Creative is at the very core of improving digital advertising engagement. It’s what engages consumers, or doesn’t, based on the relevance of images, copy and interactivity. Adopting a programmatic approach to marketing enabled the agency and the brand to effectively combine the power of technology with the beauty of creative to deliver the engaging, personalised brand experiences that consumers expect. Going programmatic meant more efficient media investments for Columbia Sportswear since impression volumes would only increase in times of severe weather, when people would be most likely to buy a winter jacket, whilst consumers enjoyed a better brand experience because the creative messages would be more relevant to them.

However, programmatic marketing has evolved far beyond being ‘just’ an efficient solution to running online advertising. The innovative combination of DCO and real time weather data demonstrates that it can be used for extremely unique creative executions and extending brand awareness to new audiences - the results speak for themselves! Columbia Sportswear saw a 40% increase in page views year-over-year and compared to the previous year’s winter campaign their engagement levels increased 4x. Most significantly, despite a 27% decrease in media investment year-over-year, the 2014 winter campaign saw a 4x year-over-year increase in product engagement.

The right data, in the right hands, and with the right platform can drive positive ROI for a brand and bring greater relevance to consumers. The main reason this campaign was so successful was because it was data-driven and it achieved one of the ultimate marketing goals: 1-to-1, personalised communication that resonates with consumers and drives actions.

This whole campaign was driven by the combination of technology, data and creative. Without the right data, the creative output would not be customised to each individual consumer and without a programmatic technology partner this couldn’t have been executed at such scale nor delivered with real time insights.

In all markets the campaign ran in, we ran ‘base’ creatives showing standard messaging to consumers that were not experiencing inclimate weather and ‘surge’ creatives that were triggered when audiences’ IP addresses aligned with severe weather forecasts. There were a series of variables taken into account to determine severe weather conditions and we were able to limit ‘surge’ messaging to only trigger for below freezing temperatures, snow and severe rain (classified as precipitation intensity of 0.4 inches/hour or more). For example: if the weather forecast for Boston was heavy snow and a consumer’s IP Address was in Boston, they would receive a piece of ‘surge’ creative. The copy would say “Forecast in Boston? Polar Vortex” (or some other copy variation) and show snow falling in the ad background.

This was a huge opportunity for the brand to be much more targeted and creative with their messaging. The custom bidder built by our optimisation team triggered the ‘surge’ flights so that the agency could monitor budgets devoted to ‘base’ and ‘surge’ flights. The agency could not only utilise the ‘base’ flights as a control group to measure the effectiveness of ‘surge’ messaging, but also get extremely granular on determining what constituted severe weather. The segmenting of budgets and creatives allowed them to be more aggressive in reaching individuals currently experiencing severe weather conditions, knowing these audiences would be more likely to purchase a new jacket - relevance drives responses.