Unilever and Coca-Cola are hailing the launch of the Nectar360 Pollen unified retail media platform, reporting faster activation, improved measurement and more effective cross-partner collaboration.
Built in-house by Sainsbury’s and Nectar360 and co-created with partner brands and agencies, Pollen combines audience insights, media planning and activation, optimisation and measurement into one single platform, enabling brands to run connected campaigns across in store, online and offsite channels.
At its core is a multi-touch attribution model that gives brands a clear view of performance across the full customer journey, helping them understand what is driving growth and where to optimise for better results.
Nectar360 managing director Amir Rasekh said: “Pollen brings our audiences, media, creativity and measurement together in a way the industry never experienced before. What we are seeing now is proof that when you remove complexity through technology and focus on outcomes, brands can drive stronger, more measurable growth and deliver better customer experiences.”
Pollen uses AI to improve performance, from pre-campaign planning to in-flight optimisation, based on what is driving sales and incrementality. This includes AI-powered tools such as advanced multi-touch attribution, designed to give a clearer view of how each channel contributes to results, and a creative checker, which can reduce compliance checks from weeks to seconds.
Launched late last year, early campaigns highlight a simpler, more joined-up experience and impressive results, including over 2.5x higher incremental sales from omnichannel campaigns, with the strongest results seen when brands connect multiple touchpoints across the customer journey.
From those incremental sales, up to 25% are driven by mid and upper-funnel activity while targeted activity, powered by first-party data has seen up to 10x higher conversion rates.
Together, it is claimed these results show how retail media can deliver beyond the shelf, driving measurable growth across the full customer journey.
Nectar360 maintains that Pollen enables brands to measure true incremental impact, moving beyond siloed reporting and last-click attribution to understand what is really driving growth.
Unilever UK and Ireland head of retail media Charlotte Murphy said: “Retail media has scaled quickly, but the way we plan and execute campaigns has not kept pace. Pollen brings everything together in one place giving us the speed, simplicity and control we have been missing. It is a meaningful step forward for how we plan, activate and notably measure retail media with the measurement insights directly informing our future plans.”
Coca Cola Europacific Partners associate director of sales Gemma Nicholas added: “For big consumer and customer moments, multi-channel retail media campaigns like our Devil Wears Prada 2 activation (pictured) are essential to get right. Moving to Pollen means we can move faster as one team, including ourselves, Nectar360, WPP, and the Coca-Cola company to evaluate the campaign’s effectiveness together.”
Nectar360 is working with PHD UK and its client Lipton Teas and Infusions, to optimise creative messaging and drive improved retail media performance. Using Pollen’s creative optimisation AI tooling, assets will be benchmarked and scored against years of historical insights to suggest improvements to help drive results against campaign objectives.
This will enable brands to clearly identify what works and optimise their campaigns to drive more impact and deliver better business outcomes.
PHD UK managing partner Lucy Holmes said: “Pollen brings together creative, targeting, performance and measurement. Our exclusive testing with Pollen will enable us to link creative performance with campaign outcomes and is a real step forward in helping clients to optimise impact and sales.”
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