#2 Insight over Instinct

T​Do Change Marketing Now Eps#2 Insight over Instinct

(0:02 - 1:40)

I really love this moment when you present the results to the client and I say, wow, this is what I needed because now I know what I have to do next. Welcome to the second episode of the Do Change Marketing Now podcast. I am Matthias Riedl, your host, and I'm super excited about the second episode.

I teased it a little bit already in the first episode. So we have today here my colleague and head of insights, supermarket research guru, and my lovely colleague Cornelia Wroblewska. And I spelled it right, right? Yeah, fantastic.

And I'm so excited about this today's episode because we were going to talk about market research, which is basically your superpower expertise. Yes. Yeah.

Thank you, inviting me today. I'm also very excited to be here. And I'm happy that I can talk with you about my work, which is also my passion.

So happy to be here. Yeah. And I would just jump right in because we know our listeners, they don't have time to waste.

So we really want to get straight to the point. So what do you think or what do you see are the most three common mistakes, you know, marketers does when it comes to their campaigns or market research or anything? Yeah. So I think marketers or business leaders in general often do not take enough time for research.

(1:40 - 4:07)

And this can create a problem because if they are not aware what their competitors are doing, what their consumers or potential consumers are thinking or what they need, what are their pain points, then it's very difficult to address those needs exactly. And that's why I have the feeling that they often are far away from the audience and from the consumer. That's also your everyday business.

When people come and say, I have a very concrete idea or a very concrete vision of how I want to talk about my product, and usually people are very emotional about it. What do you tell to these kind of clients who come with this approach where they say a very stick idea, but you're not convinced that this is maybe the right idea or you say maybe we need some more information? What do you think about that? Yeah. So first, I would like to say that it's totally natural to feel this way, to feel ownership for your brand, feel ownership for your messaging and also for your campaign idea.

So this is totally natural. And also we as researchers, we also will always say that we bring the consumer perspective and it doesn't mean that you lose the ownership of your messaging or of your creative. It only means that you try to make it really resonating with your consumer.

So it means that your idea is still there, but you can optimise it. You can tweak it a bit. You can maybe talk about different kinds of benefits to make it resonate even stronger.

So when there's a result coming from a research that, you know, saying that we should paint everything blue, we don't have to do this. Of course, you never have to do anything. Right.

But if, for example, a colour would be an issue that you see in the feedback from your consumers, then it's up to you how to do it. But maybe a different shade of blue would perform better. Or maybe it's not about the blue, but it's about total overload of visual element in the ad.

So it's not really about giving the ownership of your campaign. If we talk about creative testing, for example, it's not about giving ownership of even the decision power to the consumers. It's about understanding them, understanding their needs and attitudes and really tweaking and fine tuning your message so that it really resonates with them.

(4:08 - 4:45)

Cool. You just mentioned creative testing. What are the three, let's say, most common research studies you conduct and for what kind of purposes? So at DCMN, we do lots of tests indeed.

And the purpose of this is, of course, to make sure that we are going out there with a campaign with the best creative possible. Because you know that production costs lots of money and, of course, media costs lots of money. So before we spend this budget, it's crucial for us to make sure that the creative assets are as best as possible.

(4:45 - 6:21)

And what other researchers usually do? Is this also about target group or customer, other stuff? Target group analysis is something that we often do for our clients because we see understanding of the audience as foundation for every decision you can do when if you are a business leader or a marketeer. So we do different kinds of target group analysis when we try to really get into the needs of the target groups to understand what motivates them, what are the barriers to try out or buy a product, and also to really understand what kind of pain points do they have. Yeah, that's super interesting.

I want to go a little bit deeper in that topic a little bit later. But also another thing which I found very interesting is because we often have these cases that, let's say, a client is super successful in a country, let's say Germany, and they want to go now into the U.S. market. And a lot of times people think, you know, U.S. and Germany is kind of the same, also when it comes to perception and because we all summarise it under this term Western world.

But it actually could have a lot of big differences. Totally. So this is another frequent scenario when you should really invest into research upfront before expanding to a new market, because not only competitive environment is different, not only there are regulatory differences in those countries, but also people are different.

(6:22 - 8:25)

And it's not even the differences between Germany and U.S., but even Germany and France might be very different when it comes to attitudes to certain products, or maybe the maturity of a certain category is totally different. So whereas people in Germany maybe are totally used to a certain service, maybe in another country, it's new and you have to educate people on this category. I just remember one example where I really found very interesting.

We don't talk about clients here. I cannot mention client names, but a client wanted to, you know, go big in Europe, but also had a very clear limitation. I only want to do this with a, let's say, creative, one creative approach and not being able to localise in every country.

But also there, you guys did an amazing project where you found out, I think, you know, what are the common denominators that could work in all countries? Maybe it's just maybe can you elaborate on this? Yeah. So this is a frequent discussion we see on the client side, the discussion between the global campaign, global concept and global assets and very localised approaches. So there is also not good or wrong here, but it's always crucial, I would say, to check if your global idea is working in the new markets.

Maybe you have to quit tweaking a bit. I think it will be rarely the case that it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it's enough to add some local elements like our creative team is already doing with our clients.

Sometimes maybe you can change the slogan or the call to action in the ad. This might be enough. But sometimes if you show the reality of everyday life in the ad that does not match the reality of people, for example, you show a typical U.S. household and you want to advertise, I don't know, in Italy, for example, then there will be a mismatch.

(8:26 - 11:09)

Yeah, these occasions have happened. So that's pretty cool. But I want to go back to the target group analysis you mentioned earlier.

So what exactly is it that you guys do in the Insights team here at DCMN? And, you know, what are, let's say, an example that really surprises you then when doing that kind of research? So maybe I will start with like general outlook. So analysing the target audiences is our daily work because basically everything that we do at DCMN, you know very well, we are a data-driven company. Data and insights are very important for us.

So basically every recommendation that we give to clients, every media strategy that we prepare is based not on our gut feeling, but on research and data. That means that, for example, for media strategy, we would analyse the demographics, social demographics with secondary data tools. So the tools that gather lots of data and we can reproduce target groups and analyse certain factors.

But we also do research tailored exactly to our consumers' needs, meaning that we can go really into deep understanding of the audience, especially when it's about planning a new campaign, understanding what kind of pain points you want to address. How do you have to talk to your consumers after you have identified whom you should talk to? How you should talk to them? What arguments you can use? What kind of pain points do they have so that you can address in order to be relevant for them? Yeah, because the first episode we talked about the battle of attention and it's all about how to break through the noise. And I think it's very crucial to the better we understand the pain points of the clients and the better we are able to address, the higher the likelihood is we break through that kind of noise and really get the attention.

Of course, because people filter out messages very fastly and they will focus on those messages that feel relevant to them. And so that's why addressing their pain points, something that they are struggling with, of course, makes your chances higher that they will listen to your message. And then we can go further into understanding them and talk about what kind of tone of voice should we use? Would they be positive towards funny tone of voice? Or should we be very serious? Should we talk about security that our products or service deliver? Or is it more about maybe prestige or some other factors? So it really gives you quite useful guidelines for thinking about your campaign.

(11:09 - 13:02)

Or maybe to go, let's say, calculated risks. We had that also in one example where we had three very different concepts and they were very, let's call it progressive. And the client was very brave and they really trusted the data.

And in the data, there was one idea who was very, very progressive and loud. And so when you could see it without the data, you could say, Oh my God, what is this? But a client was really brave and then took based on the data that decision and it turned out to be one super successful campaign and all kinds of KPIs were very, very good. But this is really interesting.

Do you have any kind of concrete example from the last couple of months where you said you had an occasion where you were really surprised about what you found out? Yeah. So maybe one comment. I'm always surprised because research, market research is really exciting, exciting thing.

And there are always unexpected outcomes. That's why it's your favourite job, I guess. Yes.

Totally. It is never boring and you always have some surprising factors and always have something that is also interesting for the client. So I really love these moments when you present the results to the client and I say, wow, this is what I needed because now I know what I have to do next.

And maybe one example from past research that I actually saw is that after showing the consumers TV spot, we saw that the resonance was quite positive and they liked the spot and they said, yes, I would be interested into learning more. But it turned out they attributed the spot to a competitor brand, not to the client brand. The competitor would be very thankful for that.

(13:02 - 13:12)

The competitor would be very thankful indeed. And the consumers would be also fine because they found an interesting product. But for the client, of course, it's not an outcome.

(13:12 - 13:38)

They spend advertising for their competitor. A super interesting thing. So I want to, because we talk now very often in the context of campaigns and communication, move on to very, very new stuff where we also had our event about the catapult night, where we talked about how to turn CTV, connected TV into a performance channel.

(13:38 - 19:35)

I don't want to spoil it too much for people who have not listened to that. But where we say basically that, you know, linear TV and CTV is fundamentally different, but the opportunities for CTV in order to use data to reach exactly the audience that is gonna has the most highest probability resonating with my product, my message is super interesting. So how are we at DCMN leveraging insights and research to make these kind of campaigns even better? Yeah, so CTV has opportunity of very precise targeting.

It means that the times when you only can talk about gender and age, this is gone with the linear TV, right? With linear TV, your approach was very broad. And with your broad approach, surely you have reached your core target audience as well. But with CTV, you have different possibilities of targeting very precisely.

But of course, you can imagine if your aim is very small, the probability of missing it is also very high if you don't have very exact tools or guidelines. And research can be a helpful toolbox to really set you on an exact course to reach people that you know need or would be interested in your product or service, people that you will reach in the right context and with the messaging. So it's just quite similar to what we did in the past with the campaign, but much, much more detailed and targeted.

So this is super interesting. One thing on this, on CTV, when we set up the campaigns, usually you have like this access to an enormous amount of data. And every day gets more, it's first party data from the client, it's third party data, it's other data like weather, geographic location, etc.

So there's tonnes of opportunities how to then play out the CTV campaign. But exactly how you said, you need to know, where do I aim? And basically, this is what we see that people get lost in the opportunity where there's so much data, or what should I do now? And I think there, it's very important to have in the research before exactly found out who we do it then. And that's what we at DCMN call audience design, where we say, okay, we bring together the power of research with the power of the available data to have exactly then the right approach.

But here, I would be interested, how do you see that? Is this a development you do it because also when we talk about with clients about this day, a lot of them use CTV, just like linear TV, in a lot of cases, what would you say to them, you know, in terms of the data or research approach? Yeah, I think try to use the opportunities that are there, the toolbox is there, we are also there to help and support you. And why not give it a try with the next campaign, you might find out that being precise really pays off. Yeah, I think we have to be precise, because we have to cut through the noise.

You know, I always use that example of a laser or light or water and water cutaway say, okay, if I concentrate all my energy in one single point, then I really cut through the noise. And I really get to my audience. And this is this is really interesting.

I think another thing which I want to touch base on, because when we talk about CTV, we really think, also here at DC Man, we fully believers in that and also this data driven approach to bring in the best data possible. But also what I really like, and what was never, you know, something that got back to me, but what I really like your team does is not just coming up with, oh, this is what the consumers see now, but really coming up with what I always call actionable insights. So you're not only saying, hey, this is the results, good luck.

But what I really like that you guys always think three or four or five steps ahead, and then come up with unusual advice, you know, sure is up to everyone to take it. But I really like that. Maybe can you talk a little bit about this? You know, how do you come to this? How do you take this data from the research? And how do you get to a point where you then give an actionable advice, basically interpreting the data? How do you do that? How do you come up with these actionable insights? Well, I would say we try to be good partner for our clients.

And we try not only to focus on the task given a research project, we try to think further and try to really understand the business and give also advice that can be a game changer, basically. And we also at the CMN have experts from different fields, and we all work very closely together. So it's not that the teams work in isolation.

This is the opportunity that we have as an insights team integrated within the agency that we can work together with people from different expertises and come up with a really detailed advice or recommendations for our clients. Great. So this is really something you have to experience, I always say, because it's something we can talk about.

Once you experience it, you really see the value of it. I think this is pretty cool. Another thing we wanted to talk about is that over the last years, we were like monitoring a lot of, let's say, brand KPIs in our digital brand tracker.

(19:36 - 20:03)

Also, we stopped this by the end of the year, which I think because we're now moving to a very, very customised boutique focused approach where we said we want to really go deep into the insights that are really helpful for the clients. And a lot of clients, they always think when we talk about research, they always come, yeah, it's about brand awareness. It's about aided brand awareness, unaided brand awareness, and this kind of stuff.

(20:03 - 23:26)

Usually, every time you talk with a client in the first place, they all come up with brand awareness, you know. Now, we always say, okay, sure, this is nice, but... And maybe you can explain to the listeners a little bit more about what are the KPIs you should look at when kind of looking at your brand KPIs, brand performance KPIs, basically. Yeah, sure.

So maybe a general remark first, because you mentioned that people mention brand awareness is the first thing. Sometimes they also think, okay, this is something very complicated and something that will take lots of time. It doesn't have to be like this.

We can really be very agile in our research approach. And also when it comes to brand KPIs, it really depends what kind of KPIs the brand is using for their marketing steering. It doesn't make sense to measure KPIs that they will not use at all.

So brand awareness was and still is an important KPI. It shows us how popular your brand is, how many people know about it. But there are also many important KPIs that go above, like brand consideration, for example, how many people would actually consider buying your brand.

So this goes already one step further. And you can, of course, go further and further into this funnel and check the numbers of buyers, see how many people would actually recommend your product to others. And also it's important to have a detailed comparison, how people perceive you on the dimensions that are relevant for your brand and also your strategic planning.

Trustworthiness and all this kind of stuff. Exactly. Trustworthiness, innovativeness, but it depends on the brand.

Some brands want to be considered as very cool and progressive. Some brands prefer to be considered traditional. So it really depends what kind of dimensions are crucial to your strategic planning.

And then you want to compare yourself with the competition and see where do you perform in comparison to them. Because in the ideal case, you want to be somehow unique in your brand positioning. Absolutely.

So one thing on the brand consideration, because I think this is one of my favourites, because I always say, you know, it's fantastic when everybody knows you, but if nobody thinks about buying from you, you're also lost. So you're being famous, but being broke famously. So to push brand consideration is something that even in today's marketplace, where we have a more unsecure environment, where people are, you know, more, you know, everything is getting more expensive, all this kind of stuff.

So what we see is like, it gets harder and harder to, it's easy to push brand awareness. But what about brand consideration? And what does a brand have to basically, when I'm a marketeer or CMO of a consumer brand, what are basically the things I can influence to push brand consideration? Again, we are back to our first point. You should have a look at your consumers and see what are the factors that are important for them when buying a specific product.

(23:26 - 24:04)

I don't know if you are, for example, from home security category, what is it that can motivate people to buy your product? Is it fear or is it the need to feel that you have the top tech in your house? So there can be different motivators, different drivers that might be important for your consumer. So this is really important to be relevant and to speak the language of your consumers. So your chance of being a relevant brand increases when you really speak the language and meet the exact tone of voice that would resonate with your consumers.

(24:04 - 25:00)

Integrative and also, yeah, transport the message in a relevant environment. Can be CTV, TV, out of home, whatever, or online. So this is then where we see in the data, where is this target group consuming? Of course.

Which kind of media? It goes further to also choice of media channels, maybe a podcast would be an interesting channel for you, right? And also, one step further, what kind of content in the channels are people consuming? If they are streaming, what kind of series are they watching? Maybe it's about sport events. Maybe it's about news channels. So you can really basically apply insights from your target group analysis to each and every step of planning and executing the campaign.

(25:05 - 25:22)

It's really cool. You really can feel how passionate you are about this topic. And it's so cool.

And I'm always super proud on the team. I love actually the appointments where I always try to be in these appointments when you guys present your results to the clients. You also like this kind of stuff.

(25:22 - 26:38)

I love this because also then I'm always a little bit the therapist for the room. But I think it's really exciting. And I think what you guys can find out and how many clients we are actually could help through your work of the team to become, you know, market leaders in Europe.

And I really, really thank you for joining the podcast. Thank you for having me. Do change marketing now.

So cool to have you here, Cornelia, our head of insights. Maybe just a last word. What would you recommend? What would you say to a marketeer who is unsecure about should I conduct such a research or not? What would you say to these guys? I would say give it a try.

You don't have to commit to a whole research programme of the whole year. Take one challenge that you're unsecure about. Maybe it's the size of the logo on your out of home poster.

Maybe it's the testimonial that you want to work with on your next campaign. Take one decision that lies ahead of you and try to base it on research and then you see how it works for you. So your risk is not high, but the potential gain of this investment can be really big for you.

(26:39 - 26:42)

Thank you very much, Cornelia. Great you were here. Thank you, Matthias.

(26:43 - 26:52)

Was a pleasure. And we're really looking forward to a lot of exciting insights we will get from the next project. Yes, always.

(26:53 - 27:22)

Thank you. Thank you. This was the second episode of the Do Change Marketing Now podcast with Cornelia, our head of insights here at DCMN.

If you have any questions, if you have challenges, reach out to us at hello at DCMN.com. You can follow us here on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on social media, send us an email, send us a message. We will get back to you. We try to help whatever your challenge is.

(27:22 - 27:50)

And then up to next time when we will talk about CTV, we will dive deeper in the third episode in the topic of CTV and how can we use it to turn it into a performance channel and what opportunities do we have? We will have here our head of digital, Jean. It will be an exciting talk about, okay, what are the possibilities to use CTV in your marketing mix? Thank you so much. Bye.

###

I really love this moment when you present the results to the client and I say, wow, this is what I needed because now I know what I have to do next. Welcome to the second episode of the Do Change Marketing Now podcast. I am Matthias Riedl, your host, and I'm super excited about the second episode.

I teased it a little bit already in the first episode. So we have today here my colleague and head of insights, supermarket research guru, and my lovely colleague Cornelia Wroblewska. And I spelled it right, right? Yeah, fantastic.

And I'm so excited about this today's episode because we were going to talk about market research, which is basically your superpower expertise. Yes. Yeah.

Thank you, inviting me today. I'm also very excited to be here. And I'm happy that I can talk with you about my work, which is also my passion.

So happy to be here. Yeah. And I would just jump right in because we know our listeners, they don't have time to waste.

So we really want to get straight to the point. So what do you think or what do you see are the most three common mistakes, you know, marketers does when it comes to their campaigns or market research or anything? Yeah. So I think marketers or business leaders in general often do not take enough time for research.

And this can create a problem because if they are not aware what their competitors are doing, what their consumers or potential consumers are thinking or what they need, what are their pain points, then it's very difficult to address those needs exactly. And that's why I have the feeling that they often are far away from the audience and from the consumer. That's also your everyday business.

When people come and say, I have a very concrete idea or a very concrete vision of how I want to talk about my product, and usually people are very emotional about it. What do you tell to these kind of clients who come with this approach where they say a very stick idea, but you're not convinced that this is maybe the right idea or you say maybe we need some more information? What do you think about that? Yeah. So first, I would like to say that it's totally natural to feel this way, to feel ownership for your brand, feel ownership for your messaging and also for your campaign idea.

So this is totally natural. And also we as researchers, we also will always say that we bring the consumer perspective and it doesn't mean that you lose the ownership of your messaging or of your creative. It only means that you try to make it really resonating with your consumer.

So it means that your idea is still there, but you can optimise it. You can tweak it a bit. You can maybe talk about different kinds of benefits to make it resonate even stronger.

So when there's a result coming from a research that, you know, saying that we should paint everything blue, we don't have to do this. Of course, you never have to do anything. Right.

But if, for example, a colour would be an issue that you see in the feedback from your consumers, then it's up to you how to do it. But maybe a different shade of blue would perform better. Or maybe it's not about the blue, but it's about total overload of visual element in the ad.

So it's not really about giving the ownership of your campaign. If we talk about creative testing, for example, it's not about giving ownership of even the decision power to the consumers. It's about understanding them, understanding their needs and attitudes and really tweaking and fine tuning your message so that it really resonates with them.

Cool. You just mentioned creative testing. What are the three, let's say, most common research studies you conduct and for what kind of purposes? So at DCMN, we do lots of tests indeed.

And the purpose of this is, of course, to make sure that we are going out there with a campaign with the best creative possible. Because you know that production costs lots of money and, of course, media costs lots of money. So before we spend this budget, it's crucial for us to make sure that the creative assets are as best as possible.

And what other researchers usually do? Is this also about target group or customer, other stuff? Target group analysis is something that we often do for our clients because we see understanding of the audience as foundation for every decision you can do when if you are a business leader or a marketeer. So we do different kinds of target group analysis when we try to really get into the needs of the target groups to understand what motivates them, what are the barriers to try out or buy a product, and also to really understand what kind of pain points do they have. Yeah, that's super interesting.

I want to go a little bit deeper in that topic a little bit later. But also another thing which I found very interesting is because we often have these cases that, let's say, a client is super successful in a country, let's say Germany, and they want to go now into the U.S. market. And a lot of times people think, you know, U.S. and Germany is kind of the same, also when it comes to perception and because we all summarise it under this term Western world.

But it actually could have a lot of big differences. Totally. So this is another frequent scenario when you should really invest into research upfront before expanding to a new market, because not only competitive environment is different, not only there are regulatory differences in those countries, but also people are different.

And it's not even the differences between Germany and U.S., but even Germany and France might be very different when it comes to attitudes to certain products, or maybe the maturity of a certain category is totally different. So whereas people in Germany maybe are totally used to a certain service, maybe in another country, it's new and you have to educate people on this category. I just remember one example where I really found very interesting.

We don't talk about clients here. I cannot mention client names, but a client wanted to, you know, go big in Europe, but also had a very clear limitation. I only want to do this with a, let's say, creative, one creative approach and not being able to localise in every country.

But also there, you guys did an amazing project where you found out, I think, you know, what are the common denominators that could work in all countries? Maybe it's just maybe can you elaborate on this? Yeah. So this is a frequent discussion we see on the client side, the discussion between the global campaign, global concept and global assets and very localised approaches. So there is also not good or wrong here, but it's always crucial, I would say, to check if your global idea is working in the new markets.

Maybe you have to quit tweaking a bit. I think it will be rarely the case that it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it's enough to add some local elements like our creative team is already doing with our clients.

Sometimes maybe you can change the slogan or the call to action in the ad. This might be enough. But sometimes if you show the reality of everyday life in the ad that does not match the reality of people, for example, you show a typical U.S. household and you want to advertise, I don't know, in Italy, for example, then there will be a mismatch.

Yeah, these occasions have happened. So that's pretty cool. But I want to go back to the target group analysis you mentioned earlier.

So what exactly is it that you guys do in the Insights team here at DCMN? And, you know, what are, let's say, an example that really surprises you then when doing that kind of research? So maybe I will start with like general outlook. So analysing the target audiences is our daily work because basically everything that we do at DCMN, you know very well, we are a data-driven company. Data and insights are very important for us.

So basically every recommendation that we give to clients, every media strategy that we prepare is based not on our gut feeling, but on research and data. That means that, for example, for media strategy, we would analyse the demographics, social demographics with secondary data tools. So the tools that gather lots of data and we can reproduce target groups and analyse certain factors.

But we also do research tailored exactly to our consumers' needs, meaning that we can go really into deep understanding of the audience, especially when it's about planning a new campaign, understanding what kind of pain points you want to address. How do you have to talk to your consumers after you have identified whom you should talk to? How you should talk to them? What arguments you can use? What kind of pain points do they have so that you can address in order to be relevant for them? Yeah, because the first episode we talked about the battle of attention and it's all about how to break through the noise. And I think it's very crucial to the better we understand the pain points of the clients and the better we are able to address, the higher the likelihood is we break through that kind of noise and really get the attention.

Of course, because people filter out messages very fastly and they will focus on those messages that feel relevant to them. And so that's why addressing their pain points, something that they are struggling with, of course, makes your chances higher that they will listen to your message. And then we can go further into understanding them and talk about what kind of tone of voice should we use? Would they be positive towards funny tone of voice? Or should we be very serious? Should we talk about security that our products or service deliver? Or is it more about maybe prestige or some other factors? So it really gives you quite useful guidelines for thinking about your campaign.

Or maybe to go, let's say, calculated risks. We had that also in one example where we had three very different concepts and they were very, let's call it progressive. And the client was very brave and they really trusted the data.

And in the data, there was one idea who was very, very progressive and loud. And so when you could see it without the data, you could say, Oh my God, what is this? But a client was really brave and then took based on the data that decision and it turned out to be one super successful campaign and all kinds of KPIs were very, very good. But this is really interesting.

Do you have any kind of concrete example from the last couple of months where you said you had an occasion where you were really surprised about what you found out? Yeah. So maybe one comment. I'm always surprised because research, market research is really exciting, exciting thing.

And there are always unexpected outcomes. That's why it's your favourite job, I guess. Yes.

Totally. It is never boring and you always have some surprising factors and always have something that is also interesting for the client. So I really love these moments when you present the results to the client and I say, wow, this is what I needed because now I know what I have to do next.

And maybe one example from past research that I actually saw is that after showing the consumers TV spot, we saw that the resonance was quite positive and they liked the spot and they said, yes, I would be interested into learning more. But it turned out they attributed the spot to a competitor brand, not to the client brand. The competitor would be very thankful for that.

The competitor would be very thankful indeed. And the consumers would be also fine because they found an interesting product. But for the client, of course, it's not an outcome.

They spend advertising for their competitor. A super interesting thing. So I want to, because we talk now very often in the context of campaigns and communication, move on to very, very new stuff where we also had our event about the catapult night, where we talked about how to turn CTV, connected TV into a performance channel.

I don't want to spoil it too much for people who have not listened to that. But where we say basically that, you know, linear TV and CTV is fundamentally different, but the opportunities for CTV in order to use data to reach exactly the audience that is gonna has the most highest probability resonating with my product, my message is super interesting. So how are we at DCMN leveraging insights and research to make these kind of campaigns even better? Yeah, so CTV has opportunity of very precise targeting.

It means that the times when you only can talk about gender and age, this is gone with the linear TV, right? With linear TV, your approach was very broad. And with your broad approach, surely you have reached your core target audience as well. But with CTV, you have different possibilities of targeting very precisely.

But of course, you can imagine if your aim is very small, the probability of missing it is also very high if you don't have very exact tools or guidelines. And research can be a helpful toolbox to really set you on an exact course to reach people that you know need or would be interested in your product or service, people that you will reach in the right context and with the messaging. So it's just quite similar to what we did in the past with the campaign, but much, much more detailed and targeted.

So this is super interesting. One thing on this, on CTV, when we set up the campaigns, usually you have like this access to an enormous amount of data. And every day gets more, it's first party data from the client, it's third party data, it's other data like weather, geographic location, etc.

So there's tonnes of opportunities how to then play out the CTV campaign. But exactly how you said, you need to know, where do I aim? And basically, this is what we see that people get lost in the opportunity where there's so much data, or what should I do now? And I think there, it's very important to have in the research before exactly found out who we do it then. And that's what we at DCMN call audience design, where we say, okay, we bring together the power of research with the power of the available data to have exactly then the right approach.

But here, I would be interested, how do you see that? Is this a development you do it because also when we talk about with clients about this day, a lot of them use CTV, just like linear TV, in a lot of cases, what would you say to them, you know, in terms of the data or research approach? Yeah, I think try to use the opportunities that are there, the toolbox is there, we are also there to help and support you. And why not give it a try with the next campaign, you might find out that being precise really pays off. Yeah, I think we have to be precise, because we have to cut through the noise.

You know, I always use that example of a laser or light or water and water cutaway say, okay, if I concentrate all my energy in one single point, then I really cut through the noise. And I really get to my audience. And this is this is really interesting.

I think another thing which I want to touch base on, because when we talk about CTV, we really think, also here at DC Man, we fully believers in that and also this data driven approach to bring in the best data possible. But also what I really like, and what was never, you know, something that got back to me, but what I really like your team does is not just coming up with, oh, this is what the consumers see now, but really coming up with what I always call actionable insights. So you're not only saying, hey, this is the results, good luck.

But what I really like that you guys always think three or four or five steps ahead, and then come up with unusual advice, you know, sure is up to everyone to take it. But I really like that. Maybe can you talk a little bit about this? You know, how do you come to this? How do you take this data from the research? And how do you get to a point where you then give an actionable advice, basically interpreting the data? How do you do that? How do you come up with these actionable insights? Well, I would say we try to be good partner for our clients.

And we try not only to focus on the task given a research project, we try to think further and try to really understand the business and give also advice that can be a game changer, basically. And we also at the CMN have experts from different fields, and we all work very closely together. So it's not that the teams work in isolation.

This is the opportunity that we have as an insights team integrated within the agency that we can work together with people from different expertises and come up with a really detailed advice or recommendations for our clients. Great. So this is really something you have to experience, I always say, because it's something we can talk about.

Once you experience it, you really see the value of it. I think this is pretty cool. Another thing we wanted to talk about is that over the last years, we were like monitoring a lot of, let's say, brand KPIs in our digital brand tracker.

Also, we stopped this by the end of the year, which I think because we're now moving to a very, very customised boutique focused approach where we said we want to really go deep into the insights that are really helpful for the clients. And a lot of clients, they always think when we talk about research, they always come, yeah, it's about brand awareness. It's about aided brand awareness, unaided brand awareness, and this kind of stuff.

Usually, every time you talk with a client in the first place, they all come up with brand awareness, you know. Now, we always say, okay, sure, this is nice, but... And maybe you can explain to the listeners a little bit more about what are the KPIs you should look at when kind of looking at your brand KPIs, brand performance KPIs, basically. Yeah, sure.

So maybe a general remark first, because you mentioned that people mention brand awareness is the first thing. Sometimes they also think, okay, this is something very complicated and something that will take lots of time. It doesn't have to be like this.

We can really be very agile in our research approach. And also when it comes to brand KPIs, it really depends what kind of KPIs the brand is using for their marketing steering. It doesn't make sense to measure KPIs that they will not use at all.

So brand awareness was and still is an important KPI. It shows us how popular your brand is, how many people know about it. But there are also many important KPIs that go above, like brand consideration, for example, how many people would actually consider buying your brand.

So this goes already one step further. And you can, of course, go further and further into this funnel and check the numbers of buyers, see how many people would actually recommend your product to others. And also it's important to have a detailed comparison, how people perceive you on the dimensions that are relevant for your brand and also your strategic planning.

Trustworthiness and all this kind of stuff. Exactly. Trustworthiness, innovativeness, but it depends on the brand.

Some brands want to be considered as very cool and progressive. Some brands prefer to be considered traditional. So it really depends what kind of dimensions are crucial to your strategic planning.

And then you want to compare yourself with the competition and see where do you perform in comparison to them. Because in the ideal case, you want to be somehow unique in your brand positioning. Absolutely.

So one thing on the brand consideration, because I think this is one of my favourites, because I always say, you know, it's fantastic when everybody knows you, but if nobody thinks about buying from you, you're also lost. So you're being famous, but being broke famously. So to push brand consideration is something that even in today's marketplace, where we have a more unsecure environment, where people are, you know, more, you know, everything is getting more expensive, all this kind of stuff.

So what we see is like, it gets harder and harder to, it's easy to push brand awareness. But what about brand consideration? And what does a brand have to basically, when I'm a marketeer or CMO of a consumer brand, what are basically the things I can influence to push brand consideration? Again, we are back to our first point. You should have a look at your consumers and see what are the factors that are important for them when buying a specific product.

I don't know if you are, for example, from home security category, what is it that can motivate people to buy your product? Is it fear or is it the need to feel that you have the top tech in your house? So there can be different motivators, different drivers that might be important for your consumer. So this is really important to be relevant and to speak the language of your consumers. So your chance of being a relevant brand increases when you really speak the language and meet the exact tone of voice that would resonate with your consumers.

Integrative and also, yeah, transport the message in a relevant environment. Can be CTV, TV, out of home, whatever, or online. So this is then where we see in the data, where is this target group consuming? Of course.

Which kind of media? It goes further to also choice of media channels, maybe a podcast would be an interesting channel for you, right? And also, one step further, what kind of content in the channels are people consuming? If they are streaming, what kind of series are they watching? Maybe it's about sport events. Maybe it's about news channels. So you can really basically apply insights from your target group analysis to each and every step of planning and executing the campaign.

It's really cool. You really can feel how passionate you are about this topic. And it's so cool.

And I'm always super proud on the team. I love actually the appointments where I always try to be in these appointments when you guys present your results to the clients. You also like this kind of stuff.

I love this because also then I'm always a little bit the therapist for the room. But I think it's really exciting. And I think what you guys can find out and how many clients we are actually could help through your work of the team to become, you know, market leaders in Europe.

And I really, really thank you for joining the podcast. Thank you for having me. Do change marketing now.

So cool to have you here, Cornelia, our head of insights. Maybe just a last word. What would you recommend? What would you say to a marketeer who is unsecure about should I conduct such a research or not? What would you say to these guys? I would say give it a try.

You don't have to commit to a whole research programme of the whole year. Take one challenge that you're unsecure about. Maybe it's the size of the logo on your out of home poster.

Maybe it's the testimonial that you want to work with on your next campaign. Take one decision that lies ahead of you and try to base it on research and then you see how it works for you. So your risk is not high, but the potential gain of this investment can be really big for you.

Thank you very much, Cornelia. Great you were here. Thank you, Matthias.

Was a pleasure. And we're really looking forward to a lot of exciting insights we will get from the next project. Yes, always.

Thank you. Thank you. This was the second episode of the Do Change Marketing Now podcast with Cornelia, our head of insights here at DCMN.

If you have any questions, if you have challenges, reach out to us at hello at DCMN.com. You can follow us here on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on social media, send us an email, send us a message. We will get back to you. We try to help whatever your challenge is.

And then up to next time when we will talk about CTV, we will dive deeper in the third episode in the topic of CTV and how can we use it to turn it into a performance channel and what opportunities do we have? We will have here our head of digital, Jean. It will be an exciting talk about, okay, what are the possibilities to use CTV in your marketing mix? Thank you so much. Bye.