A leading OTC client had an annual media budget of $300 million across 16 brands. Budgets ranged from $3 million to $6 million for its small brands, and up to $50 million to $60 million for some of the larger brands. Each planning season, the client had to undergo a balancing act between what decisions to make at the brand level and what to make at the portfolio level. The goal was to create win/win scenarios that balanced historical results and what is anticipated for the future. It asked IRI for help.
IRI used its marketing mix model results and the IRI Marketing Foresight solution to assess different potential scenarios. First, the existing media plans were entered into the solution to create a starting point for media-driven sales. Then an initial optimization (+/-15% constraints) was run — highlighting a potential $7 million in incremental sales. Some flighting strategies added support to current weeks, some added more weeks and others did both. Finally, additional business constraints were applied to strike a balance with key brands’ business trends and expectations. Brand-level constraints were applied, driven by business heuristics: target, brand momentum and business size. Manual trade-offs between brands and media drivers were made to handle changes that would disrupt the historical expectations of brands.
Using the above, IRI helped the client achieve an incremental $4 million in media-driven sales off the same initial budget of $300 million. Each brand was given a before/after view of its respective media plan highlighting the changes in the plans and the rationale behind the changes.
95% of CPG, retail, and health and beauty companies in the Fortune 100 work with us.
Copyright 2022 IRI. All Rights Reserved.