Why is this work relevant for Media?

This work puts media at the front and center of the strategy, execution, and messaging. The idea was created with the intention of maximizing available data to craft a bespoke material and optimizing the delivery to create the most impact on consumers. Technology and data were naturally utilized to enhance the message of the advertiser and provide meaningful value to consumers seeing the message.

Background

Ajinomoto is a well-established Japanese food company which owns a variety of brands, including Aji-ngon® - seasoning granule product in Vietnam market known for its benefit to enhance any meal’s flavor thanks to extraction from meat and bone. In 2020, Aji-ngon® relaunches with a new product innovation - increasing the richness from meat and sweetness from bone to bring an impressive first taste and long-lasting aftertaste for the users. With the new communication message of “Double Deliciousness”, Aji-ngon® aims to pull consumers from their biggest competitor, who seem to be pretty satisfied with their current choice of seasoning granules. We needed to "break the ice" with our competitor's users to generate awareness and create consideration to persuasively shift their preference toward Aji-ngon®.

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

Real users feedback validated the consumer truth of people believing that certain kinds of food taste better under specific weather conditions. Some of the users said: “Nothing can beat the seafood hot soup when it’s raining”, “It’s too hot for hotpot now. I’d love some salad to refresh my taste”, “It’s over 35OC outside now and I lose my appetite already. I need some good food.” Marrying this with the brand offer – ‘Aji-ngon® with Double Deliciousness can make any food taste doubly better’ to come up with the idea to hi-jack consumers’ mind & mouth with relevant recipe ads based on real-time local weather.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

The strategic challenge we needed to solve is to effectively use automated real-time weather data, synchronizing them with programmatic audience targeting and using this to trigger precisive ads with a personalized creative message, so we can reach our competitor’s users when they need us most.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We deployed weather-triggered dynamic creative optimization across programmatic targeting. Using a public weather API, we connect each digit difference in temperature degrees with a cluster of creatives and then multiply these by the locations. We deploy ‘programmatic & social creative assets’ with over 2,500 different variations to match with the weather conditions and even dynamically embed the temperature on the ad preview using DCO technology. We then map each creative variation in the clusters with purchase intent signals and leverage these in programmatic ad distribution to target exactly sales-ready consumers to move them to action.

List the results (30% of vote)

We automated the ad serving process and served more than 2,500 creative variations to over 5 million unique users making it truly a personalization ad experience across channels using DCO technology. Achieved 136% higher CTR using weather-triggered dynamic ads which is higher than using statics ad experience. Tested the CTR performance between Traditional locations (traditional markets, local grocery shops) and Modern locations (shopping malls, supermarkets). Modern locations performed better than traditional locations. The campaign was also successful in convincing the Ajinomoto marketing team that personalized ads through programmatic media achieve optimal business results as proven by the positive sentiment we received from social media and the positive reaction of the internal trade team to the campaign. Finally, by being true to the consumer insight, we convinced countless of competitive brand users to try and consider the new Aji-Ngon.

Describe the use of data, or how the data enhanced the campaign output

To ensure the relevance of our messages and creatives we utilized a rich set of data points to marry with the real-time weather data: Location data, Contextual (keyword targeting ), In-Market audiences, Affinity Audiences, Geo -fencing (radius targeting) - Traditional locations and Modern locations, 3rd Party data from Oracle and Eyeota. Precision targeting was the key to deliver the results in Programmatic. We utilized different audience strategies to achieve the results which show that data-driven programmatic advertising is an important tool for brands to target the right customer at the right time at the right place across devices. This allowed for a truly-personalized and hyper-relevant messaging for the brand for the right set of audiences at the right time - a first for Ajinomoto Vietnam.