Question:
What is the biggest internal challenge you have had to overcome when working on marketing effectiveness projects in a business?
Answer:
“I've been lucky enough to lead some big other functions in retail and I think that the biggest tension is usually between the trading or buying teams and marketing.”
Chris Other, Customer and Marketing Director at Studio Retail, Specsavers and Tesco
Question:
How do you get those teams to collaborate and understand what is driving the business and how you drive the business?
Answer:
“The only way you can do it is to share and collaborate. Ultimately, you are trying to do the same thing and to break down those barriers by talking to people and sharing data. When you've got more data, it helps that discussion and makes it easier to achieve. This is not easy, owing to the fact that you do still require a natural tension in the business also. You don't want everybody to be all singing, all happy because you want a natural tension anyway.”
Chris Other, Customer and Marketing Director at Studio Retail, Specsavers and Tesco
Question:
What challenges have you experienced with clients when embarking upon marketing effectiveness projects from a modelling perspective?
Answer:
“I think there are two main challenges when starting one of these projects.
“One is the hearts and minds aspect as there's a real limit to what modelling we can do or can accomplish and how useful it can be without having the people on board and stakeholders engaged, to feed into those wider discussions about what hypothesis the business wants to prove and what questions they need the answers to.
“The other main challenge that we face is around data - this is something that a lot of analysts will emphasise over and over again: the importance of having good quality data. Having the right data, in the right place, and in the right format is something that you must do prior to a modelling project. Some organisations are able to do that internally and some organisations are not able to do it without some assistance.”
Matt Triggs. Head of Analysis and Modelling at Jaywing
Question:
What is of utmost importance when embarking upon marketing effectiveness projects from a modelling perspective?
Answer:
“Transparency is important. This is in terms of knowing what your internal capabilities are, being clear with those vs what you want to outsource, knowing what data comes from which partner, and everyone being on the same page.
“A conceptual understanding of what measurement models are doing, having everyone on the same page when it comes to data and the importance of data, and being able to get that in the right place at the right time are crucial from a modelling perspective.”
Matt Triggs. Head of Analysis and Modelling at Jaywing
Question:
What is of utmost importance when embarking upon marketing effectiveness projects from a modelling perspective?
Answer:
“I think it’s important to get your data into A) governed, and B) a place where it can be manipulated and shared. In Studio Retail, for example, we used Snowflake which is an agile cloud-based data warehouse.
“A lot of great work was done within the Data team to be able to do that and it started to transform the way that we could work and the speed that we could work at. Without that, progress is too slow and you're questioning the data, so it is very important. The commitment to it needs to come top down as well, being supported by the CEO.”
Chris Other, Customer and Marketing Director at Studio Retail, Specsavers and Tesco
Question:
What is your approach to getting started with measurement projects at Jaywing?
Answer:
“Data manipulation and sharing is a common challenge we have experienced with many of our clients alongside aligning all parties behind clear objectives and the reason you’re embarking on this type of activity. We always start by engaging the key stakeholders so we can very quickly propose the most effective solution to overcome these barriers. From an agency point of view, when we’re engaging with clients, our job is to make it as easy and cost effective as possible for them to deliver these projects.
“Sometimes our in-house data experts will work with clients to pull this data for them. A lot of agencies and consultancies will have their own process of pulling it, so it can be a really collaborative effort.”
Hanna Wade, Strategy Director (Data Science) at Jaywing
Question:
What outputs come out of measurement projects and how does this get socialised in a business?
Answer:
“At Jaywing, we are very transparent -any output must be usable in the real world. We will pass over raw data to our client’s internal teams to work with. Outputs can include working with a number of scenarios for different business plans and producing summary insight slide decks. We’ll also provide dashboards which are accessible at all times to key stakeholders or deep-dive into results in one-on-one consultancy meetings.
“If you are looking to embark on this type of project, you need to be working with a partner who can flex to the needs of your business, rather than a too good to be true one-size-fits-all platform; something that a lot of leading econometricians in this field are cautious about.”
“You should establish what questions to ask when embarking on a project such as this, both internally and of the provider that you're working with, so that you feel confident in the model, the insights coming out and the synergies that will be created between both your media partners and your internal stakeholders in making future optimisations.”
Hanna Wade, Strategy Director (Data Science) at Jaywing
Question:
How does this type of project integrate effectively when you're working with separate media partners?
Answer:
“Your different media agencies are going to have slightly different ways of doing things, such as their own different reporting or maybe their own measurement solutions. I think it's therefore important that they're engaged with the process so the outputs support their activities in a way that can be applied.
“I don’t like the perception that a media agency that just does econometrics, or an econometrics partner, comes in and tells everyone else that they’ve been doing it wrong, that they are inefficient or that this is the way of doing it.”
Matt Triggs. Head of Analysis and Modelling at Jaywing
Question:
What do you think this approach should look like?
Answer:
“I think the approach should be much more collaborative. Different organisations and brands will have different views on the most effective ways that third parties can work together. Tools can be complementary.
“Brands should be in charge of that relationship, deciding how they want their agencies to work together - whether that's wanting the first sight of all the measurement reports or encouraging agencies freely talking to each other to be able to align on, for example, channel performance.
“Getting all the people involved in the project around the table from the outset, and making it clear what the expectations are from each of the agency partners in facilitating an econometrics project, is my advice.
“In addition, having a good level of debate is good - we want to make sure that we're understanding and looking at performance critically, but in a positive, professional, collaborative way, rather than this being antagonistic.”
Matt Triggs, Head of Analysis and Modelling at Jaywing
Question:
If an organisation is looking to execute a new creative campaign which lands in the right way, how can you justify spend when you haven't done this type of activity before?
Answer:
“In terms of modelling, firstly, I always advocate for experimentation and testing with a genuinely new channel.
“If we're taking a departure from within a channel that we've used before, and we want to know whether it's going to be successful or not, you do question whether econometrics is the right tool for that.
“Econometrics is an arrow in your quiver but it’s not always the right approach for the challenge. There's plenty of other research and data to take advantage of. At Jaywing, for example, we'll review any creative outputs with tools such as customer eye-tracking to see whether they're engaged and what their emotions are when they're watching an advert.
“There are various other things that we can do using AI technology among others, to know whether a creative will be successful or elicit the emotional response that you want. So, when you're making the investment decision or you're putting an investment decision forward, you can evidence why you think this would be a success."
Matt Triggs. Head of Analysis and Modelling at Jaywing
Question:
If an organisation is looking to execute a new creative campaign which lands in the right way, how can you justify spend when you haven't done this type of activity before?
Answer:
“When you're talking about brand and especially brand activity that has a long-term impact, it is important to triangulate why you think this a good route to take. At Jaywing, we support our clients on a number of things, often running regional tests with brand activity to understand the shift in engagement this has with consumers. But we also employ tools that enable us to judge attention, motivation and engagement among others- the human element of the response.
“Using existing studies, examples of what's going on in industry to justify the initial investment and identifying the metrics along the way that you’re going to measure is also critical. If you haven't done something before, there does need to be an element of confidence and risk in testing that out but ultimately, it’s about how you show you have de-risked an approach as much as possible whilst accepting there is some risk in trying anything new. Being evidence-based is also about utilising other data that is available to you whether that’s tools, consumer research, first party data or outputs from previous measurement models. In the last 12 months, for example there was an absolute tonne of research on WARC, on the IPA, from the DMA, from leading experts in these fields. They have consolidated years and years of data from different brands and different industries, with recommendations on how this works for different channels.”
Hanna Wade, Strategy Director (Data Science) at Jaywing
