Dove offers a wide variety of products that are clinically superior in terms of care while maintained at a price point within reach of most women, successfully establishing itself as synonymous to accessible self-care and damaged hair care solution.

As consumers today enjoy deeply personalized communication, Dove rose to the challenge and started with an extensive first-party data collection. It used its business challenges as the starting point:

1. The weakening proposition on damage shows that Dove needs to reinforce its superiority to its main consumers.

2. The high price perception showed that Dove needs to find price-sensitive consumers and communicate appropriately to them.

Identifying these consumer groups we can serve differentiated communication messages led Dove to doing extensive first-party data collection – while still adhering to data privacy measures – through the years and have positively impacted metrics for the brand.

LEVERAGING ON FIRST-PARTY DATA TO DELIVER CUSTOMIZED MESSAGES, GROWING THESE INTO SCALED AUDIENCES TO POSSIBLY RIVAL THIRD PARTY-DERIVED AUDIENCES

Dove tapped a partner and piloted CODA (Custom, Optimized, Designer Audiences).

CODA is an API tool (called Bridge) that will enable Dove to build bespoke lookalike audiences on YouTube. These audiences are powered by first-party data, partner-intent signals, and advanced controls to define bespoke lookalike audiences specifically curated for Dove. CODA provides control and transparency during the lookalike audience modeling process in a privacy-safe manner and using insights from the said partner, Dove can iterate on the lookalike audience definition until they're happy with both reach as well as audience composition. Once it's created, the bespoke lookalike audience can be activated on YouTube.

The solution deployed was a global, first-of-its-kind technology called Bridge. Bridge is an internal advanced audience modeling tool that uses the partner’s CODA technology via direct API. This solution allows more control, customization, and transparency when crafting bespoke look-alike audiences that would otherwise be difficult to locate.

The strategy was 3-pronged:

• First, to have Bridge leverage Customer Match & Remarketing Lists as the mechanism for defining the desired target person to scale unique reach.

• Next, to improve audience segments based on these insights and develop new content after learning new customer trends

• Lastly, to develop geo-lookalike audiences to expand the first-party seed list to reach a much broader, yet highly engaged audience.

To measure the success of this campaign, Dove looked at three key things: the size of the audience reached, better engagement with the target audiences in the form of click-throughs, and better responses to the brand lift survey attached to the campaign measuring awareness and consideration.

At the end of the run, the campaign results were met with critical success that resonated across the world. It has set the standard globally, on the powerful impact that informed technology will have on the future of data innovation:

• 845k unique user reach, exceeding a counterpart first-party campaign reach by 264%

• The audiences curated delivered 33% Reach vs Broad (Demo) Campaign

• +9pp higher CTR than regular first-party audience campaign

• +4pp higher benchmark CTR than broad audience campaign

• 9k gathered survey responses LS, 70% higher responses vs broad audience campaign