Industry
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
Objective
The Australian protein category is highly saturated, with established brands like YoPRO and Wicked Sister dominating consumer awareness. As a new entrant, Arla Protein faced the challenge of driving cut-through in a crowded market while working with a smaller budget and competing against already entrenched players.
Results
The campaign successfully elevated Arla Protein’s position within the category and delivered measurable brand and sales impact through a precision-led programmatic DOOH strategy.
Key Product
POI Targeting
To help close the awareness gap and drive measurable retail impact, Arla partnered with The Barn and Vistar Media to launch a precision-led programmatic DOOH campaign designed to build early-funnel awareness, increase action intent and drive sales at Coles.
The challenge
Arla Protein entered the market with just 8% awareness, significantly behind category leaders YoPRO (62%)* and Wicked Sister (47%)*. The campaign needed to rapidly build visibility and relevance among high-value shoppers while ensuring every media dollar worked as efficiently as possible. The campaign required a balance of broad awareness and hyper-targeted retail activation to maximise impact throughout the launch period.
Source: Competitive awareness in OTS study conducted by PureProfile
The strategy
To maximise efficiency and relevance, the campaign leveraged programmatic DOOH to activate around key retail environments and high-performing competitor locations.
Using Vistar’s platform, the campaign targeted audiences within a 500m proximity of Coles supermarkets, alongside a top-performing chilled dessert store list, with dayparted delivery aligned to relevant usage occasions. This ensured messaging reached consumers close to the point of purchase, at the most contextually appropriate times of day, and within environments strongly aligned to category consideration.
Creative approach
The campaign combined both static and digital creative to deliver strong visual presence throughout the consumer journey, using appetising visuals and dynamic motion to capture attention in high-traffic environments.
As part of the process, Vistar Media conducted a creative analysis to optimise asset effectiveness prior to launch. Based on these insights, refinements were made to enhance logo prominence, increase headline contrast and amplify motion dynamics, helping strengthen cut-through and improve messaging performance in the OOH environment.
Messaging focused on Arla Protein’s key differentiator, “20g of protein full of taste”, helping position the brand against established competitors within the category.
Agile optimisation in action
Given the competitive landscape and limited budget, agility was critical throughout the campaign.
The flexibility of programmatic DOOH enabled rapid optimisation based on performance signals, helping the team efficiently shift spend, maintain visibility near priority retail locations and maximise exposure against high-value shoppers during key promotional windows.
This responsive approach ensured media investment remained focused on the strongest performing environments throughout the campaign.
Tasteful results
The campaign successfully elevated Arla Protein’s position within the category and delivered measurable brand and sales impact through a precision-led programmatic DOOH strategy.
- +175% lift in awareness
- +248% lift in consideration
- +364% lift in purchase intent
- #1 ranking for "20g of protein" message association
- #3 ranking for overall brand preference
- 3.6x sales peak and +13% baselines growth
By combining broad awareness with highly targeted retail activation, the campaign helped establish Arla Protein as a credible challenger brand within Australia’s highly competitive protein category.
