Tiffany & Co.,MEC and Xaxis Release a White Paper on Programmatic Buying Luxury Brands

What is the attitude of luxury brands towards programmatic buying? How can luxury brands take advantage of programmatic buying to achieve better target audience reach and ensure brand integrity? Tiffany & Co., MEC and Xaxis unveiled a practical and proven solution in the white paper recently to shed some light to luxury brands.
 

(Whitepaper launch event on Nov.7th, 2016)

 
Luxury brands in China have been cautious about the usage of programmatic buying might affect brand integrity, due to the traditional perceptions on low quality inventory as well as uncertainty on price and volume. Because of this, many have been reluctant to explore programmatic in their media plans.
 
“In fact, different buying methods have been emerged in the programmatic world to address different needs of advertisers, which drives the growth of the programmatic industry tremendously from 2014,” Said Mickey Zhang, CEO of Xaxis China, “We have been offering diversified programmatic solutions for GroupM’s clients, for luxury brands we use PDB (Programmatic Direct Buy) with premium inventories assurance plus accurate and flexible audience targeting with data and technology.”
 
As an example of this, MEC and Xaxis China came up with a programmatic strategy for Tiffany & Co. to improve its online television media (OTV) advertising effectiveness by utilizingPDB method, which isdefined as a one-one sale with fixed pricing, reserved high quality inventory, that is processed automatically.
 
Clair Mah, Senior Marketing Director, Greater China of Tiffany & Co. said, “Digital media, especially online video, is an essential part of daily life in China. Our approach is centered around our consumers. We want to meet them where they are in a brand appropriate manner, and provide targeted messages to enhance their brand experience."
 
In this campaign, Xaxis has been empowered by GroupM, the leading media investment management company, to secure high quality but rare inventory for the client with its strong relationship with media and its negotiation power. The second step is to design the communication journey and select the audience for the two creatives from Tiffany& Co., “Craftsmanship” and “Modern Love”. At this stage, Xaxis’ audience intelligence capability is crucial in identifying the genders and number of prior advertisement exposures for the incoming audience before the advertisement delivery. In the final step, Xaxis and MEC partnered with a 3rd party research vendor to conduct a brand impact study, to understand the impact of the campaign.

 
The customized communication route with viewing both “Modern Love” and “Craftsmanship” assets significantly strengthened the intended brand metrics amongst female audience --testing at a 95% confidence level. In terms of engagement, this campaign outperformed Tiffany& Co.’s previous 60s OTV campaign in 2015 on click through rate by 54%.
 
Through Tiffany& Co.’s campaign, it was demonstrated that a strong and reliable media agency partner is crucial for advertisers to properly screen high-quality media inventories to meet the strict criteria from different brands. It also proved that PDB could help luxury advertisers bring in more detailed audience segmentation and activate it with multi-creatives and data intelligence. Thirdly, it was shown that there is also a value to work with agency to conduct brand impact study to fully understand the impact of the advertising on the brand and elicit learning for the future.
 
“This case have been shortlisted in Greater China Effie Award, which is no doubt the best show case for Tiffany& Co. cross the region.” Jimmy Huang, MEC’s Greater China Lead on Tiffany& Co.said, “For sure, this is the starter of Tiffany& Co. go deeper into programmatic world. Let’s wait and see more exciting cases and implications afterwards.”
 
“Tiffany& Co. China is a true pioneer in the luxury jewellery category, successfully leveraging programmatic buying to enhance campaign performance, and again demonstrating its desire to continue to lead the industry in innovation and digital media planning.” said Gordon Domlija, CEO of MEC China, “At MEC we are always striving to grow our clients’ business, harnessing the immense opportunity in programmatic is just one of the ways we do this. We are consistently delighted to see Xaxis’ powerful data and technology platforms, and proven operational capability, create successful campaigns for our clients. There is no doubt more luxury brands will be moving into programmatic buying in order to take advantage of the business opportunity, enhanced quality of environment and control of targeted messaging.”

Click HERE to download the white paper.