SC Johnson and Omnicom Show How Glade Turned an Influencer Into a Shoppable Campaign

Tom Ashby, Global Lead, Media Services at WFA, chairs this track and introduced the session. Then Sophie Maxwell, Head of eCommerce at SC Johnson, and Emily Cross, Associate Director of eCommerce & Retail Media at Omnicom Media Group, took the stage. Winter air care is a crowded, competitive category, and Q4 accounts for 40 percent of the year’s total air care spend. Facing that pressure without the biggest budget in the category, Maxwell and Cross explained how their Glade winter campaign used an existing influencer partnership as the anchor for a connected retail media and shoppable commerce strategy.

One influencer, three connected channels

The campaign built on a multi-year relationship between Glade and celebrity influencer Olivia Bowen, whose engaged following spans more than 10 million people across platforms. The team didn’t treat influencer content, retail media, and commerce technology as separate workstreams. Instead, Cross described building “a unified storytelling approach by seamlessly integrating influence, media and commerce,” carrying Bowen’s presence across every touchpoint a shopper might encounter.

Full-funnel targeting through Sainsbury’s Nectar 360 partnership

Maxwell described the strategic starting point as an AI-powered, full-funnel approach. It was built on the partnership between Omnicom and Sainsbury’s Nectar 360, which gave the team access to Sainsbury’s advanced first-party data. That partnership let the team define which audience segments to prioritize and which KPIs would signal real progress. “If you are somebody on brand side, leverage your agency, leverage your agency partnerships,” Maxwell said. She framed the campaign’s success as dependent on removing the silos that typically separate influencer, media, and commerce data.

The team also used Mikmak, a shoppable technology partner, to turn upper-funnel content into trackable purchase journeys. This meant building bespoke landing pages that could measure shopper behavior across web, mobile, and social.

Maxwell emphasized that the team stayed insight-led rather than locked into a fixed plan. They used an open feedback loop across partners to make in-flight adjustments during what was a short campaign window. “We had that consistent feedback loop as to what was going on, what was working well,” she said, describing continuous tweaks to creative and targeting based on real-time KPI tracking.

Execution across channels, measured through Mikmak

Cross described how the strategy came to life across platforms. An AI-optimized organic content series featuring Bowen ran on Instagram and TikTok. It delivered a 2.8 percent engagement rate, more than double the industry benchmark.

That same face and message extended into physical stores through high-impact point-of-sale. Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s retail media, powered by Nectar 360, enabled granular first-party targeting of shoppers already engaging with the category or showing high purchase propensity. The team built a bespoke Glade shop on Sainsbury’s website and directed traffic there from Meta, supported by additional onsite display.

Mikmak’s role, Cross explained, was primarily measurement and optimization. It gave the team visibility into campaign traffic and let them run structured creative tests, including versions with and without price promotion, to see which resonated with which audiences. Those insights then fed retargeting, so impressions later in the campaign built on what the team had already learned.

Results that changed the conversation around budget

The campaign delivered double-digit sales growth, ahead of the previous year and ahead of internal expectations. Maxwell noted that more than half of those sales came from customers new to the Glade brand, a KPI the team had prioritized from the outset.

The team also saw strong shopper retention within Glade’s format range. Customers who bought into one scent in one format, a candle, for example, returned to buy the same fragrance in a plug-in or aerosol format. Maxwell credited early planning, well ahead of the winter season, as a key factor in being ready when demand started to build.

“Our integrated approach… created cohesive brand experiences that resonate with consumers across every touchpoint,” Cross said in closing. Maxwell pointed to the sales data as the argument that unlocks future budget conversations. “It’s a much, much easier conversation to then fight for budget in the future,” she said, noting the team now plans to apply the same connected approach across other SC Johnson brands.