The case for going consumer-centric

These brands urgently need a solution that enables them to collect consumer data and understand consumers in a detailed way that no other third-party data could compare. Most importantly, they need to be the ones that offer the experience to customers and own the data produced during the process, tailored marketing messages and further customer engagement would thus be made possible. Perhaps a digital marketing campaign that links online and offline experiences together will do the job.

Bacardi, the spirits brand well-known for its identical white rum, offered a private beach-inspired shack space to a drinking-relaxing time with friends and family. Decorated with bamboo, palm trees, floral prints, and non-stop summery vibes, the shacks were the perfect spot to bring some sunshine to the day and in need of some extra help for lasting impressions on the customers, ultimately leading to brand loyalty.

In response to Bacardi’s challenge, Appetite Creative Soul-utions created a gorgeous looking, perfectly functional app to enhance the experience of rum shack in conjunction with Shazam. The app included a host of thumb engaging activities such as personality tests to find your perfect serve and the fact of the day, showing the versatility that Bacardi had and the huge variety of options in which it could be consumed, while offering a chance to win a bottle of Bacardi rum itself or a voucher to redeem a mojito in participating bars.

The result was exactly what we hoped for. With users coming back at least two times on average, and each session lasting for a solid 2.5 minutes on average, we were able to capture all the rich engagement user data the user activity presented for us including day time, drop off points and user sessions as well as location and collected email addresses of the competition entries, fully GDPR compliant.

12 bottles of rum were given away as well as over 900 mojitos in a successful experience where the users were immersed in the Bacardi brand during the whole customer journey online and offline. We created brand awareness, repeat users, and a really impressive session length and a whole host of primary data!

Rani Float is one of Coca-Cola's most fun and innovative products, with real fruit pieces. Coca Cola wanted to attract customers for the drink as the initial objective, so they came to Appetite Creative Soul-utions, wanted cutting edge technology, fantastic design, and a unique experience.

An augmented reality app was developed, using image recognition to identify the four flavours on offer. The digital campaign not only managed to attract customers to engage in the app for over four minutes on average, almost all users went through to the end of the game, but also acquired data such as location and peak hours of use, all broken down into fine details and stored in a clean and easy to use database, yet with everything aligned to GDPR.

As a result, customers unconsciously learned more about Rani Float while engaging, which flavours were on offer and where Rani Juices were located on the shelves. In turn, Rani Float knows the peak selling times of their products as well as where and when each flavour was being sold, making it easier to send customized marketing messages that leads to higher efficiency and better logistics planning as well as understanding more about the customer base itself.

Luckily, brands are well-situated to take advantage of digital campaigns in a world where digitalization is an accelerating trend. Now it is possible to refine marketing messages based on the users’ reaction to them while having a better understanding of which consumers are interacting with their products and where the interaction takes place. GDPR might have discouraged some data collection, but it has certainly inspired a new way out for being customer-centric.

Jenny Stanley, founder and managing director, Appetite Creative Soul-utions