MMI Agency - Best Consumer Products Website

Company: MMI Agency, Houston, TX
Company Description: MMI Agency is a communications firm that uses deep consumer insights to create and activate integrated campaigns delivering best-in-class, high impact results to our clients. We partner with brands across industries, including CPG, healthcare, real estate, technology and finance. We are full-service, with capabilities in search landscape and strategy, digital public relations, media and creative.
Nomination Category: Web Achievement Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Consumer Products - Non-Durables

Nomination Title: Crest Whitening Emulsions Campaign

Building on their portfolio of teeth whitening offerings, Crest introduced in 2020 their new Crest Whitening Emulsions, utilizing first-of-its-kind technology to bring a better, faster, easier teeth whitening experience for consumers. Key goals were to build awareness, clearly convey the product’s differentiators, and drive consumer conversion.

In service to these goals, the campaign employed numerous different web-based media, including email campaigns, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, search and programmatic advertising using multiple vendors, all driving to the crestwhitesmile.com website.

The digital campaign was designed to utilize a multi-channel approach to meet a diverse audience in places they routinely consume content, and much of the early creative featured headlines that would prompt consumer realization that "this is something new." These introductory assets would feature bold, fully supported claims offering solutions to real consumer needs – namely teeth/gum sensitivity, efficacy, speed and convenience of the whitening treatment – and bring about real category disruption. Consumers directed to the website from digital channels would benefit from more educational content regarding the product’s innovative technology, compelling claims and reasons to buy, “how to” videos, and reviews, shared by real people, which further bolstered the product success. Consumers that found their way to the homepage organically would immediately learn about the new product line from the site hero banner and introductory section below it showcasing the new products.

The chosen social media channels provided optimal opportunities for early testing of different messaging, diverse models and creative executions, to enable real time learning that could be applied to additional channels as success was proven. Ongoing Conversion Rate Optimization testing on web pages led to design and functionality changes to better maximize site success.

Pre-launch for Crest Whitening Emulsions began on September 1, 2020 when digital and web content went live and an introductory sign-up email deployed with “Be the first to try” messaging, resulting in an extremely high open rate of 26%, with a 2.4% click rate. Within one week, more than 15,800 people signed up. On September 8, a limited quantity was made available on the DTC website, and all units were sold out within 90 minutes. The team quickly pivoted to release additional product on hand to see how many units could sell, total, in the first 24 hours, and revenue from those resulting sales actually exceeded the daily average from sales of the entire CrestWhiteSmile.com product suite during the month preceding launch, reflecting an 82% sales lift. September 15 marked the official launch day.

The website saw nearly 3x the average daily visitors on 9/1 (compared to the average during August 2020), and 5x the average visitors on 9/15, demonstrating clear success in raising awareness for the product. From launch through December, total site visitors increased by 10%, compared to the same period in 2019.

Also since September, Crest Whitening Emulsions has rapidly ascended through the ranks of all products offered on CrestWhiteSmile.com (12 SKUs, total), to consistently be in the top three, underscoring the lasting impact that strong, web-supported communication strategy and creative has had on providing a compelling, ongoing reason for people to buy.