The media review kicked off in January, amidst Essence and Mediacom’s merger, though Rogers stressed to Adweek that this consolidation did not catalyze the review. Instead, the brand’s new marketing transformation strategy triggered his desire to explore different service offerings.
The brand spent $250 million on U.S. media in 2022, with digital media spend accounting for $125 million of that total, according to COMvergence estimates. A source close to the review believes the actual number is higher.
The account size makes Signet one of the largest account changes this year, and marks another significant loss for WPP’s GroupM, which recently lost billion-dollar account L’Oréal, and GroupM clients General Mills and Kimberly Clark recently launched reviews, according to Ad Age. COMvergence data summarizes these losses and their impact on the business: EssenceMediacom’s wins in this year’s first quarter totaled $204.3 million. It lost accounts totaling $228.1 million and retained a total of $107.4 million. In 2022, GroupM won 4.3 billion, retained 2.9 billion and lost 3.6 billion. The loss represents 27% of all media that changed hands last year.
From holiday campaigns to hyper targeted
Signet’s been evolving its marketing tact for some years now, experimenting with digital strategies. In April, 2021, it acquired Rocksbox, a digital jewelry subscription business. It also invested in digital experiences like Jared’s virtual try-ons, and online chat infrastructure that digitally connected customers with jewelry consultants.
Data, the CMO said, will be key to Signet creating more meaningful customer experiences. “It allows us to build longer-term relationships that are more enduring over time. So we can be there in those moments in people’s lives where we can add the most value,” he added.
With a wealth of first-party data on about 55 million customers, Signet’s deep focus on digital advertising will also help the brand achieve another primary objective: Keep its brands differentiated to avoid stoking internal competition. Doing this effectively means brand marketing leaders will pull back from the top-of-the-funnel awareness marketing strategies, like holiday brand campaigns. Now, they’ll invest in targeted digital advertising year round to cultivate a more personalized connection to consumers.
Underscoring the depth of the strategy pivot, Rogers told Adweek Signet “doubled the percentage of our ad spend that is digital over the last few years.”
Publicis’ Epsilon PeopleCloud helped prove that Publicis’ had the power to draw conclusions from across Signet brands’ vast datasets, and to target its customers on a 1-1 level. “It all comes down to, both on our side and on the agency side, being able to stitch together a lot of disparate data sources and a lot of disparate operations into one single effort,” Rogers said.
