Why is this work relevant for Media?

The work demonstrates how Oracle capitalized the use of first and third party audience data to define a media strategy so as to attain the objective of building spontaneous awareness and driving business demand. The campaign utilized several targeting segments based on audience, focus accounts, and context. Ran in above 15 markets in Asia Pacific, the campaign incorporated elements of Paid Search, Content Syndication and Social Media Platforms anchored by Programmatic Display and Video. All these elements were underpinned by effective use of data segments, which was the cornerstone of the media strategy.

Background

Everybody knows Oracle as a leader in databases, but less is known about Oracle’s world class Cloud offerings. This is a problem for our brand in the long run, especially in a B2B tech environment that is being rapidly disrupted by the many benefits offered by cloud computing companies. Notable consumer brands like Amazon and Google have a stronghold in the tech cloud industry, which compounds the challenges of being recognized as a favourable Cloud player in the market. While our brief from Oracle was to create awareness and educate our target audience of B2B decision makers about the strengths of the Oracle Cloud, we had to factor in how closely the client budget allocation and internal success metrics are aligned to lead generation. This led to two business objectives to solve: drive brand awareness and familiarity while also driving business pipeline.

Describe the creative idea/insights (30% of vote)

The problem statement led to the germination of our integrated campaign, “Your Tomorrow, Today” (YTT). It was designed to demonstrate how Oracle’s well-known expertise in technology and innovation has evolved into cloud. Customers acted as the face of the campaign and shared their experience with Oracle cloud. This allowed Oracle to showcase best in class cloud offerings and illustrate the experience and innovative use cases of their current customers simultaneously. Thereby, it serves as a compelling prospect for customers to evaluate and identify with Oracle Cloud. The campaign structure was laid out to ensure relevancy of the product in the mind of both IT and non-IT audiences, which meant complexity in terms of multiple messagings, customized content, and bespoke digital user journeys. Prospective customers were able to discover new insights and opportunities for competitive advantage, thereby achieving market winning performance for their businesses – in short, making tomorrow’s future today’s

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Content and user journeys were tailored to different personas - IT, Marketing, Finance, HR - who were identified as buyers or key influencers in the decision-making process. This led to 6 campaign tracks addressing the buyers’ varied pain points, highlighting respective satisfied Oracle Cloud customers for each, and how the latest cloud innovation brings organizations to a progressive future. Three-tiered interactive user journeys were devised to bring customers through the purchase funnel for each track. Firstly, using intent data signals and contextual keywords, we targeted audiences with top-level thought leadership content. The next step was to educate audiences on innovation use cases with Oracle Cloud, and they received varied content depending on their interactions in the first tier. Trials and quick tours were the key offers in the last stage, customised to the users based on data from the first two tiers to increase likelihood of purchase.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

A diverse mix of tactics was employed, including programmatic display, native, social, content syndication, organic emailers, employee advocacy via social, and retargeting served to systemically engage audiences as they moved down the different stages of the user journeys. Almost all tactics were devised to target a limited set of accounts, thereby adding complexity to the campaign. A comprehensive digital technology stack and partnerships helped drive user interactions with the right content and at the right funnel stage. We prioritized target accounts and personas powered by Bombora data, incorporated Grapeshot contextual filters, and had a systemic retargeting strategy based on first party Bluekai data, which effectively contributed to driving conversions, improving viewability, and increasing quality user engagements. We were heavily present across five social platforms, activated six different partners across the ad-tech setup to bring our programmatic vision alive, and worked with seven demand generation partners to connect with key prospects.

List the results (30% of vote)

The highly targeted approach was able to deliver ad exposures worth 135 million impressions to our hard-to-reach B2B audiences within 6 months in APAC, of whom 770K+ interacted with our media ads, hereby driving 400K+ unique audiences to Oracle’s webpages. Business impact: 2X lift in inbound calls, 35% lift in overall inbound traffic (Incoming Chats, Emails, Calls), and a 20% increase in trials uptake. Where the campaign aimed to drive quality user engagements instead of delivering bulk leads, the effectiveness of this was demonstrated by a substantial 2X improvement in conversions of marketing-driven leads even though the volume of leads delivered has halved in comparison to previous campaigns. Notably, in meeting the challenge of driving both 1) brand awareness and familiarity, 2) business pipeline, YTT achieved a measurable 50% points lift in spontaneous awareness across our key markets and a 4X ROI in terms of net new business pipeline.