Rakuten is a leading shopping rewards program that offers Cash Back, deals and rewards from thousands of consumers’ favorite brands across a wide range of categories including apparel, health and beauty, dining, grocery, travel, on-demand services, subscription boxes and more.
Rakuten
Industry
E-commerce
Exceeding awareness goals with integrated launch campaign
Services Provided
- Media Mix Modeling
- Content and Platform Analysis
- Machine Learning Performance Inputs
- Media Planning and Buying across: OTT, TV, Digital Video, Paid Social, Podcasts, Radio
- Branded Content, Brand Integration
- Brand Measurement
- On-demand Performance Dashboard
01 Challenges
After Rakuten acquired Ebates, the company needed to undertake an extensive corporate rebranding to establish a footprint in North America. Despite being a firmly established brand overseas, Rakuten had little to no brand recognition in the United States (8% aided and 0% unaided awareness). Rakuten tasked Ocean Media to create a media strategy to increase awareness of the Rakuten name, drive consumers to their site and make Rakuten synonymous with cash-back shopping.
02 Approach
Ocean Media utilized cross-channel media planning tools to develop a ubiquitous, multi-touchpoint strategy to drive maximum reach and connect with Rakuten’s key targets and high-value, savvy online shoppers.
With the media landscape continuing to evolve and product purchasing trends shifting by demographic group, the integrated launch campaign was built to closely mirror the media consumption patterns of our targets.
What we did
- Launched campaign during the 2019 Super Bowl, with a teaser ad featuring a machine rewarding people with cash for pronouncing “RAK-uh-ten” correctly. The teaser ad then ran exclusively online for a week before reemerging on TV during the Grammy Awards.
- Negotiated a multi-media blitz which employed live sports placements in the NBA and NCAA March Madness; top-rated prime programs “This is Us”, “The Masked Singer”, “Survivor” and “9-1-1”; 58 cable networks.
- Created in-show integrations in “The Talk” and “The View” featuring brand spokespersons.
- Developed branded content executions on TLC with on-air personality Danni Star.
- Placed messages on streaming video and VOD through Hulu, Roku and six network-direct partners.
- Activated programmatic and paid social video including Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
- Built digital partnerships with ETOnline for the Academy Awards, Refinery29 and Nativo.
- Established endorsement radio overlay in 14 markets utilizing 67 on-air personalities and scripted ads on top-ranked podcasts such as “Stuff You Should Know”, “Serial” and Oprah’s “SuperSoul Conversations”.