When soup sales were down in Australia, Campbell's Soup turned to Director Mix, Google's new tool, to run a dynamic, creative campaign on YouTube. The tool helped generate customised creative for different audiences, leading to over 1.5M total views and a 55% increase in Campbell's Simply Soup sales between May and July 2016.
Goals
Increase online video engagement
Improve cost efficiency
Increase soup sales as demand falls in a warming climate
Approach
Used Director Mix to generate customised creative
Served ads across YouTube's TrueView
Continually optimised campaign
Results
1.67M total views
Average view rate of 55%
24% increase in ad recall
55% increase in sales for Simply Soup
People love soup. Especially when the weather gets chilly, a steaming bowl of soup is a classic comfort food. But what happens to soup sales when the weather doesn't cool down? That was the problem facing Campbell's Soup during Australia's warmest winter on record, when demand hit at an all-time low.
Campbell's needed a way to remind Australians that it has a soup for every occasion—no matter the temperature—so it turned to Google's Director Mix tool to help launch a dynamic YouTube campaign.
Campbell's builds customised creative with Director Mix
Campbell's knew YouTube was the way to reach key audiences in Australia and it wanted to catch people's attention in a special way. Director Mix, Google's new tool, allowed Campbell's to create 1,700 variations of a single video while targeting specific audiences on YouTube.
Users searching YouTube for "Orange is the New Black," for example, were served ads with cheeky copy about prison food. Those searching for Beyonce's "Single Ladies" were asked if they needed "dinner for one." The campaign didn't give users one reason to buy Campbell's soup; it gave them thousands of reasons.
"It allows us to be really relevant, really topical, and really quick," said Kate Stoddart, marketing manager at Campbell's. By dynamically inserting customised creative relevant to the user, Campbell's found a memorable way to let a range of Australians know that it has a soup for them.
Campbell's served the videos across TrueView, YouTube's skippable ads format. TrueView allowed Campbell's to continually optimise its "SoupTube" campaign by targeting relevant audiences contextually and behaviourally. These innovative efforts led to full stomachs for Australians, and best-in-class results for Campbell's.
SoupTube campaign increases ad recall, drives sales
With an average view rate of 55.43%, the "SoupTube" campaign garnered 1.67M total views, generating a 24.9% lift in ad recall and a 6.9% lift in brand awareness—impressive for an already well-known brand like Campbell's.
The use of Director Mix saved a lot of time during the planning stages of the campaign as well as reduced production costs. And best of all, despite the heat, Campbell's "Simply Soups" saw a 55.6% increase in sales.
