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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
How Clean Rooms Fuel Personalization At Clorox
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[00:00:00] Kiri Masters: Three years ago in 2023, Clorox's then VP of marketing transformation, Doug Milliken, got on stage at CES and explained why his company was investing in data clean rooms. [00:00:15] And at the time, clean rooms were one of five strategic choices that Clorox's board was focusing on to get smart about. The context was cookie deprecation, new privacy laws, and a marketing environment that [00:00:30] nobody could quite predict.
[00:00:32] Now, last week, Tiffany Tan, who leads e-com growth acceleration at Clorox, gave an update of sorts on the Flywheel Commerce Collective podcast. She didn't frame it as an update, but listening to her talk [00:00:45] about how Clorox uses clean rooms today, you can hear how far the conversation has moved.
[00:00:51] And the timing of this discussion is interesting because just this weekend on Sunday, Publicis Groupe announced that [00:01:00] it is buying data company LiveRamp for two point two billion dollars. Publicis CEO Artur Sadoun said that the acquisition will help clients generate new, exclusive, and proprietary data and build the smartest, most [00:01:15] differentiated AI agents.
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[00:01:18] Kiri Masters: So just to be clear, Clorox hasn't disclosed which clean room provider it uses, But that's almost the point. A two point two billion dollar deal at the holding company level tells you that the category [00:01:30] that Clorox started investing in three years ago is now strategically essential to AI-era marketing. In 2023, clean rooms were a thing to figure out.
[00:01:41] Today, they are plumbing, and as of Sunday, they're a two point [00:01:45] two billion dollar acquisition target. Let's listen in to this conversation with Tiffany Tan and Emma Irwin from Flywheel.
[00:01:53] Tiffany Tan: clean rooms much less as a piece of technology- Uh-huh ... um, and much more as an enabler, as you say, of b- of better [00:02:00] personalization. A- and frankly, we're seeing it as really an essential tool in, in modern marketing, um, because at a, at a very basic level, these clean rooms, they give us this privacy-safe way to connect our data, which we've been building, with, say, retailer signals.
[00:02:14] [00:02:15] And they're really helping us solve a tension that I think has, has just always been out there, which is that consumers we know. Our consumers are expecting relevancy, they're expecting personalization, but they also want to ensure that their privacy is understandably respected. And so the- For sure ... the clean rooms really let us do both.
[00:02:29] So [00:02:30] how we've been using it is really using it to mine insights and understand how people are actually shopping. And I think the magic really happens when we can start seeing those patterns, like the frequency of purchase or, um, the cross-category behavior. Are they doing a quick [00:02:45] replenishment? Are they doing a stock-up trip?
[00:02:46] So, uh, you know, clean rooms are really starting, um, to help us get closer to the why, why someone might need one of our brands. Um, and it's really those rich insights that help us ultimately make smarter decisions about where to invest our [00:03:00] dollars and how to best build those rich experiences for the consumer.
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[00:03:05] Kiri Masters: So what I find interesting about what Tiffany's saying here is that she is reframing clean rooms entirely, not as a piece of technology, but as an enabler for what they [00:03:15] want to achieve.
[00:03:16] She's talking about cross-category purchase patterns and distinguishing a quick replenishment trip from a stock-up trip. That is the next level up. so what does Clorox actually do with this information? [00:03:30] Tiffany shared a really specific example that is built around their water purification brand, Brita
[00:03:36] Emma Irwin: I'm gonna ask you, can you give us, like, a really tangible example of what personalized one-to-one marketing, connecting data, [00:03:45] that's what it says, connecting the data and signals together looks like in action?
[00:03:49] Like, what does a more precise and relevant experience actually look like from your perspective?
[00:03:55] Tiffany Tan: Sure. Well, uh, let me share an example, uh, uh, from, from our Brita [00:04:00] brand, uh, because it's a brand where context and need really matter, um, a lot. Um, and how we show up actually can be very different depending on the moment.
[00:04:06] So, um, let's take two very real Brita moments. So one is actually coming up in just a few months. It's back to college season, when [00:04:15] millions of students are gonna be moving into dorms. Um, and that's actually a critical adoption moment for us, and there are two audiences really involved in, in that scenario.
[00:04:24] The-- first is the student who is moving into the dorm, brand-new environment, really setting up routines for the first time, [00:04:30] and the second is the parent, um, often in a very different mindset from the student. They're thinking about- Mm-hmm ... their kids' health. They want peace of mind since their kids are living away from home for the first time.
[00:04:40] Um, so instead of running a generic message, we are really trying to tailor that experience. So, for [00:04:45] instance, parents, they may see a message that's focused on the health and safety and, and that peace of mind. Students, they may see, um, a message around convenience or the taste or how to fit Brita into their new routine.
[00:04:56] So it's the same brand, it's the same product, just talked about in a way that really [00:05:00] makes sense, um, for that moment. Uh, so, so that's one scenario. Contrast that with, um, a, a totally different Brita scenario, which might be when a local community might be notified about potential lead in their [00:05:15] water. Um, now, water quality probably not something we think about every day, but when you get a letter from your municipality and you get that notice, it immediately changes how you feel about your water.
[00:05:25] Um, you might start to worry. You probably have a lot of questions. And what we see in those [00:05:30] moments is a huge spike in information-seeking. People are searching, reading articles. They're trying to understand what this lead notice actually means for, for their family. We do have Brita filters that are certified to reduce 99% of lead.
[00:05:44] So [00:05:45] how we, um, how we show up across that journey for that consumer is actually very tailored. So early on, we might share educational content to really help reduce the fear and the confusion that they may be feeling. Then as they get a little bit closer to making that [00:06:00] decision, the message may become more solution-oriented.
[00:06:03] And then if they do purchase Brita, the relationship starts moving into areas like reminders to replenish their Brita filter, for example. So I mention this Brita example mainly to [00:06:15] demonstrate that we're not necessarily personalizing just for the sake of personalizing. We're actually trying to use different signals, um, to decide how much personalization a particular moment, um, deserves.
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[00:06:28] Kiri Masters: So a couple of things stand out in [00:06:30] that example. The first is that neither of those scenarios is something that you target with traditional demographic segments. Parents of college freshmen during move-in week and households in a municipality with a [00:06:45] fresh lead notice are behavioral and contextual signals.
[00:06:50] They're the kinds of audiences you can only build when you can stitch together first-party brand data together with external signals in a privacy-safe [00:07:00] way. So that is exactly what clean room infrastructure is built for. Retailers know that a marketplace model can dramatically boost product assortment, [00:07:15] shopper engagement, and total revenue. But to get the most out of your marketplace, you need an ad tech solution that can really engage sellers. Miracle Ads is powering the future of retail media for leading [00:07:30] retailers to activate both three P Sellers and one P brands.
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[00:07:41] The second is the Brita example isn't really [00:07:45] just about clean rooms. Tiffany doesn't say this was powered by a clean room.
[00:07:48] She presents it all as a personalization example, and that's exactly the point. When the infrastructure works, you stop talking about the infrastructure. But here's [00:08:00] where it gets more difficult. If you're spinning up tens or even hundreds of creative variations for different moments, how do you actually know any of it is working?
[00:08:11] Tiffany had a very specific answer to this
[00:08:14] Tiffany Tan: I would say [00:08:15] when we think about measuring one-to-one marketing, the first thing we are actually really careful is, is, is seeing it kind of, uh, more broadly. So we, we do try not to get overly fixated on a single metric. Um, sure, the individual metrics definitely matter, but, um, in and of [00:08:30] itself, it doesn't necessarily tell you whether our one-to-one marketing is changing consumer behavior, which is, which is often what we are trying to do.
[00:08:36] So what we are really looking at for, um, out for is, is signs of incremental impact and value over time. So are [00:08:45] we bringing new households into the brand? Uh, are people buying, uh, more per trip? Are they coming back more often? Uh, so in the case of Brita, for instance, if someone buys Brita once and then we see them replenishing filters or moving into a scrip-subscription, that tells us that [00:09:00] the experience that we've built has actually helped change that behavior.
[00:09:03] Another big mindset for us is that we, we're trying with measurement not to judge success off a singular campaign. So personalization is, is cumulative,
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[00:09:16] Kiri Masters: Personalization is cumulative. That is a killer line, and it also explains why most CPGs are still where Clorox was in twenty twenty-three. If you measure clean room [00:09:30] investments the way that you measure a single campaign, the math never really works. The ROI is in the third year, not the first. It's in the compounded insight.
[00:09:41] There's one more thread worth pulling on here. Back at [00:09:45] CES in twenty twenty-three, Doug Milliken said the higher value use case that he was excited about once the brilliant basics were worked out was upper funnel awareness building on retail media platforms. He was [00:10:00] pointing at the exact unlock that RMNs are now actively chasing, which is brand budgets, the upper funnel inventory, the move beyond closed loop attribution.
[00:10:12] So I've written about this from the RMN side [00:10:15] recently, how RMNs are eager to chase that brand budget in order to move past the retail media two point o version that optimized for trade and shopper [00:10:30] marketing budgets. That's where they wanna get to to fuel their next era of growth. What Clorox's clean room journey shows is the other side of that equation, the infrastructure that brands need to spend those dollars credibly across [00:10:45] retailers take some investment. It's been quietly built over the last three years at Clorox. The retailers who can plug into that infrastructure cleanly through clean rooms, through accessible data, through [00:11:00] standardized measurement, are the ones who will get that budget.
[00:11:04] Well, that's it for today. If you wanna hear the full conversation, check out the Commerce Collective podcast by Emma Irwin at Flywheel. Thank you for listening, and I'll catch you [00:11:15] tomorrow.
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