I Am A...

I work for a national cable network.

I am responsible for five prime-time series, and I’m the liaison between the network and the studio that produces the show. 

We’re pressed with Understanding Our Audiences in near- real time. Getting to the core of what they’re watching and why they are or are not watching us is a necessity to keep our show on the air!

In our staff meeting, the research department briefed us on some of the latest ratings and the problem areas — including our reality show’s hour.  Having the ability to analyze our overnights allows us to address these issues before it’s too late! In the same meeting, we covered how our pods are performing - and our Engagement stats are the network’s best! This is critical to making sure we sign on the sponsorships we need!

Our Distribution Strategy calls for being available 24/7 on the network’s website.  There are all sorts of deals with cable MSOs, satellite and leading video sites. There’s a lot to be considered here to make sure we’re not cannibalizing our own audience!

I work for a financial services company.

I am responsible for our flagship payment card product, which, for the first time in its history is faced with the potential for huge growth.

Today, our strategy is to spark growth using our debit product. This approach was the result of months of tightening up our Brand Management roadmap, which prescribed how to optimize our card assets to help our member banks get more from affluent customers. Furthermore, our recent Segmentation study revealed other lucrative segments we should be going after — the result of which would improve our bottom line by a couple of points! 

Consumers’ financial pressures are evident in their card choices and usage. We’re constantly fine-tuning our brand and promotions investments. Having Campaign Tracking and Measurement expertise at our access is a must to optimizing our messaging, Media Mix and weight while in-market to respond to changes in card choices, channel preferences and payment options.

We’re looking for inventive ways to drive demand for our debit-card products.  We kicked off our 2009 planning effort with an Innovation Strategy project that explored contact-less and mobile payment options for our debit product.

I work for a CPG brand.

I am responsible for Market Research for a leading beverage manufacturer. We’ve been expanding our product line to include healthy tea drinks.

We are not the first so we’ve elected to do some work to learn more about the health- conscious consumer. We’re investing in a Segmentation project in which we’ve tied media data to behavioral panels in order to gain a unique understanding of this target. We’ve also built out a Shopper Management framework which is the basis for our retailer strategy.

To complete the plan we needed some extensive insights into sales performance. We now monitor sales and promotional activity across all channels — brick-and- mortar as well as online — using a Marketplace Consumption Measurement program we’ve put in place. Our regional sales, promotions and Assortment levels are managed daily, and course-correction recommendations are received weekly. 

We are also working to get as much out of our budget as possible. More importantly, the clarity we now have about how to optimize our Media Mix is welcome learning, given all the new and emerging media options and metrics. We’ve finally worked out a good investment level for social media as well!