Unilever Breeze Partners with InMobi to Drive Personalization at Scale

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In the Philippines, Unilever provides consumers with laundry products under the brand name 'Breeze'

These products can be used for washing clothes either by hand or with the washing machine. The detergent market in the Philippines is dominated by powders and bars, with more than 95% of consumers preferring these formats over liquids.

Breeze had the objective of growing the penetration of the liquid in the market, familiarizing consumers traditionally used to the powder detergents with the new format. To this extent, Unilever needed to understand, identify, engage and acquire customers in a manner that drives a paradigm shift in their washing behavior. With a legacy of increasing convenience and brightening the lives of millions of households around the world, Unilever had to help consumers in the Philippines leap forward for effective washing through liquid detergents.

Leveraging Mobile to Understand, Identify, Engage and Acquire
The Philippines has 71% internet and 89% mobile penetration. This translates to millions of connected consumers across the nation. Keeping this in mind, Breeze built a mobile in-app strategy to survey consumers In the Philippines and bring about the attitudinal shift among them. Unilever identified InMobi as the digital partner of choice to understand the nature of its audiences, identify key behaviors and then engage and acquire them through a tailored experience.

Part 1: Understanding Audience Behavior with InMobi Pulse

Unilever, through traditional research methods, gathered seven key barriers for consumers to switch from powder to liquid detergents. However, the findings of the traditional research fell short in providing the lower funnel triggers that are required to create sharp brand messaging. These qualitative insights were not sufficient to precisely understand such a broad category of consumers and to action a plan that drives a shift in their washing behavior.

Through the survey conducted on InMobi Pulse with 11,000 respondents, Unilever found that 43% of Filipinos, especially mothers and homemakers, prefer to wash by hand. The survey also disclosed the drivers of preference for detergent choice. The survey identified three audience clusters; 1. the Bargain Hunters, who are price-conscious consumers, 2. the Skeptics, who are happy with their washing products, and refrain from trying new solutions, and 3. Laggards are the slow decision-makers.

Part 2: Identifying Potential Customers with InMobi Audiences

Unilever developed a rich understanding of their consumers through a survey on Pulse, the leading mobile consumer intelligence platform. However, to activate its communication strategy, Unilever needed to precisely target each of the segments, Bargain Hunters, Skeptics, and Laggards, at a massive scale. At the same time, the brand had to target these mobile audiences while staying up to date with their changing shopping habits, preferences, or media behavior as micro-moments unfold in their daily lives.

Unilever leveraged InMobi Audiences to amplify the three clustered audiences into a larger look-alike audience of similar preferences and behavior. InMobi’s ML-based model used over 2000 different attributes to enhance Unilever’s seed audience of 11,500 users into lookalike audiences of 1.5 million consumers from each segment.

Part 3: Engaging and Acquiring Customers with InMobi Exchange

Unilever had to create tailored creative and mobile media strategies for the 1.5 Million Filipinos. The brand had to be mindful of the right blend of creative and media efficiency to drive maximum impact.

Unilever leveraged programmatic video to deliver ads with customized messaging and aesthetics to the audience segments of Bargain Hunters, Skeptics, and Laggards. Unilever’s leadership in programmatic planning and buying meant an easy integration with best-of-breed technologies and capabilities such as InMobi Exchange and complete access to digital media quality measures around viewability, transparent brand safety, and high in-target delivery.

Sales Metrics
Marketers noticed that 13% of the viewers visited the website, 19% checked the product online, and 1 in 3 consumers went ahead and bought the product. The 33% of consumers who stated their intent to buy the product defines the campaign succeeded in driving the perception shift of powder-using consumers trying liquid detergents. Turnover of liquid detergents witnessed a YoY uplift of 30.3% in September 2019 and 24.8% in October 2019.

If you want to see the details of the Unilever case study, you can see from this video