I-Com Global Summit 2022: Data and insights can fuel marketing excellence – Reckitt’s Elaine Rodrigo

On day three of the I-Com Global Summit 2022, Elaine Rodrigo, chief insights and analytics officer, with the help of a case study, shared how Reckitt is building a ‘powerful’ data and insights engine to drive marketing excellence.

 

Emphasising the need for brands to become agents of driving purpose and change, Rodrigo explained that Finish, a dishwasher brand, helped consumers in the UK, USA and Turkey, not only save water, but also helped the brand grow its profits.

 

She said, “In the last two years, we have been on this journey to build purpose-driven brands. We want to reach our sustainability ambitions via corporate initiatives, by working across our value chain, with the power of our purpose-led brands. We expect 50% of net revenue from more sustainable products by 2030.”

 

Rodrigo then spoke about how brands can play a key role in driving purpose and sustainability in the world, with the Finish example.

 

“Data influenced what we are doing. Our R&D colleagues told us that when a consumer uses a dishwasher, 10 litres of water is used for one load of dishes. When the dishes are washed by hand, 100 litres of water are used. This means, that if we got people to use dishwashers, we could save 90 litres of water, per wash. We wanted to encourage this behaviour so people would unconsciously save water for the planet,” explained Rodrigo.

 

However, Finish’s R&D team found out that a lot of people that use dishwashers would also rinse their dishes before using the machine because they believed that the dishwasher alone couldn’t do the job. The rinsing of dishes also used 50 litres of water.

 

So, Finish developed a ‘skip the rinse’ campaign, one which focused solely on communication.

 

 

 

Measurement framework

 

Rodrigo shared that the brand’s measurement framework comprised three levels.

 

“First, we looked at the interaction – the people who have access to our products or are engaged by our purpose-led communications and programmes. Then, we looked at the number of people we reached to take beneficial actions, which in this case was adopting water-saving habits. Lastly, we saw the benefits delivered through the use of our products or programme innovations, which was as simple as saving money through electricity bills,” she said.

 

She added that along with these brand measurement frameworks, the campaign also helped Finish’s bottom line.

 

“We increased share and penetration of the Finish brand in all three markets. We have been driving this for the last two or three years and rolling it out to the rest of the brands. We are systemising the way we look at purpose. We want to build a model to show that investing in purpose and sustainability also helps business agenda,” she surmised.