About the Brand

The Brief

A Catalogue Built for Scale. A Brief Built Around Making That Scale Work Smarter.

The brief arrived with the Diwali season on the horizon and three distinct strategic requirements that needed to be resolved simultaneously.

• Liquidate Existing Stock Without Slowing the Machine:
  Clear current inventory through efficient ad-led demand generation while maintaining a healthy monthly replenishment cadence, so liquidation never came at the cost of catalogue freshness.
• Move New and Latest Inventory While Managing Cut-Size Realities:
  Drive visibility and conversion for the latest products even as cut-size challenges changed the conversion math in real time across a portfolio of this scale.
• Find the Right Shopper in a Complex Targeting Environment:
  Reach the most relevant customers across a massive product range despite limited audience targeting options available on the platform.

A catalogue of this scale asked for something more than a single campaign strategy. It asked for a dynamic performance system where inventory reality, shopper behaviour, and budget intelligence would work together in every single decision.

The Insight

The Complexity Was Not the Competition. It Was Knowing Which 10,000 Products Deserved to Be Seen, and When.

The insight was not about Diwali as a purchase occasion. It was about how a fashion catalogue of this scale behaves differently in each placement, for each shopper, and at each point in the sales cycle.

On a fashion e-commerce platform during a high-discount period, the competitive pressure does not come only from rival brands. The platform itself surfaces previous season products at sharper discounts and lower ASPs, reshaping where shoppers look and what they compare against.

The insight that shaped the strategy was this: within a catalogue of 10,000 SKUs, some products are built to convert, some are built to capture attention, and some are waiting for the right placement to unlock their demand. Treating them identically guarantees mediocre performance across the board. Building a system that treats them differently creates a campaign that converts at every level of the catalogue.

The Challenge

One Catalogue. Two Dimensions of Complexity That Required Different Solutions Running in Parallel:

Scaling United Colors of Benetton’s e-commerce performance during the Diwali season required addressing two fundamentally different layers of complexity at the same time.

01. Competing in a Platform Where the Discount Dynamic Was Already Set:
The platform’s own promotional pressure, surfacing previous season products at higher discounts, created an environment where visibility for full-price or lower-discount products required sharper targeting logic, not simply higher spend. The question was not how to out-discount the competition, but how to surface the right products to the right shoppers who were not exclusively discount-driven.

02. Generating Actionable Visibility Across a 10,000-Product Portfolio: Managing budget allocation and achieving meaningful visibility across approximately 10,000 products is not a media planning task. It is a data architecture task. Without clear product segmentation and performance intelligence, budget diffuses, and insight disappears. The challenge was building a system that could make every tier of a 10,000-SKU catalogue individually accountable.

The Approach

One Portfolio. A Multi-Layer Strategy Built Across Five Dimensions of Conversion Intelligence:

The approach was built around one governing principle: within a catalogue of this scale, the products that deserve visibility are not the ones with the highest brand equity. They are the ones the data says will convert, placed precisely where the right shopper will find them. Five strategic dimensions gave the campaign its structure.

01. SOH-Led Product Selection: From One Lakh Units to a Working Ad Catalogue

The team began by segregating approximately one lakh units of live Stock on Hand by cut sizes and the past month’s conversion performance. From that universe, approximately 8,000 to 10,000 products were identified as active candidates for advertising. Starting with inventory reality, not assumptions, meant every subsequent decision was grounded in what was actually available and convertible.

02. Ad Group Architecture: Precision Targeting Within a Massive Catalogue

Separate ad groups were created for similar products, enabling the team to efficiently target different placement slots and manage budget distribution at the product cluster level. That structural decision is what made individual product accountability possible at a catalogue scale that would otherwise make precision impossible.

03. Performance-Led Prioritisation: High CTR and High CVR at the Front

Products demonstrating both high CTR and high CVR were prioritised for brand protection campaigns and top-of-search placements to secure early revenue wins. Leading with proven performers meant the campaign built momentum from the first week, not just the final stretch.

04. Four-Tier Budget Intelligence: Every Placement Earning Its Allocation

Budget was allocated across four distinct performance tiers based on what each segment of the catalogue needed to achieve:

• 39% directed to top-performing products for branded search queries
• 20% allocated to high CTR but low CVR products via recommendation slots
• 30% directed to high CVR but low CTR products through homepage and category page placements
• 11% reserved for lower-performing products across PDP slot zero and cross-sell placements

Each tier reflected a different conversion reality within the same catalogue. That differentiation is what kept the overall budget efficient and every allocation individually accountable.

05. Display Retargeting and Timing Intelligence

Products with high CVR but low prior traffic were elevated through category page and homepage display banners, using a six-month lookback audience for retargeting precision. Low-discount products were pushed during regular BAU days and standard weekends, deliberately sidestepping discount-heavy peaks when platform dynamics would work against them. Recommendation page visibility was maintained continuously through event periods to capture traffic patterns that extend beyond discount-driven search behaviour.

The Performance Framework

Conversion Intelligence Was Not One Decision. It Was a System of Many Working Together.

The United Colors of Benetton campaign was built on one operating principle: within a 10,000-SKU catalogue, every product has a different conversion reality, and a strategy that ignores that difference will produce average outcomes across the board. The framework that delivered results was not a single tactic. It was four interdependent layers of intelligence operating simultaneously.

Inventory as the Starting Point, Not the Finish Line:

Beginning with live SOH data and cut-size performance meant the campaign was built on what was actually available and convertible. Most campaigns start with the budget. This one started with the catalogue, which meant every subsequent decision had a grounded commercial logic beneath it.

Architecture Before Activation:

The ad group structure was not a campaign management convenience. It was a strategic decision that made product-level accountability possible at scale. Without that architecture, the budget intelligence framework would have had no structure to operate within.

Placement as a Signal, Not Just a Channel:

The four-tier budget allocation treated each placement slot as a signal about shopper intent. Branded search slots went to high performers. Recommendation slots went to attention-builders. Homepage and category banners went to the converters who had not yet found the product. PDP and cross-sell slots went to the long tail. That mapping is what makes ROI move from an aggregate number to a product-level outcome.

Timing as a Competitive Lever:

The decision to push low-discount products during BAU periods, rather than competing for positioning during discount-heavy events, reflects a sharper reading of how platform promotional calendars reshape shopper behaviour. Presence during the right moments compounds returns more efficiently than presence during all moments.

The Results

What the Luvih Brand Humanization Campaign Delivered for Merino Laminates.