With the goal of optimizing the cost of advertising for its Johnnie Walker Blue Label product, Diageo, the world's largest producer of distilled spirits, invested in the use of artificial intelligence. Through Vidmob, a leading global platform for AI-based creative performance that uses data analysis to drive marketing results for major brands, Diageo recorded a 68.8% reduction in the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of its campaign.
The “Deserves a Blue” campaign, featuring videos on Instagram and Facebook, aimed to expand the product's unique message to admirers and consumers of Blue Label whisky. Associated with a sophisticated lifestyle, the Scottish drink is gaining increasing popularity in Brazil. Data from the Scotch Whisky Association reveals that the country has become the fourth largest market for Scotch whisky in the world, with growth of 215.2% post-pandemic.
In the case of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label campaign, Vidmob's exclusive tool analyzed, frame by frame, all the elements present in the video creatives during their broadcast on Meta's social networks, as well as the more than 39.5 million user impressions, such as reactions, comments, and shares.
As a recommendation for Diageo, Vidmob suggested starting the creatives with impactful messages. Just as in the initial guidelines for “Deserves a Blue,” the uniqueness argument – with the messages “Only one in every 10,000 barrels can deliver the taste of Blue Label” and “A blend made with the most extraordinary Scotch whiskies” – was 8.09% stronger using videos of up to 15 seconds in length.
However, the argument for how to do it – with the message “Serve 45 ml of Blue Label in a whisky glass without ice” – performed excellently with shorter creatives, reaching 9.76% CPM.
Color also played a key role in the insights generated by Vidmob. Throughout the campaign, the warm yellow tones did not correspond well with Blue Lake's messages. The recommendation was to use gold at the beginning of the creatives, but prioritizing blue in the middle to end scenes, achieving a 30.11% gain in CPM.
“With Vidmob’s AI, we realized that the gold color, common to all whiskies, wasn’t as impactful as the blue color. With these insights, we were able to focus on the main creative recommendations for the campaign and, at the same time, optimize media investment in our ads. Notably, by replacing gold with blue, performance improved,” says Lindsay Stefani, Head of Media, Data, Growth and Brand Experience at Diageo. “In other words: the use of AI offered actionable insights for the creative team in a super-efficient partnership in this groundbreaking campaign.”
Animations that focused solely on the movement of the liquid performed poorly in the new campaign, resulting in a drop in CPM. To reverse this situation, Vidmob recommended prioritizing the image of the bottle, highlighting the glass and the Blue Label label.
“Vidmob has been boosting campaigns for major brands, and it was no different with Blue Label's media campaigns. The videos that were already running on social media had an even more significant impact after the insights generated by our Artificial Intelligence. Images like the bottle, for example, make more sense in those few seconds that need to grab attention and catch the audience's eye,” says Miguel Caeiro, Head of Latam at Vidmob. “It's important to highlight that by reducing the CPM, it's possible to optimize campaigns, expanding brand reach and reaching a larger number of people in a more targeted way.”
