Hello, I'm Kimoto from Ajinomoto Co. [Yuichiro Kimoto General Manager Digital Analysis and Creation Group Consumer Data Analysis & Business Creation Department. Food products Division Ajinomoto Co., Inc.]
At Ajinomoto, I have been working with Google since 2020
to develop our digital marketing and increase our ROI. [Evolve digital marketing and increase ROI]
Today, I’d like to present our work on “Cook Do Koumi Paste.”
At Ajinomoto, we put a lot of emphasis on reaching wide audiences and expressing
the “sizzle” of food through the five senses in order to make them
think “this looks delicious,” “I want to make this,” or “I want to eat this.”
For that, we’ve been focusing on video ads, primarily TV ads, which use movies and sound to convey a message.
But, as we all know,the world has changed dramatically
Even in my own personal experience, where I now find myself watching my hobby videos on YouTube on my phone every day,
or watching YouTube on TV with my kids, I realize that the media touch points have completely changed.
Against this background, Ajinomoto has been promoting the use of digital media for about five years.
We aimed to solve two problems through these efforts.
The first issue is to improve the ROI of our reach.
While TV has a mass reach, it also has room to improve in terms of ROI.
Looking at the results of our TV campaigns, we saw that there were many people that TV can’t reach in our target audiences,
in addition, there was a lot of reach to non-target consumers.
The second issue is creativity, changing the message to match consumers’ interests and increasing their desire to buy.
For example, if we deliver the same message to people with very different motivations for cooking,
it will have a limited impact on changing their attitudes.
We believe that a “Small-mass” approach using digital media can help solve these problems.
A small-mass is a group of people of a certain size with similar needs.
By multi-targeted, multi-creative appeals, we can lead to changes in attitude.
However, since this was a different approach than the mass TV advertising we had been specialized in so far,
neither we nor our agency had sufficient knowledge.
That’s why we asked Google to help us and give us full advice.
Google helped us from the strategic planning phase
and advised us on the right small-mass marketing approach.
After a series of discussions, three small-mass segments emerged.
Working women with teenage children who eat a lot
Working couples with increased opportunities to cook due to COVID-19
Single men who like “Zubora-Meshi” meals (meals with the least effort) that you can eat straight from the pot.
In addition, from the 100+ affinities defined by YouTube,
we combined the attributes most relevant to each small-mass segment and targeted the ads to them.
Not only did this allow us to target the right audience,
but it also gave us input to picture the small-mass segments more clearly.
Next, in terms of the creative expression,
Creative Works, Google’s creative consulting team, provided us with a series of sessions on creative methods in digital media.
Our agency also got involved and three of us, Ajinomoto, Google and agencies discussed
the creative ideas directly together, which was important for the rest of the project.
We also worked on building the messages as a system.
In concrete terms, the first step was to decide on an overarching message
we wanted to convey, and then to divide it into several appeal points.
We added creative variations for each combination of appeal points, and by changing the ad targeting,
we were able to clarify how to “pinpoint what to say to which audience and with what variation.”
We received suggestions on how to improve the finished video
and used the ABCD framework to ensure that the key points of the digital creative were covered.
When we measured the campaign, we saw good results in terms of KPI and sales.
We were very pleased with the results,
which showed that consumers more deeply received our message thanks to the small-mass initiative.
Ajinomoto’s efforts are not limited to Koumi Paste.
With more than 15 brands now using YouTube, we have also begun “cross-brand KPI assessments.”
Specifically, with Google’s advice, we are defining KPIs for each brand and building cross-brand assessments
that will enable us to accumulate knowledge.
In the past, KPIs have sometimes been misunderstood among team members working on the project.
I recognize the importance of identifying KPIs at the marketing planning phase,
sharing them throughout the projects, and having the courage to discard other KPIs from the assessments.
Clearly defining the KPIs also allows brands to learn from each other,
allowing us to accumulate knowledge.
By involving Google from the marketing planning phase to our cross-brand assessments,
we are changing the way we do marketing.
We will continue to make changes to improve our ROI.