Lockdowns have resulted in millions suddenly changing their food consumption habits, travel plans & finding other ways to manage their underlying health conditions. For the Anti Diarrhoea (AD) category, this meant staying at home where conditions are more manageable, ultimately causing a fall in sales for Imodium.

As COVID measures were lifted we expected more episodes/incidents to be reported and we needed to re-engage with those who have left the category, bringing Imodium top of mind and back into their shopping baskets.

Pre-pandemic, our media strategy had focused on key insights and triggers of diarrhoea such as food, stress and travel, allowing us to get closer to an audience who are difficult to reach in the digital space. We were suddenly in a category environment where each of these triggers was increasing and decreasing rapidly in response to ever-changing and stressful UK Government measures.

The next challenge was automating the process. We built an application interface protocol connection (API) between Compass and the Trade Desk real-time programmatic platform, to personalise digital creative to our audience. The API allowed budgets to flow through from Compass Connect into the trading platform in real-time, reducing the amount of time taken to turn insight into action.

Budgets were set at a total level based on predicted category sales then automatic adjustments were made to creative rotation using modelled triggers to automatically serve the most relevant trigger-based creative from our decision tree into the market.

We ran the activity in two stages. The first stage tested the technology and budget pass-through to the trading platform. Initial tests showed this was successful and that there were no unexpected issues ahead of the full campaign. We then ran the main campaign, monitoring it throughout for any anomalies.

We ingested brand searches, food interest data, stress content consumption, travel & mobility data alongside an updated sales feed. We used the data to set overall budget at any given time and ensure our budget was being invested when it would have greatest effect.

We went even further and broke down the effect of each trigger dataset against sales.

Using the data, we were able to understand how relevant each trigger was at any given moment and split our current budget against brand, travel, stress and food content. We also developed a dynamic decision tree with creatives that would respond to each of these factors whilst taking into account the location of impression and time of week.

The campaign was a huge success, correctly adjusting live campaigns and capturing the attention of lapsed category buyers.

Compass Connect delivered an incredible ROI of 170% for programmatic display after stripping out the effect of lockdowns using an independent econometric study by Johnson & Johnson.

That’s not all – the agility of Compass Connect has delivered returns for Imodium in the UK, today and provided confidence in predictive analytics for the future, with the technology now being applied across multiple markets and Johnson & Johnson brands beyond the UK.

As Kelvin Muturi, Senior Media Manager UK said, ‘The Compass Connect Tool has been a game changer for J&J, enabling us to support our Imodium audiences through the most difficult of times, by serving the right creative message, at the right times, with results that speak for themselves’