Mars on why media conversations come before the creative idea
After shifting to a global media account two years, Mars now believes in working out its media strategy before conceiving the creative concept in order to drive more value from its marketing and reach audiences at a time of “media explosion”.
Dolmio advert
Mars now works exclusively with Mediacom to run its media business globally, a decision that vice president and global food chief marketing officer Silvia Davila told The Drum means the agency isn’t competing for its business, but instead to become a “better strategic partner”, which leads to better learnings for the maker of Dolmio and M&Ms.
“We gave the whole business to Mediacom in an effort of really having media conversations at the beginning of an idea,” she said. “So even before it becomes creative they are playing a very strategic role on the way that we create the ecosystem and within that they are not competing for our business, they are competing to become a better strategic partner all the way through so that was a key transformation”.
As a knock on effect on the ROI of its advertising and marketing, Davila said that Mars is already seeing better consistency across all parts of the business.
“What we have seen is consistency on the delivery and a lot of discipline in the test and learn. We are really leveraging the learnings of the segments, so if something is happening in pet care and it is actually really well communicated, it doesn’t matter the size of the segment we can all learn from each other, that is something that we have also seen a great benefit of the same agency having the visibility of everything”.
Elsewhere, Mars is continuing to drive home its recent shift of marketing its products as either “Every day” or “Occasional” in response to changing consumer attitudes towards health and the onus on brands to better look after the wellbeing of those buying their products. Mars estimate that five per cent of its range will incur an ‘occasional’ recommendation including Dolmio lasagne sauces and Uncle Ben’s oriental sauces pending a reformulation of their recipes in the next five years to cut out excess salt, sugar or fat. To date, Mars has reduced the sodium in its food by 20 per cent and will aim to cut that by a further 20 per cent.
During the remainder of 2016 Davila added that Mars will be building internal capabilities for its media analytics globally as it looks to negotiate the of “media explosion” and understand what is real reach and what is fraud.
“The media explosion in general and reaching consumers is a very complicated journey because not only is that becoming a totally different ritual where reaction, region, relevance are new conversations, there is also the challenge around what is real and what is not. Is that real reach or are you going into sites that are relevant sites or are they just created sites? So that is something that is going to challenge all of us as advertisers and understanding where we are putting our money”.