2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

Lifebuoy runs the world’s largest behavior change program to encourage hand washing. In response to the global pandemic, the brand has embarked on a public service campaign to remind people that hand hygiene and using any soap brand can help reduce the spread of infections. For this, the brand launched a YouTube campaign with the aim of reaching audiences on YouTube across the most relevant video content during the global pandemic and drive association of the brand with hygiene.

Describe the creative idea

Lifebuoy identified video as a highly relevant advertising channel to effectively target users, and partnered with Silverpush to leverage their AI powered video advertising platform Mirrors. The world’s first in-video context detection platform for video ad placement targeting, Mirrors enabled the brand to reach its consumers through content which is contextually relevant for the brand. Mirrors detects in-video contexts like faces, logos, objects, scenes and emotions to bring relevancy with the content users are actively consuming vs past searches and blanket targeting methods like affinities and keywords. This helped in leveraging avenues such as banner and bumper ads along with a 27 second video ad, targeting content that the relevant audience was watching, in real-time– and not based on previous YouTube viewing behaviour.

Describe the strategy

Lifebuoy’s unique formulation along with healthy hygiene habits can help protect entire families from infection. For this, the brand decided to reach out to both younger audience and parental figures in Egyptian households. For better targeting, Lifebuoy further narrowed down the audience to niche categories like users engaging with content related to pandemic like masks, hygiene, sanitisation and safety. And further targeted users engaging with content ranging from beauty, lifestyle to food and celebrity faces in order to build association with women across the region. To increase reach to parents, video content with toys and scenes like classroom and playgrounds were also selected.

Describe the execution

Brand reached out to the audience on content relating to health and hygiene to drive association with brand during the COVID-19 crisis. And targeted the following in-video contexts: • Objects: like masks, sanitizers, wheelchair, drip bottles. To increase reach to younger audience and their parents, video content with toys and scenes like classroom and playgrounds were selected. • Activities: like coughing and sneezing • Logos: of brands like J&J, Dettol, and Lux • Faces: celebrity endorsers, and YouTube influencers like Ruba Zai, Tala Samman, and Ahmad and Ascia were targeted. The popular faces helped attract the18-24 years population in particular. Type of videos included Vlogs, interviews, make up tutorials etc. • On-screen text: to amplify the effect, audience was reached on all contexts that contained texts like Corona or COVID-19. • To increase reach to female audience, campaign was delivered over content relating to make-up, cosmetics and fashion related brands.

List the results

Overall, The campaign showed unprecedented results. Ads were seen over 2M times on YouTube with 25.05% view rate. Users were a lot more engaged with the ad using this contextual targeting compared to regular targeting with 25.05% VR Campaign started with 20% view rate. Optimization over best performing video content improved view rate by 20-25% in the second week of the campaign. View rate reached 32% towards conclusion. While for business results Lifebuoy had 4X LB USG in H1 and 7X E Com growth in skin cleansing category and is now officially a 100M EGP brand.