By Chantal Tode
January 22, 2016
Dove’s curly hair emojis
NEW YORK – A Mindshare executive at Mobile Marketer’s Mobile FirstLook: Strategy 2016 discussed how Unilever’s Dove and Hellman’s brands built campaigns from core consumer insights that were a hit on mobile and showcased the power of native integrations.
“It is really difficult at times to build a mobile strategy for a lot of CPG brands just because everything is so different all the time,” said Jeff Malmad, managing director and head of mobile for Mindshare North America.
“So how do you build campaigns that are really built on a core insight,” he said. “How do you build campaigns that don’t just leverage mobile but leverage desktop, tablets, digital out of home and print.
“There are all these other touch points you have to consider in order to deliver these types of messages for these types of programs.”
A holistic strategy
The fundamentals of marketing have not changed. Brands are looking for ways to get consumers to engage with their products and eventually make a purchase.
What has changed is that there are now so many different channels through which to engage consumers. Thus, the challenge for marketers is how to break through the clutter and deliver programs that are driven by an idea first.
First, brands need to start with an overall concept and leverage it across all the different screens. The platform should be secondary.
“I’ve run hundreds of campaigns and the most successful campaigns that we deliver are the ones that really deliver that one core critical insight and then we take that core critical insight and spread it across all the different screens that are out there,” Mr. Malmad said.
“It is not our primary thought of we just need to build a mobile campaign,” he said.
Zones of mobility
Brands should prioritize their partners for multiplatform campaigns, per Mr. Malmad. There are so many potential partners, it is important to be very specific and choose who you want to work with.
To help Unilever accomplish this, Mindshare focuses on different zones of mobility. The comfort zone is about achieving scale and reaching a lot of people through partners that can push messages out to traditional media and social media.
The idle zone focuses on deriving consumer insights from their mobile location history.
The hot zone of mobility is about trying to reach consumers when they are in a parking lot of a store or walking in the front door using push notifications.
Love Your Curls
Unilever’s Dove brand worked with Mindshare on the Love Your Curls campaign, which was built around insights related to how young girls and women feel about their hair.
The research showed that four out 10 little girls do not like their curly hair while 10 percent of women do not love their hair because of their curls.
While the initial push was not meant to be a mobile campaign, it resulted in a significant number of women submitting stories to Unilever. This information was turned into a digital book, with 100,000 consumers downloading the content to their Kindle devices within a short period of time.
“From a Love Your Curls perspective, this really started to manifest itself into the world of mobile,” Mr. Malmad said.
Emoji keyboards
From there, further research showed that 76 percent of consumers today are using emojis when they communicate and 72 percent of women want to express themselves through an emoji.
Unilever and Mindshare decided to build an emoji keyboard for the brand rather than work with the consortium that oversees official emojis, as this can take a long time.
This resulted in the first curly hair emoji keyboard that was published, with consumers able to download and share it. The keyboard represents different ethnicities and also includes animated GIFs.
Dove’s curly hair emoji keyboard was downloaded more than 890,000 times.
“We found that there was an opportunity to communicate with the consumer and give them that value so they could express themselves in a way that they do not have an opportunity to do right now,” Mr. Malmad said.
“The opportunity with keyboards is great, but how do you get people to engage with it, how do you get people to stay with their keyboards,” he said.
“You will probably see in the future, more opportunities to get people to stay in the keyboard, either through CRM or other opportunities that are valuable to consumers.”
Beacons
The campaign also included TV, with spots talking about the emoji keyboard and a cover wrap on Teen Vogue with the emojis. There was also a social media component.
On the iTunes store on the day of the launch of the keyboard, Dove was trending as the most downloaded keyboard almost as soon as it launched.
For the Hellman’s brand, Unilever and Mindshare focused in on the insight that 48 percent of people do not know what they are going to eat for dinner at 4 p.m.
They build a campaign leveraging inMarket’s beacon network and relationship with Conde Nast’s Epicurious app to provide shoppers walking into grocery and mass merchant stores with content related to meal-time inspiration
“We are not pushing a Hellman’s message to people,” Mr. Malmad said. “We are pushing an Epicurious mealtime inspiration message to people and then they are going into that and experiencing different recipes they can make with Hellman’s.
“This is about integrating the brand in the shopping experience in a helpful way,” he said.
Native integrations
Users also were presented with a recipe suggestion when they were in the dressing aisle, with the option to save it for later.
With other campaigns for the brand in the market at the same time, there was a 5 percent increase in perception of brand versatility and a 1 percent lift in dollar share in a $ 2 billion industry.
“I showcased a lot of different campaigns and one of the things you did not see was mobile banners,” Mr. Malmad said. “I am a big believer in banners. They work really well.
“But, also at the same time, how do we create experiences that use native integrations, keyboards, push notifications, to drive more engagement and more product sales,” he said.
Senior Editor Chantal Tode covers advertising, messaging, legal/privacy and database/CRM. Reach her at chantal@mobilemarketer.com.
How Unilever leverages core consumer insights for mobile success: Mindshare exec
