A campaign for a local auto dealer submitted by Charter Communications’s Spectrum Reach unit won the inaugural Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for best campaign of the year.
Awards were also presented to Gamut for a campaign for footwear retailer Merrell for best use of data, Vevo’s campaign for Credit Karma Money for best multiplatform campaign and Fox’s effort for Pepsi Wild Cherry for best branded content.
The awards were presented November 18 at the Advanced Advertising Summit.
The Spectrum Reach campaign for Florida’s Palm Coast Ford used TV and targeted media and achieved a strong return on ad spending while meeting the client’s key goals, including sales.
Working with the dealership, the audience for the campaign was defined as a former Ford buyer or a shopper in the market for a new truck. Using Spectrum’s first-party data and third-party data from Polk, Spectrum Reach identified the networks that appealed to that automotive shopper for the linear campaign. Online video and search ads helped provide holistic multiscreen media coverage.
The campaign ran from December 14, 2020, to February 28, 2021 in both the dealership’s primary market and an area 20 miles south where Palm Coast Ford had not previously run a campaign.
Traffic to the dealership’s site was up 52% and sales were up 13%, Spectrum Reach said. Homes that were exposed to the ad bought 185 cars, or about one car for every 500 homes exposed to an ad. Spectrum households accounted for 61% of all sales during the three months, and people who saw an ad were 121% more likely to buy a new vehicle from Palm Coast Ford than those who didn’t see one.
“The story of Palm Coast Ford is one of local expertise and understanding our customers’ unique goals,” Diana Fusco, division VP of Spectrum Reach, said in accepting the award.
To support the relaunch of Pepsi Wild Cherry, Fox and Pepsi created a new game show, Cherries Wild, with six half-hour episodes hosted by Jason Biggs.The Wild Cherry brand was integrated into game play and set design and the game was extended across linear, digital, social and mobile media. A custom Cherries Wild interactive mobile gaming app was created, allowing viewers to play at home alongside show contestants in real time.
“At Fox, we don’t succeed unless our brands succeed, and Cherries Wild was a perfect example of a partnership that achieved both of these goals,” said Nancy Croston, senior VP of ad sales strategy and brand partnerships, Fox Entertainment.
In its winning campaign, Credit Karma wanted to promote its new checking account product. The brand turned to Vevo, the music video network, to achieve incremental reach on top of its linear TV campaign, while also driving awareness, favorability and purchase intent.
According to iSpot, 36% of Vevo’s connected-TV campaign audience was unduplicated with traditional linear TV. That means about 4 million unique viewers who never saw the Credit Karma Money campaign on linear TV were exposed only through Vevo. The campaign drove a 20% increase in brand consideration, 11% in product awareness and 14% in brand favorability for those with a credit score under 580. For those with credit scores between 740 and 799, product awareness was up 18%, brand consideration was up 20%, ad recall rose 16% and brand favorability was up 14%, Vevo said.
“This award is further proof of Vevo’s value to brands that advertise across our network,” said Hillary McPadden, senior director of sales at Vevo.
In its campaign, Merrell wanted to boost brand awareness and influence purchases among outdoor and fitness enthusiast adults in the 18 to 39 age bracket. Cox Media-owned Gamut used proprietary first-party data, customer data and third-party data sources to target relevant and engaged audiences down to the ZIP code level. Geographic targeting is another layer of targeting that was applied to the dataset used for the campaign.
Gamut worked with Cox Custom Research and Market Cube on the post-campaign analysis. The OTT campaign drove a 132% lift in purchase intent among the brand’s target audience, with 39% saying they planned to buy within the next six months.
“Gamut’s expertise with data is what helps our clients really extract the greatest return on ad spend when they run with us,” Gamut president Soo Jin Oh said. ■
