2022 Silver Performance Marketing Activity

Agency: TMW Unlimited

Client: WeightWatchers

Campaign Name: Turbo-charging post-lockdown performance

Campaign Overview

Post-pandemic, consumers deprioritised health and wellness in favour of embracing freedom, leaving health brands with a diminishing market that was also flooded with new competitors.

Strategy

To drive business performance, the brand reduced its performance marketing spend. This used latest media trends, historic channel performance and consumer insights to flip media and marketing strategy, and deliver an audience, creative and targeting approach which maximised effectiveness, and prioritised brand media to hit performance goals.

WeightWatchers couldn't outspend competitors, so needed to outsmart them. Spend was shifted from traditional performance channels - PPC and social - to upper-funnel tactics, to improve overall integrated campaign effectiveness.

CRM and Nectar data was harnessed to target lapsed subscribers, WeightWatchers food shoppers and look-a-like audiences to acquire at scale. This was supported by data-matching within digital channels, along with emails which were optimised towards highest-propensity moments to rejoin driven by life-stage and event triggers.

In social and display, the team used app tracking data to identify members' favourite restaurants, shops and food types, and created targeting pools to attract new high-affinity audiences.

Contextual targeting, optimised spend and content using trend and moment optimisation tools allowed WeightWatchers to react to and hijack new trends as they happened. In PPC, geo-targeted incrementality studies enabled the agency to refocus spend on terms that would drive the greatest incremental uplift and most white space.

Creativity

A data-fuelled approach enabled the brand to flex its creative and targeting based on consumers' content consumption, category interest, weight-loss barriers and overall sentiment in a post-Covid world.

The work demonstrated how people could live their best lives, overcoming barriers while achieving healthy weight loss.

Results

The data-driven approach was core to the campaign’s success. MMM data helped identify the way to drive business performance was to invest less in performance channels, and more in broad-reaching channels which drove higher incrementality.

MTA data shone a light on the length of the path to purchase, determining that rational messaging would not be enough for people who take 1.5 months to convert. This informed the decision to introduce emotional messaging across channels.

CRM data was successfully integrated into digital and above-the-line channels, including website, social and TV. Geo-activated incrementality testing demonstrated where to invest in PPC. Contextual data and audience signals and trends informed when to spend and jump on trends as they arrived.

All of these learnings contributed to one of WeightWatchers’ most efficient campaigns, with a 20% increase in media-contributed sales alongside an increase in media spend of just 1%.

CPAs were down across key acquisition channels, beyond KPIs. DRTV CPAs reduced by 41% at a time when media buying costs were skyrocketing. PPC reduced by 39%. Social media results outstripped expectations.

The Team

WW - Tony Miller VP, Digital & Growth Marketing - Harriet Grange, Head of Acquisition - Lily Lee-Steere, Senior Marketing Manager - Laura Santos, Senior Digital Performance Manager - Catharyne Walton-Matthews, Social Media Manager - Annie Chen, Digital Assistant - Ben Ferrari, Marketing Coordinator - Stuart Chappell, CRM Manager

TMW Unlimited - Phil Rhodes, Creative Director - Kate Craggs, Senior Copywriter - Caroline Matthews, Senior Art Director - Paul Dazeley, Head of Planning - Phoebe Rodgers, Planner - Emma Norman, Chief Client Officer - Claire Wilson, Senior Account Director - Sophie Peck, Account Director - Becky Yates, Senior Account Manager