chevron-icon

How Danone Drove Profitable Growth with In-Flight Promotion Optimization

Key results

More than 1.5 million incremental units moved

$3+ incremental return on marketing investment (iROMI)

Over 30-percent more efficient CPID after optimization

THE BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Driving incremental volume efficiently

Danone entered the quarter with extra inventory and a sales gap to close across its dairy and dairy-alternative portfolio. The objective was to drive incremental volume quickly and efficiently. For this pilot, Danone was able to analyze performance while the campaign was live, identify where promotional investment was working most efficiently, and adjust its approach before the flight ended.

THE SOLUTION

Optimizing for performance while there's still time to act

Traditional promotion tools — like a temporary price reduction (TPR) — are designed around a fixed discount and duration. Once live, the promotion typically runs as planned, regardless of how it’s performing.

LiveLift™ introduces a more dynamic approach: it provides performance signals while a campaign is running, giving brands the opportunity to adjust promotional investment, scale what is working, and improve efficiency while there is still time to influence the outcome.

For brands like Oikos and Activia, Danone used those performance signals to optimize promotional investment while the campaign was still live, adjusting offer values across products to balance pacing, efficiency, and volume. Over the following 10 days, Oikos and Activia were able to scale, resulting in Cost Per Incremental Dollar (CPID) that was more than 30% more efficient than before the optimization.

THE RESULTS

Turning optimization into incremental growth

The five-week pilot moved more than 1.5 million incremental units and generated more than $3 in incremental return on marketing investment for every dollar of promotional investment.

The results also included an independent third-party view from Circana. Circana measured household-level sales lift for two featured brands — Oikos and Light + Fit — using loyalty-card panel data matched against campaign exposure.

Danone

Circana's household-level sales lift measurement found:

  • Oikos sales lift outpaced the yogurt category benchmark by 1.4x the norm.

  • Light + Fit’s featured 4-pack saw a double-digit sales lift that exceeded the same category benchmark by 4.8x the norm.

In both cases, increased household penetration was the primary driver of sales lift, with both Oikos and Light + Fit seeing double-digit percentage lifts in HHP.

In other words, the real value was reaching new consumers: the lift was driven primarily by more households buying the brands, not simply by existing buyers purchasing more.

Every promotional dollar is competing with every other dollar in the marketing mix — and we track this closely. That’s why an ongoing view of performance matters. The significance of what the LiveLift pilot showed us, side by side against a one-size-fits-all discount, is that in-campaign optimization lets us be agile in a way other promotion tactics can’t. It is a distinction that's changing how we think about where the next dollar goes, not just how the last one performed.

Ariel Dalton Headshot

Ariel Dalton

Head of Strategic Insights, Planning & Connected Commerce, Danone USA

THE TAKEAWAY

Promotions are a dynamic growth lever

LiveLift™ enables CPG brands to take a more agile approach to promotional investment: use in-flight performance data to identify what’s working, optimize while there’s still time to act, and measure the resulting impact. By moving beyond evaluating promotions after the fact, brands can use performance signals to make better decisions, scale volume, and drive profitable growth while campaigns are still live.

Find out what in-flight optimization can do for your portfolio

Reach out to discover how LiveLift™ can drive profitable growth for your brand.

Contact us

FAQ

Have more questions?