Barriz boosts UCC DRIP POD’s brand awareness in Japan with Amazon DSP

Coffee drinkers appreciate enjoying a professionally brewed cup of coffee from their preferred brands at home, in the office, or in a hotel room. The Japanese beverage company UCC DRIP POD aims to help them do that by offering a coffee brewing system that uses individual capsules to brew freshly roasted cups of coffee, one at a time.

Anticipating that coffee aficionados gravitate toward familiar brands, UCC DRIP POD focused on advertising to customers already considering their products to drive sales. But as their product page visits began to stagnate and the number of units sold peaked, Solo Fresh Coffee wanted to reevaluate their strategy and approach to brand awareness.

To achieve their goals, UCC DRIP POD engaged Barriz, an Amazon Ads advanced partner. Based in Tokyo, Barriz provides consulting services in advertising, marketing, and promotion with a focus on digital commerce.

In 2016, UCC DRIP POD began running Sponsored Products, which promote individual product listings in shopping results and on product detail pages on Amazon. These ads focused on reaching audiences already considering a purchase with the brand but did not distinguish new customers from preexisting ones.

Barriz used Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to gain insights into the audiences that browse UCC DRIP POD products. They found that from October to December 2022, the number of unique users had decreased by 20% from the same period in 2021.¹ Barriz set a goal to double the number of unique customers they reached by directing their campaign toward new-to-brand customers.

Barriz wanted to invest in long-term growth, so they implemented medium- to long-term brand recognition approaches that would boost sales as measured over three months and one year. They also reviewed these measures regularly and adjusted their marketing strategy as necessary.

Barriz gained insights into the audience that views UCC DRIP POD’s products using the Amazon Ads media planning suite, which uses machine learning and tools that connect between channels, helping advertisers to reach and convert audiences across the customer journey.

From January to March 2023, UCC DRIP POD tripled their year-over-year advertising expenditures to focus on awareness measures marketed to potential customers: those who demonstrated interest in the product category but had not yet purchased from UCC DRIP POD.²

Barriz introduced Amazon DSP to their strategy, a demand-side solution that lets organizations programmatically buy ads to help reach new and existing audiences on Amazon and third-party sites and apps. To enhance UCC DRIP POD’s ongoing Sponsored Products campaign, Barriz used Amazon DSP video ads to help drive customers to product detail pages at a lower cost per click (CPC). Barriz used Amazon standard identification numbers to reach customers who had browsed the product detail pages of competing products.

Using Amazon DSP, Barriz increased the volume of the audience browsing V’s product detail pages by 209% from January to March 2023 compared with the same period from 2022.³ Additionally, the sales achievement rate—actual sales compared with sales goals—increased by 14.4%, while year-over-year sales went up 35%.⁴

Barriz also helped vUCC DRIP POD to quantify the effectiveness of a brand awareness campaign. Brand search impressions received a 29.8x lift after users came in contact with awareness measures.⁵

As the Amazon DSP campaign continues, Barriz has the metrics they need to determine the number of unique users required to achieve UCC DRIP POD’s overall sales goals. Using these metrics, Barriz can help the company to determine future goals and the budgets to help achieve them.