Wunderkind Success Story: Clorox

Vivian Chang: I'm Vivian Chang. I head up the direct- to- consumer practice within Clorox, and so that is a marketing capability where we're bringing all of the tool chest of direct- to- consumer into Clorox's portfolio of brands to come alongside the brand teams and think about how to have those one- to- one relationships with consumers. Some of the challenges that Clorox faces that Wunderkind was able to help us figure out solutions for is as a CPG company, historically, we haven't owned relationships with consumers. So, the retailers own that data. We don't have a lot of first party data. Over the last five years there's been a digital transformation journey that Clorox has been on. One of those key tenets is to own data and actually give consumers a reason to engage with us. That helped us develop the reason to have direct- to- consumer as a channel so consumers can actually purchase from brand. com at their convenience, but then also using Wunderkind for that acquisition through the onsite experiences, through the popups. It actually has become one of the leading acquisition sources for the brands that we've turned it on for. I'll go even broader actually. Some of the products that Wunderkind helps us with, the onsite experience piece, it's actually not just about direct- to- consumer. It's really just helping us have first party data that we can then better understand the consumers, use as seed audiences for targeting and lookalike modeling, and then continue the conversation. So, then on the direct- to- consumer side, it is helping come alongside consumers on that transactional journey. Things like abandoned cart reminders, subscription repeat reminders. It almost becomes a supplement to the email programs that we're running. In a way, that allows us to be a little bit hands- off and is automated and Wunderkind take care of all of that for us. I think what's unique that Wunderkind brings to the table for us is that managed service approach. It is a tool, but then there are also creative services. There's a team that comes in and helps to think about the strategy alongside us, and then the execution. It allows us to really think of Wunderkind as an extension of the team. That's important to us and it's one of the reasons why we've expanded the number of brands within the portfolio that use Wunderkind because it doesn't require so much high touch from the internal stakeholders. Certainly, we can look at return on ad spend, so that's one. However, like I said, it really is about that broader goal, and so it's the volume of acquisitions, the efficiency of acquiring those, and then really the harder one to quantify is the time save, the extended resource amplifying the team. That whole package of things brought together is really that value that I think of for Wunderkind. From the beginning, one of the features that Wunderkind offers that's different from call it SaaS tools is that creative element. Being able to take our brand guidelines and the assets that we have, do the design execution, come back to the team, and then be able to turn it around in a really quick timeline, that's something that typically we would've had to go for different agencies or different teams internally. Having that end- to- end handoff is something that is a real benefit for us. Actually, the benefit I would say for my team is we're simultaneously trying to run direct- to- consumer levers for the Clorox businesses. So, the Burt's Bees, the actual shop. clorox. com, Brita, supplements brands. On the other hand, we are trying to help Clorox internally understand how they could be doing more to approach things with a typical direct- to- consumer growth loop, do more on lifecycle marketing, engage with consumers throughout that entire journey. Being able to hand off things and not be as high touch on the execution side for the brands allows us to spend more effort on the internal education, the socializing, getting more brands to come on board to test new vendor solutions like a Wunderkind. How we think about planning in the calendar is both always on activities and messaging and promotions and then you have the tentpole moments. Say historically for CPG, it's been all about the tentpole moments. If back to school is the key period, then all of the effort is going there. But for direct- to- consumer, you kind of always have to be there and so the smaller holidays also matter and we see pops there. It's a balancing act of where do we spend our efforts, where's the creative go? I think having tools that can run almost in that autonomous process is really important for us. Then we can still swap out things like creative but not rethink and replan for everything ongoing. Wunderkind really helps with that efficiency, one, I think inherently because we use Wunderkind for that onsite experience, it is always on and it allows us to still do testing pretty easily. So, 15% off versus free gift with purchase. For Burt's Bees, we found that free gift with purchase performs really well. For a different brand, we can very easily do a different kind of test. We're still testing, but the baseline is that it's there. It's constantly acquiring first party data. We have the pipes hooked up so that we can activate on it. It allows us to just drive to scale. So, constantly build on activities from the past. One of the strongest values I would say Wunderkind brings to us is acquiring first party data. I think all of the brands are preparing for what is this cookie-less future and wanting to do more with lookalike targeting and improving the personalization. Wunderkind has been a key partner for us on that. I'd say that the most direct side where Wunderkind helps our brands on performance is closing that transaction. Getting higher AOVs, higher basket sizes, and so forth. I would turn it back to Wunderkind, I guess. In our unique space where the transaction is not entirely under our control, how could we be leveraging the tools? How could we be leveraging the products in this more omnichannel, holistic way, which is where consumers want to be. They don't want to be locked in, but they do want to know about new products that are aligned to their lifestyle. They want more education on how to use different products with as little work as possible from their side. I'd say Wunderkind is a good partner. For me, the sign of a good partner is not that everything is always perfect. It's that Wunderkind is open to feedback, open to adjusting, able to pick up a phone and call someone and know that I'm going to be heard and get responses back. I think that is the key to a strong vendor relationship and that's something that I think Wunderkind has really done well.