Goodman Fielder’s Wonder ‘Recycling Rewards’ campaign has not only won the hearts of Australian consumers, but also adland award judges. The campaign that won the environmental, social and governance category at the MFA Awards last year, recording an 83% increase in soft plastic collections versus its 2021 campaign and double-digit growth in unit sales from the bread brand’s 2022 campaign, also won Cartology’s Campaign of the year. 

What you need to know: 

• An omnichannel customer base saw Goodman Fielder increase conversion and growth through digital rather than traditional media
• Retail media needs to be planned in its own right, as its own media channel. It has been a critical component of Goodman Fielder’s total media mix
• The Wonder ‘Recycling Rewards’ campaign drove core brand metrics resulting in record breaking results and improved sustainability outcomes

Marrying up marketing with purpose and customer insights

Bread brand Wonder has very high penetration reaching a third of Australian households, and in 2021 Goodman Fielder made the conscious decision to build sustainability into its overall purpose, ensuring that it builds a better future for the younger generation. “Creating a better future of sustainable play for Aussie kids is at the heart of our purpose and why we consciously put our marketing dollars into an initiative that has, and will continue to, make meaningful impact.”

And so, the Wonder ‘Recycling Rewards’ campaign was born from the insight that 60% of soft plastics in Australia can be recycled, but in reality, only 16% are being recycled¹.

Through cause-related marketing we connected with customers and encouraged trial with a recycling initiative that wasn’t restricted to our own brand. Any soft plastic bread bags were accepted, making the program and our sustainability initiative authentic, and inclusive which drove its success.  

Retail media: The secret ingredient

We view retail media as a critical component of our total media mix. It is a vehicle to ensure that we reach the right customers with the right message at the right time. It goes beyond point of purchase. Whether that's in-store, online, or an ad in-aisle, it's never been more important for us to tap into that as the media landscape shifts.

Our customers are time poor parents, they’re browsing online, checking out from the couch and grabbing to go from the aisles. And so, we needed an omnichannel campaign strategy that reflected how our customer shop and reach consumers through their full purchase journey.

Using an omnichannel approach, Wonder saw media engagement results that exceeded all benchmarks:

• 24% new-to-brand customers
• 38% new to SKU customers
• 16% growth for the Wonder brand
• 85% more bags recycled than last year
• 58% increase in school participation versus launch year, with 1580 schools taking part in the program.

Access to retailer data, in this instance through Cartology, was critical. We unlocked customer insight around the time of day when consumers are shopping and bolstered digital spend in those moments and days. For a category like fresh bread, which is bought on a weekly basis, this was  vitally important to mitigate media wastage and reach the right customer at those key times of influence.       

We’re all working towards the same commercial outcomes, why not do that together?

We’ve had the opportunity to play in the retail space for a while now, to get under the hood of it and where we’re moving to now is a truly integrated approach to planning and retail media is a critical component of our total media mix. 

Taking the Wonder Recycling Rewards campaign as an example, we needed to make sure that we showed up in the most relevant, contextual way throughout that shopper journey. We proactively partnered with Cartology to build a bespoke campaign and really leveraged their expertise around investment choices on the right communication channels within retail media.

It has been a triple win – sales growth, a win for the environment with increased recycling collections, and a win for our customers. It was a significant investment for the business, but it has paid off. We were able to grow ahead of the category and ahead of our competitive set, where gaining new-to-brand customers is very difficult. Ultimately winning the hearts and minds of customers is how we're going to drive sustainable brand growth in the future.

And we haven't taken our foot off the pedal. It's a program that we actively believe in. And our brand health measures have been positively impacted. We grew brand fame by six points and positive sentiment by nine from the Wonder campaign. So we are putting our marketing spend behind a cause-related campaign that we know will drive a result.   

The learnings and opportunity

Driving success in retail media requires more cohesive planning and through customer insight and online and offline channels, we can delight and surprise our shoppers in more meaningful and unexpected ways, delivering value in that moment of truth.

Whether that is using contextual audiences to target on or off platform or more granular post campaign reporting, we will lean in to ensure that we're optimising and shaping our investment strategies in the most strategic way possible.

Being able to access this information from retail media providers gives us much more detail than we've ever had before and as the industry grows and customer behaviour changes, It’s never been more important for how we plan activity.         

The biggest learning for us, however, has been trust - trust in trying new and different strategies and trust in testing and learning. Retail media is a relatively new channel built around the customer. We did something in retail media that we’ve never done before and it paid off in spades.

My key takeout?

Plan holistically. Marry purpose with customer insight. Test, learn and trust.

1. AFGC Packaging Circular Economy 2020