The campaign featured X Factor star Cheryl Cole, who has been the face of L'Oreal products in the UK since signing a global deal with the company in August 2009. In June 2010 this association was reinforced with the launch of a special limited edition hairspray, the Elnett Satin Diamond Hold & Shine, which also featured an image of Cheryl on the can.
As a result of the close association between L'Oreal’s Elnett hairspray and Cheryl Cole, and the ongoing popularity of the X Factor star, the desire was for online advertising for the product to be as closely associated as possible with other content that revolved around Cheryl Cole.
The campaign was planned by Zed and ran across a number of publisher sites, including IPC Media. The campaign ran across Marieclaire.co.uk, Nowmagazine.co.uk, look.co.uk and instyle.co.uk, all of which regularly feature Cheryl Cole content. Additionally, IPC Media approached Zed with the idea of using contextual targeting technology, powered by Grapeshot, to further strengthen the association between Cheryl Cole and the Elnett campaign.
Grapeshot technology works by analysing the editorial content that a reader is looking at on a website and serving an ad that is contextually relevant to that content. By targeting readers at a moment when they are interested in the subject of the ad, levels of engagement improve significantly, without the need to track users across the web. When applied to the Elnett campaign, Grapeshot’s contextual targeting technology saw click through rates increase an additional 47%.
Karen Casey, digital planning director at Zed, said: "'When planning the recent Elnett campaign featuring Cheryl Cole we were looking for a highly targeted environment positioning the creative exclusively around Cheryl Cole content. IPC’s new contextual targeting product powered by Grapeshot was the perfect solution, enabling us to deliver this laser targeted solution within premium content channels across a number of IPC sites'.
Nick Bradley, commercial development director at IPC Media, said: "Grapeshot has helped IPC to improve the effectiveness of the campaigns we run across our websites. Delivering increased engagement with our audience is clearly a very powerful benefit for our advertisers.
Grapeshot CEO John Snyder said: "The results of this campaign highlight the ability of Grapeshot’s leading-edge technology to help both publishers and advertisers to generate revenue and sales. IPC and L’Oreal are just two of the businesses who have already experienced the benefits of contextual targeting."
