The Pack That Thinks Fast and Slow Most packs are built for speed. Flash of colour. Hint of brand. Maybe a benefit if you're lucky. That works well enough when shoppers are rushing, which they usually are. Still, sometimes they stop. And when they do, the pack that got them to pause can just as easily talk them out of it. What looked bold from a distance falls apart up close. It’s loud but empty. Eye-catching but not convincing.

A New Standard of Intelligence We have grown used to AI as a smooth-talking oracle: confident, responsive, often correct and occasionally overconfidently wrong. Yet it has always remained sealed. Even at its best, the large language model has been a closed circuit. It speaks but does not show. It appears to know but cannot explain how. This opaque fluency has defined the past generation of AI systems. They are impressive in performance, yet ultimately unaccountable in nature

Retail media, including digital in-store ads, is gaining importance for brands aiming to drive sales at the point of purchase. While it enables precise targeting through retailers' first-party data, measuring its impact remains challenging due to fragmented metrics and attribution complexity.

Emotions are powerful predictors of consumer behaviour. Yet understanding and measuring them effectively is a complex challenge. In a recent webinar hosted by DVJ Insights, Professor Dr. Bob Fennis from the University of Groningen shared the academic state of emotion measurement. Lucas Hulsebos, CEO of DVJ Insights, followed by translating these insights into real-world, scalable applications.

Is the One They See First In every aisle, the pack is the first thing a shopper notices. It’s what catches the eye, starts the decision and shapes the choice. While it doesn’t get media spend, it still speaks every day to every buyer in every store.

When Adidas moved all their media spend to digital in an effort to become “digital first,” it seemed like the obvious move. Consumers were flocking to online platforms, traditional media was supposedly dying, and everyone was preaching digital transformation. But a few years later, Adidas quietly reversed that decision. Why? Because it didn’t work. Their brand salience suffered, and their business results showed it. The campaign didn’t break through the clutter the way they h

The Twin Goals of Innovation: Effectiveness and Efficiency Innovation has long been one of the hottest debated topics in business. With...

What does it mean to be a loyal customer? And more importantly, what drives that loyalty in the first place? We often look to commercial brands for the answer, but the insights from Dansk Erhverv, Denmark’s second-largest business organisation, offer a surprisingly fresh perspective. In a recent conversation with Annette Bentzien Bastidas, Data Analysis and Insights Manager at Dansk Erhverv, we explored how a trade organisation with no traditional “products” to sell builds me

Hamburg, May 1, 2025 – DVJ Insights proudly welcomes Gabriele Herrmann (Gabri) to its growing German consultancy team. With a background...

Oslo, May 1 ,  2025  - DVJ Insights continues to expand its international consultancy team with the addition of Alexandra Brendan in...

We’ve grown accustomed to AI as a responsive tool, an intelligent mirror reflecting our queries. Ask, and you shall receive. But a subtle shift is underway, one that may redefine the boundary between automation and autonomy. Enter the era of AI agents. While platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have made headlines for their language capabilities, their most transformative potential lies not in conversation but in initiative. Not what they say, but what they do. At the cor

An Ever-Changing Way to Shop Nordic grocery shopping used to be predictable. Not anymore One minute customers are filling their baskets with cut-price canned goods at REMA 1000. The next they are splurging on organic, hand-churned butter at Meny. Nordic grocery shoppers are switching between budget and premium. Sometimes on the same trip. It is a trend retailers cannot ignore.

In today’s media landscape, attention is fleeting and memory is selective. With every second of airtime, brands fight not only to be noticed, but to be remembered. Yet amid all the noise, one of the simplest, most effective tools for reinforcing memory often goes overlooked: the tag-on. A short follow-up message, usually shorter, aired after a competing ad, and designed to reinforce or expand on the original message. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t start from scratch. It builds

Brand activation is evolving, shifting from short-term sales drivers to essential tools for long-term brand growth. In this interview, we speak with Sanne Demir, Communication & Behavioural Strategist at De Combinatie van Factoren (DCVF), a Dutch activation agency known for combining creativity, behavioural science and retail design into impactful brand experiences. From developing concepts to 3D retail design and production, DCVF helps brands bring their strategies to life w

The challenge of breaking through with new products Think back to your recent grocery shopping trips: If your answers suggest that only a small fraction of new products stood out to you, you’re not alone. Many consumers navigate stores in "automatic mode," overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options – which easily can be around 30.000 SKUs (stock keeping units) compared to only around 300 articles a shopper stores at home. So, the reality is that most new products struggle to

As a subsidiary of the Otto Group, one of the world's largest retail and e-commerce companies, Otto is a leading e-commerce platform...

Information has never been more abundant, but the ability to extract meaning from it remains as elusive as ever. AI deep research tools promise to transform how we access, synthesise, and apply knowledge. Instead of manually searching for sources, reading papers, and compiling insights, a well-structured research plan is generated in seconds. ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity have all introduced their own versions, each attempting to redefine what research means in the AI

Tighter Competition Demands Better Preparation for Success In sports, competition is becoming increasingly intense, with athletes separated by mere milliseconds or millimetres. Success is no longer achieved by optimising just a few aspects of preparation — it now requires a holistic approach encompassing physical training, nutrition and hydration, mental preparation, performance analysis, rest, recovery and many more. Some athletes go to extraordinary lengths, focusing on eve

Decisions Decisions Buying the usual is easy. It’s autopilot. But buying something new? That’s work. You’re in the chilled drinks aisle, staring at a lineup of probiotic potions. You’ve heard they’re good for gut health maybe from a friend, a podcast, or some influencer who looks suspiciously well-lit. But which one? You don’t know the brands. One screams ‘science,’ another looks like a children’s yoghurt. Some promise immunity, others talk about ‘live cultures’ as if they’re

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has long been a powerful tool for brands looking to make an impact in the real world. Despite its relatively small share of total ad spend (around 4.5%), OOH remains a unique and valuable medium, offering mass reach and repeated exposure. But what truly makes an OOH campaign effective? The answer lies not just in strong creative execution but also in the context in which an ad is placed.