Your brand research is bloated...slow, unproductive, and way to costly. Here is how to cut long -form survey tracker costs in half and get so much more by integrating digital and social data into a contemporary brand guidance system

1. How to put your brand research on a digital
high protein diet!
Joel Rubinson, President
Rubinson Partners, Inc.
joel@rubinsonpartners.com
Blog.joelrubinson.net
Twitter: @joelrubinson
June, 2014

2. Basic premise: Research is not delivering
enough value for the money
The marketing insights team mission must become how to deliver more
for less. There is so much waste and so much research that under-
delivers, if we can't achieve more for less, shame on us.“
Stan Sthanunathan, SVP CMI Unilever
January, 2014

3. Brand research is falling short
 Brand research is bloated…long costly surveys, slow
moving, and reduced relevance as the ways marketers
build brands has changed in a digital, social, and mobile
world.

4. How can brand research
increase its value?
 Achieving more by focusing on productivity…
 Real time campaign tracking and adjustment
 More complete measurement across digital and social signals of
brand success in a digital age
 Create consumer and moment segmentation that leads to a
predictive engine for precision targeting and customization
 Store and model data for learning about what works
 Focus on targeting profile factors ability to drive ad response
rather than relying solely on attribute ratings
 For less…
 Cut tracker costs by 50%
 Reduce testing budget

5. What are the barriers to achieving this
transformation?

6. The problem
Barrier: marketers are driving forwards while
research is looking backwards
We focus on measuring past performance, using tools that lock
us into retrospective marketing

7. Measurement vs. prediction
Traditional research questions
are about report cards
Predictive question sets are
about marketing actions
How did our campaign perform? How are campaign elements
performing? How should I move
money around for the rest of the
campaign?
• What brand attributes have
differentiated our brand?
• How did our concept and copy
test vs. norms?
What behaviors, preferences, and
conversations identify users who we
should target?
What media expenditures
historically have the highest
correlation to sales?
Plan our upcoming campaign: what
messages delivered on what
screens, in what context have the
highest conversion rates

8. Barrier: the market researcher comfort
zone
surveys
digital
Mobile
research

9. ‘Always on’
culture
Changing
how we
shop
Marketers
must be
“always on”,
relevant
Affecting
what we
measure
and how we
measure it
Digitalization
of
everything
Barrier to overcome: need to achieve digital
understanding
Brands
become
media
Multi-
screen
connected
Pull
messages
Consumers now choose their screen, the
brand information they are exposed to,
and how they shop.

10. ‘Always on’
culture
Changing
how we
shop
Marketers
must be
“always on”,
relevant
Affecting
what we
measure
and how we
measure it
Digitalization
of
everything
What “consumers are in control” really means
Brands
become
media
Multi-
screen
connected
Pull
messages
Consumers now choose their screen, the
brand information they are exposed to,
and how they shop.
• 20+ categories, typically...
• 50% + pull digital info as
they (pre) shop
• 60%+ of brands bought
were first considered
during research phase
• 25% browse weekly just
to kill time
• AOL: Buying at Speed

11. ‘Always on’
culture
Changing
how we
shop
Marketers
must be
“always on”,
relevant
Affecting
what we
measure
and how we
measure it
Digitalization
of
everything
Our marketing future is about precision marketing
…personalization, behavioral targeting, users seeking out
what is relevant to them at the moment
Brands
become
media
Multi-
screen
connected
Big data of
Marketing
signals
Pull
messages
The diverse streams of marketing signals and
behavior outcomes lead to big data:
• Customer transactions
• Web behaviors
• Social media conversation
• Ad and content serving, tagged in detail
• Conversions
• Location and other sensor data

12. Research and analytics needs to help
marketers flip the funnel
 Traditional
media
planning flows
from C to A
 In a digital
age, media
planning
should go
from A to C

14. Integrate survey and digital data for a more
complete brand guidance system
 We must learn how to integrate digital and
survey data together into a contemporary guidance
system for brand success and marketing productivity
 Why? Because consumer behaviors have forever changed and so
therefore are the rules of marketing, and the metrics of brand success

15. A high protein digital diet for brand
research
Reduce long form
tracker costs by 50%
 Tracker redesign: focus on
key measures using micro-
surveys, in the moment
 Dipstick strategy studies
 Reduce testing by 25%
 create a brand guidance system based on data science
 Continuous measurement of brand beliefs via social media, aligning conversation themes and attribute factors
 Continuous measurement of drivers via digital ad response
 Big data integration for brand guidance, campaign improvement
 Fully leverage first party data as a core, which will encourage an always on brand strategy
 Media and creative planning using Moneyball-style big data approaches
 Commit to productivity
 Put your best team in charge of enabling a real time marketing culture
 Turn every ad campaign into a naturally occurring experiment
 Use agent-based modeling, or Bayesian networks so experimentation and attribution can be valued at least as highly
as regression at determining what works

16.  Joel@rubinsonpartners.com
 Blog.joelrubinson.net
Thank you!
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