Commentary

Building an Audience Strategy

by Nina Lentini , Staff Writer @Nina_Lentini, May 4, 2019

Chobani faced a common challenge: How to get more people to buy more product. "No one knew who our consumer was better than we," said Sydney Friedkin, Digital and Marketing Analytics Manager, Chobani, on the final day of Data & Programmatic Insider Summit. The brand had a new evolution with an inhouse creative team but the media landscape had shifted.

"We were hungry to learn more about why consumers engaged or didn't with an ad," she said. "We were operating like a large company but it was not who we were." Chobani had to get smarter and more strategic.

Friedkin said it looked first a breakthrough brands like Harry, then at consumer behavior and what it was trying to change. Third, it created a DMP, which she said was a "game changer," taking it from traditional to digital and leaning heavily into programmatic and an audience-first strategy to get more flexibility.

It shifted the funnel from awareness, consideration, and trial to become one of demographics, passive interest, intent, purchase-based, and retargeting. Chobani came out with more tailored messaging. "We had more control of who and where we were reaching." Then, Friedkin said, it did a data audit with its agency and learned it didn't have a lot of first-party data but what it had was a powerful tool. Also, to lean into third-party data for programmatic purposes and then to lean into third-party data for direct partnerships. Data diversification became its North Star in maximizing reach to get Chobani's message out there.