The importance of branding in a rapidly changing market environment

Q. Please tell me your responsibilities.

The eUC Promotion Department of the Global Marketing Headquarters, where I work, was created with the mission of leading Unicharm in internet e-business. Originally, the department was mainly responsible for owned media, but in January 2019, we integrated paid media and strengthened the collaboration of the triple media.

I work in the Media Group within the eUC Promotion Department, and am in charge of planning and verifying offline and digital advertising for Moony, the disposable baby diaper.

Q. Please tell us about the characteristics of the market and your company’s situation.

Baby diapers are worn by our customers' precious children. They also have a high unit price and are used frequently among consumer goods. For this reason, one of the characteristics is that customers demand high quality, but Moony conducts thorough product testing, so we are confident in the quality of our products. Another characteristic is that baby diapers have a short usage period of three years, so consumers change frequently and new users are constantly entering the market. Branding is extremely important in the marketing of baby diapers, so that new consumers who are constantly flowing into the market will choose our company as a manufacturer of safe and reliable diapers.

Another recent trend is that busy couples raising children tend to purchase more online than other daily consumer goods, and the rate of online purchases is growing rapidly. When purchasing online, customers must specifically request Moony, so it is important to gain pure recall through branding. The importance of building such a brand's perceived image is both a characteristic and a challenge of the baby diaper market.

Q. What challenges have you faced in marketing so far?

We felt that there was a problem with verifying the ROI of advertising measures. As advertising options have increased and consumers are exposed to a variety of advertisements on a daily basis, changes in consumer attitudes are no longer limited to TV commercials as in the past. In order to respond to this situation, we made organizational changes and created a system that could promote the triple media of paid, owned, and earned in an integrated manner. However, as we integrated the triple media and implemented various measures, it became difficult to measure the effectiveness of each measure, and the ROI became difficult to clearly understand.

When it comes to measuring ROI, it is still easy to get figures for digital advertising, but measuring ROI for offline advertising is particularly difficult. In particular, TV commercials remain important as a branding channel, and because they are also the most expensive, they are a major challenge. For TV commercials, the base time commercials are purchased in bulk every six months, so they have a strong fixed cost nature, and it is a point of concern as to how much they should have.

Reasons for changing MMM to MAGELLAN

Q. Have you done anything to address these issues?

We conducted an analysis using the MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling) method. As a result of the analysis, we were able to clarify the effectiveness and efficiency of 15-second and 30-second ads, and also learned the difference in cost-effectiveness between digital and offline advertising, so I'm glad we did it.

However, it was difficult to continue this method because of the high financial cost and the labor costs involved in meetings and data collection required to create the analysis model. In that respect, MAGELLAN has the advantage of being less financially expensive and faster to analyze than the previous method.

Other major reasons for adopting MAGELLAN included "the ability to comprehensively analyze digital and offline advertising to verify its effectiveness," "the ability to optimize the allocation of advertising time commercials and spot commercials," and "the ability to use the analysis results to optimize budget allocation for overall marketing initiatives."

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

First of all, the analysis model currently lacks stability, so we would like to improve the reliability of the analysis model by optimizing how we draw the customer journey and how we select data. Currently, we use MAGELLAN to predict the effects of short-term measures, but in the future, we would like to be able to scientifically quantify brand value.

Relationships with consumers tied together by brand value

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

Ultimately, I think it's important to create a structure that accumulates the brand value of the product. We have confidence in the power of our products, so we want to communicate that effectively so that customers can feel the value, be satisfied, and recommend our products to other customers. We want to develop promotions that will allow such a relationship to continue between customers and Mooney. I don't think this can be achieved with offline advertising alone these days, so we want to achieve this through collaboration between triple media.