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

Het snelgroeiende marktonderzoeksbureau DVJ Insights heeft een nieuw kantoor geopend in Noorwegen om de aanwezigheid in Scandinavië te...

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.

Reducing Friction in Online Shopping Shopping online should be easy. You find what you want, click a few buttons, and it’s on its way to your home. So why does it go wrong so often? For many shoppers, the journey from browsing to buying is riddled with obstacles. Confusing menus, missing product details and clunky checkout processes frequently derail purchases.

Why Marketers get Cross-Country Advertising Wrong Marketers Love the Idea of a Global Campaign—Consumer, Not so Much Every global marketer dreams of the ultimate efficiency play: one campaign, one message, one world. It sounds great in theory, but in practice? It rarely works as intended. We want scale, but we also want impact—and that’s where the tension lies. New research from DVJ Insights suggests that while global consistency has its place, ads that truly resonate across

The world of artificial intelligence has long been dominated by a handful of tech giants, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, each competing in a high-stakes race to build ever more powerful models, backed by massive GPU clusters and vast computational resources. For years, the assumption was clear: progress in AI required access to the most advanced hardware and astronomical budgets. Then came DeepSeek-R1. Its release sent shockwaves through the AI industry. The stock markets plu

It's The Looks Stupid While inner values often take precedence over physical appearance—especially in the long run—it’s not a question of either-or. Both are crucial, and their interplay determines lasting success. What holds true for human relationships applies equally to products. A product’s inner values—its taste, functional benefits, comfort, or performance—are essential for building long-term relationships like brand loyalty. However, without an appealing physical repre