How Ferrero elevated shopper creative with iterative research

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Learn how Ferrero tapped into Suzy to optimize shopper creative with iterative research.

Good shopper creative can help a brand reach consumers on the shelf. But what if you could take shopper creative to the next level? What if a brand could be certain that creative would drive sales and reach target shoppers? Or what if that design could increase in-store awareness and boost visibility, both with the general population and with target demographics? 

Phil DeConto, Vice President of Customer Marketing at Ferrero and leader of the Shopper team, saw the opportunity to take the brand's shopper creative to new heights. Phil's team works to engage consumers along the entire path to purchase, secure purchase intent, and ultimately drive sales for Ferrero. As a portfolio of sweet packaged goods brands, Ferrero needs to stand out on the shelf year-round with compelling creative and shopper media. It's especially important during key seasons when candy sales peak, like Halloween. It's the team's job to make that happen.

Shopper creative: The power of fact-based guidance

Partnering with best-in-class commerce agencies means that Ferrero has excellent creative concepts to choose from. The initial creative was a great start, and the Shopper team recognized an opportunity to optimize it. 

"There are clear objectives that the shopper media needs to achieve, which are different depending on the brand and campaign but generally include pre-shop awareness, in-store navigation and reminder, trial/repeat incentive, category or meal solution planning, and others that serve the conversion opportunity. Put more simply, the shopper media needs to convince you to put our item into your basket or we haven't done our job," Phil said. 

Ultimately, there was an opportunity to know exactly which creative concepts would help the Shopper team reach their goals, taking Ferrero's creative to the next level. In turn, it would help their shopper agency refine the designs in the future to be even more impactful. 

Traditionally, Ferrero had to skip shopper creative testing because it was cost-prohibitive or too slow to be impactful. Suzy's solution, which is cost-effective while still robust, was the perfect answer to this challenge. With Suzy, the Shopper team could run research quickly, gaining insights in just weeks. That would allow the team to learn from campaign to campaign, creating opportunities to make a big impact on the shelf during every candy-focused holiday and throughout the year.

Designing the research for shopper creative insights

The Shopper team and agency team worked with Suzy to design a study that tested previously approved creative against a concept with shopper specific messaging. If results showed that shopper concepts were more apt to drive conversion, they could optimize the creative to drive more sales at the shelf, a big win for both Phil's team and the Ferrero brand. 

The team first needed to survey the right audience. By tapping into Suzy's proprietary audience, they could find exactly who they needed to speak to.

“Based on the needs of the campaign, we can speak to shoppers based on their background and past purchase behavior," Phil said. 

Once the audience was decided, the team introduced different creative concepts to them. Then they gathered results through a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative testing. 

First, the Shopper team used monadic testing to understand which creative concepts were most likely to drive purchase intent. Then, they followed up with qualitative video open ends to dig deeper into the reasons why consumers chose certain concepts. Finally, using Al-powered heatmapping, the team tested how the concepts would perform on the shelf. This testing also helped them understand which version would stand out most "in the wild'' through a grocery store aisle mock-up.

The results of the study

The good news? All the creative designs had strengths and the potential to stand out to consumers. But ultimately, Ferrero was able to find one creative concept that edged out all other designs and garnered the highest scores for the KPIs Ferrero chose, especially purchase intent. 

When the team surveyed shoppers during video open ends, the qualitative data validated these findings and helped them tell the story of why certain creative outperformed other designs. "The visual of your target shopper telling you exactly what they like or dislike about your creative is incredibly compelling," Phil said. 

Heatmapping analysis drove it home. Ferrero found that the winning concept had the highest probability of perception. The tagline on the design also performed well. These results were also critical for communicating with the Brand team to explain why certain creative worked. "It really hammers home the results of the test for our internal audience," Phil expressed.

Driving value with shopper research

Thanks to the Shopper team's work, Ferrero now has added confidence in the campaigns they launch. 

"Introducing more facts into the campaign development process eroded fear, building trust and confidence with internal and external stakeholders that the shopper programming will meet expectations," Phil said. 

With the data they found from shopper creative research, the team was also able to communicate the value of shopper-focused creative with Ferrero's Brand team. Not only did it confirm that their instincts were right, but also built trust within the organization. 

"The findings demonstrate to Brand that we're selecting the right creative," Phil explained. "But more importantly, they show that we're acting as trusted stewards of both their brand and the budget. This builds faith in the program as a whole, which further reinforces the value of investing in shopper marketing in the future."

What's next for Ferrero?

Thanks to the nature of Suzy's platform, Ferrero can iteratively test shopper creative for every campaign. Whether the team is creating assets for Halloween, Christmas, Easter, or any evergreen campaigns, they continually learn what works with shoppers and apply their findings as they go, optimizing campaign after campaign. The more they learn, the more confident they feel that shopper creative will help the team reach their goals.

The Suzy Difference

With Suzy, you can truly understand your target shoppers to reach them in the store. We can 

help you: 

• Uncover the steps consumers take when shopping for your products. 

• Optimize your campaigns to secure purchase intent. 

• Understand where to focus your efforts in the purchase funnel to drive sales. 

See how it works today—book a demo with our team now.