Background

As part of the Indian multinational conglomerate, Godrej Group, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) operates in the domestic and international markets in the 'personal and household care' segment. With the rapid digitization in India, GCPL focused on foraying into direct-to-consumer (D2C) retailing, building e-commerce capabilities, and leveraging data to strengthen consumer relationships. Compared to other home and personal care products, the home insecticide segment has had lower engagement among the predominant purchase influencers in Indian households — women. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the key brand objective for GCPL was to reinforce the need to maintain hygienic insect-free homes. The core challenges included breaking through the existing clutter of COVID-related marketing in the home and personal care product segment and creating meaningful engagement with Indian women.

Describe the creative idea

As hygiene became one of the top few concerns at the peak of the pandemic, GCPL decided to launch a campaign educating consumers on maintaining insect-free homes. More specifically, GCPL wanted consumers to use its products – Good Knight and HIT – to stay protected against vector-borne diseases. To make an impact, GCPL had to target household-product purchase influencers, and in India, this group primarily comprised women. However, the pandemic drastically changed the way this group entertained themselves, they now sought entertainment from digital-first channels, on-demand over-the-top (OTT) videos, casual gaming and news apps on their mobile phones. They also had greater responsibility in maintaining hygiene in their families. Leveraging their behavior, a mobile-centric campaign was designed, with personalized videos conceptualized to stay top-of-mind amidst the advertising clutter.

Describe the strategy

GCPL needed to reach NCCS A audiences – a commonly used consumer classification in India. Some of the audience segments crafted in this category were: Internet-Savvy Audiences, Premium Apartment Residences, Premium Smartphone Users, Household Influencers and Purchasers, and Urban Dwellers – all aged between 25 and 45 years. These niches were found by factoring in audience interests, mobile app usage, demographics, location context, and device insights. Our creative solutions delivered seamless buffer-free, in-app video experiences to drive the required impact for the campaign. Three different horizontal, short-form mobile video ads were launched: a 15-second video for Kala HIT Lime, a 20-second video for Lal HIT, and a 30-second video for Good Knight Gold Flash. Due to India’s highly diverse population where consumers speak different languages, GCPL decided to capture hyperlocal interest and launch vernacular ads in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam.

Describe the execution

GCPL targeted their core groups on the medium of choice – mobile. Delivering powerful messages through mobile-first and vernacular videos, GCPL delivered highly engaging and brand-safe ad experiences in a transparent manner. We personalized the ad experience for users via retargeting and drove higher ROI. By marrying GCPL’s first-party data with our data signals, the brand built custom audiences and phased out a sequential targeting strategy to drive consideration among high affinity users. The campaign had different strategies for the engaged audience and unengaged audience — the former experienced full-screen media ads with a call-to-action that would clearly communicate to users to buy the product, whereas the latter received video ads in subsequent months to reinforce top-of-the-mind awareness and brand recall. As the unengaged audience began interacting with the ads, they were also nudged to complete the purchase via a mobile-first creative.

List the results

The use of targeting, video ads, and programmatic capabilities delivered phenomenal results. While the campaign reached over 10 million unique users, the videos recorded a massive 1.5X completion rate and an average engagement rate of 2.5X, compared to the industry benchmarks. As a result of sequential targeting and retargeting, GCPL engaged about 1.3 million engaged users at a 10% lowered cost. A survey was also conducted to better understand top-of-the-mind recall, aided and spontaneous awareness, and brand sentiment. This helped the brand quality-check their first-party data that resided in their AI-CDP. The qualitative insights revealed that mobile video ads had provided a 22% higher recall for their brand HIT as compared to Good Knight. Furthermore, the home insecticide category saw a 15% growth in the last fiscal year with the combined efforts of precision targeting, retargeting, and programmatic videos, thereby making this a successful campaign for GCPL.