A grip on change

The doors are slowly opening up again, and it’s time to set our sights. A year marked by stagnation, but also by change, from the way we work to how we live and behave. Research by DVJ Insights showed that this year, people are buying more online and through e-commerce platforms, and, more importantly, this trend is not set to change, even when the measures are behind us. Whether delivery men or women have secured a permanent place in our day to day, or stores are still able to entice us, one thing is certain: consumer behaviour is changing. But the wishes of marketers have changed too. Never before have organisations been so eager to find insights to understand the changing world around them than in 2020.

Questioned

It revealed some interesting issues. It turned out that many organisations lacked the research tools required to keep up with the developments during the corona crisis. While the need for weekly measurements has been increasingly questioned in recent years, this year showed how important it is to have insight into market developments at all times.

“The suddenly changing world brought huge questions for marketers. This year, more than ever, we saw how important it is for brands to have a continuous understanding of developments in the market, how the consumer’s world is changing and how to adapt to this as a brand.”

Now, one year on, many marketers began the year optimistically, according to a DVJ Insights study among marketing professionals: 48% felt hopeful about 2021, and 39% expected it to be ’business as usual’ again after the summer. With the world once again gearing up for change – the ’new normal’ or life post-pandemic – the need for continuous insight only seems to be increasing.

Missed opportunity

However, not all research is sufficient. It can’t keep up with developments, or research only shows a small part of the picture. Many brand trackers are purely quantitative, they measure the ’what’, but miss the ’why’. What does the life of a consumer look like at the moment? What new needs and wishes are there? In such a changeable time, you want continuous insight to be able to adjust your marketing, but many tools are descriptive and only look back. A missed opportunity, given that research today can explain and predict. Therefore, DVJ Insights started to take a fresh, critical look at brand tracking a few years ago. The goal? Making it a more valuable and continuous source of insights.

Lisette Kruizinga-de Vries, Team Lead Science & Analytics DVJ Insights: “We use brand tracking data combined with our MassQual techniques and external data sources, such as media data and sales, to generate insights for our clients to use in practice. A good example is the bandwidth tool where we can determine for each KPI within which bandwidth the media expenditure must remain to generate an effect.”

The (re)opening

It led to the introduction of Reality Analytics, which measures trends continuously, identifies the ’why’ by integrating MassQual techniques into brand tracking, and makes predictions based on time series analysis. Crucial here is that the setup is based on academic insights and that not only brand data is measured, but also sources like sales, PR and website data are integrated.

Over the past year, we have been rebranding Reality Analytics to fit the changing expectations and needs of all those companies who were left with questions in the first few months of the new decade. The world is opening up again, so let research be your gatekeeper.