Helly Hansen – Driving High-attention Awareness for Ski Collection

Helly Hansen is a premium performance apparel brand specialising in ski, sailing and outdoor wear. Founded in Norway over 140 years ago, the brand is trusted by professionals and outdoor enthusiasts operating in some of the world’s harshest environments. Known for performance, protection and durability, Helly Hansen combines advanced fabric technology with functional design to deliver high-performance gear for skiers and outdoor adventurers.

Ahead of the highly competitive ski season, Helly Hansen set out to drive strong upper-funnel awareness and engagement for its new Ski Collection. The client’s core challenge was to break through the crowded winter sports market and reach highly relevant audiences – specifically those actively researching ski trips, winter destinations and ski equipment.

Helly Hansen needed to transition away from traditional targeting methods to a privacy first, cookieless strategy capable of delivering both deep precision and broad scale. 

Ultimately, the brand needed a way to guarantee that their media investments were not just generating surface-level impressions, but translating into meaningful human attention and measurable brand impact.

In partnership with Wavemaker Global, Adlook designed a privacy-first activation strategy focused on reaching high-intent winter sports audiences within relevant, high-quality environments. 

The strategy was built to drive business outcomes by ensuring each component delivered a clear, tangible advantage:

• ID-less Precision: Using proprietary, content-based technology, we identified users actively demonstrating intent signals around ski travel and equipment research – allowing us to accurately reach niche audiences planning winter holidays without relying on cookies.
• Focused Market Impact: We enhanced targeting precision by layering geo-targeting across key cities aligned with Helly Hansen’s priority markets.
• High-Intent Moments: By aligning messaging with relevant contexts – such as skiing content, competitor activity and emerging ski fashion trends – the campaign engaged consumers in focused, deep-reading moments.
• Guaranteed Media Quality: We maximized exposure quality by prioritizing premium and high-attention environments through Adelaide

Measuring Business Impact: To evaluate brand outcomes, we implemented a Brand Lift Study focused on product consideration, assessing the impact of media quality and optimal frequency.

The campaign delivered strong upper-funnel performance, significantly exceeding planned benchmarks across engagement and attention metrics:

• 80% VCR (+6.4% vs plan)
• +19.4% Completed Views vs plan 
• +18% Attention AU Score vs plan

Beyond media performance, the Brand Lift Study confirmed a strong impact on brand perception and consideration:

• +24% Product Consideration Lift
• +192% Increase in Consideration lift among users exposed to 3+ impressions
• +6% Higher lift on high-attention inventory

What drove these results:

• Demand exists beyond expected markets: By targeting behavioral intent, the campaign unlocked strong demand in non-ski regions – proving that high-intent audiences actively plan winter trips regardless of location.
• Attention drives effectiveness: Premium news and lifestyle environments consistently outperformed, capturing users in high-attention, deep-reading moments and translating into stronger engagement.
• Quality + repetition drives impact: Higher frequency combined with high-attention environments significantly increased effectiveness – showing that consistent exposure to strong storytelling is what drives meaningful gains in consideration.

These results demonstrate the direct relationship between attention quality, targeting precision and measurable brand outcomes.

This campaign highlights the growing importance of combining high-quality media environments with advanced, privacy-first targeting strategies. By continuing to build on Smart Audiences and attention-based optimisation, there is a clear opportunity to further scale awareness and drive deeper engagement across seasonal campaigns.

Future activations can expand into broader outdoor and performance segments, while continuing to leverage brand lift measurement to optimise toward tangible business impact.