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Media agencies sometimes stumble upon audience data significant enough to impact product strategy.
To advertise its HomeHawk security camera, Panasonic was working with Robert Douglas and Boris Litvinov, two former Dentsu Media leaders who together founded the full-service agency Left Off Madison.
The agency team relied on market research company MRI-Simmons’ audience data, intending to find probable home security device buyers and place them in an audience segment. But after scrutinizing the data, they discovered something surprising: Tropical fish and reptile owners were buying the product and mounting the security camera on tank walls to observe the animals.
Douglas and Litvinov collaborated with social media influencers in the tropical pet community to create content and test how well it performed relative to home security content.
“It did far better than ‘watch your backyard or front yard’ stuff. And the fish tanks were the first ones out of the gate that just killed it, for like a year,” Douglas said. “To the point where now, Panasonic is taking the same device, putting it in a new box—whether it has graphics on the outside of reptiles, fish and stuff like that—and going to sell it into Costco [or] Petco,” he added.
Sometimes brands make the wrong assumptions about who to target. Only 42% of brand marketers actually know their audience’s basic demographics, such as their gender or location, according to a 2022 HubSpot survey of more than 1,200 marketers.
Years ago, it could be common for advertising agencies to focus on market research and intelligence. Now, it’s more common that brands approach agencies with a project brief, target personas and a strategic vision already in mind. That approach can make it hard for agencies to offer more to clients than just execution.
“Agencies have a rich heritage as innovation partners, helping brands identify and solve business problems,” said Jay Pattisall, principal analyst at Forrester Research. “An important element of that counsel was marketing research and consumer intelligence. Grey Advertising invented Downy for Procter & Gamble when the agency discovered an unmet need for a fabric softener through its focus groups.
“That type of consumer-centric innovation is part of the DNA of agencies, and the reason data sciences, intelligence and AI are fundamental to today’s agency playing the innovation and business partner role.”
