How MMM unlocked $2.8m incremental value for a CPG co in two challenged markets

Background

A global CPG company with a portfolio of household name brands wanted to maximize the value of its total media investment in two key markets. Specifically, it wanted to understand how to drive incremental volume, optimize the channel mix for each brand, and allocate its total media budget across different brands.

The company faced significant business headwinds as well as regulatory changes in one of the markets that limited paid media options for some products. Across both markets, there was a growing concern that long-term brand equity was declining.

Solution

We implemented an annual marketing mix modeling (MMM) program that combined core modelling with Unobserved Component Modeling (UCM). UCM treats baseline sales as dynamic rather than static, allowing us to separate short-term sales lift from the more long-term impact that marketing has on performance.

This holistic analysis enabled us to provide a consolidated insights summary that identified high-level trends across all the company’s brands and markets. Based on this, marketing teams were able to optimize media investments. We also worked with key stakeholders to enable them to see how these optimizations impacted broader business KPIs across different markets and brands.

In the market faced with regulatory upheaval, we conducted an innovative cross-brand optimization analysis. Instead of viewing each brand in isolation, we analyzed the total media pot across a number of brands to provide strategic advice on how to redistribute spend between them for maximum growth.

To empower the client’s teams to make agile decisions, we also provided access to our decision-making platform, Gain Theory Interactive, for hands-on scenario planning and budget optimization.

Results

Our approach provided the company with a clear, data-informed strategy for maximizing returns that reflected how the business operates at different levels.

Across the two challenged markets, our recommendations identified $2.8 million in additional value for the upcoming fiscal year. For example, the cross-brand optimization analysis revealed that directing marginal additional investment to the largest brand would deliver the greatest return, given its scale and headroom for growth.