How do you grow a brand in today’s fragmented media world? For Femke Hendriks, Business Development and Advertising Strategist at both NS Advertising and Insiders, the answer lies in connecting with audiences in meaningful moments. From travellers in the train to long-term destination branding, she sees firsthand how new channels, fresh ideas, and strong evidence of effect can make the difference. A New Channel For Advertisers For many brands, trains are more than just a way

“Did the campaign move the needle?” It’s the first question I’m asked when we present campaign results. Rightly so, if you’re spending millions on advertising, you want to know whether it’s working. But in all the excitement about impact on the brand, whether awareness, consideration, preference or otherwise, we often skip the first fundamental question:

For Boudewijn van der Kroft, Managing Director at TerraSana, growth isn’t about chasing the next big thing but about staying true to purpose. The Dutch organic brand has built its success on pure ingredients, honest production, and sustainable choices. In this interview, Boudewijn shares how integrity, focus, and collaboration drive innovation and brand growth at TerraSana. Purpose Before Performance For Boudewijn, growth is not about chasing numbers but about staying true to

Gemini 3 and the Move From Curation to Connection In recent weeks, Gemini 3 has sparked a quiet but meaningful shift in how we think about artificial intelligence. The conversation is no longer focused only on scale or multimodality, or benchmark performance. It is increasingly centred on something more subtle: the emergence of models that behave less like pattern recognisers and more like systems that can genuinely reason.

The Clear Sight Effective decision-making on how to progress with innovation initiatives requires three key elements:

With a mission to make the alcohol-free world “more beautiful, better, and sexier,” World of Nix is redefining what it means to raise a glass. Founded nearly five years ago by Frederike de Groot and Wim Boekema, the Amsterdam-based brand offers a curated range of premium non-alcoholic wines, spirits, and elixirs. In this interview, Frederike shares how World of Nix is growing a movement built on taste, authenticity, and the long-term challenge of changing habits, not just mar

London, 4 December 2025 – DVJ Insights has won the MRS Award for best Media Research, recognising its pioneering work in redefining how retail media is understood and optimised. In partnership with Cyreen and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the study not only showed that in-store advertising drives sales but also revealed a powerful creative multiplier, showing that creative quality is the deciding factor in retail media effectiveness. Retail media is one of the fastest-growing

Growth in personal care does not happen by chance. It requires a balance between building on what is already strong and daring to try what is new. For Laurens-Jan Duvigneau, General Manager Beauty & Wellbeing Benelux at Unilever, this means balancing a solid core focus with the agility to innovate and explore new media approaches. In this article, he shares how Unilever Personal Care is reshaping its growth strategy — from protecting the core to embracing a social-first minds

Utrecht, 26 November 2025 - DVJ Insights is opnieuw erkend als een van de snelst groeiende bedrijven van Nederland en wint voor de achtste achtereenvolgende keer de FD Gazellen Award. Deze erkenning volgt op de plaatsing van DVJ op de lijst van Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions 2026 door de Financial Times en Statista. Daarmee bewijst DVJ dat het succes van het bedrijf geen momentopname is, maar het resultaat van een duurzame en strategische groei. DVJ realiseert al meer da

Brand growth is often seen as a mix of strong marketing, innovation, and consumer engagement. However, according to Sunita Sharman, Head of Business Intelligence UK & Ireland at Ferrero, execution plays an equally critical role. Distribution, in-store visibility, and last-mile execution can determine whether a brand thrives or disappears.   In this interview, Sunita shares her insights on the fundamentals of brand growth, the role of innovation, and how AI is shaping the futu

Humans learn slowly. We spend years studying, specialising, and narrowing our field of vision until we can say we truly know something. A good physicist often knows little about law, and a great lawyer rarely writes code. This limitation shapes how we think about intelligence. We divide people into generalists and specialists because our minds are bounded. There is only so much we can hold and process. When artificial intelligence arrived, we extended this same mental map to

Through DVJ’s Brand Growth platform, we interview over 2,000 marketers across 12 markets in Europe and the US every year. These conversations offer a fascinating pulse check on the marketing mindset. Over the years, one theme has stood out: caution. We’re seeing more and more emphasis on immediate returns, tighter efficiency targets, and a steadfast belief in consistency above all else.

When everyone already knows your brand, the challenge is no longer awareness; it’s affection. For Hanneke Berghoef, Head of Marketing at Audax Retail, the company behind Bruna and Read Shop, brand growth starts with building an emotional connection. In this interview, she shares how Bruna is working to evolve from a “cold” brand into one that people love, despite limited budgets, legacy store formats, and the changing dynamics of retail media. From Well-Known To Well-Loved Fe

The Imbalanced Embrace Few concepts have captured the marketing world’s imagination quite like Category Entry Points (CEPs). Introduced by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute through ‘How Brands Grow’, CEPs provide a powerful way to understand how and when consumers access categories in their minds – the moments of need that trigger brand recall and choice.

What does it take to grow a brand in a category dominated by private labels, shifting consumer habits, and ever-increasing commercial pressure? For Jeroen Stirnberg, Marketing Director at GranFood, the answer lies in disciplined decision-making, sharp consumer relevance, and unwavering strategic clarity, not in flashy campaigns or chasing trends. In this conversation, Jeroen shares how Grand’Italia, the Netherlands’ leading pasta and sauce brand, navigates brand growth throug

What an honour! Our Brand Growth Platform has been recognised in the Thought Leadership category at the Grand Prix Content Marketing Awards 2025! Nine years ago, we started with an ambitious goal: helping brands grow through knowledge. Through our annual Brand Growth Study, vision interviews, and a yearly global event, we share insights that truly help brands grow. This recognition is a wonderful compliment to our team, our academic partners, and our clients, all experts in t

Utrecht, 4 november 2025  – DVJ Insights is door de Financial Times  en Statista  uitgeroepen tot Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions 2026 . Deze erkenning is voorbehouden aan slechts 300 bedrijven in Europa die de afgelopen tien jaar een uitzonderlijke groeiprestatie hebben laten zien. Deze benoeming valt samen met het behalen van de achtste opeenvolgende FD Gazelle Award, een extra bevestiging van de constante groei van DVJ. Achter dit succes schuilt een consequente strat

We are proud to share that DVJ Insights has been recognised by the Financial Times and Statista as one of Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions 2026. This recognition is a special reward for the 300 companies in Europe that have shown exceptional growth over the past 10 years. DVJ has been able to realise a consistent annual growth for a period of 10 years! This recognition comes at the same moment as our 8th consecutive FD Gazelle, also showing the consistency of our growth. W

Blog post by Lisette Kruizinga-de Vries, based on the master thesis of Rong Shen (HEC Paris - MSc Data Science & AI For Business) The Battle For Attention In today’s media landscape, attention is one of the hardest things to get from consumers. Younger audiences in particular dislike long ads and often skip them or do other things at the same time (Duffett, 2017). Traditional TV advertising, once seen in a passive, one-screen setting, has now become time-shifted, watched on m

We’re proud to share that DVJ Insights has been shortlisted in two categories at the MRS Awards 2025  — a recognition of our continued commitment to turning research into real-world impact. Our nomination in Media Research highlights our breakthrough work in retail media, where we combined innovative exposure measurement with creative testing to show how in-store advertising truly drives sales. By linking shopper behaviour directly to purchase data, we revealed that strong c