Geographic Analysis Drives Business Results

Red Comma is passionate about analysis and media planning. A key part of this process is synthesizing geographic data to define opportunities that align with brand objectives. Here are a few examples of this work in action, driving significant insights that impact the bottom line. Links to the mini-cases below:

HVAC: Zip targeting drove market growth

Retailer: Tiered market segments help deliver strong sales

Higher Ed: Inquiry mapping provides OOH focus

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HVAC: Zip targeting drove market growth

We conducted a robust geographic analysis that brought clarity to spend allocations during planning and enabled post-campaign results tracking that showed growth in the targeted zips. Red Comma analyzed sales data in-house to evaluate success versus relying on proxy digital metrics.

• Background: This HVAC, plumbing and electrical provider had a long history in the community and glowing consumer reviews, but was outspent by competition and needed help focusing their upper-funnel spend to the most productive channels and neighborhoods.

• Data Sources:

  • Client-provided current and historical sales by zip code

  • US Census populations, median home value and home age by zip code

  • MRI-Simmons audience profile that linked home value and home age to propensity for hiring out improvement activities

• Analysis: Zips were grouped into segments for “spend to business” and “spend to opportunity” goals. This helped inform planning discussions and budget allocation among the priority regions initially for Outdoor and in subsequent years for CTV.

• Results:

  • Red Comma analyzed client-provided sales data to asses campaign impact.

  • The OOH plan delivered growth to both the targeted zips and the full DMA.

    • OOH placements on main highways provided broad exposure which likely helped grow the DMA as a whole.

  • Shifting the CTV buy from covering the full DMA to just targeted zips improved campaign efficiency; sales results pending client release of this year’s data.

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Retailer: Tiered market segments help deliver strong sales

We developed a new geographic approach that allocated funds to markets that had been unsupported for several years. Consistent with reach-based planning principles, delivery was reduced in some geographies so a broader target footprint could be exposed at least once to the message during key seasons. These media plan changes helped the client achieve their best sales year in company history.

• Background: A regional retailer with over 200 locations needed to revisit their local media plans as part of planning for the new fiscal year. The prior agency had spent heavily in some markets while leaving others unsupported in traditional media.

• Data Sources:

  • Sales and historical support by DMA

  • Aided & unaided awareness by DMA

  • SQAD media pricing and Nielsen target universe estimates by DMA

• Analysis: DMAs were analyzed and segmented based on current sales (to make sure we protected key markets) and awareness (to make sure we spent more in markets with low brand recall).

Results:

• Media budgets were flat vs. YA, so several plan scenarios were considered before finalizing an approach that supported all markets while ensuring appropriate coverage of the strongest performance DMAs.

• While many factors went into the company’s success, they posted “the most profitable year in the company’s history” and “double-digit sales growth in all of its major merchandise divisions” according to trade media articles.

• Client marketing contacts believe that the geographic re-alignment played a key role in delivering those strong sales results.

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Higher Ed: Inquiry mapping provides OOH focus

We analyzed enrollment inquiries on a regular basis for a long-standing education client to ensure traditional media elements like Outdoor and local cable TV zones aligned with key opportunity areas.

Background: University advertiser was consistently out-spent in the category by competitors with national media plans, so our local traditional media dollars had to be highly focused and productive.

Data Source: Enrollment inquiry data points with geographic identifier

Analysis: Every quarter during media planning, inventory locations were aligned with the most recent inquiry heat maps to ensure media plan impressions were reaching areas that showed the highest propensity for interest in the school’s programs.

Results:

• Between 2017 and 2020 our client’s enrollments grew by 5.5% when the category declined by -3.9%, representing a 9.4% gap in performance.

US e-commerce topped $1 trillion - How can brands capitalize?

Comscore’s recent State of Digital Commerce webinar showed incredible growth and provided insights into key drivers.

Growth

• US digital commerce grew past $1 trillion for the first time in 2022, up +21% YoY

• The largest category was Grocery/Baby/Pet at $219 billion

Drivers

• The category with strongest growth was Event tickets (+75%), showing a continued return to social gatherings post-COVID

• While growth spanned all digital platforms, mobile was the highest at +26% versus 2021. Mobile now represents 38% of digital commerce dollars.

Grocery

• Over the past 4 years, online Grocery spending has increased 333%. Continued growth indicates this is a long-term trend driven by convenience and seamless digital shopping experiences.

• After Events, Grocery was the second-largest category for mobile share of ordering

• While desktop still represents the highest share of dollars, larger phones and more robust retail interfaces have driven the consumer’s ease of conducting mobile commerce in this category

• Social engagement (i.e. likes, shares, etc.) has grown at a higher rate in Grocery versus other categories like Apparel, indicating social’s increasing influence on the CPG space

Implications

• Establish a solid base of digital commerce technology ASAP. Even for brands that rely on retailers, it is essential to develop your ecom infrastructure and make the online path to purchase frictionless

• Ensure your digital properties are designed with mobile user experiences in mind and plan to increase digital spend on mobile devices in the future

• Engage with your audience across social media platforms and share content featuring sales and promotions

More great news on Retail Media

In partnership with The Trade Desk, we recently showcased some great work for our CPG partner Smithfield Foods on behalf of their Eckrich brand. (Click the headline for the full case study.)

Red Comma Media & WARC: Retail Media Networks

We’ve Been Published!

Red Comma Media discusses Retail Media Networks as part of the WARC November Spotlight series.

View Article

We strive to provide innovation and leadership for our advertiser partners and as part of this philosophy, we have been working with Retail Media Networks (RMNs) for our CPG brands for most of 2022, gathering early learnings and providing insights for the best ways to leverage these powerful new tools for our brands moving forward.

We’re honored to have published an article about using RMNs on challenger brands as part of WARC’s November spotlight series on retail media trends. WARC subscribers can view the article in full here.

Our agency relies on WARC for insights across the spectrum of advertising and media research and we’re beyond excited to have our own content published on this platform.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can help your brand or agency with this new, exciting RMN space. We’d love to hear from you!

Getting Started on Annual Media Planning

Ready for 2023 Media Planning?

Key things your agency can be doing right now to help prepare.

Labor Day Weekend has come and gone, which in the agency world typically marks the end of Summer and the start of the next planning cycle for our clients. Whether you’ve hit the ground running or are just starting to dip your toe, here are a few key things we’re doing at Red Comma (and your agency should be doing to!) to help get started on planning:

1. Encourage clients to refresh their 1st party data. Whether you’ve been robustly collecting or are new to 1st party data, it’s definitely time to start creating or fine-tuning your data lists. Not only will this information be useful come time for execution, but incorporating this as a planning practice moving forward will become increasingly important as we move toward a cookie-less existence online.

2. Review target audiences & competitive spending activity. Keeping on top of spending activity in the market is a crucial step to inform your media strategy and something we provide clients on a regular basis to keep them ahead of their competition. It’s also important for agencies to bring forward an analysis of media habits, attitudes and behaviors for any new audiences to consider how to enact them most effectively. Even if target audiences aren’t changing, it’s important to update the data on existing audiences as the media landscape evolves each year.

3. Have preliminary KPI discussions. What good is a media plan without goals and objectives? Discussing any changes to KPIs early in the planning process will help steer your agency teams toward the correct set of vehicles for consideration and ensure that appropriate measurement tactics are put in place.

4. Bring forth discussion on new media trends. Not only is it important to stay on top of current media trends, but communicating them and discussing how they may impact clients directly is key. Even better if you can find ways to incorporate or test any new trends in your upcoming plans.

With media planning season just around the corner, make sure your agency is working proactively to ensure another successful year for your brand.

Light users drive CPG growth

We’re big believers in reach-based planning because over & over we’ve seen it drive business results. A new study released in 2022 shows that using broad-reaching campaigns to attract “super-light” users is key to brand growth.

Research* was conducted on 55 CPG brands across 12 categories. The study found that “super-light” users (defined as someone who purchased a brand 5 times or less over a 5 year period) are responsible to driving long-term success. These “super-light” users represent, on average, over 75% of unique brand purchasers. And the smaller the brand, the higher the percentage, so this type of user is particularly important for challenger brands.

So what does this mean?

• Penetration is more important than retention; trial matters more than loyalty

• Mass reach campaigns are most likely to reach occasional buyers

• Consistent and continuous messaging will help maximize reach

*Reaching “super light” buyers is critical for CPG Brand Success, Stephen Whiteside. WARC

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

Metrics that measure efficiency are much easier to gather and report than metrics on effectiveness, which is why they’re so ubiquitous in our industry. That doesn’t mean they’re the right metrics to help inform media buying decisions.

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As part of a June ‘22 white paper on prioritizing effectiveness, WARC referenced the impact of upper funnel advertising tactics on long term business impact.

Because upper funnel tactics such as TV are traditionally more difficult to fit into digital reporting models, these media types are often deprioritized in the media mix.

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Comparing the charts below illustrates the clear case for a focus on video (inclusive of linear, CTV, OLV and Social) to drive a balanced mix of short and long term performance.

At Red Comma, we are increasingly advising even our highly performance-driven partners to budget more money for both video production and media tactics.

New Partner: Heaven's Door Whiskey

We love working on media strategy and planning assignments, so we’re thrilled to announce we’ve started a collaboration with Heaven’s Door Whiskey that will help inform their 2022 efforts. Backed by Bob Dylan, the spirits company has been winning awards and getting noticed right out of the gate.

Our strategic media planning provides analysis and recommendations for competitive landscape, target consumers, geography, seasonality, communication goals and budget priorities…culminating in a Channel Plan for the upcoming year.

New Partner: Rebel Hard Coffee

We’re excited to announce that we’ve starting working with Rebel Hard Coffee. It’s the best kind of recommendation when a former client reaches out after they’ve moved to a new company and we’re thrilled to start implementing a strategic and insightful plan to drive business results for our new partner.

Prioritizing Business Outcomes

The ANA released a report today on media KPIs and the results seem consistent with our own experience as we are diligently working to move our advertising partners from efficiency or exposure metrics to measurements that are more directly related to sales.

The report showed that advertisers are still evaluating performance based on CPM or CPC most often, despite that ROAS or Conversion are believed to be more important.

While CPMs are certainly low hanging fruit for analysis, advanced metrics we’ve put in place to help tie more closely to business results include:

• Attributing digital exposure to in-store sales via IRI’s Continuous Campaign Feed data

• Including lift studies from a variety of partners in our media buys (Placed, Lucid, IRI, Nielsen)

• Direct tracking of on-site conversion via tracking pixel, coupon , SMS or QR code

• Controlled market testing or pre & post campaign comparisons

The tactics and approaches vary depending on the industry or media type, but we’re passionate about going beyond the typical when it comes to measurement.

Click the image for the free download

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AI-driven digital: Article in CMS Wire

Executing personalized digital campaigns has produced amazing results for our clients. (See our May 2020 blog article on CGP ROAS) When our AI partner was recently featured in a trade media article, they asked Red Comma to participate and talk about our experience working with the technology.

Read the article in CMS Wire here.

Thoughts on being independent

It’s no secret that the recent months have been hard on many industries, but to a certain extent the impact on marketing, and agencies in particular, have been a bit under the radar as news has rightly focused on areas like healthcare, tourism/travel and restaurants.

But when many of those companies are ready to engage with marketing again, they are going to find a very different landscape. In this time of change and uncertainty I am incredibly grateful to be an independent agency. So many of my peers have been facing hard decisions handed down coldly from holding companies.

If needed, we have the luxury of playing the long game, sacrificing short-term profits to make sure our team remains intact, not only for the sake of protecting our beloved co-workers but also to ensure our clients enjoy the stability they’ve come to expect from us. We haven’t enacted layoffs and in an industry where talent is perhaps the only true differentiating factor, we’re bullish on what’s to come.

Long live the independents!

Swift Response to Outdoor Planning During COVID-19

The impact of COVID-19 on media consumption is undeniable. The nature of the outdoor industry, with long-term, non-cancellable contracts made it difficult for advertisers to adapt plans to the new reality: fewer people traveling outside of the home. Which in turn meant fewer than expected impressions on contracted inventory. Add on that the industry was not set up for real-time measurement and many advertisers and agencies were left wondering how to proceed.

Red Comma Media took a proactive approach by working to secure bonus inventory before some geographies were even officially shut down. This swift action allowed us to start making up for under-delivery right away. Media partners were able to place our advertisers on inventory as openings arose, giving us access to many prime locations. By scheduling this inventory as early as April and May, we were also able to get ahead of the rush of advertisers expected to reenter the market over the summer months.

Eventually, GeoPath published tools to evaluate real-time exposure. Some trends we found include:

• In the weeks prior to COVID-19, traffic was up significantly versus 2019 averages, in some cases offsetting the down weeks during COVID closures

• Larger metro areas saw more significant decreases in traffic, while some smaller markets experienced very minimal change

• By the first week of May, traffic numbers in most markets appeared to be recovering

After analyzing our clients’ original schedules versus revisions with the bonus, we were able to quantify the true impact of the pandemic, as well as identify any impressions that might still be owed. As a result of our quick action, our advertisers saw less adverse effects to their outdoor media plans.

Life after cookies

Google announced that Chrome will be joining Apple (Safari) and Mozilla (Firefox) in phasing out third-party cookies, once the backbone of programmatic advertising, by 2022. While the long-term outlook is unclear, brands and agencies should use this time as an opportunity to rethink their targeting strategies.

1. 1st Party Data Strategy: Many third-party audience data sources used for targeting will become obsolete in the new cookieless landscape, so advertisers need to make aggregating data of their own a priority. Brands should establish a unique value exchange with consumers in order to collect their personal information (e.g. email addresses, phone numbers, names, and postal addresses) so that they can be retargeted.

2. Contextual Targeting: Reaching relevant audiences by serving ads adjacent to a specific type of content, AKA contextual targeting, doesn't rely on cookies. Knowing what type of content your target audience engages with and where they consume it will be key to reaching them in a post-cookie world. Personalizing ads based on context rather than user behavior is one way to increase the likelihood of messaging resonating with audiences.

3. Walled Gardens: Platforms with endemic data sets such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, will be well-equipped for highly targeted advertising due to their identity graphs. Partnering with experts in these channels will be more important than ever in order for brands to adapt to the evolving ecosystem.

Data Sources for Media: ANA free paper

This week the ANA published a helpful guide to using data in media buying. It is available for free (see link below). Third-party audience data allows advertisers to target consumers based on characteristics such as demographics, interests, and location. It helps buyers reach niche audiences across the web and app landscapes. Selecting a data provider to partner with or an audience segment to leverage can be difficult given the wealth of options. This guide arms you with criteria to focus on to ensure the data you're paying for is quality.

1. Data Accuracy: What assumptions does the data make, e.g., are visitors to an auto website actually more likely to buy cars?

2. Data Precision: Are the data collection and modeling procedures sufficiently precise, e.g., does the vendor use a lookalike model that assigns people to the audience who shouldn't actually be included?

3. Data Recency: How regularly is the data refreshed? When was it last refreshed?

4. Data Coverage: Does the dataset cover enough of my intended campaign audience to provide necessary scale for my client's campaign?

5. Data Deployability: Can I use the data with my chosen tech partners?

Best targeting for CPG ROAS?

We’ve partnered with [24]7.ai on several AI-driven display and video campaigns and each have been set up as a clear test of hypotheses that would help drive brand advertising forward. Our latest test was designed to show the return on ad spend (ROAS) differences between:

• Purchase-based targeting (2nd party, from IRI)

• Behavioral/interest targeting (3rd party)

• Contextual targeting

Each test was linked to store-level sales data and a control cell was held out in order to measure the lift that advertising produced. Similar to our other AI efforts, tens of thousands of ads were served as the computer matched headlines with recipes and images for optimal results. (note: creative learnings have been robust as well).

The result was a statistically significant increase in sales and ROAS for ads that were contextually targeted toward passion point environments for the brand.

Free COVID-19 White Paper

We teamed up with Friends & Neighbors and Kōse to develop this white paper to provide help for brands both now and in the long term during these unprecedented times.

Download it for free at the Friends & Neighbors website

Effie finalist - University of Minnesota

We’re excited to kick our blog off with the announcement that our work on the University of Minnesota’s Driven to Discover campaign, along with our partner agencies Friends & Neighbors and Kōse, has been named a finalist for this year’s Effie awards.

College Football - another successful season for Eckrich

For the past several years Eckrich Smoked Sausage and Eckrich Deli Meats have executed a program with the College Football Playoff and Disney (ABC/ESPN) that includes announcer talent in creative, an extensive mobile tour, and a robust media schedule. We love working with our agency partners to help pull off a seamless 6-month campaign and the 19/20 effort culminated on January 13th with the chance for one lucky sweepstakes entrant to win a million dollars.

For more detail on the elements executed by Red Comma, click below!

Trends in sports marketing

We are incredibly lucky to work with a variety of brands who maintain active sports marketing platforms. Sports media buying represents unique challenges and the landscape is constantly changing.
For 2020 we are seeing:

1. Mobile-centric: The ongoing trend toward mobile content consumption across all media is poised to impact sports marketing in a big way in 2020. Brands need to plan for mobile exposure and optimize experiences for mobile screens.

2. Fragmentation: More players are entering the sports media space. (i.e. Amazon and rights holders like LaLiga making their own channels). This will make it harder for brands and media buyers to generate reach and aggregate significant audiences from the handful of major players who’ve been dominant in the past.

3. Immediacy: Consumers are increasingly looking immediate availability of supplemental information to enhance the depth of their sports experience.