Sonoco’s product solutions span a wide range of consumer packaged goods. Various products consist of paper, plastic and metal packaging of all shapes and sizes. As the push for biodegradable and recycled materials continues to grow through sustainable business practices and consumer demand, creative packaging solutions have become both a marketing tool and an industry best
practice for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. 

Sonoco’s paper packaging team approached Media Two with the opportunity to create a media campaign supporting the launch of a new variation of composite cans. Composite cans have been a packaging mainstay for products like coffee and snacks for years, but are now available through more eco-friendly and cost
efficient methods.

Our campaign needed to focus on building awareness of how the composite cans could be used in a new way by packaging and marketing teams, while also driving leads for Sonoco’s sales team. The timing of the campaign led up to the annual Food Marketing Institute (FMI) trade show in Chicago. Ideally, leads generated prior to the event would result in face-to-face meetings during the conference. 

Business-to-business (B2B) audiences can be difficult to isolate online. While key business decision makers generally engage with industry trade publications, their media consumption is not limited to those publications and content. We recommended a phased approach that began with trade-specific media placements aimed at building a sizable remarketing audience pool. This allowed us to isolate the B2B target audience and then consistently remarket to them for frequency leading up to the event. The campaign initially focused on high impression volume with the trade publications as the primary KPI, serving to create a very valuable remarketing pool.

As we approached the trade show, additional funds were shifted to maximize the remarketing exposure. Programmatic media buying was at the core of this strategy to create the necessary reach within our remarketing audience pool. The week prior to the trade show, email marketing was also incorporated to extend our frequency by using subscriber lists from the top two trade publications. During the event, the media focused primarily on mobile devices targeting show coverage as well as mobile geo-fencing to reach show attendees.

By leveraging reach with the trade publications and our remarketing audience data, we saw a 400% lift in lead volume leading up to the event. This helped the sales team schedule meetings for the show. The shift to focus on show coverage and mobile geo-fencing during the show resulted in a 197% lift in click volume to the product page.