← BEFORE

When web visits showed significant declines, leadership and teams had no way of knowing whether they should be worried – that is, whether it would actually damage sales performance.

They wanted a solution for understanding the best way to manage web traffic in order to ensure alignment with sales goals.

AFTER →

We began by listening to the expert opinions of the digital team members to obtain their thoughts on how web traffic could be managed to help support sales objectives.

This interaction revealed that there was a need to map web activity to corporate performance, and they came to the consensus that if this ability was developed, it would help teams accountably manage traffic and also have confident answers for leadership in times of web fluctuations.

We collaborated around two solutions. The first was a visually intuitive dashboard for linking web activity with corporate performance. The second was a straightforward “Digital Management Playbook” that revealed vital insights for making digital decisions at the appropriate moments.

Both leadership and teams now knew when it was necessary to take web oriented action in the interest of maintaining performance goals. This built more synergy between the two groups, and we collectively removed a significant “worry factor” by clearly measuring digital’s impact on corporate goals.

Snippet from Digital Dashboard

Sample page from “Digital Management Playbook”

← BEFORE

Although there was an aggressive objective put forth to raise brand opinion by 3 percentage points in the next 3 years, there was little understanding of what ad spend levers were available to accomplish this.

There was also very little insight as to how key competitors could potentially impact the efforts. To devise an effective plan, an understanding of how to drive opinion and fend off competitors was needed.

AFTER →

The starting point was a collaboration with the VP, CMO and the various marketing teams. We wanted to obtain a profound understanding of the existing barriers in planning an upward shift in brand opinion.

We discovered that a key barrier was having no systematic, reliable method for linking marketing efforts to brand opinion. With this void, there was no way of substantiating the impact of potential plans to the goal of lifting opinion.

This led to evaluating the link between marketing and opinion, where we identified how to split advertising spend between branding and promotions in a way that would lift brand opinion while thwarting competitive moves – all in the interest of supporting organizational objectives.

The results were delivered in a visually appealing “Brand Opinion Levers” report that was used as an annually generated handbook for making decisions on lifting opinion. The result allowed the CMO and the marketing teams to align with corporate aspirations. Furthermore, the experience provided a baseline method for understanding marketing’s influence on company objectives – securing a way to build future plans with a newfound level of accountability and substantiation.

Sample pages from annual
“Brand Opinion Levers” report

← BEFORE

There were targets for traffic and targets for profits, and when it came to deciding the products and promotions that would help reach these goals, there was too much complexity and off-the-cuff guessing.

AFTER →

When trying to upgrade product strategies, the cyclone of week-in and week-out retail operations can get in the way of a good starting point as was the case here. We began by organizing opinions and thoughts from various perspectives: leadership, management, analytics, and IT. We realized that all the major pieces were in place to streamline and upgrade product strategy development, but the problem was a lack of bandwidth in putting it all together.

To address this core challenge we engaged in a series of collaborations and discovered that there was a significant desire for supporting planogram and flyer decisions in a way that aligned with corporate objectives.

After collaboratively developing methodologies and solutions, the core functionality ultimately centered around answering which key product-promotion mixes would drive both traffic and profitability. We detailed the strategy in an analytically story-told narrative for simple understanding and engaging adoption.

Beyond the upgrade in product strategy development, the solution de-siloed what was once disjoint teams working without much unison. Now planogram and flyer teams had a way to naturally align since they were working from a common platform, and this raised both synergy and the ability to hit corporate traffic and profit goals.

Sample page from solution methodology

← BEFORE

Budget and GRPs were allotted based on a simple premise of how products performed in the previous year. This led to barriers when trying to identify new ways of mixing up or freeing up the budget – especially when sales goals had to be maintained.

AFTER →

Upon a few meaningful discussions with leadership and key personnel at the agency, we realized that the core problem was having no solution for measuring spend and GRPs up against corporate performance. Doing so would help understand how to free up resources while maintaining sales targets.

To address this barrier, we measured and identified the saturation point of spend and GRP which led to a precise understanding of when spending can be stopped and freed up. We also identified the products that “piggyback” off of the promotion of others – providing more avenues to save. The results were packaged into a “GRP Wear-Out & Free-Rider Products Playbook” for easy access and understanding.

Equipped with these insights, we secured a clear understanding of exactly where and when spend could be saved or reallocated while maintaining or exceeding sales performance goals. This provided leadership with an extra layer of decision support and assurance when directing actions with the agency.

Sample pages from “GRP Wear-Out
& Free-Rider Products Playbook”