Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser has overhauled its agency roster following a competitive pitch and appointed VCCP to handle a major slice of its global brand experience business.
The appointment will see VCCP tasked with delivering digital consumer experience strategies and advising on the complete range of digital consumer touchpoints, from content, social and digital advertising through to ecommerce content best practices.
VCCP’s remit will be across the hygiene portfolio of Harpic, Vanish and Finish and work will commence immediately, with activity going live early this year.
The agency joins the likes of Havas, Isobar, McCann, Zenith and Dentsu on RBs roster.
RB global brand experience lead Nick Horan said: “Our remit was to find a partner who could help us deliver gold standard consumer experience thinking and creativity across our portfolio of brands. We’re excited to be working with VCCP to deliver that and build on our digital capability.”
VCCP Partnership managing director Peter Grenfell added: “RB Hygiene’s role in society has never been more important than now. We’re thrilled to be working with them and look forward to helping them realise their ambitious plans for both their business and brands.”
Headquartered in Slough, with operations in around 60 countries, the £12.85bn turnover company has scores of household name brands across its recently revamped operation which is split into the three global divisions of hygiene, health and nutrition; these range from Durex, Cillit Bang and Dettol to Nurofen, Lemsip and Clearasil.
It is one of the few companies which have seen sales rise during the coronavirus pandemic, especially in the health and hygiene categories as consumers rush to buy cleaning products to tackle the spread of the disease.
RB’s ecommerce business is also growing. In the first half of 2020, ecommerce sales were responsible for about 12% of total revenue. Due to Covid-19 and lockdown conditions more and more customers were switching to online channels. Overall, Internet sales grew more than 60% in the first half of 2020, with the hygiene business unit seeing 90% growth.
Last summer, the group signed a deal with Google Cloud to boost its data-driven customer engagement programme.
The appointment is designed to build new capabilities around consumer identification, journeys, and behaviours. In addition, it enables the company to manage data and analytics, measurement and attribution, and automated martech activation across all of its channels, including web, social, in-store, and more.
Once digitised in Google Cloud, RB will use Google’s machine learning capabilities to evaluate return on investment and plan future campaigns more effectively. The company will also run its own machine learning and auto-machine learning models, in an effort to generate insights to optimise media spend.
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