The entire planning and execution of Bugs Out relied on the smart use of real-time data to reach buyers in a proactive mode to win the reactive war against Wilson's competitors.

In order to do so, we used data to initially identify potential infested households to serve personalized and contextually relevant digital banners.

This approach was enabled by a robust data partnership with The Weather Network that allowed us to be relevant every step of the way by pushing the right product to the right consumers, according to the level of infestation risk and weather triggers.

Wilson, Canada’s top insect repellent brand, leads sales with 28% of market shares. However, it’s main competitor, Ortho, isn’t far behind with 27%.

Whitin the category, the hundreds of different products are very confusing for the consumer as they lack differentiation from one brand to another. Every pest control product has a similar packaging, blurring the consumer’s decision making in a moment where they are over-stressed.

This is the main reason why Wilson needed to outsmart competition with an innovative approach that would disrupt the category, as well as help them maintain 2020 sales levels, throughout another uncertain COVID year.

When an insect invasion occurs, consumers panic and default to search online for quick solutions. They are spurred to action within the next 48 hours despite not knowing which product to buy.

They will usually Google “big dark, hairy, insect with 6 legs” or “crawling, long centipedes” hoping to identify the intruder and learn how to get rid of it. Unfortunately, this can be difficult as there are more than 55 000 species of insects in Canada and more than 150 different products to choose from.

Worst of all, insect invasions are unpredictable events! People can't anticipate when tiny invaders will enter their beloved home, and their anxiety levels go to the roof when it happens.

Using the power of data and a unique partenership with The Weather Network, Wilson saw an opportunity to be top-of-mind in consumers' minds before they even knew they needed the product.

Wilson built a solid data ecosystem that would become the basis of trust with consumers: allowing them to predict anxiety-provoking invasions that they couldn’t plan before.

With a 100% digital approach, Wilson would be able to connect precisely with their core target ; Canadians at risk of bugs invasions. Historical and real-time data were analyzed to share valuable information with Canadians and help them identify the specific product they need before an insect invades their home.

We connected our media channels to several data points so that our communications would be as relevant as possible to the consumer. To make sure to maximize opportunities between consumers and the brand, we precisely balanced push & pull tactics so Wilson could be the hero brand of the day ; reassuring when consumers need Wilson the most (pull) and solution-driven when consumers don’t even know yet they would need Wilson at their rescue(push).

Our data ecosystem followed a 3-step strategy.

#1

With Wilson experts, we gathered all the data on the most common insects and rodents and determined an exhaustive list of weather conditions that cause their proliferation.

#2

This data was crossed-reference and integrated with The Weather Network first-party data feed. To connect with people when their household might get infected, the ad was personalized with specific creative related to the problem the user could face.

As such, we created over 1 million message combinations – for each weather trigger can be matched with a Wilson product. Those combinations happened in real time.

#3

We were able to map the most infected neighborhoods across Canada. We created a first-to-market audience targeting connecting with people based on an extrapolation at the scale of the postal code (FSA) they live in.1450 postal codes were targeted in a country of only 1600.

Thanks to an efficient data strategy, Wilson has been able to educate Canadians on possible insect invasions and give them the tools to prevent these traumatic events.

The result: we recorded a global sales increase of 3% in the pest control category. A great surprise considering that we anticipated flat results year-over-year due to uncertainties related to COVID.

We reached a high level of engagement on all creatives: we outperformed with click through rates (0.75%), which is more than double The Weather Network’s benchmarks (0.30%). Some of our creatives even got up to 5 times over the anticipated results (2.22% CTR).

Wilson became Canadians’ insect invasion savior by building a solution to help Canadians predict the unpredictable!