2022 OmniShopper Awards: Integrated Path to Purchase Activation
Integrated Path to Purchase Activation
Campaign: Kleenex Tissue Sessions
Brand: Kleenex (Kimberly-Clark)
Retail Partner: Target
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce
Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex brand needed to increase household penetration among Target’s younger shoppers, especially with Black consumers. By activating a socially conscious campaign during Black History Month and Women’s History Month, as well as by offering Target-exclusive designs from diverse artists, the brand looked to spark sales during the traditionally soft March to June timeframe.
Kleenex chose a group of up-and-coming female artists to create the Celebrate the World collection, a variety of limited-time-only Target designs depicting vibrant scenes from around the world. The strategy was to turn Kleenex purchases into a larger conversation about inclusivity and diversity in design — and by extension, everyday culture.
To bring the campaign to life, Kleenex teamed up with LikeToKnowIt influencers to encourage followers to share their perspectives on important topics. Influencers were equipped with “Designed to Inspire” kits containing conversation cards with questions to spark discussion and a box of Kleenex tissues featuring one of the collection’s designs and drink coasters, which mirrored the graphics of each Target-exclusive design.
The designers and Instagram influencers created shoppable posts (including InstaStories) that encouraged Target shoppers to host Tissue Sessions themselves throughout Women’s History Month. A PR campaign and the Kleenex brand’s own social page, along with a series of e-blasts, helped spread the word, while the Target.com brand page showcased the designers’ personal stories and passion for inclusivity.
The Kleenex Celebrate the World pack achieved an inventory sell-through rate of 97%, an impressive result for a program that lacked any broad-scale media. The success of the program also cast a halo on the total Kleenex brand, with Kleenex sales at Target increasing 28% versus the same period the previous year, outpacing total category growth of 25%.
Campaign: Stand Up to the Fuego: Bring Intensity to Taco Night
Brand: Old El Paso (General Mills)
Retail Partner: Walmart
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce
To support the introduction of Old El Paso’s spicy new Takis Fuego Stand N’ Stuff taco shells, General Mills needed to drive awareness and trial of the products exclusively at Walmart. It also wanted to bring a sense of fun and excitement back to family taco night, a weeknight meal tradition that has lost a bit of its luster among the brand’s target audience of young Millennial parents and their children.
Stand Up to the Fuego (i.e., fire) brought the heat to Walmart shoppers on National Taco Day, Oct. 4, 2021. Exclusive PR kits with products, swag and recipe content were distributed to some 400 food bloggers, 2,000 qualified Walmart shoppers and seven TikTok influencers via a social challenge at #takistacochallenge. Sampling also took place at a food truck event at a Walmart store event in El Paso, Texas, and continued at some of the hottest and coldest places in America, including Fairbanks, Alaska.
In addition, Old El Paso scored an invitation to rapper Snoop Dogg’s 50th Birthday Party and a few of his concerts, garnering additional buzz with his social posts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
At the end of the campaign, Old El Paso Takis Fuego was the top performing taco shell at Walmart and grew weekly dollar share through Oct. 16, 2021. Retailer media helped drive immediate product awareness of the new item. The overall campaign sales lift was 10.66%.
Campaign: The Best Year Starts Here
Brand: General Mills’ Box Tops for Education participating brands
Retail Partner: Walmart
Agency/Solution Provider: VMLY&R Commerce
The COVID-19 pandemic has made perceived inadequacies in the U.S. educational system blatantly apparent. Between at-home schooling, childcare and disruptions to the education system, families truly haven’t known which challenges to tackle first. In 2021, General Mills’ Box Tops program partnered with Walmart and the LeBron James Family Foundation on a two-phase campaign to deliver a message of empowerment through education, while supporting Walmart back-to-school seasonal shoppers looking for meal and snack solutions and driving conversion for Box Tops for Education brands.
A three-episode video content series, “Empowering Equity,” hosted by James in partnership with Box Tops, awarded $200,000 in teacher loan forgiveness checks. The series premiered on Walmart’s YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts, and drove viewers to the Walmart.com brand page, highlighting how consumers could use the Box Tops app to donate their earned box tops to schools in need.
Local support at Walmart stores included a Walmart Prep Rally seasonal parking lot event through which General Mills awarded a local school $25,000. The Box Tops for Education national partnership stories of the Black Men Teach organization were amplified through paid media, scaling their local-impact message. In stores, ads on self-checkout screens encouraged shoppers to download the Box Tops for Education app to make a difference, while Walmart’s new print-on-demand capability leveraged first-party sales data to print custom boxes for back-to-school shoppers’ delivery orders.
“The Best Year Starts Here” lifted sales by 7.5% across the General Mills portfolio and increased basket size by 2.9%.
Campaign: Plant a Tree with HP
Brand: HP with The Jane Goodall Institute, The Arbor Day Foundation and Rebel Wilson
Retail Partners: Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Costco, Staples and Office Depot
Agency/Solution Providers: Arc Worldwide, Edelman
HP’s research showed that although 85% of PC and printer shoppers are extremely or somewhat concerned for the environment, only 25% would pay even a slight price premium for sustainable products. To overcome this “Green Gap,” HP wanted to make it easy for shoppers to be environmentally conscious by building a green value proposition into their purchases.
“Plant a Tree with HP” created an authentic brand story around the personal relationship between HP CEO Enrique Lores and renowned environmentalist Dr. Jane Goodall. As the promotional centerpiece, a portion of profits from HP PC, printer and ink/toner purchases from April through June 2022 would go to The Jane Goodall Institute to plant a million trees globally.
A 30-second promo video with Goodall was the launching point for an omnichannel campaign, supported by retailer media, that ran across social networking sites and HP/retailer websites. Amazon featured an HP weekend homepage takeover, while Costco ran the promo video on TV walls and Walmart developed a print ad with HP in USA Today. National media amplification came in the form of a “forest bathing” video conversation about sustainability challenges between Goodall and Australian actress Rebel Wilson that ran on YouTube and the campaign landing page at HP.com/PlantATree.
Initial campaign results were positive on both brand preference and attributable sales/ROAS. In April alone, Walmart generated $5.8 million in sales attributed to the campaign, $60.79 ROAS and 55.5% were new buyers.
Campaign: 2021 Coors Light Summer Made to Chill
Brand: Coors Light (Molson Coors Beverage Co.)
Everyone needs the occasional respite from the summer heat. Thus, Coors Light created a program to drive volume and in-store display during the critical summer selling period by making the connection to summer chill with a virtual experience enabled by thermographic sunglasses on limited-edition packaging.
Users activated the signature “blue mountains” and word “Chill” by using the Coors Light sunglasses on packaging and POS to scan a QR code that generated brief videos of summer, pool or lake occasions. Participants also provided their emails and entered into sweepstakes registration to win Ray-Ban sunglasses and branded merchandise.
The program was amplified on social media through consumers’ Facebook and Instagram feeds, while shoppers were greeted by the QR codes on in-store displays. On premise, Coors Light engaged bar patrons at their tables through POS with QR codes and branded barware. Campaign ads ran across TV and online video platforms, while retailer media ads drove purchase at key retailers. Packaging was localized on high-traffic billboards with headlines like “How California “Chills” and “Asi nos gusta Chill.”
Despite overall declines as compared with pandemic-induced spikes during the previous year, Coors Light showed positive dollar sales growth among the target group, including 21- to 34-year-old consumers (up 6%) and in the key markets of Pacific Northwest (4.8%), Arizona/Las Vegas (4.4%), Wisconsin/Minnesota/North Dakota (2.6%) and Illinois/Iowa (3.3%). In addition, on-premise sales were up an impressive 68.9%.