Deodorant and antiperspirant company, Rexona, created four targeted ads and a stay-at-home marathon to encourage people to stay active and increase sales during the pandemic.
Objective:
Deodorant and antiperspirant company, Rexona, is a brand that has always encouraged movement, giving people the confidence to move and be active without sweating. When the pandemic hit, the brand launched an initiative to encourage people to stay active. The objective of the campaign was to encourage people to take up simple movements at home during their day-to-day activities.
For this campaign, Rexona wanted to focus on raising awareness on its brand purpose while engaging people on the topic of staying active. In addition, the brand wanted to ensure that it grew sales during a time of decreasing demand for deodorant as people were home more and becoming less active.
Target Audience:
Rexona targeted men and women ages 18-to-35 who are interested in "non-active" activities, such as watching movies or TV series and playing video games. Upon defining these interests and affinities, the company created four targeted ads.
Creative Strategy:
Rexona developed one ad targeting women and three targeting men. The context of the ad designed for the female target was focused on binge watchers and introducing simple exercises that could be done while binging their favorite show. The three male ads also aimed at promoting simple exercises that they can do while playing video games or watching a movie or series. The campaign ran via YouTube bumpers, using relevant affinity targeting for each.
To push the its effort even further, the brand wanted to engage people who continued to stay active, despite the pandemic. Rexona partnered up with Tri-Factory, Egypt's No. 1 marathon activation, to launch a stay-at-home marathon during Ramadan.
Since the campaign was running during a time of crisis, Rexona offered to donate one Egyptian pound (EGP) for every kilometer run during the virtual marathon, encouraging people to "move more for good." All the proceeds went to the Breath Foundation for ventilators in an effort to help COVID-19 patients. To further encourage people to stay home, Rexona established a presence on ecommerce retailers to ensure that people could shop for its products safely and responsibly during the pandemic.
Context:
In previous years Rexona's efforts were aimed at capturing non-deodorant users and educating its target audience about the use of antiperspirants. However, during the pandemic, Rexona risked losing active users because they were becoming much less active. Accordingly, Rexona had to change its strategy to maintain its clientele, while encouraging those who use other brands to switch. Therefore, the company measured retention, rather than expansion to ensure that it was not losing market share.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Rexona started its campaign by identifying its audience and developing four targeted ads to be served on YouTube. Because the targeting of the ads made them so relevant, the brand achieved results with cost-per-view 50 percent lower than the benchmark, proving a more effective and efficient approach.
For the say-at-home marathon, Rexona, in collaboration with Trifcatory, promoted announcements and posts on its owned channels, achieving a cost-per-click 38 percent lower than the benchmark.
Around 80 percent of the total campaign budget was dedicated to mobile. The total campaign budget was around $15,000. For the first layer of the campaign, Rexona knew that a wide majority of its target accessed YouTube through their phones, so it was important to make sure that the brand was present in the mobile environment to ensure maximum effectiveness. The second layer of the campaign — the stay-at-home marathon — was executed entirely on mobile.
Mobile Execution:
For the stay-at-home marathon, Rexona targeted people who were trying to stay active at home. The brand knew that most people were doing so through different fitness apps, so it partnered up with TriFactory for a mobile marathon experience where people were able to sign up on the app to complete the marathon. Users were able to track their progress through the app and share it with the rest of their friends on social media. Since this was the engagement aspect of the campaign, Rexona needed to make sure that it was well funded and continued to encourage people to run for the brand's cause. This allowed the company to create the perfect virtual experience and a deep sense of community where everyone was running for Rexona's purpose.
The campaign helped Rexona be heard and relevant during this difficult time. The brand hoped to only sustain shares and sell as much as it did in 2019, but the results were surprising: