Premier Tech 12 Awards

Bugs out!

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Provided Services
Goal

Wilson, Canada’s top insect repellent brand, leads sales with 28% of market shares. However, it’s main competitor, Ortho, isn’t far behind with 27%. Wilson needed to outsmart competition with an innovative approach that would disrupt the category, as well as maintain annual sales, given the uncertainty of another pandemic year.

A business success

Sales increase in the pest-control category
+2.5%
Engagements with our ads vs the industry
200%
Unfortunate encounters avoided
7 452 692

Consumer Insight

Nothing is as stressful nor as traumatizing as discovering a family of big, dark, hairy insects right in the middle of your living room. Everyone gets itchy as soon as they hear or talk about cockroaches, bed bugs, or centipedes. You’re surely scratching your arm while reading this…

When an insect invasion occurs, consumers panic and default to searching online for quick solutions.

They are spurred to action within the next 48 hours despite not knowing which product to buy.

They will usually Google “big dark, hairy, insect with 6 legs” or “crawling, long centipedes” hoping to identify the intruder and learn how to get rid of it. Unfortunately, this can be difficult as there are more than 55 000 species of insects in Canada and more than 150 different products to choose from.

The hundreds of different products are even more confusing for the consumer as they lack differentiation from one brand to another. Every pest control product has a similar packaging as this blurs the consumer’s decision-making in a moment where they are over-stressed.

Worst of all, insect invasions are unpredictable events! People can't anticipate when tiny invaders will enter their beloved home, and their anxiety levels go to the roof when it happens.

Knowing that, Wilson saw an opportunity to be top of mine in consumers’ heads BEFORE they even knew they needed the product. With this mentality, Wilson became Canadians’ insect invasion savior by building a solution to help Canadians predict the unpredictable.

Data-Driven Strategy
Wilson built a solid data ecosystem that would become the basis of trust with their consumers: allowing them to predict anxiety-provoking invasions that they couldn’t plan before. Historical and real-time data were analyzed to share valuable information with Canadians and help them identify the specific product they need before an insect invades their home. With a 3-step strategy, we connected our media channels to several data points so that our communications would be as relevant as possible to the consumer.
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Step 1:

We gathered Wilson’s experts’ data to understand which insect activity might become predominant based on temperature, humidity, geography, and seasonality.

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Step 2:

We created a never-before-used targeting system based on search behavior and zip code activity levels: reverse postcode location targeting. Programmatic ads suggested specific Wilson products to prepare for possible infestations.

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Step 3:

We capitalized on building a strong partnership with The Weather Network, Canada’s leader in location-based data. We collectively developed a prospecting tactic, connected to multiple data points to deliver a customized programmatic ad, based on the level of infestation risk depending on the weather triggers identified previously.

Creative Execution

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Insect Invasion Index

The experts at Wilson helped us identify which insects were more prone to infest according to the different weather triggers. By gathering all the data on the most common insects and rodents, we determined an exhaustive list of conditions that cause their proliferation.

Map the most infested neighborhoods in Canada

Based on consumers research and trends, we were able to map the most infected neighborhoods across Canada. We created a first-to-market audience targeting connecting with people based on an extrapolation at the scale of the postal code (FSA) they live in. Banners were activated based on infected FSA to push the best product solution to their pest problem. 1450 FSA were targeted in a country of only 1600. Moreover, the FSA data were integrated into search ads to personalize text ads based on the user location, redirecting them to the closest resellers.

Predict the infestation

Wilson’s products data was then transcripted in a matrix crossing different types of insects with their infestation triggers and integrated into The Weather Network first-party data feed. To connect with people when their household might get infected, the ad triggered prospecting audiences only when the ad met all the experts’ infestation data.

Propose the right product

Then, we needed to push the specific creative related to the problem they could face. Every combination of creatives was connected to their API directly inside the banner to integrate into their Bug Report. This tool helps users tracking the level of insects in their region and its integration adds contextualization and clouts into our creative.

A succesful campaign

Festival of Media North America
2021
Data & Insight
Media Innovation Awards
2021
Location-based marketing
Internationalist Awards for Media Innovation
2022
Local brand or service in a local Market
Prix Idéa
2022
Meilleure utilisation des médias numériques
Prix Idéa
2022
Meilleure utilisation de la donnée

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