Tag: kantar

Last week, Kantar hosted an impressive new forum of industry debate and discussion focusing on unearthing growth opportunities for UK brands in the modern age. Located at the BFI Theatre on Southbank, London, the full day of seminars and live experiences bought together industry professionals and inspiring agenda-setting leaders to discuss challenges, opportunities and issues which face marketing departments, creative and media agencies, and media owners.

Key themes:

1. What can we learn from the 2019 Brand Z Top 75 brand?
   • Growing brands and expanding their portfolio of goods and services into new ecosystems and entering new, unsuspecting categories. Amazon is now the most valued brand in 2019, and their diversification into voice and entertainment beyond their original USP of an e-commerce platform have catapulted their business results and their reach of new consumers.
   • Top brands are creating interesting new B2B connections, partnering with somewhat abstract brands to create new consumer experiences or bespoke products. Key examples include McDonald’s partnership with Uber Eats, Toyota partnering with Pizza Hut, and Amazon with Nike.

2. Major challenges facing marketers, planners and media owners in 2019;
   • Capping campaign frequency to avoid wastage was a major theme in productivity conversations. Marketers wanted to challenge agencies to provide more rigour in capturing actual frequency thresholds across channels. According to Kantar, 57% of clients aren’t confident in their current planning of frequency.
   • The least understood channels for driving ROI, according to a sample of clients via the Kantar study, are sponsorships and partnerships. 44% of clients agree that sponsorship is the least trusted channel to deliver an accurate ROI. This was a hot topic as it was apparent that sponsorship needed more shared data from the marketing community to prove an ROI success indicator.
   • What is the right threshold to adopt a test and learn agenda? Conversations from senior marketers had unified thoughts on a 70-20-10 approach to commit 70% of working media towards strong performing, tried and tested media channels, 20% against innovation in tested channels, and 10% against out-of-box thinking to drive earned media. All respondents agreed this approach needed a robust measurement framework, off the back of sound hypothesises.

3. Dispelling e-commerce myths
   • Panellists discussed how marketers can have an unwarranted fear or hesitation in amalgamating e-commerce channels into overarching plans. E-commerce ad spend is rising, but not at the level of adoption of consumers to its platforms. This conversation prompted us to explore new figures released from Kantar;
     • Of the online grocery universe in the UK, face wash accounts for only 3.8% of value share, however if we flip this, in terms of online retail sales, it represents 31.8%
     • 45% of e-commerce online spend contribution is from shoppers aged over 55, meaning marketers shouldn’t assume e-commerce is driven by younger consumers; don’t neglect the silver surfer!
       1. 48% of online ‘heavy’ shoppers are aged 55+
       2. It’s not only younger audiences that want convenience (40% of older consumers want shopper delivered to their door)

What does this mean for OMD clients?:

• Think creatively and beyond your immediate category when considering B2B partnerships to leverage brand equity or exchange goods and services. More brands are open for value exchanges to engage with new consumers.
• There are predominant and shared frustrations and unknowns in some key media planning topics such as frequency management, ROI clarity on certain channels and test and learn agendas. There is an industry-wide call to arms to share successful case studies and results with the industry to set benchmarks to help set more accurate standards.
• Dispel myths of e-commerce as a channel which only connect with agile, future-facing Generation Z, as e-commerce already has the scale and spend volume of wider, older audiences.

Authored by Tobie Rhodes, executive director at OMD EMEA