Why is this work relevant for Media?

With the reality of a shift to a cookieless future, there was an urgent need to develop a sustainable solution for Dove who is heavily reliant on customized communications depending on the target audience. It was essential for Dove’s media campaigns to be able to find a solution that will properly provide custom messages. Dove tapped a key partner to help define, create customized goals, and fully leverage its first-party data strategy. This was critical, as it would ensure Dove could continue to deliver relevant messaging to its target audience while also maintaining quality reach from its first-party seed audiences.

Background

Dove offers a wide variety of products that are clinically superior in terms of care while maintained at a price point within reach of most women, successfully establishing itself as synonymous to accessible self-care and damaged hair care solution. As consumers today enjoy deeply personalized communication, Dove rose to the challenge and started with an extensive first-party data collection. It used its business challenges as the starting point: 1. The weakening proposition on damage shows that Dove needs to reinforce its superiority to its main consumers. 2. The high price perception showed that Dove needs to find price-sensitive consumers and communicate appropriately to them. Identifying these consumer groups we can serve differentiated communication messages led Dove to doing extensive first-party data collection – while still adhering to data privacy measures – through the years and have positively impacted metrics for the brand.

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

PERSONALIZED COMMUNICATION RESONATE BETTER WITH CONSUMERS With the growing options available in terms of products, media, and experiences, the need for personalization also grew. According to Google Insights, 63% expect personalization as a standard expectation among brands. Personalization has now become integral to drive relevance in key spaces that Dove was being challenged in: damage and value. Past learnings also affirm this. When personalized communication is done, Dove was able to drive incremental lifts in awareness, recall, consideration versus non-personalized campaigns. Even better results were seen when Dove shifted to using first-party data (those with consent, mobile number, and emails), especially for its video campaigns. However, this strategy is being threatened by the cookieless future. The challenge Dove is facing is how to continue leveraging its first-party addressable data to ensure that it continues to deliver relevant messaging to its audience while maintaining quality reach & scale.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

LEVERAGING ON FIRST-PARTY DATA TO DELIVER CUSTOMIZED MESSAGES, GROWING THESE INTO SCALED AUDIENCES TO POSSIBLY RIVAL THIRD PARTY-DERIVED AUDIENCES Dove tapped a partner and piloted CODA (Custom, Optimized, Designer Audiences). CODA is an API tool (called Bridge) that will enable Dove to build bespoke lookalike audiences on YouTube. These audiences are powered by first-party data, partner-intent signals, and advanced controls to define bespoke lookalike audiences specifically curated for Dove. CODA provides control and transparency during the lookalike audience modeling process in a privacy-safe manner and using insights from the said partner, Dove can iterate on the lookalike audience definition until they're happy with both reach as well as audience composition. Once it's created, the bespoke lookalike audience can be activated on YouTube.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The solution deployed was a global, first-of-its-kind technology called Bridge. Bridge is an internal advanced audience modeling tool that uses the partner’s CODA technology via direct API. This solution allows more control, customization, and transparency when crafting bespoke look-alike audiences that would otherwise be difficult to locate. The strategy was 3-pronged: • First, to have Bridge leverage Customer Match & Remarketing Lists as the mechanism for defining the desired target person to scale unique reach. • Next, to improve audience segments based on these insights and develop new content after learning new customer trends • Lastly, to develop geo-lookalike audiences to expand the first-party seed list to reach a much broader, yet highly engaged audience.

List the results (30% of vote)

To measure the success of this campaign, Dove looked at three key things: the size of the audience reached, better engagement with the target audiences in the form of click-throughs, and better responses to the brand lift survey attached to the campaign measuring awareness and consideration. At the end of the run, the campaign results were met with critical success that resonated across the world. It has set the standard globally, on the powerful impact that informed technology will have on the future of data innovation: • 845k unique user reach, exceeding a counterpart first-party campaign reach by 264% • The audiences curated delivered 33% Reach vs Broad (Demo) Campaign • +9pp higher CTR than regular first-party audience campaign • +4pp higher benchmark CTR than broad audience campaign • 9k gathered survey responses LS, 70% higher responses vs broad audience campaign

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

Bridge enabled Dove to bring its own consumer data to the table and expanded it based on valuable insight and emerging consumer trends, allowing Dove to serve content to a broader, yet still highly engaged audience. • These audiences are powered by valuable first-party data, intent signals, and advanced controls to define bespoke lookalike audiences specifically curated to the brand’s criteria. • The solution provides control and transparency during the lookalike audience modeling process in a privacy-safe manner and using insights from the main partner, Dove can iterate on the lookalike audience definition until they're happy with both reach as well as audience composition. • Once it's created, the bespoke lookalike audience can be activated on YouTube. Leveraging this today is what led to critical campaign success for Dove and building on this for tomorrow is what will allow Dove to be a tech innovation leader for the foreseeable future.