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Meet the retail media masters: Celebrating the Tesco Media Upfront award winners for 2023

Best Use of Connected Store: Premier Foods

Before this year, the last time that Britain crowned a new monarch, television was still being broadcast in black and white. The media landscape has moved on a little since then, meaning that brands now have a much broader palette to work with when tapping into nationally significant events like May’s coronation. And, as the country came together to celebrate the accession of King Charles III, brands like Premier Foods went to work.

Taking advantage of this unique sales opportunity, our winner here made excellent use of Tesco’s Connected Store proposition, using a range of inspirational formats to showcase two of their iconic British brands in the build up to the coronation. With the bunting being hung, Premier Foods ran a fully connected in-store campaign to put Mr. Kipling and Ambrosia products in the spotlight – reaching more than 15m customers in the process.

Best Use of Sharpened Audiences: Diageo

Any good retail media campaign has a sharp, scientific plan behind it. The more specific you are in terms of who you target – and how – the less money you waste on reaching out to the “wrong” kinds of shoppers. If you’re promoting dishwasher tablets to the 50% of households that don’t own one, for instance, then your media plan could probably use some tightening up in terms of the audience.

Diageo is a company that truly understands the importance of sharpened audiences. Using the powerful insights provided by Clubcard data, the company has consistently built bespoke predictive audiences for a number of its brands. Targeting customers who have the highest propensity to try with teaser campaigns, then retargeting those who showed intent with onsite and offsite media, Diageo has delivered phenomenal results across its portfolio.

Best Use of Connected TV: Unilever

Connected TV is a key part of our portfolio, enabling advertisers to use Clubcard data to engage with Tesco customers on ITVX, Sky, and – as announced at the Upfront – Channel 4. In fact, the addition of C4 to our list of partners makes Tesco the first retailer to partner with all three of the UK’s powerhouse TV stations, something that we’re undeniably excited about.

The power of the partnership between Clubcard data and TV’s reach is perfectly demonstrated by our winner here. Unilever worked with Tesco Media and ITVX on the launch of its new Magnum Starchaser and Sunlover ice creams, zeroing in on shoppers who usually buy ice cream – but not always Magnum – and reaching out to them while they watched their favourite shows.

Best Use of Tesco.com: Pernod Ricard

Tesco.com is one of the most diverse channels within our media ecosystem, providing advertisers with access to everything from brand-building homepage and checkout banners through to deeply targeted placements like Sponsored Search. The addition of Sponsored Browse functionality to the platform only rounds that offering out further, allowing brands to engage with shoppers who build their basket by browsing rather than searching.

While any of those opportunities are powerful on their own, a joined-up approach to the Tesco.com proposition can deliver even better results. By embracing that philosophy, optimising and learning along the way, and adopting new formats like Sponsored Browse early, Pernod Ricard has used Tesco.com to reach the right people in the right place at the right time – and converted more key customers as a result.

Campaign of the Year: Heineken UK for Cruzcampo

Alongside so many other brilliant campaigns, our winner for the best of the year had to truly stand out. Fittingly, the one that did tapped into a range of different elements from across the Tesco Media & Insight Platform, resulting in a razor-sharp, highly connected initiative that exceeded all of its KPIs.

Heineken’s winning campaign – for the launch of Cruzcampo lager – used predictive modelling to target customers throughout their shopping journey. Connected Store was then employed to inspire, offline targeting used to further sharpen the media plan, and online media activated in order to convert key customers. A truly phenomenal campaign that used the entire Tesco platform to great effect.

Collaboration of the Year: L'Oréal

The winner of our final award – L'Oréal – has worked closely with Tesco to create something truly special. As well as establishing a dedicated Centre of Excellence for retail media, the company has embraced a truly collaborative approach, bringing its internal teams, media agency, and Tesco together in order to create a shared vision of success.

At the heart of that partnership is a joint business plan, one that has been invaluable as a way to create focus around specific goals and encourage collaborative growth. That plan is underpinned by a relentless focus on innovation and creativity, and has driven a sophisticated approach to the use of data science as a path to success.

Evidence of that can be seen in one recent project, once again involving predictive modelling. Cognisant of the fact that long term growth would come from expanding its category as a whole, L'Oréal worked with us to identify potential buyers who had yet to engage. The result? 45,000 brand new customers, who were targeted in a digital-centric media plan.