Case Study

College Basketball Championship Tournament Case Study

In February 2023, we harnessed the power of our unique 90 million first-party audience base to support Reese’s during the men’s college basketball championship tournament—a key sports merchandising window for candy brands.

Large pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
Executive Summary

DGMN recommended employing multiple audience strategies to help Reese’s win in the chocolate category during the momentous tournament. To reach potential new Dollar General (DG) customers, DGMN used advanced analytics of current and past customer behavior to identify purchasers within natural cross-shopping categories of chocolate candy such as cookie and cake mixes, party supplies and salty snacks. Hershey also opted to target current Reese’s and chocolate category purchasers to drive incremental trips per customer and units per trip.

DGMN identified the source of incremental sales as an increase in transactions and units per transaction among the test group compared to the control group. In addition, the multiple tactics and diverse audiences included in the campaign propelled the initiative’s overall success.

Case Study

Hershey and DGMN partnered to create a highly personalized digital marketing campaign from February 13, 2023 to March 12, 2023. The intent of the campaign was to support Reese’s during the men’s college basketball championship tournament key merchandising window. This equated to an opportunity for Hershey to increase visibility and help drive customer awareness by using Mr. Cup, Reese’s University mascot, to attract university and chocolate buyers during a popular sports timeframe held each March.

The specialized media plan comprised targeting audiences using DGMN’s 1P data across the digital ecosystem through offsite, onsite and video ad units. In addition, the audience targeting strategy took a multi-faceted approach, which included current buyers of Reese’s products, allowing the campaign to not only focus on existing customers but also extend efforts to convert adjacent category shoppers into new Reese’s shoppers. DGMN used its audience capabilities to target cookie and cake mix, party supply and salty snack buyers. As a result of the campaign nearly 33% of the purchases were made by new shoppers who chose Reese’s products from the SKUs featured in the creative. DGMN leveraged closed-loop measurement capabilities, providing the incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) as a success metric.

Leveraging its audience, DG and Reese’s met customers along their natural path to purchase. Reese’s employed in-stream video during this high-streaming timeframe of college basketball in combination with the campaign’s audience strategy. As a result, the tactic generated the highest iROAS.

$10 89
Incremental return on ad spend
Campaign Results

DGMN proved it could deliver the most relevant and effective ads to the targeted customers during their shopper journey. The Reese’s campaign was a remarkable success and demonstrated that DGMN could reach and target the perfect mix of customers willing to convert and shop the brand at Dollar General. The report also highlighted the specific audiences that were most engaged during the campaign, developing a recommendation to further optimize future campaigns for Hershey.

5 Pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
14%
Sales Lift

DGMN is leading the way in the retail media and digital advertising space with multiple vendor partners, creating meaningful and lasting connections between brands and DG customers to drive win-win outcomes. Additionally, by offering iROAS within final reporting, DGMN provides an accurate measure of campaign effectiveness and resulting sales among DG customers who would likely have not purchased the products if they would not have seen the media.

DGMN’s closed-loop measurement and insights have been instrumental in our ability to accurately gauge the impact of our campaigns. Partnering with DGMN, we’ve been able to align Hershey’s and DG’s strategic objectives, creating tailored media plans that reach our target audience and drive growth. DGMN continues to work with us to ensure we’re investing in the most effective way, optimizing our marketing budget to maximize our return on investment.

Chris Gaughan, Senior Manager, Omni Channel Marketing at Hershey

By creating customized media plans based on vendors’ objectives, curating specialized audiences, implementing diversified tactics, and measuring its own success based on the success of vendors’ investments, DGMN is innovative, transformative and economical.

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