Visualize the effects of promotions using “sales” as an indicator rather than awareness or purchase intention

Encourage purchases using awareness, interest, and purchase intent as indicators

Q. Please tell me your responsibilities.

Our department is in charge of advertising and communication for each brand. Our mission is to raise awareness of the brand, stimulate interest, and encourage purchase intent, and we play a role in encouraging purchases.

Among the many brands, the brand that has introduced MAGELLAN this time is "Sekkisei."

Takuya Chiba, Manager of the Advertising Planning and PR Division, Advertising Department

Q. What are the characteristics of the market and the challenges in marketing?

First, there are two major characteristics of the market. The first is that there is a wide variety of products and sales channels are diversifying. Even when we talk about cosmetics and skincare products, there are some products in the relatively low price range that are sold at mass retailers such as drugstores, and some products in the high price range that are sold at department stores and other locations after counseling. There is also a certain amount of sales via e-commerce, and sales channels are diversifying.

The second reason is that the market is easily influenced by trends and changes quickly. Compared to the past, we feel that customers' tastes and preferences have become more diverse, and trends are changing faster. This means that advertising and communication that was successful last year may not work this year, making marketing difficult in a market that is unique to this market.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the market as a whole. Opportunities for customers to try out products in stores have decreased due to people refraining from going out, and the means by which customers obtain information have changed, so it was difficult to quickly grasp these changes.

Rebranding of "Sekkisei" in a time of change

Q. In these rapidly changing times, has your company's marketing strategy changed at all?

As more people have started to wear masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the need for products that can be used at home to care for your skin has increased, skin care products have been growing. Therefore, as part of the overall optimization, we allocated a budget to skin care products.

In September 2020, in celebration of its 9th anniversary, Sekkisei underwent its first rebranding with the aim of further accelerating its globalization and expanding its points of contact with new customers.

As customers who have been using Sekkisei for many years are gradually moving up in age over the years, we felt it was necessary to develop a branding strategy aimed at a new customer base, mainly those in their 20s and 30s. For this reason, we appointed a new muse and strengthened our digital initiatives.

In addition, the brand has been reborn as a brand that is kinder not only to the skin but also to the global environment, with the new value of "Gift from the Earth - SEKKISEI Clarity". Although the brand has previously been involved in coral conservation activities such as the "SAVE the BLUE" project, the brand is now taking sustainability into consideration more than ever before, such as by changing its container design to be more environmentally friendly.

Publicity Department, Publicity Planning and PR Division 1, Marina Yamauchi

Aim to visualize the effectiveness of promotions by using "sales" as a new indicator

Q. Please tell us why you introduced MAGELLAN.

This was because they wanted to visualize the effects of promotions using the new indicator of "sales" in addition to the indicators of awareness, interest, and purchase intent. In previous surveys, they were able to grasp the effects of promotions on awareness, interest, and purchase intent. However, they had been unable to find out which promotions actually contributed to sales, and where the issues lay. They also wanted to visualize the results of the rebranding by linking it to sales.

In addition, while we are able to visualize the effect on online sales, such as e-commerce, to a certain extent, we felt it was difficult to visualize the effect on offline sales, which account for the majority of sales, and therefore we wanted to analyze it using MAGELLAN. Of course, we understand that the upper funnel, such as awareness, is important when developing promotions. However, we believe that by visualizing the contribution to sales, we will be able to find more specific areas for improvement, such as what kind of promotions are optimal in the future and how we should allocate budgets.

Promotions are not the only thing that affect sales. Various factors such as COVID-19, in-store promotions, and competitors' advertising also have an impact. Our previous surveys were focused on promotions, but we wanted to conduct a survey with a broader perspective that included external factors other than promotions, so we decided to introduce MAGELLAN.

In the future, we would like to conduct regular surveys rather than spot surveys, so that we can implement a high-speed PDCA cycle for our promotions. We believe that MAGELLAN is a good solution to our problems in terms of cost and speed of output.

Q. Please tell us about your future plans for using MAGELLAN.

First of all, we want to visualize the correlation between promotions and sales, which could not be visualized in previous surveys. We want to clarify how much the promotions we designed based on past survey results and experience contributed to sales, and whether they were good or bad.

We also hope to improve the efficiency of promotions by visualizing the impact of external factors. For example, for new products, we have previously conducted promotions to coincide with the release date, taking into consideration shelf placement, but in fact there may be more effective promotion timing than aligning with the release date. The optimal timing design is just one example, but we hope to obtain output like this that will lead to the next step. We would be happy to obtain information that will help us determine the direction the brand should take. We are currently using MAGELLAN with Sekkisei, but it would be nice to expand it to other brands in the future.

By properly handling and understanding data, we want to realize new advertising and communication that stays ahead of change.

Q. Lastly, please tell us about your goal in marketing.

With the digital shift, various data is now available, but I think it's important to know "how to handle which data." Data itself doesn't lie. Therefore, you should collect all the data you can. However, it's important to remember that data doesn't give you all the answers. I think it's important to know which data to handle, how to understand it, and how to use it. By making good use of data, we want to aim for new advertising and communication that not only keeps up with changes in the world, but also responds quickly to them, and stays ahead of the changes.