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StrategyCase Study 02

From Visibility Brief to Sales Lift

Syndicated ResearchGoogle Traffic DataMedia BuyingMulti-Market Negotiation

Executive Summary

A national alcohol brand briefed a visibility campaign across roughly 13 distributor markets: keep the brand visible so in-market retailers felt they had marketing support. I took that brief further on my own initiative, setting a harder objective the work could be measured against: driving actual retail sales, not just awareness. I built the target audience and its media habits from syndicated consumer research, placed the media on real evening-commute behavior so the message reached buyers one exit from a store at peak intent, and negotiated packaged buys across the markets to stretch the budget. The plan delivered a 28% sales lift, and the client funded a 38% bigger budget the next year to repeat it.

The Brief: A Visibility Ask

  • Support defined as awareness

    The brief defined support narrowly: keep the brand visible in each distributor's market so retailers felt backed. Awareness is hard to tie to anything a client can bank.

  • A generic buy would prove nothing

    A standard reach-and-frequency buy across roughly 13 markets would have satisfied the brief and left no way to show it had moved the business.

The Reframe: A Sales Objective

  • Raised the bar to a commercial goal

    I took the visibility goal and went beyond it, setting a commercial objective on my own initiative: move real product off the shelves at the retailers the campaign was meant to support. That single decision turned a routine distributor-support buy into a campaign the client chose to fund again.

  • Built the audience from data

    I built the target audience and its media habits from GfK MRI, Simmons, and Scarborough syndicated research, so every placement was chosen because the data pointed to it, not because it was a default buy.

  • Placed on behavior, then negotiated the buy

    I layered Google traffic data over that audience, read evening rush-hour patterns, and placed out-of-home at freeway exits feeding retailer clusters. Across roughly 13 markets I negotiated packaged, multi-market buys to cut the per-unit cost and contracted all the media myself.

The Breakthrough: Raise the Bar First, Then Target on Behavior

The win started with a decision, not a media plan. Setting a sales bar above the visibility ask gave the work something to be measured against, and the audience and placement were then built to clear it. Hover any result to see it.

Raise the bar
Went beyond the visibility ask and set a measurable sales objective on my own initiative.
Build the audience
Built the target audience and its media habits from syndicated consumer research.
Place and negotiate
Placed out-of-home at freeway exits on evening-rush data, and negotiated packaged buys across roughly 13 markets.
28% sales lift ยท 38% budget next year

Went beyond the brief to a sales objective

The brief asked for visibility. I raised the ambition on my own initiative, setting a harder objective the campaign could be measured against: moving actual product off retailer shelves. That higher bar is what made the campaign worth funding again.

Placed on real evening-rush behavior

I read Google traffic data for evening rush-hour patterns and placed out-of-home at freeway exits feeding high-density retailer clusters, so the message reached target buyers one exit from a store at peak purchase intent.

28% sales lift

The plan produced a 28% sales lift for the brand at its retailers, the outcome the reframed objective was built to move.

38% bigger budget the next year

The client funded a 38% larger budget the following year to repeat and extend the plan, the clearest signal that the sales objective had paid off.

The brief, and the bar above it

The brief
Make retailers feel supported
The objective I set
Drive actual retail sales

I took the visibility goal and set a measurable sales goal above it, on my own initiative.

The lesson travels past media. Every market already runs on a system: how people move, when they are ready to buy, how the media is priced. I read that system from the data and placed the brand inside it, at the exit before the store, at the hour of intent, at a rate a packaged buy could reach. The campaign did not have to invent the moment of purchase. It had to show up where the system was already carrying people toward it.