2023 Silver Out of Home

Agency: Havas Media Network

Client: Starbucks

Entry Title: Winning Hearts & Minds of Gen-Z

Executive Summary

Starbucks adapted to unique market conditions and consumer behaviour change, by identifying a new growth audience.

Strategy

Starbucks operates in a category where consumer behaviour has seen a complete transformation post-pandemic. Hybrid working has impacted the frequency of category engagement and purchase intent. The brand needed to fix a growing revenue gap.

Utilising proprietary research fused with YouGov data, an opportunity arose by identifying a new, critical audience group: Gen-Z+ (18 to 28). A less habitual group, but an audience identified as a high-priority cohort capable to help close the sales gap.

Sales data demonstrated a rise in iced coffee beverage orders; importantly driven by a younger consumer, and positively for Starbucks, the drinks demanded an average order value that was 32% higher than traditional espresso-based hot drinks.

Creativity

How do you win when you can’t outspend? You out-connect. The campaign needed to do just that, connecting with the emerging Gen Z target audience: the answer was data.

The team used DMP ADA from Talon to build a bespoke audience by analysing more than 9 million mobile ad IDs, and associated mobile-location data mapped against Starbucks locations.

The data was ingested into the DMP from the data supplier Pickwell and used in tandem with a point of interest data-set from EMAP to identify visitation behaviour to different coffee brands. This was overlaid with home locations which over-indexed for 18-24s: 4.9 million individuals, and the Gen Z Coffee House Hopper audience was born.

The team scored 200,000+ viable panels, ensuring the audience’s habitual movements were captured and the frames they were most likely to see were identified. The DOOH schedule was further optimised using Talon’s DSP Atlas to perform an automated buy of all panels in proximity to Starbucks stores, down to an hourly level that over-indexed for impressions served to the target audience.

Results

The ambition was to create short-term revenue, mid-term frequency and long- term brand love success via a new data-driven approach to Out Of Home. This was a unique approach for Starbucks, which immediately saw a more cost-effective buying approach, reducing CPTs, minimising waste and delivering a 62% uplift in target audience impressions.

The Team

Havas Media Network - Andrew Darby, Managing Partner - Eliza Fowler, Business Director - Charlotte Rudd Mx Manager - Lara Loh, Mx Manager - Alex Smith Account Executive

Contributors

Talon