Mapp Helps PepsiCo Use 1st-Party Data to Drive Maximum Social Engagement

A success story for the Quaker Oats brand in the Netherlands

Global brand Pepsico knows that 1st-party consumer data is the most valuable marketing asset. The most common 1st-party data is first & last name, email address, the person’s job, phone number, and sign-up source, but the best part is that it’s GDPR-compliant, not available to the competition, and most importantly – provided by the consumer voluntarily.

Since 2016, PepsiCo has trusted Mapp’s powerful customer data platform (CDP) with storing their 1st party data across multiple brands, such as Walkers, Quaker Oats, Lays, Doritos, and PepsiMAX to name a few, in their Europe Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) region. PepsiCo then activates this data within Mapp Engage to send relevant, personalized emails to their database of contacts. They also use Mapp’s open marketing automation platform to send automated exports to PepsiCo’s SFTP for multi-team access across brands. Social media is an important part of PepsiCo’s global marketing strategy, and they include many social platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter and most recently TikTok. They use their 1st party data for retargeting ads and to build lookalike audiences, which are potential prospects based on known attributes of existing customers, for their social media campaigns.

Pepsico’s primary methods of collecting 1st party data include:

• Social ads promoting a compelling offer that require a form submission, like a raffle incentive
• Email sign-up on their websites, using pop-up overlays offering a prize or raffle
• Online games or apps that require email registration, for example “Doritos Quest”

PepsiCo has run many successful campaigns with Mapp. They were happy to share the highlights of their Quaker Oats Cruesli campaign called “The Battle” that recently ran in The Netherlands.

CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE: Quaker Oats wanted to revive a “dusty” brand image and add a new Cruesli flavor to the supermarket shelves. Their campaign encouraged the public to help create a new flavor (new type of Cruesli combination) on the Quaker Oats website and give it a name. The winning flavor would be produced and the winner receives a prize of 10,000 €.

CAMPAIGN PHASES

The campaign was structured in three phases:

PHASE 1: PROMOTING THE CONTEST AND GETTING FLAVORS SUBMITTED

The campaign was promoted with online advertising, social media, television ads, in-store marketing, and outdoor billboards. The multi-channel mix reached a diverse audience.

RESULTS: More than 50K Cruesli combinations were created, which equated to 50K new contacts in their Mapp database

PHASE 2: VOTING FOR THE WINNING FLAVOR

After submissions closed, Quaker Oats publicly promoted the top three flavors. They retargeted the people who participated in the contest and offered a second incentive for them to vote for their favorite of the final three.

RESULTS:More than 400K votes on the winning flavor were submitted. The cost-per-acquisition (CPA) was 50% lower for getting votes from their first-party contacts from phase 1 than broad market votes. Nearly 400K new contacts were captured with the votes.

PHASE 3: REVEALING THE WINNER

Once Quaker Oats was ready to announce the winning flavor, they launched two campaigns.

First, they used the 1st-party data collected from the contest to send an email blast via Mapp Engage to remind and activate them towards purchase.
Second, Quaker Oats ran new social media ads with “Be the first to try!” messaging and an incentive to win the new flavor, which continued to build their Mapp database and generate excitement.

Quaker Cruesli Frambalicious was the winning flavor. According to Quaker Oats, it’s a “delicious crunchy grain mix with roasted whole grain oatmeal, fresh pieces of raspberry, white chocolate wedges, pecan nuts and mint.” It is still being sold in stores today!

“The Battle” campaign was a huge success for Quaker Oats. PepsiCo shared these key takeaways:

• Ads using the 1st-party data collected and stored in Mapp outperformed all other audiences, and was also the most cost-effective
• The second-best performing audience was the lookalike audience using the known attributes of the 1st party contacts
• Interacting with prospects in their database really paid off – the positive association with the brand lead to a much higher conversion rate, but PepsiCo decided that incentives should always be a part of their campaigns.
• Reaching people while they are relaxing via social media was highly effective in driving participation in a competition.