The Task

Centrum’s Maternal Health campaign opened on unfamiliar terrain: instead of the usual product hero shots, the creative leaned entirely on an emotional, story-driven narrative. That bold shift meant there were no historical benchmarks to gauge success. Moreover, one of the key KPIs needed to be measured were offline sales, and I quickly discovered there was no budget nor time for testing and experimentation: no geo holdouts nor no multi-channel lift studies. In short, true experiments were costly, infeasible, or irreproducible.

The Opportunity

However, I noticed we were sitting on a treasure-trove of privacy-safe, weekly time-series data: eighteen months of sales, distribution, price, brand-equity KPIs and more that captured at the same cadence. Aggregated streams like these are tailor-made for a hybrid approach that blends tf-CausalImpact’s Bayesian counter-factuals with XGBoost-plus-SHAP diagnostics, delivering causal lift estimates and granular driver splits without ever touching user-level identifiers

The Findings

The campaign significantly contributed to MH product sales, despite price increases and distribution challenges before, during, and after the campaign period. Overall, MH assets drove a lift in top box consideration and first choice consideration among the high priority 18-44 female audience. Furthermore, the campaign continued to have a positive halo effect on overall Centrum sales.

Campaign Impact on Sales

The MH creative assets significantly increased sales for the Centrum Maternal Health product, effectively counteracting the effects of pricing increases and reductions in %ACV. Additionally, it provided a halo effect into non-MH Centrum sales.

Campaign Impact on Brand Equity

The MH assets successfully enhanced top 3 box consideration, and first choice consideration among the 18-44 female audience, but no lift was detected in Spont Awareness (recall from previous report, MH assets showed HALO lift to Centrum overall audience communications awareness). Achieving a substantial foundational awareness that is critical for sales impact requires broader reach. In the absence of this foundational awareness, strategies should prioritize enhancing Top 3 and First Choice Consideration metrics to sustain sales momentum.

Leading Indicators of Performance

Engaging consumers through clicks on social media platforms correlates with improved sales performance, a trend not observed with video content. Video serves as a potent channel for awareness, necessitating broader reach, while social media effectively engages consumers at the consideration stage.

Creative Indicators of Performance

“Clementine” song worked harder than “This Old Man” across channels where both songs ran.
Humming element drove strong engagement and contributed to sales, particularly on Social.
Short video duration (6s) was most strongly correlated with sales, but longer video duration performed well on Social.
“Buy Now” CTAs driving to easy-to-navigate Retail site was highly correlated with sales impact

The Details

Section 1: Impact of Overall Campaign

Overall Campaign Impact KPI: Centrum Awareness

Overall Campaign Impact KPI: Centrum Brand Consideration

Overall Campaign Impact KPI: Centrum First Choice Consideration

Overall Campaign Impact KPI: Centrum sales, non-MH

Overall Campaign Impact KPI: Centrum MH sales

KEY Consideration: The MH Campaign launch appears to have been influenced by significant changes in %ACV and PPU

Understanding The Economic Role of Distribution and Pricing in CPG Marketing Attribution:

While advertising is crucial for generating demand, two fundamental drivers of CPG sales are distribution and price. If a hard-to-differentiate product is not widely available, or if it is too expensive, even the best advertising will have limited impact. CPG firms operate in a retail environment where getting on the shelf (and staying there) and optimizing price/promotions are core to sales performance. Therefore, any comprehensive sales response model must account for distribution and price (and their interactions with advertising) to avoid misattribution.

All Commodity Volume distribution (%ACV): measures the percentage of total market retail sales (of the corresponding goods) occurring in stores where the product is sold. It is essentially a distribution breadth weighted by store size. A %ACV of 80% means the product is available in outlets that account for 80% of the market's total sales volume. This metric captures both the availability and the quality of placements (being in a high-volume supermarket counts more than a small grocer). Distribution is often called the number one driver of sales in CPG: "shoppers cannot buy something that’s not in the store!”. Empirical studies back this up: Ataman, Van Heerde, and Mela (2009) found the sales elasticity of distribution to be ~0.74 in packaged goods, roughly six times larger than the advertising elasticity. This means that increasing distribution coverage has a far bigger impact on sales than an equivalent percentage increase in advertising weight. Distribution's outsized effect comes not only from shelf availability but also from indirect benefits: wider distribution boosts consumer awareness (seeing the product in more stores), improves perceived legitimacy of the brand, and increases competitive presence. On the other hand, losing distribution (delistings or out-of-stock situations) can negatively impact sales quickly. Additionally, Distribution and advertising often interact: advertising can drive consumers to stores, but if the product is not there, the effort is wasted. Similarly, when distribution expands, advertising has a larger audience to activate. This method will allow for such interaction effects (an ad's impact might scale with %ACV).

Price (Price Per Unit, PPU) is the other critical factor: Price dictates the economic value proposition to consumers and is a primary lever for promotions. In CPG, demand is typically price-elastic: when price drops, volume sold increases (and vice versa), all else equal. The extent of this effect is captured by the price elasticity. Meta-analyses indicate the absolute magnitude of price elasticity is often an order of magnitude larger than advertising elasticity. Tellis back in 1988 found on average price elasticity (negative, as higher price reduces sales) is about 8 times greater than advertising elasticity. A moderate 10% price cut might yield ~5–15% volume lift depending on category, whereas a 10% increase in ad spend might only move sales a percent or two. Price promotions (temporary discounts, coupons) can spike short-term sales as consumers stock up or switch to the brand for the deal. On the other hand, price increases can slow down sales or push consumers to competitors. It is therefore crucial to include PPU in sales models; otherwise, one might falsely attribute a sales bump from a discount-driven volume surge to the advertising that ran concurrently.

KPI Contribution Hierarchy to Centrum MH sales

MH % ACV was the most important sales contributor, followed by current Centrum First Choice consideration for Females 18-44, MH PPU, and finally, Centrum sales momentum.

Overall consideration is a small contributor, but still significantly more impactful than comms awareness, which has negligible impact.

Other non-creative campaign factors contributed to MH Unit Sales included:

1. Clicks to MH Assets

2. MH Social and Video Impressions

3. Other Centrum Impressions

4. MH Search Impressions

Section 2: Impact of Specific Executional Elements

Creative Element: Song Selection

Assets featuring the “Clementine” song were stronger contributors to MH sales vs. assets with “This Old Man song” (or assets with no music).

The use of first person/self-affirmation we hear out the gate in “Clementine” may have contributed to its stronger engagement power and effectiveness.

Creative Element: Humming vs Words

Humming/no lyrics drove higher effectiveness vs. lyrics/song-based assets, with a particularly strong effect seen on Social.

Humming may have felt like a refreshingly different, more soothing ad experience vs. most ads people experience on Social, which tend to be interruptive/loud.

Creative Element: Video Duration

Short-form video content (6s OLV) was the strongest contributor to MH sales.

Shorter video duration was most highly correlated with sales, however longer video duration performed strongly when executed on Social channels where viewers were more likely to immerse themselves in the message.

Creative Element: CTA & Landing Pages

Buy Now CTA driving to easy-to-navigate retailer sites appears to be highly correlated with sales success.

6s OLV was the strongest contributor to MH sales and also the only asset in the ecosystem with a “Buy Now” CTA driving to Walmart/Target retail sites for a large part of the campaign flight; this landing experience, in turn, was most highly associated with sales.

Section 3: Big Picture View

Key Elements Driving Upper, Middle, and Lower Funnel Metrics

Comms awareness was strongly influenced by attention-catching, engaging creative elements like Humming, which help to draw eyes and ears and help the brand stick in people’s minds.

Mid-funnel consideration metrics were influenced by a mix of creative elements and other aspects of our broader marketing ecosystem, including the impact of surrounding masterbrand comms as well as price point.

Lower funnel sales metrics are most influenced by distribution and pricing, with campaign/creative elements playing supporting roles.

Measuring Causality and Creative-Level contribution without relying on identity