Turning Yesterday’s Data
into Today’s Engagement

Over the past decade, the world seems to be in overdrive, with trending hashtags changing by the day, inclusive language altering our speech, and disasters shared every minute in news notifications. But none has compared to the current epidemic of COVID-19, which has redrawn our world, halting most industries in their tracks. Constant change can also mean endless stress and a continually evolving learning curve for business leaders. However, jumping on the necessity of using your brand’s available data to improve your business doesn’t have to mean relearning everything you do. Sometimes it means using the resources already available to point you in the right direction. This goes for product and brand research, too, although it’s something your brand might not immediately think about when you’re brainstorming marketing ideas or success drivers. As it turns out, that previous market survey you performed years ago—even for an unrelated product or service—could provide valuable insight for your newest and upcoming ventures, giving you that elusive answer to “what’s next?”

One example of using past research for bolstering a new campaign is our work for AT&T. Our agency specializes in consumer profiling and brand futurism, conducting vast research on particular consumer groups through market analysis, global cultural research. One of our proprietary tools is our PlayGround sessions—an evolved focus group that delves into the minds and habits of consumers to glean more in-depth data for our clients. AT&T’s goal was to find a way to tap into the vast sales potential of the millennial consumer market, and we were able to help them by studying our past PlayGround Session findings, along with market share analysis and trend studies focused on a multicultural millennial target. Our research showed that millennials placed high-value in creating shareable content, and AT&T was poised to become the ideal platform for that type of creation thanks to its mobile technology. Our strategists set to work on further research and ideas for AT&T’s new millennial-focused app, and Karaoke Mashup was born.

Promotional campaigns and weekly contests pushed Karaoke Mashup to AT&T’s audience, and the app was used by bloggers, YouTube channels, and social media influencers en masse to create and share fun karaoke-style videos. The result of using our past market research was that our client’s goal was met, and sales increased as a direct result of the campaign. AT&T gained significant credibility among its millennial target market—and the consumers had fun!

So, if you’re on the fence about starting up a new research division or struggling to come up with ideas for gathering new actionable data, consider this: the research you need could already be out there, even in your archives! Our brand futurists put their whole hearts into conducting extensive consumer research so that our files are well-stocked with valuable information that is ever-evolving to better help our clients. Our past research has built up an arsenal of insight into various cultural groups, generations, industries, markets, and more. We never throw good data away, and we’re continually striving to up our game for gathering insight by studying over 1.8 million consumers worldwide. We use every weapon in our arsenal—past, present, and future—to tackle your challenges and goals in the most innovative ways that will give you the actionable data that could make all the difference between “same” and “success.” A majority of the world is trying to keep it together in a holding pattern, use this time for a self-reflection of sorts. Make your brand strategy as tight as it can be, take a look at your competition and find out what sets you apart, and how to capitalize on it, so when the world begins to open back up, your brand has the strongest sense of self on the market.