Today, media agencies usually have data analysis skills that can help product teams. They are often the shops responsible for parsing audience segmentation data. That’s why some of them, like Left Off Madison, approach their work with a degree of skepticism.
“We never trust anything that a client gives us,” Douglas said. The small agency leaders pore over data to look for the unexpected using well-known tools like MRI-Simmons to dissect audience segments, of their own proprietary tools.
Campaign data as a market intelligence tool
Their findings don’t always impact product strategy and design, but often inform messaging and strategy enough to save clients money.
“A lot of times like marketers—I’ll be honest—it’s like they go through gut instinct,” said Paula Connard, evp and chief personalization officer at Horizon Media who developed the media agency’s blu audience management platform. Horizon Media once had a client in the retail industry that was sure targeting a specific audience was crucial to a successful activation. Data analysis proved the client was wrong.
“It’s always a little scary to go to a client and tell them what they thought was incorrect, and [that you] have actual data to prove it. … They could have been going down a route of creating custom content, landing pages… all that production work that might not [have been] the best use of their dollars,” Connard added.
Sara Owens, svp of analytics and data science at Media Matters Worldwide, helped the DTC meat-delivery company ButcherBox reach a similar conclusion. The brand aspired to reach consumers who used platforms like Instacart or Shipt to order grocery delivery, when Owens and her team found that ButcherBox customers were more likely to be quality-obsessed foodies than to seek out convenient online options.
“If they’re really concerned with quality, they don’t want an Instacart driver picking out their produce from the grocery store. But they’ll buy something like ButcherBox because the quality is inherent in the product,” Owens said.
Headphones for hip-hop enthusiasts on the green
Left Off Madison found more data that led to yet another audience discovery for Panasonic.
While compiling a segment of working professionals, the agency found evidence that Panasonic’s Technics headphones would resonate with golfers. That was a surprising discovery, given the common belief that golfers hail from older generations and aren’t as likely as young people to invest in new consumer technology. But it turns out that golfer demographics are evolving as younger people, and specifically hip-hop fans, are embracing the sport.
