Unilever's 'Vaseline Gluta-Hya Serum Burst Lotion' campaign won Gold in Media Programmatic at The Drum Awards, leveraging a full-funnel omnichannel strategy to drive brand lift and footfall conversions in Bangkok and Northeast Thailand, achieving a 20% sales uplift and 37% faster conversion time.
As an innovation leader, Unilever aimed to drive brand lift and footfall conversions for its 'Vaseline Gluta-Hya Serum Burst Lotion' range. The campaign faced a multifaceted challenge: engaging consumers in Bangkok and the Northeast—high-potential yet historically difficult markets—and turning attention into measurable store visits and sales. Compounding this challenge was the need to promote various products in the Vaseline Gluta-Hya Serum Burst Lotion range, each offering unique benefits aligned with the brand’s vision of seamlessly serving all lifestyles. Whether targeting sporty individuals, enthusiastic clubbers, or cafe hoppers, the campaign had to clearly communicate how each product complemented different lifestyles. To ensure strong brand recall and engagement, it had to do this without causing consumer confusion.
The Northeast, Thailand’s most populous region, represents a significant growth opportunity, but its predominantly rural population and limited digital infrastructure have historically made targeting difficult. To succeed, Unilever needed to deliver contextual, relevant messaging that highlighted each product’s unique benefits, precisely targeted and delivered at the right moment and place.
Partnering with its agency, Spark Foundry (Publicis Media), and The Trade Desk, Unilever devised a full-funnel omnichannel strategy. This approach effectively reached potential customers, delivered location-specific ads in Bangkok and the Northeast, and drove tangible business outcomes, including measurable brand lift and footfall conversions.
To break through consumer fragmentation and ensure consistent visibility across the most relevant touchpoints, Vaseline recognized that no single channel alone could deliver the scale, precision, and contextual impact needed. So, it combined digital out-of-home (DOOH) for mass visibility in high-traffic locations, over-the-top (OTT) and audio for immersive storytelling in personal environments, and display ads for reinforcement and retargeting. This created a seamless omnichannel presence that maximized reach and engagement throughout the consumer journey.
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The campaign’s unique selling point lies in its pioneering role as Thailand’s first-ever programmatic omnichannel strategy, setting a new standard for integrating digital and offline channels. By leveraging The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) in conjunction with customer relationship management (CRM) data, Unilever ensured precise, privacy-safe audience targeting, unlocking premium inventory across diverse channels. This innovative approach was complemented by advanced dynamic creative optimization (DCO) to deliver contextually relevant, real-time advertising that resonated deeply with consumers.
The approach hinged on a holistic strategy that seamlessly integrated each channel’s unique strengths. DOOH capitalized on the power of physical presence and contextual relevance to create moments of impact in high-visibility areas. Audio and OTT provided immersive experiences that connected with consumers during private and leisure moments. Meanwhile, display added a critical layer, extending the reach and frequency of engagement by reinforcing key messages and serving as a retargeting engine to recall previously engaged consumers across online web environments.
To ensure the right message reached the right people, Vaseline began with a foundation of identity and precision targeting. Using UID2, CRM data was transformed into privacy-safe identifiers, then enriched with lookalike audiences and third-party data. This provided a broad yet targeted audience, while the identity graph mapped CRM data to device IDs, ensuring seamless connection across channels and devices.
On top of this base, the campaign added a shield of contextual intelligence through programmatic DOOH placements in high-traffic locations, including cafes, nightclubs, fashion outlets, and gyms. To maximize the impact of DOOH advertising, where location and context shape every message, consumers were served different ads based on their environment. For example, in the Northeast, where most people work outdoors, ads emphasized the product’s non-stickiness in hot weather.
A touch of personalized treatment came through DCO, delivering contextual, data-driven, real-time advertising via Plan B screens in Bangkok. This approach allowed Unilever to serve ads relevant to consumers’ interests, based on each screen’s location. For example, in Bangkok, the company served ads for Vaseline Overnight Radiance Repair near nightclubs, highlighting how the product can help partygoers restore and rejuvenate their skin overnight.
The campaign then ensured a seamless and engaging consumer journey across premium audio and OTT partners, including True ID, using frequency capping across all channels to reduce ad fatigue and optimize ad spend.
Following the precision-targeted engagements via audio and OTT platforms, display ads were strategically deployed as a pivotal component of the retargeting approach. These ads re-engaged consumers who had previously interacted with the company’s DOOH, audio, and OTT content. By tapping into the insights gathered from earlier touchpoints, these display ads were customized to reinforce the campaign’s key messages, thereby extending the interaction lifecycle.
This strategic retargeting allowed Unilever to maintain continuity in messaging and foster a deeper connection with the audience, ultimately guiding them down the funnel. Through personalized and contextually relevant display ads, the campaign effectively turned initial interest into deliberate action, converting engaged viewers into active store visitors. This cohesive integration of channels enhanced brand recall and encouraged repeated engagement, solidifying consumers’ relationship with the Vaseline brand.
To measure impact, Unilever activated the Lifesight footfall measurement solution via The Trade Desk platform. This allowed the brand to match visitation data for Lotus’s, Watsons, Big C, and 7-Eleven stores in Bangkok and the Northeast, with campaign data and in-flight optimization to drive more traffic.
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Brand lift experts Happydemics conducted surveys to evaluate the campaign’s effect on top-of-funnel metrics such as ad recall and interest.
Unilever was thrilled with the campaign. In particular, using a full-funnel omnichannel approach to optimize ad touchpoints targeting consumer experience was highly effective in speeding up and increasing the number of footfall conversions.
In Bangkok, using contextualized ads resulted in:
In the Northeast, using contextualized ads resulted in:
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Through The Trade Desk’s omnichannel frequency control capability, Unilever was able to reinvest 47% of its media spend on increasing its reach by 1.5 million unique people.
The campaign also delivered significant brand lift for the 'Vaseline Gluta-Hya Serum Burst Lotion' range, including:
These results demonstrate that highly contextualized ads, tailored to consumers’ real-world environments, drive stronger product association and engagement. Vaseline’s retargeting strategy via display captured attention and reinforced ad recall, guiding consumers further down the funnel toward conversion. By pioneering a DOOH-led programmatic omnichannel approach with real-time contextual creative and precise retargeting, the campaign not only achieved measurable gains in brand lift, footfall, and sales. It also set a new benchmark for combining creativity, data, and technology to deliver meaningful consumer experiences. This innovative campaign highlights the power of advanced programmatic strategies to break new ground in consumer engagement and market impact.
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Spark Foundry UK
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The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk™ is a global technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through its self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage,...