPETO
In ZEPETO, Coach launched an interactive video booth where players could style their avatars. It also became the first brand to launch an official limited item on the platform, and three item drops sold out in less than three hours every time.
The results
This multichannel strategy enabled Coach to reach Gen Z audiences that are typically fragmented across platforms. Ultimately, entering Roblox and ZEPETO delivered significant results to Coach, including:
1. Increased brand awareness
In just four weeks, the brand received 13 million visits, underscoring the integrations’ rapid resonance with Gen Z.
2. High brand engagement
The brand saw 2.47 million votes cast in its ZEPETO styling competition and four million virtual item try-ons, demonstrating the brand’s ability to spark community-driven interaction.
3. Strong item sales performance
Virtual item sales exceeded top sales benchmarks by 16%, making the campaign a commercial success.
Guided by GEEIQ’s team of experts, Coach’s community-led approach was a success with players, solidifying their brand’s appeal amongst Gen Z.
How does GEEIQ help Coach succeed?
By leveraging both Roblox and ZEPETO, Coach engaged diverse segments of the Gen Z audience, adapting its messaging to each platform’s unique environment. This multi-platform approach ensured broader reach and deeper engagement than a single-platform strategy could achieve.
GEEIQ’s combination of data-driven insights and virtual strategy expertise provided Coach with the tools they needed to make this marketing campaign a success in the virtual world as well as the physical.
GEEIQ helped the brand:
1. Authentically engage Gen Z with platform-native creators.
Using the GEEIQ platform, GEEIQ’s virtual strategists identified and collaborated with platform-native virtual item creators and influencers. This included popular influencers on Roblox, like iBella and Lana’s Life.
Influencers also received free Tabby bags and comp cards featuring their avatars, which they used to promote the Coach Tabby bag giveaway, further linking virtual and physical engagement. A sentiment analysis conducted by the GEEIQ team found that 100% of the sentiment surrounding the activation on social media was positive or neutral. This connection between virtual engagement and physical rewards was designed to enhance brand loyalty among digital-native audiences.
2. Curate a brand-first virtual strategy.
As with any successful marketing campaign, the GEEIQ team worked with Coach’s PR partner to organize a multichannel virtual strategy that tackled all verticals, including UGC items, gaming influencers, paid media, and real-world press events. All of these maximized engagement and PR within the campaign’s time-limited, four-week window.
The strategy also included upskilling workshops, where GEEIQ advised Coach’s extended business units on best practices for integrating their brand authentically into virtual worlds, while leveraging data to optimize results.
3. Benchmark paid media strategies in virtual worlds.
Paid media opportunities on platforms like Roblox and ZEPETO are still relatively new and difficult for brands to benchmark. Drawing from extensive experience launching virtual activations for clients, GEEIQ offered Coach industry-specific and tailored paid media benchmarks. By working closely with Roblox, GEEIQ’s team ensured that Coach’s ad spend was directed toward qualified traffic, optimizing reach and cost-efficiency for the campaign.
Key takeaways
Based on the data, Coach was able to execute a highly successful, data-driven virtual strategy crafted by GEEIQ. From a marketing perspective, their virtual activations effectively drove brand awareness and strengthened the brand’s perception among Gen Z – even in a competitive, saturated, and evolving market like virtual worlds.
David Lehman, Digital Director at Coach, expanded on the relationship between GEEIQ and the brand:
“The GEEIQ team offers far more than insights. They intimately know the gaming landscape – players, platforms, and partners. The strategy we developed together fundamentally supported our business goals and ultimately helped us break through to an entirely new audience.”
To learn more about virtual strategies for brands, join our webinar with GEEIQ partner ZEPETO.
