Unilever?s Maille tastes mobile?s potential with beacon campaign targeting foodies
Unilever?s Maille mustard brand has added a dash of beacon marketing to help it target foodies in Los Angeles and Chicago grocery stores, driving sales at the point of purchase while gaining earned media for the brand?s first digital campaign in the United States.
The centuries-old brand is using beacons to reach consumers with an expressed interest in food, including foodie bloggers, while they are grocery shopping via an ad designed to raise awareness of Maille and encourage viewers to look for it in the store. Working with beacon marketing network inMarket, Maille?s content is appearing in applications such as Epicurious, CheckPoints and List Ease.
?It is a very traditional company that really wanted to target foodies in the LA and Chicago markets with one of its first digital campaigns,? said Kevin Hunter, president of inMarket.
?We were able to find a lot of their target audience and have the brand be further down the purchase funnel for immediate impact,? he said.
?Targeting at the point of purchase lifts sales and doing it with influencers helps the brand get earned media.?
Contextual, targeted marketing
When someone with a food-related app in inMarket?s network walks into a grocery stores in Los Angeles or Chicago that is part of the program, the shopper will receive a push notification reminder to open the app and access saved content such as a recipe or a grocery list. Users who swipe the message to open the app will see a full-page branded message from Maille before being taken directly to their saved content.
The ad positions Maille Dijon mustard as an important ingredient in ?extraordinary? meals and encourages users to find it in the condiments aisle.
As a traditional brand that has not done a lot of digital marketing before, the overarching approach from Maille is to target those with an interest in food in the digital space and encourage them to share recipes and content about its products.
Maille is actively engaging consumers across social media but also wanted a way to leverage technology to reach consumers further down the purchase funnel and drive a quick lift in sales.
The beacon-driven ads, which have been running for a month and are scheduled to continue for another month, enable the brand to take advantage of contextual relevance and interest-based marketing to reach the right consumers at the right time.
A growing opportunity
Last month, craft brewery Schlafly Beer leveraged beacons located on beer taps to send customized messaging to consumers as part of a growing network of bars and restaurants in St. Louis, MO (see story).
Earlier in May, Citibank said it is deploying beacons at select Manhattan branches, enabling customers to enter ATM lobbies during off-hours without a card and to receive personalized, location-based messages (see story).
?We are driving engagements inside grocery and retail stores,? said Christine Fleming, marketing director at inMarket. ?They saw this as a real opportunity to use the scale of our network to be able to able to reach shoppers in the moment in the store.?
