Why is this work relevant for Media?

Digital was the go-to vehicle during COVID lockdown. Digital was the new gateway and the new storefront. The campaign revolved around the digital media vehicles of Search, Display and Affiliates. Media played a big part in both consideration and conversion in this campaign. Choices made by media in search, display, e-commerce, audience segmentation resulted in unprecedented gains for the client

Background

India was forced into lockdown from the month of March 2020 due to COVID-19. Overall sentiment and consumer spending was down. Dell tasked Mediacom with exceeding revenue goals by 488% and unit goals by 457% YoY on Dell’s D2C ecommerce portal www.Dell.com through a high-performance ecommerce campaign. As per IDC data, Dell lost its #2 rank in market share in 2019. On the brand side, it was noticed that Dell was low on premium consideration while most of the laptops offered for sale on www.Dell.com belonged to the premium category.

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

India is a complex socio-cultural market where tech adoption can take time. With lockdown, however, India saw a massive demand surge for laptops as people were forced to work/study/socialize from home. India, a developing country became virtual overnight. Everything moved to a screen, and the use cases for a laptop multiplied. Not only work, but shopping, education, doctor’s consultation, etc. got added. Even weddings were held online. Digital was the new gateway and the new storefront. The laptop became one’s window to the outside world. Dell was in a prime position to take advantage of this paradigm shift. With the lockdown impact, print and OOH saw a huge dip in effectiveness due to lesser reach making it impossible to even consider the above-mentioned vehicles for achieving the decided KPIs. Google reported 81% YoY growth in laptop related queries during this period making digital the go-to vehicle during this period.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We took this opportunity to first do a situational audit of the owned infrastructure and its historical data. High Cost-Per-Acquisition, low ROAS and conversion, Lack of full funnel visibility and attribution was an obstacle to performance campaigns. This was followed by a Media-Mix-Model insights from Nielsen which noted that spends can be optimized in three major online vehicles of Search, Display and Affiliates. We used social and programmatic on multiple touch points during the consideration stage of the customer journey, knowing they wouldn't affect sales as much. Through mid-funnel, we decided to drive premium consideration riding on premium display media channels, premium audience segments with communication surrounding key product features. For the lower funnel strategy, we optimized the budget as per the MMM learnings in the three media vehicles to have a better conversion opportunity. We also completely tweaked our search and display strategies to improve media efficiency

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

• Search: Shift to SA360 for better data visibility and optimization, separate account for PLA & enabling smart shopping for proper visibility of conversion, shift to tCPA bidding strategy • Detailed audience segmentation into multiple cohorts with the help of DMP 3rd party data layering • Retargeting mid funnel exposed audience and focusing on e-tail in-market audience segments of Amazon • Whitelisted buying strategy implemented on detailed audience segments into multiple cohorts for DCO • Minimized audience overlap between direct buy publishers and Prog partners, using Salesforce • For Affiliates, we took the best communication practices of driving value through discount coupon codes while offering higher CPS% to the partners • Driving social campaigns with data from important transactional and behavioral data partners • Mid Funnel consideration strategy was clubbed with large format interactive ads in terms of execution

List the results (30% of vote)

• While the revised planned goals were 457% more units YoY and 488% better revenue YoY, we delivered 700% more net units YoY and 535% better net revenue YoY • We were also able to deliver 77% better CPA on overall media spends YoY • We also managed to improve the conversion rate by 547% YoY • Search alone delivered an overall 584% increment in net units, 310% growth in net revenue, 113% increment in ROAS, 18% drop in CPA and 62% improvement in CV% • Programmatic QoQ ROAS improved by 30% • This contributed to Dell regaining #2 Rank in Consumer IDC with a share of 19.2% and gain momentum over its nearest competition HP with a YOY growth of 141% in Google Search Insights