How Philips got CTRs 5X the average from a hard-to-reach premium audience in Vietnam

Background and objective

Philips wanted to create greater awareness and drive consideration and preference in Vietnam for a range of premium products, such as a pressure cooker, air fryer, garment steamer and cordless vacuum.         

The core target audience was young Vietnamese couples and families in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, residing in upscale apartment buildings.

According to a Nielsen study, in APAC, over a quarter of consumers say they seek out products which make life easier (27%) and convenient to use (27%), while around one in five consumers is looking for products suitable for small households (21%) and tailored to a specific need (22%).

While broad targeting would reach a large base, it would be wasteful given the premium price-point of the products. In addition, the group was known to watched much less TV and read far less than the average. 

Vietnam does not have a post code system, so no easy way to profile geographic areas exists. In addition, radius-targeting was not viable because diverse types of dwelling units often exist in close proximity to each other, risking spillover to the wrong audiences.

Execution

The team mapped-out major residential districts in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, identified apartment buildings within each district and graded every building based upon the facilities it offered. 'Grade-A' buildings were tagged and polygons were built around them.

The team then overlaid this geographic data with Inmobi’s Audience Data to identify those audiences that matched the core target. Each time a core user was seen within the custom virtual geofence, a Philips ad was delivered within apps on their device.

The mobile-only campaign started with three product ads shown sequentially, followed by a range ad. The first three, full-screen ads highlighted the product’s premium design and finish. These ads featured interactive elements. For example, the garment-steamer ad encouraged users to wipe the screen to iron, while the electric pressure cooker ad encouraged users to set the timer to turn on the cooking function. Calls to action invited users to visit the website or find a store.

After users had seen each of the product ads, they were re-targeted and served the range-ad, in which a panoramic image of a premium home showcased the products with hotspots. Upon clicking each hotspot, users could view the product video and visit the website to find out more. This highly impactful and innovative ‘rich-media-with-video’ format helped break banner-fatigue, boosting campaign relevance and stickiness.

Results

The campaign reached 80% of premium audiences in 120 grade-A buildings in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The clickthrough rate was 2.3%—more than five times the global average for all display ads.

On average users spent 48 seconds on the ad unit.

A post-campaign study measured the impact of the campaign on brand metrics:

• 36% of users stated their perception of Philips changed to be ‘more favorable’
• 65% of users were more favorably aligned to the brand
• 88% of users agreed on the ‘brand for me’ dimension.

Versus the same period a year earlier, sales of

• Garment steamers grew by 50%
• Electric pressure cookers grew by 91%
• Air fryers grew by 252%.