Reddit Marketing Case Study with Dove - Turning Real Reviews into Real Growth

Speaker: Welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Target internet.com. In this episode, we're talking Reddit marketing and how a well established brand like Dove helped drive sales in this notoriously difficult channel to get right.

Speaker 2: So as Google has brought in results from Reddit, more and more. And now we have AI overviews and AI platforms generally using Reddit. More many of us have looked at Reddit, but either we've never really got much further with it 'cause we're not sure we understand the platform properly, or we might have quite realistic fears about what could go wrong. So when I heard that the beauty brand Dove was running a campaign centering around user feedback in Reddit, I really wanted to hear more about this. Now, let's be clear. A digital marketing podcast is ad free. We don't take paid placements. There are some genuinely interesting insights in how this campaign was planned and run. And how a brand can really make use of Reddit effectively. Really important for showing up in AI overviews for getting feedback, and there's a lot that will unpick within this interview. So I'm joined, uh, by Emily Barford, who's head of Dove Beauty for the Beauty and Wellbeing Division at Unilever. Uh, the campaign itself focused on a hair mask, launched back in January 25. However, like many newer formats in beauty, hair masks still face a bit of a challenge that a lot of consumers aren't fully aware of how or why to use them. So that lack of awareness is something that we can all probably learn from. How can we build awareness of our products services, whether you are consumer facing B2B or anything else. So to help drive awareness. Market penetration and sales growth. Dove built a campaign around an organic Reddit conversation about the product, so rather than scripting the response or only selecting positive comments, the brand asks for permission to use the first 50 reviews, comments and feedback exactly as they're written, positive, negative, neutral. The comments shared without any edits. Now this conversation was then turned into outdoor digital. There was influence engagement, there was a popup event and loads more that Emily gets into. But at the core of it was a genuine conversation within Reddit. So what can we actually learn about using real conversations as the foundation for creative work? So over to the interview. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Okay, I'm here with Emily. Emily, why don't you just introduce who you are, your role, and then we'll kind of get into this, what I think is quite an interesting campaign. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Sounds great, and thank you so much for having me. So I'm Emily Barfoot. I am the head of Dove Beauty for the Beauty and Wellbeing Division at Unilever. That means that I am in charge of our North America Innovation Funnel for hair care and skincare and all of the in-market execution and campaign activity. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: So, I mean, look, Dove's been known for challenging beauty standards for a long time. I was really interested that you'd kind of lent into the Reddit side of things. So how does this kind of real reviews campaign fit into that broader brand story? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: So Dove, as you know and pointed out, we've been around for a long time. In 2004, we launched our real beauty platform, and that was really iconic, quite frankly, at the time, and spearheaded people into. Challenging narrow definitions of beauty. So one of the things that we've always done. Portray real people as they are. And that's part of how we define what real beauty really stands for. And so when we sought to promote one of our latest hair masks, which is a new product that we developed last year, we wanted to make sure that we were showing a new take on what that belief system is for Dov. So real reviews at its essence and core basically takes the same belief system that Dove has already had, but extends it into a new space using the language that Redditors are actually using themselves and showcasing their words themselves. So we took how the product was being discussed and evaluated and trusted in a social first world by using exactly their quotes without edits. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: So, so what kind of made Reddit the obvious home? Because for me, we know that Reddit's really important from a Google point of view. It's important from a kind of AI overview point of view, but it's also got a bit of a reputation being the bit of the wild west. You know, you never know. The conversations can be quite extreme in terms of reactions to things. So it's obviously a, it's a brave strategy. So what made it the obvious home for the brand, do you think? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Reddit is an amazing platform. It truly is. And what started the whole thing actually is as we relaunched our hair portfolio, we noticed that there was an organic conversation starting to happen within Reddit. And so we saw quotes like WTF Dove and really organic discussion around how the products were working for different hair types. And if you don't know the hair category, it is actually quite confusing for a lot of people and there's a lot of navigation that you have to do if you're trying to build beyond, you know, a shampoo and conditioner into a wider set and routine. And so a hair mask, which is an incremental step beyond your conditioner, is exactly something that someone wants to do to actually look up what to do with it, how to use it, when should I use it, will it work for my hair? And so on. So when we saw this conversation already happening, we thought this is a perfect opportunity to leverage real people's voices on a product that we want to drive. So. Consumers were using Reddit to share their detailed experiences, to understand the performance of different products, what results might work for them, and help each other in a peer-to-peer problem solving type of way, as opposed to just reacting to, you know, standard advertising. So Reddit became really fundamentally unique on that. Core idea. It is culturally honest by design. It is a place where people are going to search as you pointed out, it will drive the LLMs, which is fantastic, but it's authentic. They're validating their claims. They're validating their experiences. They're reducing uncertainty that they might have before buying the product where. We really wanted to drive that conversation and leverage that honesty within the Reddit platform. What also is fantastic about Reddit. As a bonus is that it's an incredibly wonderful place to, to generate insights for true product innovation. You're gonna get people's real thoughts around did it work, did the packaging work, did the scent bother them, et cetera. So for us to actually establish and engage that community, we ended up having really rich insights come for this that we could feed into, you know, even our product development. And. There's another element of Reddit that is so critical to this campaign and to dove inherently, which is its lack of polish right now in the world. Trust is eroding people who don't always know what is real, what is not real, what is curated, what is authentic, and the fact that Reddit is an unpolished world. People who are not being paid necessarily to tell you something specific. It actually affords an incredible opportunity to build trust and engage people in a very real, authentic way. So Reddit was the trifecta of of the best place that we could kind of pull from and leverage in this campaign and do it in a really a way that's authentic to us, authentic to real beauty, and. Authentic to, you know, how people will leverage these reviews to actually choose our product in the end. 'cause ultimately what we wanna do is raise awareness and drive penetration of a product that we launched that we believe is fantastic and we just need other people see the results themselves. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: I love the idea of Reddit as a place of getting insights and then, you know, authenticity is that theme that's been coming out again and again in conversations on the podcast previously. But what's interesting to me then is that Reddit is notoriously difficult or resistant to brand intrusion, you know, having the brand voice in there. So how did you approach earning trust and how did that work? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: So I'll start by saying Redditors are not. Brutal just because they want to be. They are honest, they are transparent, they are authentic, they're real experiences. And so you have to show up in the same way. You cannot hide, you cannot try and curate the conversation. You have to let it happen in an unpolished fashion. And brands that work, I think within Reddit. Are doing a good job of showing up unpolished a bit as well and allowing that to therefore be part of the community and respect the rules and codes of the community that exist. So within the norms of the platform, we started with coming with a post that was from the brand and we didn't hide that. We said, Hey, it's Dove. We need your help. We want you to try this product and give us your. Positive, you're negative, you're neutral, anything you got. And then we're gonna reach out and publish the first 50 people that give us permission to use their review. So we started with authenticity. We started with an unbiased type of prompt. And I think that started from a place of of positivity, therefore for the redditer community to engage with us without and share whatever they wanted to say. So transparency. Within the platform is critical to enable not feeling like an intrusive brand, but feeling like a collaborative. And we're truly here to understand what it is that you have to say. And then finally, we really wanted to execute the campaign in a way that respected the rules. Beyond just the engagement within the platform, but on other executions, whether that's out of home or, we did a, an event in New York City where we published the reviews in Giant Masks at the, in the Flatiron District. We did films and other digital and social creative. So some things we did for that to respect Reddit or rules were, we used ssar faces. So that's the face that you know is the digital identity of a redditor. We put it on. All of the content to make sure that they recognized sort of their themselves in that code. We also published the quotes without context. This is the quote that they said, this is exactly what it said. We didn't shape what or change anything that they said so that it wouldn't be taken out of context and. Through these points, I think what we saw people react to and some of the best quotes that we got were, did Dov seriously just leave the comments on, is this real? Did Dov just really publish a negative review? And so we enabled people to basically see that we are respecting Reddit, we're respecting Reddit codes and trying to do it in a new way. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: I love that. So how much of the campaign therefore was planned, and then how much did it need to be responsive, like based on what you just said? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Sure. So the elements of the campaign that were planned were obviously the channels in which we invested and the belief that we needed to have a balanced. Result in terms of what was positive and what was negative. So if we published only positive reviews, it wouldn't work. 'cause you need to actually have a balanced approach of negative and positive to enable the level of transparency, credibility, and trust that we were looking to achieve. Fortunately, we had a lot of positive comments and so we weren't dealing with a situation where it would end up being a lot of negativity, but those were the elements that were planned. So the strategic intent, how we were gonna drive the credibility. And then of course the media activation itself. This was about principles. It wasn't about scripting outcomes. The guardrails really were publish the reviews exactly as written, preserve the full context, gain the permission before we did so, and respect the anonymity, as I said, and. Nothing around a pre of which sentiment, which language, which claims outside of the point I mentioned around a balanced view, positive and negative. So ultimately the responsiveness. Was very extensive in terms of what was happening in the organic conversation and viewing the positive sentiment at, for the most part, that came from the campaign and taking on the insights that we got and responding to people to say, Hey, thanks that we didn't realize that you didn't like the sense. Maybe we'll look into that. And it, it reflects the broader Dove and Unilever social first philosophy which is that we treat social. As a starting point, not just an amplification layer. And we prioritize the many to many participation and engagement through voices of others than just the brand to the audience. So it enabled us to really have kind of a collective responsiveness across influencers across the in market in Flatiron district event that we held and in the digital out of home that we ran. Ultimately we, we preserved the principle, we preserved the intention of the campaign through this process, but we didn't control the narrative. We let the, we let people speak for themselves. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Okay, so based on that then, so what does success ,look like for a campaign like this? I'm assuming were different metrics to what you might normally use to evaluate a campaign. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Sure. So the first thing is we really looked at sentiment. So is the organic conversation that's happening. Positive, negative, and the scale of it. We looked a lot at impressions. So ultimately this was an awareness attempt to get people to be aware of our hair mask and then hopefully try it. And then the third piece, which is very normal in the way that we look at campaign executions is are we driving purchase intent? Are we getting the sales lift that we expect? We ended up having around over 260 million impressions from the campaign. We had north of 15 million video views of some of our key assets. We had 63 million out of home impressions and 150 UGC user generated content pieces from the event that we had in the Flatiron District. That was kind of the spark of the campaign, and the one that is my favorite is our treatments business is triple digit growth. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: That's phenomenal. it's great that it's tied back to real world results, so based on that, I mean, there's a lot of mentioning there about, social first. So social listening, I guess it's used a bit, but it's not, you know, used that strategically. So how central is that social listening piece to this whole campaign and how it evolved? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: So central. First it started, I mean, the initial insight of the campaign came from social listening. It came from looking at. Spread it as a platform and the, or in the conversation that was already happening there. It's foundational. It also, the sentiment element that I mentioned in terms of social listening was our ability to say, are people actually picking up on it? Are we getting the right insights from this? Do we need to infuse more influencer content to continue the engagement that we were looking to achieve? So we were very actively listening within the community around what was happening. Not trying to shape it, as I said, so it informed platform choices. It informed media allocation and optimization. If we were seeing improvements in purchase intent on one channel versus another, if we were seeing certain quotes that landed. One message versus another quote that landed another message Doing better in terms of engagement. We would optimize accordingly within that within the media insights and within the social listening as well. So it informed a lot of the, let's say, the execution and the creative structure and the optimization of the media itself. And beyond that, I think it's informing us to a great degree of how we need to continue to leverage community listening from here as an ongoing. Discipline as a brand and translate that raw sentiment into real insights and into our other storytelling that will come from the brand. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: I love that were there any surprises that came out of this then? Because you know, obviously with the Reddit community, you never know the conversations that are gonna come out. Any feedback or anything you didn't kind of expect? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: I would say the main surprise for me. Was the lack of negativity. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Right. I think that's a really, no, it's a really good thing to hear because I think Reddit is renowned for, oh, people are gonna pile on and it's gonna be terrible. And actually I think it's a brave thing to do, but I think actually Redditors, as you said aren't inherently negative. And actually, if you are honest and transparent, it reflects well on the brand. But also I think that people react well to that. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: They absolutely. And. We always knew that we had a really good product. This was a well awarded product. It was built on decades of research and hair repair and tons of consumer reviews on really loving the benefit of it across different hair types and challenges that make that individuals have. But you can't please everyone. So I expected that we would have some things that would come up as some more negativity, I was surprised at how, not just how positive, but how constructive the conversation truly ended up being. I mean, people, they, they gave us packaging insights. They gave us new product ideas. They gave us scent and sensory ideas. And it gives me, as an innovator, so much excitement that there's still so many problems to be resolved in, in the world of haircare. So I would say that was my biggest surprise. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Yeah. I was going to say, how do you turn that Reddit data into something actionable? And I think you've kind of answered that because. I hadn't really thought about it particularly before, but that idea of Reddit actually being an amazing source of insights. 'cause you will get people suggesting their insights and bringing those in. So I think that's fantastic. we talked about the fact that real views can be critical. Is there any uncomfortable truth that come out or do you think that, you know, the product's been developed over a long time, that you'd kind of matured beyond that already? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: So, so in terms of a, taking a risk on a new product, there is that, but we had so much research behind it historically that we felt really confident. And last year from an editorial perspective, we ended up with the most awarded hair repair mask in the us. So we knew it was, we knew we had something great to work with. I can't say that I found anything from the feedback that was uncomfortable. I really feel we had such a high degree of confidence in it and such a high degree of. Positive feedback that maybe the uncomfortable truth is it's very affordable and we're delivering results at a very un affordable level. So from the lens of people who maybe were out there saying, I can't believe this was actually a, one of the, one of the real quotes, like, I can't believe that I've been spending so much money on my hair for so long, and you have this mask available. And it delivers incredible results. So perhaps that's an uncomfortable truth for the category. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Well, that's a good thing, right? So, so what does this kind of signal about where do's going with marketing over the next few years do you think? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: I think that this builds on, it's, builds on dove's honesty and real women's voices in a new way. Yeah, it. It evolves how we show up. It's not different from what we've done in the past in the true inherent sense of it where it is. An evolution, let's say, is how modern ecosystems of execution and modern platforms are going to work differently, perhaps, of where trust comes from, where credibility comes from, and those are all things that we will continue to leverage from a more specific angle around media and execution. I do think that we saw such an incredible user generated content and engagement from our popup event in the city. The amount of earned conversation that we got off of that alone in addition to the traditional channel of out of home. Signal to us that these are channels and experiential events that will continue to be really exciting for people. I think people need small moments in their day that they see something that inspires them and they wanna participate in an event. We had an hour long queue at the popup event and people at, you know, they're New Yorkers, they're busy, they're going places, but a lot of them just really wanted to know what was going on and get some joy in their day. So I think we will continue to invest in the various channels. We'll continue to invest in some of these new experiential activation types of things for people. And then at a macro level, we are heavily investing in this many to many model. I mentioned this le leaving your brand in the voices of others and letting them drive the conversation and the awareness. For you that will continue to grow while still activating across the holistic marketing mix. And Dove can do it in such a unique way by building and continuing to reinforce the trust and credibility that people have in this brand. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: And I, I think it's interesting because. You kind of answered this question a little bit, but I was gonna say, do you think this is specific to Dove? Because that authenticity of Dove fits in really well, but actually you've already said that, you know, that physical event, a little bit of joy in somebody's day does actually drive online activation and so on, and engagement as well. I really love that connection between physical events, bringing a little moment to somebody and actually how that drives true social engagement. I think there's something really important in that . So I think with the. With ai kind of changing how people discover products. The changes in Google, you mentioned AI overviews. How do you think that community led credibility kind of fits into that? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Yes. So there's several elements of, I think the AI discussion to be unpacked of what worked in this campaign and what consumers are facing right now, what everyday people are facing for us. We start from the same principle, which is real beauty is defined by women's themselves, not by algorithms. And as AI becomes more prevalent, it from a communication standpoint, from the brand, we want to make sure that technology is not distorting, realness to technology is not distorting real beauty. In a way that falsifies and intensifies the beauty narrative and the standards that we are. So we're working so hard to fight as a brand. That being said, AI from a search perspective is fantastic. And where we see search conversation pulling from the Reddit community, pulling from earned pieces of content that work with our amazing publishers and editors that are out there. In that respect, it is so important to make sure that your content ecosystem and your social engagement is driving the conversation that you want to show up within that, that AI world. From a search perspective, riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: So for marketers listening that want to kind of take a similar approach, is there any key learning or key mistakes that you think that you'd warn them not to make or some things they need to know? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: yes. First believe in your product. Don't do this on something where you are not a hundred percent sure that you will serve an unmet need and you will serve with a really fantastic experience, or you're setting yourself up for a very risky riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: right. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: I would say you probably have to have a brand that has a high degree of trust to start from. This is a risk on trust. So you don't, you need to start from a foundation of existing credibility and belief for the majority of your consumers. Showing up in a conversation that exists is better than showing up in a conversation that you started. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Yep. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: So being able to tap into something that's organically happening and. Do it in a way that is not hiding anything that you are a brand, intersecting yourself in this conversation is very important. And then just be ready for whatever happens. Because we were very fortunate in this case, we had. Mostly positive engagement. We had a lot of feedback that was positive about simply the intention behind the campaign in addition to the product. But it could have gone wrong, it could have been very bad, and we had to prepare ourselves internally that could happen and be okay with that as a company and as a brand. So you need to set yourself up, I think, internally, to just know and be ready for that level of risk as well. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Fantastic. Well, I think there's some incredible insights in there that those marketers that are looking at Reddit as a platform can really take away. I mean, just to close things up, what's next? Is there a viewpoint on where you might take this next, any platforms, communities you're kind of looking at thinking that might be the next frontier for Dove? riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: There's so many things that Dove is up to. I would say we will continue to invest and expand the many to many ecosystem. In terms of our media model, we will continue to invest and expand in platforms and in and community engagements like Reddit, and you will continue to see real beauty show up in new ways that ethos that we have, that principle that we have of showcasing realness will be continuously evolved, whether it's through this type of idea and Reddit platform showcasing the unfiltered feedback or new ideas that are up and coming. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0220: Fantastic. Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Some incredible insights there. And we'll link through to the campaign, so target internet.com/podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. riverside_emily_barfoot_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0221: Thank you for having me.