Durex

The Objective

Durex (durex.de) has a clear brand purpose: Provide the safety and freedom for you to pursue your sexual pleasure. We fight for a world of sexual security. We fight against symbols of shame and stigma – a mission and a message that require continuous nurturing and amplification, even in a sexually liberated market like Germany.

When Durex Germany started to track a trending decline in consideration on its brand equity tracker, the brand decided to stimulate some activity in this crucial funnel phase. To do this, it set out to inspire its target audience of “open & curious” consumers through a native-first content approach, focusing on its Gefühlsecht - Thin Feel range of condoms.

The audience’s profile and consumption habits made social media a logical choice of campaign channel – while engagement KPIs such as watch time were crucial for the brand to accomplish its goals. TikTok had reliably over-indexed in consumption for the relevant target segment while also cementing incremental reach when stacked against some other key players in the social space. But would the attention powerhouse also deliver tangible business results?

The Solution

The local Durex team was eager to put this exciting proposition to the test. The brand leveraged TikTok Creative Exchange (TTCX) to generate three content packages with distinctly different creative types. These were delivered on the platform as part of a smart bundling approach, consisting of In-Feed Ads and Top Feed Ads with Reach & Frequency to support the campaign’s focus objectives.

A Brand Lift Study was implemented to provide clarity on which of the three could produce the most significant brand impact. Not only that: the local Durex Germany team partnered with the Global Reckitt & TikTok teams to run the first Marketing ROI Impact Study on the platform. The study leveraged a regional multi-cell approach backed by Nielsen sales data to measure the incrementality of the activation.

More specifically, the study’s goal was to answer 3 core questions:

Can TikTok, the high-attention platform, drive an incremental ROI and sales uplift for Durex?

What type of content type resonates best on TikTok – Branded, Repurposed Branded (Remix) or Native (Net New) – as reflected in business impact KPIs?

Are Top Feed Ads in the very first ad slot worth the premium CPM compared to standard in-feed placements?

The Results

The collective output garnered from this campaign delivered impactful insights and was a resounding success for the brand. In terms of incremental ROI and sales uplift, the campaign generated ROI results that were twice as strong (90%) vs historical Social MMX outputs.

For the content types, the following results were observed:

• Native (Net New) garnered the highest ROI – 30% above Branded and 200% higher than Repurposed Branded (Remix).

• Native (Net New) content also yielded a 95% increase in watch time over the two other content types as well as an increase in consideration of 41%.

• Top Feed indeed merited its higher CPM compared to standard infeed placements by delivering a 2-3x higher effectiveness score (regional net revenue matched to impressions).

In addition, the Brand Lift Study showed a 27% increase in ad recall as well as an increase of 3% in brand preference. In closing, this Durex’ success story showcased the power of cross-functional collaboration across global and local teams – ensuring a parallel learning agenda and driving mutually beneficial insights that can be scaled.