After more than a dozen years of putting the bulk of its ad dollars into traditional TV, Loblaw has made a big shift to digital for one of its biggest annual campaigns.
The company created a digital-first strategy for this year’s President’s Choice Summer Insiders Report, with a focus on the web’s most visual properties.
Sabrina LaRosa, Loblaw’s senior director of media, says the objective was to build awareness with younger demographics and connect with Canadians where they are engaging with content online. It became clear that the team needed to invest in a digital strategy that would appeal to young shoppers and create new opportunities to test ads content through audience targeting and personalization.
“Past campaigns have been almost entirely traditional versus digital but it was time for change to try to reach a younger audience,” LaRosa says. “We wanted to test going lighter on TV, trying more digital video and stronger digital as a whole to see if we get the same impact, the same awareness, same deliverables. That was the initial strategy going into it. Key partners like Google really started the ball rolling in terms of ideating of how we can go to market in that digital lens.”
Working closely with Google enabled Loblaw to take one single creative asset and turn it into 16 different variations on YouTube through Ads Creative Studio. Each ad features similar creative but with unique messaging personalized for specific audiences such as outdoorsy daytrippers, backyard BBQers or elegant evening entertainers. AI-generated voice overs further personalize the content.
“We’re leveraging a lot of the video assets and platforms [Google and YouTube] have,” LaRosa says. “We still have some TV in the mix but heavier on the digital side, so 70% digital, 30% traditional, with a bit of social in the middle.”
In addition, Google’s Broad Match AI keyword search helps Loblaws reach broader audiences without having to build expensive keyword lists. Broad Match searches automatically account for misspellings, different variations and other relevant, but not exact, terms. This is especially relevant for President’s Choice, which regularly uses its Insider’s Report to launch new products with on-trend and international ingredients, such as ube, yuzu and wagyu, that consumers may be interested in but not yet familiar enough with to spell.
Matt Sicoly, retail account executive with Google Canada, says this campaign in particular was a one that Loblaw and Google wanted to use as a testing bed and pilot for other campaigns.
“I think some of some of the work we did on this campaign will inform and help us kind of scale all of the other banners and Loblaws. This has been really cool to see this work so well with a younger demo, and it will definitely transform the rest of the marketing.”
So far results show statistically significant reach in both ad recall and consideration, an incremental lift in search for “President’s Choice” and, most importantly, the campaign outpacing sales by 14% compared to last year’s report. LaRosa says the media strategy is one that will continue for the grocer into 2024 as it continues to try and reach a younger audience.
