PepsiCo Pursues Personalization at Scale

Looking for a way to deliver personalization at scale, PepsiCo recently tapped Aki Technologies to execute a pilot program for Off the Eaten Path, a better-for-you snack brand out of the Frito-Lay division.A smaller but growing brand, Off the Eaten Path needed an innovative marketing strategy to reach its core customer base and establish itself in a competitive category. Analyzing the behaviors and preferences of the brand’s three target segments (see sidebar at right), Aki helped identify the most opportunistic moments in the day for delivering an advertising message and rapidly executed a personalized mobile ad campaign at scale.“Aki was able to ingest our [proprietary, custom] audience base to help us be more prescriptive with our messaging,” Kate Brady, PepsiCo’s head of media innovation & partnership development, told the Path to Purchase Institute. “We thought that this was a great way to test some of our audience profiling to understand how we can better serve these consumers in a dynamic way by using Aki’s moments technology and doing more personalized creative executions.”An 11-year PepsiCo veteran, Brady’s current role involves identifying and scaling the best new methods and technologies available to connect with consumers in the context of today’s rapidly changing media landscape. “Everything is being more data driven and shifting away from those traditional, linear types of channels to more dynamic and digitally driven channels,” Brady says.In partnership with tech venturing arm PepsiCo Labs, Brady’s team identified Aki as a promising partner and facilitated the pilot to trial Aki’s unique “moments powered by motion” personalization approach, which the adtech company describes as predicting when a consumer will be receptive based on proprietary data signals and then targeting ads by the more than 160 individual moments Aki has perfected over the last six years to best drive sales.“One of the things that we loved about Aki’s technology is just the fact that from a movement perspective it can recognize if you’re sitting or if you’re running or walking, and serve different creatives based on those, so that we really are ensuring that the type of messaging and the format that’s being served is really appropriate for the action that’s occurring,” Brady says.Running Nov. 25, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2020, the Off the Eaten Path mobile campaign served up a variety of ad formats (video, rich media, banner) with add-to-cart functionality and multiple creative executions that engaged audiences with personalized messages and imagery spotlighting products and features deemed most relevant for each viewer. In total, more than 250,000 creative permutations were dynamically generated based on the audience cohort as well as a multitude of other factors including the target’s purchase base, what retailers the target shops at, how they shop, location, weather and, of course, the moment.“Once we define everything … the technology does the hard work,” Risa Crandall, SVP of CPG strategy at Aki, told the Institute. “Sometimes folks think personalization is time, money, energy — it’s going to delay the campaign. And maybe with others that is the case but with us it’s just the opposite. The technology is the team, if you will, that pushed the campaign effectively on target but with speed and efficiency from a pricing standpoint and from a workload standpoint.”The personalization that the technology enabled, particularly from a visual perspective, was key when it came to influencing receptivity.“The top performer was really that you see you in the ad, so that I’m seeing family if the family message is coming to me. If [Brady's] a jogger, she’s seeing people that are jogging,” Crandall says. “Second was the packaging and all the other relevant messaging about the product, but you understanding that this is a product that connects to you was the top performer.”Entrusting the personalized approach to Aki’s algorithm proved successful. Tests showed all three audiences were at least two times more likely to engage with personalized video compared to non-personalized video, while personalized rich media drove 110% higher engagement on average, and personalized creative drove 85% higher engagement.“We were really thrilled to see the levels in attention and receptivity and engagement that were proven out,” Brady says.Longer term vision is a part of the PepsiCo Labs program, so now that the partners have found success, they are deepening the relationship and looking to grow together in a way that benefits both parties.“Our team is really focused on how we can leverage the data set to be as prescriptive as possible and to ensure that we’re really being customer-centric in everything that we’re doing, and I think Aki helps us deliver on that goal,” Brady says.

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

You May Also Like

AD Retail Media’s Transition In-House

Member Perspective: Maximizing Retail Media Partnerships