NEW YORK/NASHVILLE: Clorox, the manufacturer of home care products, is emerging as a leader in that category's use of digital marketing and market research techniques.

A new report from L2, a think tank for digital innovation, declared Clorox to be a "digital genius". The Digital IQ Index: Home Care report pointed to the brand's high search visibility and its mobile-optimized site, which included "one of the most complete product information and user reviews among brands in the Home Care category". In addition, the brand achieved 81% visibility for "bleach cleaner" across e-tailers.

The only other home care brand to achieve L2's 'genius' classification was Tide, the P&G brand. A further 13 brands were deemed 'gifted', another 13 'average', ten 'challenged' and the remaining 18 'feeble'.

Just over one third (36%) of home care brands had a customized mobile site, according to L2, while almost half (46%) had no mobile presence at all.

L2 also highlighted Clorox's interactive multimedia campaign – Bleachable Moments – which invited TV viewers to use an app to check in when they saw an ad and share their own 'bleachable moments' to increase their chances of winning the Bleachable Moments sweepstake.

Separately, Danny Brown, Clorox global shopper insights lead, outlined to The Market Research Event in Nashville how the brand is using the tools of marketing research to identify and remedy retailer bottlenecks. (Warc subscribers can read a full report event here: Clorox Insight's Best Practice: Four-Step Bottleneck-Breaker.)

He explained how he worked to create and embed shopper insights capabilities into field sales teams. Starting at a store-by-store level, Brown's team looked at brand performance against competition and year-over-year performance within that particular store.

In each case – for each product and for each distribution point – Clorox sought to identify the location and source of any bottlenecks and then to answer the question, "How do we widen the highway?"

"We're getting our fair share of shoppers in the store," said Brown, "but they're not going down the aisle or we're not converting them." He pointed to the example of the person who might buy just one bottle of bleach a year, or had stopped buying altogether. "What we're trying to do is get that shopper back into our franchise," he said.

In general, Clorox looked to ensure that "must-carry" items were in distribution, used new items to generate excitement and build baskets, while all the time pricing leading items competitively.

Data sourced from L2; additional content by Warc staff