Dove Men+Care

Objective

Dove Men+Care is the male personal care sub-brand of Unilever's world-famous Dove brand. Their core audience is among the 25-55 age group, with a focus on men. The brand aims to communicate their 72-hour protection, long-lasting fresh feeling, and generally encourages men to take care of themselves.

On their journey to become a truly social-first brand, Dove Men+Care was looking to drive awareness and consideration of their recently launched premium shower gels and deodorants. The campaign needed high impact formats and innovation to become a success.

To capture their audience Dove Men+Care needed an unmissable campaign that would blend the digital and physical experience, bringing their brand to life for consumers. In keeping with TikTok best practices, Dove Men+Care needed to keep the TikTok creators central to their campaign, maximising recognition amongst potential buyers.

Solution

To bring this vision to life, Dove Men+Care partnered with WPP Media and TikTok to launch an Out of Phone campaign, which utilises TikTok branding and creators in XL-format digital out-of-home billboarding. The overarching strategy was to seamlessly blend the digital and physical experiences, amplifying sales and maximizing brand recognition.

Topview, Top Feed and in-feed ads served as the backbone of the campaign. These provided ample room to highlight brand benefits and evoke emotional responses. Then to capture the audience in the physical world, Dove deployed TikTok Out-of-Phone in major Dutch cities, specifically Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Although deployed for a short window, this high-impact format was chosen for its strong potential to drive contact frequency and extend the TikTok experience beyond the mobile screen.

The brand kept authentic TikTok creators, including Donny Roelvink and Simon Eurlings, at the center of their assets. Assets ranged from product-focused to entertainment-focused, giving a strong blend of content helping to avoid creative fatigue. They also integrated the brand in a natural way while also delivering a "masculine touch" that resonated with the audience.

Given the large scale and innovative nature of this campaign, a robust measurement plan was designed to prove the impact generated. First, a TikTok Brand Lift Study was implemented, to prove on-platform incremental brand impact generated by the combination of in-feeds ads and premium formats. Second, Kantar was engaged to track the cross-media impact of TikTok and Out-of-Phone. Their THX solution can passively track exposure to these two channels, and consumer research afterwards shows the differences in brand metrics, driven by exposure. Finally, Circana's Geolift solution was used in a multi-cell set-up to measure the sales impact in the TikTok + Out-of-Phone region, and the TikTok-only region.

Results

All three measurement solutions showed significant positive results.

First, the TikTok Brand Lift Study showed a 7.0% lift in Ad Recall, and 4.3% lift in Awareness. Users exposed to the campaign more than once weekly showed up to 4x higher lifts, with 19.9% lift in Ad Recall and a 14.2% lift in Awareness.

Next, the Kantar Cross-media Study showed that compared to controls, the users exposed to TikTok and Out-of-Phone had:

• 84% higher Total Brand Communication Awareness,

• 14% higher Product Awareness,

• 54% higher Brand Consideration,

• 8% higher Brand Image perception, with a 22% higher score in the Male audience.

Finally, the Circana Geolift study showed a total Brand sales lift of 2.6%. The TikTok-only region showed a 2.1% sales lift, while the region where TikTok was amplified with Out-of-Phone saw a 3.1% sales lift. The specifically featured products in the TikTok and Out-of-Phone region even showed up to a 7.7% sales lift!

To summarise, the campaign exceeded the brand's expectations and proved that bundling TikTok's premium ad solutions with TikTok-first creatives and a robust measurement approach was effective in meeting the brand's objectives and measuring the impact.