2025 OmniShopper Awards: Integrated Path to Purchase Activation
Integrated Path to Purchase Activation
Campaign: Avocados From Mexico: Winning the College Football Playoff Shopping Season at Walmart
Brand: Avocados From Mexico
Retail Partner: Walmart
Agency/Solution Provider: VML
Hosting college football watch parties is a weekly battle of culinary creativity versus financial reality. High grocery prices have led to more home cooking, while social media has raised expectations for visually appealing dishes that cater to viral food trends. In this context, avocados are an MVP of entertaining — a widely-used ingredient that is versatile and luxurious enough to elevate any dish.
These insights fueled an integrated campaign from Avocados From Mexico, the official avocado brand of the college football playoffs, at Walmart. A sequential messaging strategy guided shoppers through awareness (digital display), consideration (search, mobile offers) and purchase (in-store targeting, instant redemptions). The creative was built on “Always a Good Play” messaging to ensure avocados remained on the roster throughout the 16-week season.
The campaign launched with targeted ads via Walmart Connect and utilized third-party amplification to extend reach beyond Walmart’s owned channels. GenesisX used its ImpulseAI solution to geo-target shoppers at or near Walmart locations, reminding them to pick up avocados and converting them in-store. These activations exceeded benchmarks by 41%, totaling $467,000 in incremental sales. In addition, AFM was the first avocado brand to run an Ibotta Walmart Cash promotion. The campaign achieved a 31.7% redemption rate versus Ibotta’s 17% industry average for a 4-6-week program.
The campaign’s transformed avocados from occasional purchase to a must-have game day ingredient, resulting in total sales of $10.9 million (versus $3.1 million from the previous year’s campaign), 395,000 new Walmart buyers and 42 million total impressions.
Campaign: Kleenex Self Care Awareness
Brand: Kleenex (Kimberly-Clark)
Retail Partner: Target
Agency/Solution Provider: VML
Using color to influence moods and emotions is an ancient idea that took a modern spin in Kimberly-Clark’s Self Care Awareness program. Its limited-edition packs of Kleenex Self Care is for Everyone tissues, an exclusive Target design, tapped into the booming wellness craze that continues to spread across the CPG industry.
Given the insight that choosing Kleenex brands can be a powerful statement about one’s sensibilities and values, Kimberly-Clark turned Kleenex Puffs packs into canvases for female artists of color. The retro mod styles featured affirmations such as “Take a deep breath” and “Love yourself first” to inspire the program’s 18- to 34-year-old target audience. The goal was to create “Mood Rooms” that add a pop of positivity — say, indigo in the bedroom to feel a little calmer or yellow in the bathroom to brighten the spirit.
The program included custom Target endcap displays and online tactics — product detail pages, paid search, off-site and on-site display, social posts — as well as shoppable CTV ads. Exploring the varying levels of details in each area allowed shoppers to visualize the Kleenex collection in different rooms and get ideas for how each design could help set a different mood.
The boost from the CTV portion alone — ad units were up 35% versus 2024 and 15% versus projected — brought in an incremental $1.27 million in sales. By the end of the program, Kleenex’s market share at Target was up 570 basis points and digital share of Target e-commerce was up 540 basis points versus the same period in the previous year.
Campaign: Wicked Cocktails Straight From Oz
Brand: Pernod Ricard
Agency/Solution Provider: Arc Worldwide
Holiday marketing tends to be fairly predictable, as most programs focus on promotions and pragmatic themes such as tips for hosting or gift giving. Looking to shake (or stir) things up, Pernod Ricard built a holiday 2024 program around a licensing and merchandising partnership with Universal Pictures’ "Wicked." It was a playful nod to the cultural phenomenon spawned by the blockbuster film with pink and green cocktails to boot.
Wicked embodies values like inclusion and individuality that resonate deeply with Gen Z and Millennial consumers, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community. These experience seekers were a prime audience for the program’s range of online and in-store tactics that connected Wicked imagery with Pernod Ricard brands including Absolut, Kahlua, Malibu and Jameson.
The centerpiece revolved around custom cocktail creations for Wicked personas, such as the “Ozspresso Martini” and the “Ozmopolitan.” These colorful concoctions came to life in social media through influencer content, were featured in digital ads, and were made available for on-premise consumption at select movie theaters and bar locations. At key retailers, a modular display and sampling kits motivated shoppers to take a break from the traditional holiday shopping sprint and enjoy Wicked-themed get-togethers with family and friends.
The results were worth toasting: Pernod Ricard sold through almost double the displays versus the previous year (17,411 versus a benchmark of 9,863). The program also drove big traffic increases at major movie theater chains, with November’s best results at AMC (up 293%), Cinemark (81%), Regal (71%) and Marcus (56%).
