2020 Award Winners: Location, Messaging and Retail or FMCG Campaign categories

The winners of the 2020 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards were announced at a virtual Awards Ceremony last Friday. Over the next few days, we’re taking a closer look at the winner in each category, continuing today with the winners of the Most Effective Location Campaign, Most Effective MessagsingCampaign, and Most Effective Retail or FMCG Campaign categories…

Most Effective Location Campaign
Gousto, TabMo and the7stars – Gousto Commuter Location campaign
The objective here was to break busy adults out of their meal-planning inertia via a multi-screen campaign designed to drive awareness and attract new customers for Gousto’s recipe box offering.

The strategy focused on smart geotargeting and driving purchase consideration through sequential messaging; using location to connect offline and online media channels and retarget people through various touchpoints across different media channels throughout the day.

Measurement used performance metrics and compared insights for groups that had been in the location of at least one out-of-home (OOH) ad, and those that hadn’t seen any OOH ads (ie not been in the location of any), but had seen at least one digital ad and/or audio ad.
The target audience was defined as ABC1 commuters. In line with this and the campaign goals,  the7stars planned an outdoor campaign across major cities and areas that see high commuter footfall and in which TabMo could ringfence specific locations using its geotargeting tool.

TabMo built on the brand awareness created by the OOH ads, retargeting people using mobile display and digital audio ads. Comparing brand awareness of people who had seen an outdoor ad against those that hadn’t provided insight into the user journey, qualified the impact of a cross-channel strategy and linked together advertising channels that usually sit separately within the campaign plan.

TabMo’s advertising demand side platform (DSP), Hawk’s API integration with Google Maps enabled TabMo to accurately retarget people whose mobile Device ID indicated that they had been within 5 metres of one of the outdoor placements booked by the7stars, creating the group of users that had been ‘exposed’ to the ad.

A ‘non-exposed’ group – i.e. ABC1 commuters seen in the target cities but who had not been in close enough proximity to the OOH placements to have seen them – was created within Hawk by excluding the device IDs of the exposed group. TabMo was thus able to compare cross-channel performance based on whether or not people had seen an OOH ad.

TabMo also ran a brand awareness study via research firm, Dynata, which provided richer performance insights and brand uplift data, to show the strength of the campaign in reaching the relevant target audience, as well as the success of the overall cross-channel strategy.

The campaign delivered excellent results across a number of KPIs, including clickthrough rates, view-through rates, and listen-through rates.

On the brand metrics, people who had been exposed to a TabMo creative for Gousto scored higher than the control group that had not seen an ad for aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, brand familiarity, brand favourability and purchase intent. They were also more likely to agree with the statements: “Gousto is a quality brand I trust” and “Gousto is a brand worth paying more for.”

Judges’ View: “This campaign demonstrated a well thought-through approach to execution and analysis of the campaign in line with the target demographic. Impressive use of device IDs to split exposed and non-exposed groups and get real-time insights, plus a good omnichannel strategy, and great results.”

Most Effective Messaging Campaign
UN/WHO and Vungle – Ads for Social Good
This campaign was developed in response to the UN (United Nations)/WHO’s (World Health Organisation) Global Call Out to Creatives to help stop COVID-19’s spread through visual content that conveys public health messages quickly and effectively. Vungle created playable ads that amplified these messages to gamers worldwide in a one-off campaign activity.

The UN/WHO brief set a number of guiding objectives. Most importantly, any creative submitted for consideration (and subsequent roll out) had to be designed to encourage the viewer, regardless of location, to adopt public health precautions and to act in solidarity, and be composed of content pieces that would contribute to efforts to prevent the spread of damaging misinformation. The brief specifically requested that the creative work captured one of several UN key messages: 1.) Personal Hygiene, 2.) Physical distancing, 3.) Know the symptoms, 4.) Kindness contagion, 5.) Myth-busting, 6.) Do more, donate.

Crucially, the creative content had to translate critical public health messages in a way that would engage and inform people across different cultures, languages, communities and platforms. Any creative medium could be used, so long as it disseminated key messages in a clear, impactful, and shareable way.

Vungle knew that the surge in app usage driven by lockdown presented an immediate opportunity to connect with a widened audience via mobile devices. With millions of people playing mobile games every day, in-game ads could play an important, strategic role in the distribution and amplification of public health messages.

For the ads themselves, Vungle developed playable or interactive ads, leveraging the innate gamification principles that make this type of in-app advertising design successful for monetisation purposes. 

Importantly, the team focused on developing content that conveyed the key messages without overly relying on language/words so that the content was applicable across geographies, cultures and languages. Vungle was also able to facilitate delivery of public health messages to “hard to reach” groups, using dynamic localisation technology to translate messages into 22 different languages, including Urdu, Bengali, and Swahili.

The first group in the campaign illustrated the key steps to properly wash your hands, encouraging the app user to swipe backwards and forwards through the steps, accompanied by a ticking clock. The second group reinforced 2m physical distancing guidelines through a game where the player dodges a series of falling shapes, by shifting position with properly timed finger swipes. 

Vungle then applied creative testing to learn, scale and adapt the ads at rapid speed to enhance user experience while still achieving engagement goals. Once its tests were completed, Vungle tailored the content to each placement’s context for a seamless, relevant in-app experience.

As a result of the submission, Vungle’s work now sits in a library of artwork that will educate, uplift, and inspire individuals and communities all across the world through this global crisis – the UN COVID-19 Creative Content Hub. The content went live on April 20, 2020 in 50 countries.

Especially impressive is the fact that this was a philanthropic, non-profit campaign effort on behalf of the company to support global efforts to help stop the spread of the virus and save lives. No budget was made available by the UN/WHO. Vungle donated staff time, resources, equipment and external consultancy to support the development and testing of the series of playable ads. Network distribution has also been handled free-of-charge.

Judges’ View: “Good strategy, capitalising on the thumbs-on-screen nature of mobile gaming as a means of driving engagement. Campaign execution was good, with localised messaging and impressive campaign optimisation. Also clever to focus on content that conveyed the key messages without overly relying on words to overcome language and cultural barriers.”

Most Effective Retail or FMCG Campaign  
Manscaped and Tapjoy – Tapjoy CPA, Rewarded Ads Campaign
Having grown rapidly in the past couple of years, for this campaign, Manscaped aimed to balance profitability with its goal of boosting brand awareness. To do so, it would need to tie ad spend directly to first purchases. It would also need to expand its reach, targeting consumers outside of the saturated mainstream channels. Despite using over 30 growth channels the company still sought to reach more net new customers, so it partnered with Tapjoy to launch Cost Per Action mobile in-app ad campaigns in the US.

Manscaped expected that the mobile gamer audience would overlap with key customer personas, but hoped that Tapjoy’s Cost Per Action bidding would offset risk while they found their footing. Another draw was the value exchange model of rewarding users in return for engagement.

The first rewarded offer promoted Manscaped’s Perfect Package 3.0 bundle, including a trimmer, toner, deodorant, toiletry bag, and boxers. CPA bidding allowed them to run profitable tests, with every dollar of ad spend going towards a new customer’s first purchase. They found that product images outperformed lifestyle images by roughly 20 per cent. Promotions that offered free gifts and free shipping also increased conversions significantly. Finally, Manscaped realized that tailoring messaging to appeal to the gaming audience, using phrases like “level up” and other gaming verbiage, gave campaigns a boost.

Given the offer’s $89.99 price tag, the team was eager to optimize every aspect of the campaign to scale conversions. Fortunately, it gained impressive traction from the offset and exceeded its baseline with a 2.7 per cent conversion rate. In total, the US campaign garnered over 100,000 purchases, 99 per cent of which were from first-time customers. Manscaped and Tapjoy have since taken the campaign international, and have again seen great success. Rewarded in-app offers now play a pivotal role in Manscaped’s growth strategy, and the company plans to continue to invest in the partnership in the future.

Judges’ View: “From start to finish this campaign is flawless. It is a fantastic example of a tried and tested campaign to understand the end consumer, with massively impressive results. Pulling off a successful CPA campaign on a product of that value is always tricky to achieve, but they passed the test with flying colours.