Grier, who spoke with Beet.TV at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, has a creative agency background that influences that view. For now, she says storytelling mostly plays a role in Clorox’s TV strategy.
“[TV] is still a reach vehicle and a great place to tell a story, particularly a purpose-driven story,” says Grier. “There is something unique about the passive nature people will watch that content, and the ability to tell them a beautiful story.”
TV, however, is just one part of Clorox’s overall mixed media platform, and a supplementary one at that. The media mix is just over 50 percent digital, and linear TV is one piece of the remaining 50 percent. “What we try to do is tell stories through the entire ecosystem as opposed to use media vehicles for just one thing,” says Grier.
At the core of Clorox’s strategy now is first-party data. According to Grier, the company has been “on a hunt” to get first-party data through a value exchange. One way Clorox has done that is by building a recommendation engine for Hidden Valley Ranch. The brand offers customers recipes or platforms to create their own recipes. Depending on what they choose, they’ll be served a second recipe personalized to complement that first recipe. It’s not unlike Netflix’s content recommendation engine, and Grier says the company has seen a 40 percent lift in sales from customers who were served a second recipe.
“We made a commitment to gathering first-party data,” says Grier. “We know that if you put people at the center, and you’re able to understand their goals and needs and can exceed their expectations, you’re going to win.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, 2019. The series is sponsored by iSpot.tv. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“I’m going to suggest that we have to figure out how to pull them both together around one consumer in order to really drive the growth we want. But it’s not an either or. But it’s an and,” says Eric Reynolds.
Reynolds was referencing his talk at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing conference, where he discussed “the tension between performance marketing, or growth marketing, and brand marketing.” His presentation was titled Path To Growth: A Modern Marketing Dilemma.
Among other insights Reynolds shares in this interview with Beet.TV, he talks about the slow and steady decline of linear television as a means of reaching consumers and how Clorox has been moving out of both print and TV in favor of digital—video in particular.
Why performance marketing does very well is because it’s data-rich, agile and nimble. “It’s actually way much more consumer-focused than classic brand marketing, which is the way I grew up. It’s because they’re very intimate with the consumer and they change fast,” Reynolds says.
The problem with performance marketing is “you run out of steam fast…because you fundamentally don’t know the person you’re trying to build a relationship with your brand. It’s just a bunch of clicks and data and sets. And that will get you so far.”
On the other end of the spectrum, brand marketing provides a strong understanding of consumers at a life and a category level. “It creates enduring ideas that keep people coming back. And you need both is the point. If we’re all just about activation through data, then we really don’t have a brand,” Reynolds adds.
“But if we’re only talking big, thematic, large-scale ideas that are slow, well we’re not rising to the challenge that consumers expect us to do, which is to have that real time, that intimate, be-useful relationship so you really need to do both.”
Asked for a breakdown of Clorox’s media choices, Reynolds says they’re constantly changing but tied less to a “big, strategic choice” and much more to “following where consumers are open to receiving messages and information from us. And what that means broad-scale is for a us a consistent decline in linear TV, year on year on year, and a rise in more assignable media like digital display, video, social. And we see these trends continuing.”
As the company’s analytics have evolved, providing ever more insight into how media is performing for sales, “well over” 60% of Clorox’s media is now digital.
“Now video, though, is the place where it’s all heading towards, because for our categories and our brands, it’s the place where we tell the richest stories, the kind of stories whether they’re product stories or category stories or brand stories, that seems to be the place where consumers want to engage with us.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>“I don’t look at it as leaving anything behind,” says Osborn, who made the move last September. “I’m bringing all that I’ve learned from the creative part of the equation and I’m trying to apply that through a whole new aperture. Media is closer to the customer, the consumer, than anything else.”
In this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2018, Osborn talks about game-changing technology and advocates for cause marketing as a way to improve people’s lives and give marketers an “economic multiplier.”
When Osborne joined BBDO 25 years ago to work on the Pepsi account, the media side of the traditional full-service agency was considered “a bunch of numbers.” What’s changed is that “we have the data, we have the analytics that tell us who to go target and how they behave, which sets up the foundation of the entire strategy framework.”
Emerging technologies like augmented reality and robotics aren’t front and center on Osborne’s radar screen. At least not yet. Voice-activated devices, the connected home and artificial intelligence seem to have more near-term potential.
“AI is really, really powerful,” says Osborne. “It’s a game changer. Because if it can make our customers’ lives easier, more fluid, more relevant to how they want to live their life, then that’s really, really of high value.”
At CES, OMD is joined by more than 100 clients. Some are obvious—Apple and Intel—others less so, including Clorox, Cigna and State Farm. Osborn says they’re all seeking to apply innovation and invention to their business models to be smarter and more relevant to customers.
“We want to peak their imagination and really push them to think about things from a whole different standpoint.”
Osborn is a supporter of the Red Cross and other philanthropic organizations, so he appreciates the value of cause marketing, calling it an “economic multiplier.” Finding the right cause to align with varies from brand to brand.
“But I will tell you this. Usually it’s much more powerful if the people that work within the company share in the delivery of that sense of purpose as well as the messaging part of it as well.”
This video was produced by Beet.TV in Las Vegas at CES 2018. Please visit this page for more coverage.
]]>“Unless the TV companies are selling it, no one can buy it,” Morgan says in this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2018. “Having their recognition that this is a way to deliver better value for the marketers and make more money themselves has been a really big step.”
In the “old days” of TV, a $3 million, three-week linear TV ad campaign might have involved buys on 10 networks and 110 spots. “But now that everything is fragmented, you really need to do it more precisely. So for us, that same campaign might be 70 networks and 3,000 spots.”
Post-campaign analysis used to take a month following the campaign’s end. Now it can be delivered in one day, showing not just gross rating points and demographics but how much of the advertiser’s target audience was reached. Simulmedia matches those data to the advertisers’ first-party purchase data at the household level. Therein lies the challenge of the future for traditional advertising and media agencies.
“The agencies just are not structured or staffed to be able to execute campaigns at that level,” says Morgan. “You need a lot of software automation, which we have, you need a lot of predicative analytics, which we’ve built” to traffic the creative and provide daily reporting.
Simulmedia counts among its clients Choice Hotels, Clorox, Expedia and Home Depot.
The company is still “very, very focused” on linear TV and the biggest reason is “that’s where the money is. Number two, that’s where the under-optimized opportunity is.”
Morgan sees the need for more collaboration among industry players given the growing importance of cross-screen TV viewing. He cites the example of Simulmedia’s partnership with Facebook.
“If you’re running a retargeting, campaign it’s natural for you to want to understand what people are likely to get a TV ad in the same day or two. So that you can make sure that you can maximize the proximity and time and to person in the delivery of those two messages.”
While the definition of TV is bound to keep changing, Morgan believes one thing that’s certain is the importance of viewing on large screens. “Maybe it’s not going to be the same hardware device but the large-screen format is going to continue to be really powerful,” says Morgan.
This video was produced by Beet.TV in Las Vegas at CES 2018. Please visit this page for more coverage.
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