How Reckitt are using Automated Ads to Champion a New Way of Working
At the recent DMEXCO/MADfest event Lindsay Barrett, the global head of Content & CX at Reckitt Benckiser, gave a global audience an insight into how they are using automation to power their digital advertising performance and insight.
Lindsay was quite frank when she tells the audience that her job means “she gets to talk about sex positions and c-sections all day long.” Her team is tasked with shifting RB’s business to a consumer-first model. The fun part for Lindsay is piloting and scaling partners that improve content relevance and performance. The hard part is convincing brand teams we don’t need them to produce expensive ads all the time!
Reckitt Benckiser has used automation to improve ad performance and give them “shed loads more consumer insights.” Despite this being a game-changing transformation for RB. It was an uncomfortable shift in both mindset and process. Lindsay’s team went from creating a small number of ads to compiling banks of assets and handing creative control over to an algorithm. The beauty of this new process is that their ads develop over time based on which emotional triggers the audience is in the mood for and not what mood the brand’s team is in.
Reckitt Benckiser has been working with Automated Creative for the past two years in the US, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Vietnam, Thailand and Peru. The goal was to overdrive enrolments into their CRM program AND remove assumptions and bias from their comms. Automated Creative’s technology has created hundreds of new ads that organically improve each week. The system drills down into which combination of visual and language triggers are most successful. It produces unique creative to test different visuals, messaging, language styles and formats.
By working in this unconventional way Barratt’s team have “proved a lot of people wrong, mostly ourselves, which was fun.” Here’s a breakdown of the insights Automated Creative were able to uncover for RB:
Mexico - RB had never tested visuals of Dads when targeting moms. This led to a dramatic increase in performance.
Canada - AC generated hundreds of ads in both English and French Canadian. Despite them being the audience being from the same demographic. Different languages produced differing data. The English speaking audience wanted rewards and discounts and the French-speaking audience wanted tools and inspiration.
Peru - AC’s ads saw a 3x improvement on focussing on different visuals and different value propositions.
Vietnam - Ads performed much better when the face of the mum was not used in the ad.
US - The longer the video we used, the better the conversion rate, especially when using a fun and lighthearted tone of voice.
By leveraging Automated Creative’s automation-driven ads Reckitt Benckiser has been able to put the customer at the centre of our campaigns and champion a new way of working.