Lion strikes a balance between in-house software and their marketing agency

Summary

• Lion’s Clare Tsubono knew they needed to take a different approach to measurement across their vast beverage portfolio
• Working closely with Mutinex and agency UMWW, Tsubono is driving change to metrics that matter

Boasting over 20 years of experience in media across APAC, Clare Tsubono has seen investment trends come and go.

These trends have included using media to grow brand love, to hyper targeted buys and (as the cookie approaches its imminent demise) back to a more balanced approach.

Over the last five years, Clare’s been working with Australasian brewing icon Lion as the Head of Media, partnering closely with Marketing Director Rachel Ellerm to help manage the transformation of the media data.

As she explains, “We’ve increased our media budget fairly significantly. As a part of that, we needed to show the business that we’re agile in our approach, allocating spend effectively and most importantly, demonstrating ROI.”

So what strategies are Lion pursuing in their path toward smarter measurement and planning?

As Clare frames it, “Focusing on super personalised media buys can distract from the big picture. Instead you need to look at revenue contributors and make sure you’ve got the balance right between high and low volume channels.”

Tsubono and Ellerm quickly identified a need for market mix modelling to aid in making this case, but first they had to do the work to surface the right data for collection. “We’re really moving at pace on the data front,” she says, “Compared to where we were two years ago, we’ve made good strides.”

This work has unlocked the ability for Lion to engage Mutinex GrowthOS on market mix for two brands in their portfolio, with more in the pipe.

The magic was found in combining GrowthOS with the expertise of their agency

Having gathered deep experience around market mix in her previous roles, Tsubono was pleased to be able to choose a SaaS tool that the in-house marketing team could really sink their teeth into. 

“I think for me one of the primary considerations around choosing a provider was the ability to access dashboards that were user friendly. Yes we work with our agency (UM) who do a great job, and they work with a number of other Mutinex clients as well, but we wanted them to have another lens to provide recommendations.

“Ultimately it’s really easy for us to be able to see that data, understand what might have been happening and bring a strong point of view around where to go next.”

Ellerm adds that this is the power of the combination – both UM and Mutinex. 

“UM is a really important partner in our media investment team. They obviously bring a wealth of data and experience to the table when we have these conversations. The data that we have from GrowthOS is another layer to that and they bring a lens from the broader market that gives us valuable external context.”

Individual channel ROI is less important for Lion – building stronger brands is the real focus

Tsubono does not expect to use market mix to completely shake up the Lion investment – which is currently uniform across the suite of brands.

“Because of what I’ve seen over the years, I bring a slightly different perspective from other marketers on how we should be using marketing mix,” she explains, “especially at an organization like Lion.” 

“Ultimately we benefit from reaching as many beer drinkers as possible. We don’t need to update our performance buy on a daily or weekly basis, the focus for us is really how we can build stronger brands.”

“So when I look at market mix, I’m not looking to see how individual channels are performing based on ROI so that I can move investment around. I know that some of the best performing channels on an ROI basis can still be very low volume. We don’t gain anything by shifting investment to high ROI channels if they’re still going to be low volume.”. 

Instead Tsubono and her team will be going deep on individual channel performance to try to squeeze the most juice from every buy. 

”Where we get our advantage will be in understanding how specific channels are performing at the publisher level and at the creative level. If we can optimize to get the best possible result from every channel, then we’ll make a difference to the bottom line.” 

Having already seen the results from two years worth of data on two brands, the team are already realising the importance of adstock and getting creative right. 

“Over the next several months, we’ll focus on ensuring that our data labelling is at the level we need it to be to unearth the information that we want to really power those decisions.” 

The rollout

Tsubono now has some work ahead to roll out Mutinex GrowthOS across the full Lion portfolio. 

“That will give us a full view of performance across all of our brands and allow us to translate even more insights into action. We’re excited to see the results as we incorporate more data. We know that with everything so fragmented and so many of our results coming from inside walled gardens, there’s really no hope to calculate things like cross media reach. Market mix gives us something we can orient around to make meaningful decisions.”