2022 OmniShopper Awards: Digital

Campaign: Mazda Retail Go-To-Market

Brand: Mazda
Retail Partner: Mazda dealerships
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce

For the past three years, Mazda’s overarching business goal has been to sell more cars with less marketing investment. Part of its strategy to increase marketing effectiveness and efficiency was to leverage first-party data in order to improve ad targeting across the shopper journey.

Working with The Trade Desk, Mazda curated audiences using data from MazdaUSA.com and passed the information to dealer websites to enable retargeting. It also used the data to model first-party lookalikes that strengthened the quality of leads among “intender” Mazda buyers. Those audiences were served messages at the start of their journey, vehicle attributes mid-journey and conversion-driving offers late-journey, effectively pushing them down to the dealer. This dramatically improved the quality of the traffic hitting dealers’ physical and digital showrooms, leading to much higher sales and greater marketing efficiency.

In addition, by minimizing duplication between brand and dealer marketing, Mazda successfully expanded reach and message frequency to new prospects. The company prioritized engaging audiences on CTV devices to establish Mazda’s presence and to enter the customer consideration set, leveraging digital video/audio and paid social to increase campaign reach and frequency, and to maximize the use of Mazda first-party audience.

Participating dealers in the “Retail Go-To-Market” program reported 35% higher increase in year-over-year sales than non-participating dealers, while dealer media activity became eight times more efficient from piloting to roll out. Dealer engagement increased, and within one full year (September 2020 to August 2021), $24 million in total dealer funds had been redeployed into the Mazda ecosystem.

Campaign: Demogorgon Surprise

Brand: Energizer
Retail Partners: Amazon, Walmart, Target
Agency/Solution Provider: Grey

To capitalize on the excitement of “Stranger Things” season four, Energizer launched a limited-edition Demogorgon hunting flashlight, named after the underworld creature from the original season of the Netflix drama-horror series. The collector’s item became the focal point in a digital/social campaign that encouraged shoppers to “Hunt Demogorgons.”

Energizer leveraged “Stranger Things” fandom with teasers for the show delivered across social media and e-commerce sites, including Amazon, Walmart and Target. Flashlight performance standards for both basic and enhanced creative were turned into “Dungeons & Dragons” stats; unique “Stranger Things” elements were served up as challenges; and season-related benefits were playfully executed. Those teasers’ interactivity got people talking, exploring and sharing their new collector’s items.

Energizer relied on user-generated content to drive awareness and sales both in store and online. Creative was designed to answer questions and tease moments in the upcoming season to encourage fans to share their experiences with the community on sites like Instagram, TikTok and Reddit. Fans created, sought out and engaged with this content, piling up organic impressions and driving exceptional results for the campaign.

Energizer sold all 4,000 units within the first 4-6 weeks after launch, which led to out of stocks on Amazon due to the high sell-through. Thousands of user-generated stories and millions of social impressions and engagements were created during the campaign.

Digital: Mobile Activation

Campaign: Nature Valley Adventure Quarters

Brand: Nature Valley (General Mills)
Retail Partners: Kroger and affiliates
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce

Nature Valley granola bars had been experiencing sales declines at Kroger stores since 2019. One of Nature Valley’s longtime partners, The National Parks System, was also seeing its lowest visitation numbers since 2015, with Park attendance down 25%.

To gain relevancy with modern families and tap into the desire of Kroger shoppers to bring more adventure into their lives, Nature Valley created a first-of-its-kind, commerce-enabled experience leveraging a historic U.S. Mint initiative: The America the Beautiful quarters collection. The unexpected partnership turned 19 billion everyday money pieces into savings on a favorite snack brand, Nature Valley, and outdoor adventures at 56 of America’s National Parks.

Kroger shoppers were driven by omnichannel media to an AI-powered experience on AdventureQuarters.com, where they could scan any one of their special-edition America the Beautiful quarters found in their pockets or coin jars at home. The quarters acted as tokens allowing users to engage with an interactive map to learn about the National Parks, to enter to win a National Park pass to promote tourism and conservation, and to obtain a discount on their favorite Nature Valley products at Kroger and affiliate grocery retailers.

Surrounding media consisted of 11 separate touchpoints ranging from Kroger emails and exclusive coupon offers to TV retargeting, animated paid social, travel-focused influencers, animated mobile display ads, and in-store print signage with a scannable QR code.

Nature Valley saw a 26% increase in dollar sales lift at Kroger stores during the eight-week campaign (April to May 2022), which facilitated close to 300 new trips to visit the National Parks, more than 50% more people than the campaign goal.

Digital: Retail Media Activation

Campaign: Oreo Pokemon Adventure at Target

Brand: Oreo (Mondelez International)
Retail Partner: Target
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce

In 2021, consumers were still craving Oreos during times of comfort, but were increasingly looking for ways to reconnect with people and have fun. Mondelez International needed to develop an e-commerce play for Oreo’s Pokemon partnership at Target that could leverage the nostalgia and cross-generational love of the brands while driving sales of online sales of limited-edition Pokemon Oreo packs at Target.com.

“Oreo Pokemon Adventure” played into the iconic videogame’s “catch ’em all” mentality by using animated social posts to tease the 16 different Pokemon characters — which came emblazoned on the package and embossed on each Oreo cookie — that could be “captured” by purchasing multiple packs of Oreos as part of the limited-edition launch.

At the same time, Target’s Bullseye banner ads drove shoppers to a custom Pokemon microsite and harnessed the power of nostalgia by asking them to take part in a quiz to gauge their Pokemon expertise. Additionally, Roundel media served animated ads on both Facebook and Snapchat that asked viewers to guess which Pokemon embossment was featured on the Oreo cookies. These targeted ads drove shoppers to the product listing on Target.com where they could add direct to cart for themselves or for their kids.

Limited-edition Pokemon Oreo cookies achieved $255,000 in e-commerce sales during week one, with 31.5% of all sales online, which was more than nine times higher than the next SKU in the cookie category. Pokemon Oreo eclipsed Game of Thrones Oreo as the highest one-week dollar sales total for any snack item ever at Target.

Digital: Social Media Activation

Campaign: Allegra #LiveYourGreatness Sweepstakes

Brand: Allegra (Sanofi)
Agency/Solution Providers: PureRED, Havas, Lippe Taylor

In fall 2021, Allegra launched a new campaign platform, “Live Your Greatness,” which showcased allergy sufferers feeling unrestricted and living on their own terms. For spring 2022, PureRED recommended extending the platform to include a sweepstakes contest that could significantly increase consumer engagement and sales.

The #LiveYourGreatness promotion encouraged users to post a picture or video on Instagram and Twitter platforms that showed off their “greatness” outdoors without allergies holding them back. Sweepstakes participants (on AllegraLYGSweeps.com) entered the tags #LiveYourGreatness and #AllegraSweeps for chances to win weekly first prizes or the grand-prize trip anywhere in the continental U.S., up to $10,000, and first prizes for outdoor related e-gift cards from participating merchants such as Visa, Amazon, Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s Columbia Sportswear, Dick’s Sporting Goods and REI.

The promotion targeted current users and competitive category buyers for whom the #LiveYourGreatness sweepstakes would fulfill their desire to share how they are unencumbered by allergies and are living their greatness every day. Multiple advertising and promotion channels were utilized to build awareness of the sweepstakes, including social media, online videos, display ads, social influencers, broadcast TV tags, paid search and national FSIs.

Allegra’s #LiveYourGreatness sweepstakes was an effective complement to the brand’s existing marketing program and contributed to a 7.4% year-over-year sales lift. The promotion exceeded all major KPIs, which included 238,000 microsite visits, 4,330 sweepstakes entries and a total of 1 million brand engagements.

Digital: Mass Media Activation

Campaign: Oreo Stuf Scan

Brand: Oreo (Mondelez International)
Retail Partner: Target
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce

Mondelez International needed to reverse the recent dip in Oreo sales and overall cookie category consumption at Target. Determined to re-engage Gen Z and Millennial shoppers with young children, it landed on a central theme “to take back Oreo” via an augmented reality (AR) experience.

“Oreo Stuf Scan” reinforced the idea that Oreo owned black-and-white iconography in popular culture. Here’s how it worked: Shoppers were invited to go to StufScan.com and upload images of black-and-white items (namely, the Oreo-inspired sneakers that Oreo cheekily says have been “hijacked” from the brand) in order to unlock a QR code for a fun AR experience that included a digital coupon offer for a 2-for-1 purchase of packs of Oreo cookies.

The experience was promoted through targeted push notifications and on-site/off-site Roundel display and search banners to drive awareness. An out-of-home billboard including a QR code also promoted the Stuff Scan experience. Influencers drove awareness on Instagram and TikTok and linked to the experience from their content, while paid social ads amplified the program.

The campaign resulted in increased Oreo sales and overall cookie category sales at Target. The offer redemption rate was over 50% during the promotional period, and the mobile push notification resulted in 29,000 engagements (nearly 2% above benchmark). The microsite received one view every 15 minutes throughout the duration of the campaign. Influencers saw an engagement rate of 13.4%, with 31,000 engagements.