2021 OmniShopper Award Winners: Integrated Path to Purchase Activation

Campaign: Say Aloha to Flavortown Summer Sweepstakes Entrant/Brand: King’s HawaiianRetailers: Kroger, Albertsons/Safeway, ShopRite, Meijer, Southeastern Grocers, Publix, Giant, Stop & Shop, Schnucks, Giant Eagle, Target, Tops, Harris Teeter, Weis, Food Lion, Price Chopper, Smart & Final, Stater Bros, AWG, Lowes, Piggly Wiggly, Hy-Vee, SuperValu, MilitarySummary: King’s Hawaiian wanted to give shoppers more irresistible bun options beyond the traditional bread aisle and expand buying occasions for its portfolio of hamburger, hot dog and slider buns during the 2021 summer grilling season. Working with The Wilson Group, augmented reality studio Zappar and Hood Packaging Corp., King’s Hawaiian developed an omnichannel campaign that leveraged recent trends in gaming and cooking to overcome barriers to purchase in the deli/bakery section of grocery retailers, where most King’s Hawaiian buns are sold.The “Say Aloha to Flavortown” campaign, featuring celebrity chef Guy Fieri, used an interactive AR experience to encourage shoppers to find their product in-store and participate in a sweepstakes, with a grand-prize culinary escape to Hawaii. By scanning a QR code with their phones, visitors could instantly explore Flavortown Beach through web-based AR tools to find exclusive recipes, play games and watch cooking videos, all the while racking up more “flavor points” as part of the summerlong sweepstakes program.The campaign leveraged pre-shop tactics such as on-site retailer banner ads, boosted product search, retailer app integration and digital coupons. In stores, point-of-sale displays featuring a unique QR code enabled consumers to launch the AR experience and enter the sweepstakes. Additionally, POS materials with retailer-specific, QR-coded messages from Fieri — including entry shrouds, bread aisle shelf talkers, front lobby signs and floor talkers — directed grocery shoppers on where to find the products.“Say Aloha to Flavortown” set a King’s Hawaiian record for most displays sold in for a summer program, with 93% increase in incremental displays versus the year-ago period. The promotion drove a 19.3% increase in volume growth for the brand’s grilling portfolio and far exceeded expectations for customer engagement with a total of 230 million impressions.Campaign: Homemade HeroesEntrant: VMLY&R Commerce and Mondelez InternationalBrands: Oreos, Ritz, Chips AhoyRetailer: Albertsons CompaniesSummary: Last summer, Mondelez needed to drive sales of its snack brands Oreo, Ritz and Chips Ahoy at Albertsons stores without a boost from the Summer Olympics, which had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by the insight that 19% of people switched where they shopped during the pandemic because they wanted to support a local business, Mondelez created a program to celebrate the everyday or “homemade” heroes, including parents who became experts in home schooling, as well as healthcare, grocery store and other frontline workers.Mondelez was able to provide financial, health and emotional assistance to those groups of people via a charitable tie-in with the Albertsons Companies Foundation and local food banks. Throughout the month of July, every purchase of a Mondelez product at an Albertsons store was matched with a donation to the foundation. At the same time, an integrated program across 13 Albertsons Companies divisions transformed Mondelez Olympic packaging into a local support program with activation across all retailer touchpoints.Dynamically geo-targeted social posts featured the Homemade Heroes messaging and patriotic-themed recipe inspiration from participating brands. Expandable rich media display ads reached Albertsons shoppers primarily on mobile, driving to more information and to add-to-cart on a division-specific landing page. In stores, merchandising including at-shelf tags, custom endcaps, lobby displays, check stands and incremental floorstand displays helped shoppers navigate the purchase of Mondelez participating products and drove further conversion. Homemade Heroes gave a major lift to both Mondelez brands and the respective snack categories at Albertsons stores. The gains from participating brands during the promotional period over the previous year included Oreo (up 14%), Ritz (26.8%) and Chips Ahoy (28%). All told, the program generated $100,000 in donations to the Albertsons Companies Foundation.Campaign: Neutrogena Makeup the Gap 2020Entrant: Johnson & JohnsonBrand: Neutrogena Retailer: WalmartSummary: The cosmetics category suffered big sales declines in 2020 due to shifting consumer priorities in the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson’s Neutrogena cosmetics brand wanted to help stem the slide and drive sales at Walmart by appealing to the values of Gen Z female shoppers through a charitable partnership with Girl Up, an organization whose mission is to advance girls’ skills, rights and leadership opportunities. For every Neutrogena makeup product sold at Walmart, the company donated $1 to Girl Up. One of the challenges for Neutrogena and Walmart was that Gen Z prefers to shop for cosmetics at specialty retailers. Thus, a combination of authentic influencers, custom content and paid social media support was used to educate young Walmart shoppers on the benefits of the partnership with Girl Up. To increase mid- and lower-funnel conversion, Neutrogena worked with Walmart Connect Media to reach relevant shoppers on a series of broad reach tactics, on-site and off-site display ads, all of which drove traffic to a custom brand engagement page on Walmart.com. In stores, an out-of-aisle display featured top selling Neutrogena makeup items and relevant “Makeup the Gap” messaging.Neutrogena Makeup reached its goal of providing Girl Up with the maximum promised donation of $50,000 as a result of the successful activation. The brand saw a 38.9% increase in point-of-sale at Walmart and drove incremental displays in 500 stores, resulting in an additional $111,000 in shipments. Additionally, strong media results included a 23.8% sales lift when comparing the spending of test and control groups exposed to the online advertising. Neutrogena drove 57.5% of new buyers to convert at Walmart via the ads executed by Walmart Connect media.Campaign: Sing It With OreoEntrant: Eastwest Marketing Group/Pratt IndustriesBrand: Oreo Retailers: National grocery stores across the U.S.Summary: In 2021, Oreo decided it was time to move away from the last several years of product-focused campaigns toward a more altruistic marketing concept with purposeful messaging. With so many people struggling in their lives, Mondelez International’s Oreo brand looked to spread a little bit of kindness through music and turned to one of entertainment’s biggest stars, Lady Gaga.Oreo and Lady Gaga teamed up on a “Sing It With Oreo” campaign to promote a limited-edition Oreo cookie inspired by the artist’s “Chromatica” 2020 album release. The pink-colored golden Oreo cookie with green filling came in three custom embossments and was enveloped in shiny pink packaging to stand out on shelves. Fans were invited to “speak your heart” and “spread the love” via tunes dubbed “Oreograms” that they either borrowed from Lady Gaga or recorded themselves by scanning a code on the packs. Participants entered a contest whose grand prize winner would receive a chance to collaborate with Lady Gaga on an original Oreogram. To celebrate the release, Oreo hosted a digital scavenger hunt on Twitter in which 50 fans were randomly selected to win packs of Gaga Oreos signed by the artist and valued at $125. Oreo also sent a mailer with the limited-edition products to social influencers who aligned with the brand’s kindness platform. In stores, national point-of-sale with images of Lady Gaga and the products included more than 34,000 four-shelf floorstands placed in grocery stores across the U.S. Consumers went “gaga” for the Oreo program, which contributed to the brand’s sales lift of 6.3% in February 2021 over the previous year, per Nielsen data.Campaign: Back to Well at WalmartEntrant: GlaxoSmithKlineBrands: Advil, Theraflu, Robitussin, Clorox, KleenexRetailer: WalmartSummary: For consumer healthcare marketers, the 2020-21 cold, cough and flu season was an especially challenging period given the compounding effects of the pandemic. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) saw an opportunity to drive sales at Walmart with a wellness-themed campaign that arose from a co-marketing partnership with Clorox Co. and Kimberly-Clark. The “Back to Well” campaign, which ran from October 2020 through March of this year, included a choice of $10 Fandango gift card rewards for Walmart shoppers who purchased $25 worth of products from participating brands Clorox, K-C’s Kleenex and GSK’s Abreva, Robitussin, Theraflu, Advil and Flonase. GSK worked with Breaktime Media to design a series of web pages on DailyBreak.com that bundled products with easy add-to-cart options and offered tips for promoting good health and hygiene during the cold and flu season. Similar features were employed at a shoppable landing destination on Walmart.com. Digital display ads promoted getting “Back to Well” themes and the reward offer, with both visual and audio cross-platform ads delivered through mobile and web apps like Pandora, iHeartRadio and Pinterest. In Walmart stores, sidekick displays used imagery of a mother and son to emphasize the importance of caring for loved ones during the pandemic.GSK was the only major OTC brand to successfully grow share at Walmart during the softest cold and flu season in recent memory. During the span of this program, GSK increased buyer conversion (up 6.7 points), share of wallet (3.1 points), dollars per buyer (15.5 points), and dollars per trip (10.7 points). Additionally, GSK brands saw incremental sales lifts of 3% during the stock-up months of October, November and December, and recorded its largest feature display support to date, with three displays totaling incremental sales of $1.5 million.

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