Shortening the Path to Purchase

The Challenge? Drive  consideration & conversion for Olay’s premium range in China. 

Defining the Problem.
In a highly competitive market of who shouts the loudest, the attack on Olay was two pronged; one, from local brands with a homegrown and heritage story and two, from luxury brands with a strong science story. Together, both communicated trust, credibility and relevance-  issues that were the biggest barriers for Olay to bust.

Identifying the Opportunity
The key to driving behavior change was to uncover and understand how people made their choices along the path to purchase - and - to understand the most potent triggers of all to design the right nudges along their decision making journey. 

Trust is a Real Person Like Me. From a perspective of Choice Architecture, there are two key factors to consider here. One, the fact that people trust ‘real’ people, and two, that people find safety in numbers. The food stall with a longer line outside it is always perceived to serve much better food than the food stall with a shorter line / no line.  
This heuristic was used to create peer-to-peer recommendation system for Olay. The insight was also the cornerstone of the strategy to use Power Claims on the storefront using real consumer reviews. A constant moving tracker at commerce that indicated the number of women that bought Olay. Every time the tracker moved, it communicated the fact that women were reposing their trust in Olay. KOLS and local Chinese opinion leaders – real people, (no celebrities) were used to tell, extend and live the Olay brand story to communicate efficacy & trust. This was all about driving trust using real stories versus using ‘cold’ technical R&D claims. 

Overcoming the Choice Overload. “Some choice is good, doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better” Barry Shwartz. With multiple steps in their beauty journey already established, we used the Regimen Story to bundle individual SKU’s to drive sales for the brand as a whole. Combinations of Moisturizer, Cleanser, Toner, Serum, etc. were bundled together as a total beauty solution drive brand habit. The story was one of total beauty solutions that helped simplify choice and drive habit.  

Driving Relevance through Association. This meant identifying one of the biggest problems that people faced in China - Pollution. Everyone in China checks the air quality & pollution levels almost everyday on their mobile devices. It is a way of life for the pollution fraught Chinese. Positioning Olay as the solution to skin stress brought on by urban pollution, with recommendations  that included messaging in the context of weather & pollution apps to communicate the skin dangers of living in an urban environment, offering skin tests to show tangible proof that she is suffering from urban skin damage and helping her prevent skin damage with the right products from Olay helped drive heightened relevance.

And the Result? Olay registered a significant positive on the think metrics (consideration, purchase intent) as well as the do metrics (conversion, buy, share reviews and ratings) metrics. The Experience Centered Path to Purchase, with the right nudges embedded to trigger conversion, drove increased relevance all along the purchase funnel and helped fortify Olay’s position in market as one of the top skin care and beauty brand of choice.