Deepening Analytics to Influence Recovery & Growth
Challenge
- A leading US retail bank – having recently suffered significant brand erosion post the financial crisis – was looking for a modeling methodology that would:
- Build the business case for the optimum split between brand strategies and performance marketing and sales programming
- Inform the strategy to restore their former dominance and health
- Whilst the bank had used Marketing Mix Models (MMM) for years (and leveraged it successfully for local and national investment optimization) it suddenly found itself facing an erosion in brand trust and allegiance and a massive change in baseline trajectory; one that was also impacting the efficiencies of short-term marketing.
- Fortunately the bank maintained strong data streams, not just on short-term activities and sales but also on longer-term customer satisfaction at a branch experience level and consumer sentiment at a regional level.
- Marketscience was tasked to identify which consumer perceptions were critical to restore, how much to invest to do so, and to inform programming impact as it rolled out.
Solution
- The bank turned to Marketscience to leverage its proprietary (and academically verified) approach to modeling both long- and short-term advertising effects. This approach enabled the team to separate the impact of short term investments from underlying consumer sentiment driven trend changes.
- Importantly, the methodology included time-based dynamic models AND critically for a national bank, the local vs national picture was also measured using hierarchical techniques, all in a fully integrated model.
- This approach ultimately permitted the balancing of investments between longer-term, national brand restoration and short-term sales and local programming
- Finally Marketscience implemented and supported a rigorous in-market test and control design to inform goal setting and ongoing campaign performance. This impact was measured both through ongoing MMM updates and through our propriety behavioral impact survey design to measure live programs as they aired, primarily in news and sports sponsorship.
Results
- Post-financial crisis, the model was able to identify which consumer perceptions were critical to restore and would lead to baseline recovery. A focus on “trust” and “reliability” were critical; leading to a cross line-of-business, multi-product support strategy and investment guidance based rebound.
- Ultimately, it was sustained brand investments using a more balanced mix of traditional and digital platforms which contributed to the effectiveness of key sponsorship and local programming that helped grow boardroom appreciation and greater support of brand value and the resulting sales that led to a return of industry beating Marketing and Sales ROI.
What we did
- High Dimensional MMM