Sponsored Brands video always-on strategy helps Pringles find growth

Though originated in the US, Kellogg’s-owned Pringles has grown in popularity across the world, particularly in Europe, where it began offering its recognizable cans of flavored potato chips in the mid-1990s. The brand began selling its products on Amazon.de in 2017 after recognizing a growing opportunity to engage snacking consumers making more online food purchases in Germany.

Kellogg’s works with two partners in Germany in support of the Pringles brand: Carat Deutschland assists with brand, media, and digital communications, while iProspect offers guidance with online retail performance marketing.

The challenge of growing sales attributed to advertising efficiently

Kellogg’s tasked its agencies with leveraging the brand’s advertising investment to help drive greater awareness of Pringles products with German snacking consumers and help drive sales in the Amazon’s store. From its first campaigns launched in Q4 2017 through the start of 2021, the brand has consistently challenged iProspect with demonstrating continuous improvement against their KPIs for Pringles advertising campaigns on Amazon, with a focus on driving increased return on ad spend (ROAS) and more efficient average cost-per-click (CPC).

iProspect wanted to improve Pringles’ Amazon Ads strategy to help the brand stand out to shoppers within the snack category.

Building a strategy that leverages an always-on approach and new creative formats

When devising the strategy, Kellogg’s agency partners wanted to stress the importance of retail readiness and actively build on campaign learnings by using an always-on approach with continuous optimization. To help toward that goal, they kept Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns active throughout the year with consistent investment and grouped the campaigns by tactics catering to different shopping audiences.

The learnings from the performance of these campaigns and their featured keywords helped with budget allocation and optimization of product detail pages. Here are the ingredients the agency partners used to help drive business results for the Pringles brand with Amazon Ads.

  • Maintaining retail readiness: Retail readiness was the foundation of their Amazon Ads strategy. The brand’s agency partners worked together to ensure product availability and maintain the brand’s status as Featured Offer across its products. If an ASIN was out of stock or no longer the Featured Offer, they would work with the Pringles brand owners to take the appropriate action and ensure their Amazon Ads campaigns retain their always-on strategy.
  • Creating space for engagement with Stores: The agency partners also advised Kellogg’s on the development of a Pringles Store on Amazon, which featured custom lifestyle brand imagery, video content, and all the available buying options for the Pringles catalog. The Store represented a great opportunity to help both new shoppers discover and engage with the Pringles brand story, and existing customers explore all their Pringles flavor and pack-size options. With the brand’s content fully ready for great shopping experiences, the agency partners used a variety of Amazon Ads products to service Kellogg’s goals.
  • Driving consideration with Sponsored Brands: The agency partners also used an always-on approach for the brand’s Sponsored Brands campaigns. They used learnings from Sponsored Products—like which products are driving the most sales attributed to advertising and which terms are yielding results from the brand and category term sets—to inform the Sponsored Brands campaigns.
  • Testing new creative formats like Sponsored Brands video: Using keyword learnings from the brand’s Sponsored Products campaigns, the agency partners first launched Sponsored Brands video campaigns specifically focused on Pringles-branded shopping terms. The initial results showed great promise and value in terms of efficient conversions for the brand, so they increased investment by building out campaigns focused on category and similar brand terms.

Yielding results with an always-on approach and Sponsored Brands video

Kellogg’s agency partners framed the Pringles advertising strategy as a marathon, not a sprint, with long-term success afforded by the quality of insights derived from always-on campaigns over time. These insights become learnings that drive optimization and can inform tactics across their Amazon Ads campaigns. Having a confident understanding of what tactics yield performance for the Pringles brand empowered Carat and iProspect to test Sponsored Brands video and find results against key goals.

Since launching Sponsored Brands video in late Q3 2020 to Q2 2021:

  • Delivering engagement: Pringles Sponsored Brands video campaigns generated a 200% higher click-through rate (CTR) than Pringles Sponsored Brands campaign historical average.
  • Driving conversion: Pringles Sponsored Brands video campaigns have yielded an average return on ad spend (ROAS) 152% higher than the Pringles Sponsored Brands campaign historical average.
  • Achieving efficiency: Pringles Sponsored Brands video campaigns yielded the above CTR and ROAS improvements while maintaining an average CPC 5% less than the Pringle Sponsored Brands campaign historical average.

When discussing the value of working with agencies, Pringles had the following advice.

quoteUpYour agencies can be strong partners in helping to enhance the impact of your Amazon Ads campaigns if you keep them updated about your business objectives and ensure close collaboration on campaign operations.quoteDown
– Christoph Sterkel, Business Development Manager eCommerce Northern & Eastern Europe, Pringles