Haleon needed to redefine media as an investment for growth i.e. to convince internal stakeholders to shift media focus from cost to quality, and from efficiency to effectiveness.

Haleon partnered with their advisors MediaSense to initiate a cross-functional project – including Marketing, Procurement, Finance, and Consumer & Business Insight & Analytics – that required senior stakeholder support across each function and 48 markets.

The Media Impact Model developed by MediaSense for Haleon identified and defined four drivers of media effectiveness:

1. Context – metrics that reflect environment and relevance
2. Reach – metrics that maximise audience reach
3. Quality – metrics that reduce wastage and increase engagement
4. Values – metrics that reflect Haleon’s purpose-led values

Key business stakeholders helped select and define the metrics, with MediaSense testing new KPIs e.g. attention metrics; audience affinity; and contextual relevance of inventory.

The next stage was for MediaSense to develop a consistent method for measurement. Historical Haleon data was used to generate a ‘media impact score’ – a statistical method for attaching a single consistent score of 1-10 to all effectiveness drivers, based on the distribution data for each metric.

The final stage was for MediaSense to correlate digital and offline media impact scores with Haleon campaign and business outcomes such as brand health, RoI and sales. This informed the prioritisation and weightings of the media quality KPIs.

Haleon’s media agency Publicis was then targeted to improve the integrated media quality KPI score across 48 markets.

Haleon reported major strategic changes from the Media Impact Model, including:

(i) a dramatic cut in the long tail of programmatic sites “from 180,000+ to 5,000”; and

(ii) “moving TV spend from off-peak to premium high impact slots.”

The model was adeliberately built to enable evolution and to incorporate new media channels, now including social, programmatic, YouTube, e-commerce and retail media, as well as TV/BVOD.

Haleon quoted outstanding results:

• 25% uplift in media quality (across digital and TV) when piloted in 2023 and further double digit improvement on full go-live in 2024, as measured by the Media Impact Model
• Significant impact on advertising effectiveness for Haleon’s power brands: Voltaren Germany up 25%, Voltaren Australia up 41%, Sensodyne South Africa up 43%, Panadol Taiwan up 63%, Centrum Philippines up 89%
• 40% overall increase in effectiveness and RoI, as measured by Haleon’s independent marketing econometrics tool
• Seven consecutive quarters of sales growth across 2023 and 2024, including 12% of sales attributed to media as per Haleon’s marketing econometrics tool

This is true industry-changing innovation and partnership – MediaSense supporting Haleon in shifting media planning and buying from efficiency to effectiveness, by correlating media quality data with campaign outcomes to drive business growth.