If you didn't join our recent webinar, Transforming Your Connected TV Strategy, you missed an insightful conversation and deep dive into how brands can use the Disney Advertising platform to drive their business objectives. Kepler clients J. Crew and Champion joined our panel to share their brand's experience working on the platform and discussed CTV's impact on their goals and their 2022 ad strategy.

Key Takeaways

• CTV's role in clients' media mix is evolving and allows brands to deliver innovative ad solutions that prove their impact
• Through streaming platforms like Hulu, brands can tailor the audience's experience with media in each stage of the funnel
• J. Crew and Champion are two of Kepler's many clients utilizing the Disney Advertisement platform in their 2022 ad strategy to develop unique ad solution strategies and measurement tactics to drive performance towards their business objectives—regardless of KPIs
• The future of paid CTV media will continue to evolve. Access to democratized dashboards like Hulu Ads Manager will be vital in ensuring that advertisers can easily reach their target audience with CTV ad solutions

Kepler and Disney Advertising are partners working with clients to deliver integrated media marketing across The Walt Disney Company's entertainment and sports offerings. As streaming becomes more pervasive, Kepler has seen the value CTV can drive, and as a result, in the last 2-years, the partnership has seen over 612% year-over-year growth with clients like AMEX, Bed Bath & Beyond. As this partnership evolves, clients gain access to broader audiences and more innovative viewer-first and choice media options. 

The majority of Kepler's 2021 spend with Disney was seen on Hulu, as clients saw its media push audiences down the funnel with a 17% increase in brand awareness, a 12% increase in ad recall, and an 11% increase in consideration intent. No matter the KPI, Hulu has served as a full-funnel partner as the brand's suite of products and ad experiences put brands at the forefront of innovation. The webinar explored this as panelists highlighted Disney's full-funnel CTV capabilities and the innovative ad solution these clients have put into market through this partnership.

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J. Crew kicked off the client portion of the webinar as Courtney Landolfe, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, joined the event to discuss their recent upper-funnel brand awareness "Making The Scene" campaign, which featured Blackish's Traci Ellis Ross. Launched at the tail end of 2021, this was J. Crew's first streaming platform campaign, and the goal was to create excitement and inspire people to get out of their sweatpants post-pandemic. 

The campaign targeted a broader-than-usual audience, and Landolfe indicated that the biggest struggle going into the campaign was defining what success would look like with current last-touch capabilities. The client was pleasantly surprised by the results, as Kepler's strategy utilized Hulu to amplify J. Crew's message in a premium environment. 

The platform provided both reach and scale as the ad-supported version of the platform offers over 150,000,000 unique impressions and access to proven sponsorships like the "Hot on Hulu" product. Kepler addressed the brand's measurement considerations by partnering with Hulu's research team to deliver on a brand lift study that proved the lift and campaign effectiveness across crucial brand metrics. The campaign strategy also included a broader Match Market test to tease out the campaign's down-funnel impact. What resulted was a double-digit lift across many of the brand attributes and questions, including ad-recall and message association, with statistically significant gains in the perception of J. Crew's product quality. 

John Shumate, VP of Global Brand at Champion, also joined the panel to discuss the brand's experience on Hulu. As Champion has evolved over the last 17 years, the company continues to prioritize reaching people in a meaningful way. When the Kepler team suggested Hulu in 2021 for their Reverse Weave Week campaign, the Champion team leaped at the opportunity to test performance on the platform. Results proved impactful, and the Reverse Weave Week campaign served as the foundation for other CTV campaigns the brand ran moving forward. Kepler was able to help Champion apply insights from past campaigns to new efforts like their 2022 "Get it Girl" campaign, and this new campaign exemplifies how Champion's CTV strategy continues to evolve.  

The strategy expanded to include an immersive 50/50 sponsorship with ESPN and Disney. The Disney team suggested this sponsorship strategy because of the alignment between Champion's messaging and The Walt Disney brand's value. Both teams identified relevant "Champion" moments to spotlight things happening around Title 9 and its monumental 50th anniversary. The immersive cross-platform campaign utilizes the entire portfolio of Disney brands, running on linear and streaming services, and employs unique media solutions like in-game features. This 360 program continues to run and is a prime example of what innovation is available with paid CTV media. 

Sylvester Phifer, Vice President of Self Service Platform at Disney, wrapped up the conversation with the Future Forward segment, where he unveiled some of what is to come from the platform. Disney's mission is to make its vast audience available to advertisers through these key ideas

• Data-driven precision
• Premium ad experiences
• Measurement solutions
• Frictionless buying
  
  

In 2022, the platform aims to improve across these ideas by democratizing access to its inventory through the Hulu Ad Manager. The platform will allow small and medium businesses to leverage the features and functionality to target, measure, and optimize their campaigns. Allowing 24/7 access to premium content on flexible budgets, specific audience targeting, and near real-time optimization opportunities. This product was developed out of the industry demand for both convenience and transparency and will extend to select agencies in the summer of 2022—including Kepler Group.  

The event was chock-full of great information that advertisers and brands could use to build out and evolve the CTV paid media strategy moving forward. A special thank you to the Disney, J. Crew, and Champion teams for being a part of this event and sharing their keen insights and point of view on the CTV products.

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