A 5% boost in Philadelphia sales leads Mondelez to predict Facebook will be its biggest single e-commerce channel
Just months after announcing its e-commerce Facebook tie-up, Mondelez International is already backing it to succeed, claiming early tests are enough to indicate that the social network will become its biggest digital sales channel.
The snacks maker has seen experiments with its Philadelphia brand on the social network drive a five per cent boost in sales. And while its claims of success may seem a little early given the single-digit increase, it’s worthwhile noting that the business has spent the bulk of 2014 learning about how it can tempt people to consider purchasing snacks online.
Mondelez has been vocal about its objective to eventually sell products online, but has only recently gone public with its ambitious target to raise e-commerce sales from less than $100m in revenue today to as much as $1bn by 2020. Speaking at Advertising Week New York, Bonin Bough, chief media and e-commerce officer at Mondelez said the “confidence” to go public with the figure was built on promising results from its Philadelphia work.
In partnership with Facebook and ChannelSight, the Oreo-maker let customers buy direct from videos earlier this year as part of a wider campaign to boost awareness of its ‘Deliciously Whipped’ range. It shifted 40 per cent of its marketing spend on the brand to digital, the majority of which was spent with Facebook, said Bough.
Following the shift in media spend, purchases from the Facebook video climbed 16 per cent, while there was a 10 per cent jump in brand association among viewers. Overall, sales for Philadelphia were up five per cent “the majority of which can be directly attributed to Facebook,” said Bough.
The figures have validated a strategy that initially raised eyebrows in the industry given 90 percent of its sales are still made in store. Experts questioned how well it could convince online shoppers to make traditional impulse-purchases online.
Beyond sales, the consumer data gleaned from its e-commerce push is also helping Mondelez personalise its marketing efforts and better judge where and when it buys media.