For its annual spring fashion campaign, retailer Joe Fresh kicked off its media spend the way it typically would: substantial buy on TV, debuting against the Oscars ceremony.

From there on, though, things were a little different as Joe Fresh rolls out its "Free Your Fresh" campaign.

Lindsay Cook, the brand's VP of marketing and communications, explains, "Typically, our TV campaigns have been over a six-to-eight week period [and] the peak and climax occurs over the following weeks."

Instead, she says, the campaign will go lighter on TV following what she calls the "big tune-in moment" at the Oscars. "We're being more strategic and fine-tuning our approach," she says. Following that tune-in moment, the TV buy will extend for only five weeks with slightly less frequency than before.

To compensate, Joe Fresh will roll out a more intense schedule that consists largely of paid social media through demand generation, paid search, paid social and some influencer content. Cook confirmed that the brand isn't spending any less on media than it usually does for its season campaigns, but is focusing its media spend more outside of "mass reach, traditional vehicles."

Why the sudden change-up and the stray from mass? Cook tells CARD that even though the social roll-out will be "intense," the goal is to not overwhelm the audience, which she admits its previous approach may have been doing.

"The point here is that we're trying to be more relevant to our customer and be less of a nuisance. This way, we'll follow her journey."

The digital media buy allows Joe Fresh to be more driven by audience insights, become more targeted and specific, says Cook. "We've typically done a very broad-strokes approach in the past." Cook didn't want to reveal too much about how exactly Joe Fresh is refining its targets, since, she says, "a lot of great momentum comes from those insights," but admits that the goal is to try to meet customers at more key points along their purchase journey and pinpoint them "when [they] have intent to purchase."

She said they plan to experiment with hitting profiles such as "mom shopper," "men's shopper," "young professional" and more.

Digital signage and cinema buys will also serve as a complementary media buy.

Changing up the media mix was also crucial to complement the creative, which Cook said had also been the result of many focused discussions. "We wanted something that would result in a more emotional connection," she says. "We've tapped into an emotion that we think is synonymous with the brand. The opportunity here is to test different types of media and see what sticks, see what resonates."

Joe Fresh split its media buying internally as well as through Dentsu, which has been the AOR for the broader Loblaw company since 2015.