Case Studies Selected for Inspiration

During the course of my career I've had the privilege to lead some amazing teams which have produced exceptional results for our clients. These are a few of the solutions that I am most proud of because of their impact, scale or novelty.

$400M in incremental revenue from a world-class analytics solution

Target has long been recognized as one of the most innovative and forward thinking marketers in the world. Their sophisticated operation invests over $1B to a year to execute 60 campaigns in 40 different channels across 5 geographic levels in service of 2,000 stores with 24 departments each. With so much complexity, it was difficult to form a unified view of their investments and impacts. The Target CMO selected us as a partner to build out a best-in-class analytics capability to harmonize measurement, then create a data-driven process for channel planning and optimization that would maximize financial returns on this sizable investment.

Our first task was to identify, catalog and collect data from over 200 sources in the organization. With this accomplished, we built a Marketing Mix Model to evaluate the relationship between investments and short-term sales for every dollar on every department, in every store in every week of a three year period. Not to leave Target's strong brand affinity out of the picture, we developed a new methodology to understand the impact of marketing on brand health, and the impact of brand health on long-term sales. These measurements allowed us to leverage the Accenture AMAP tool and make complicated investment decisions, dividing money across channels, campaigns and geographies. Lastly, we deep-dived into specific channels, such as TV, where their inventory was benchmarked price and quality verses our pool and their competitive set to identity $325M in value opportunity.

Deploying this solution took the efforts of more than 50 analytics professionals across 3 continents. Over a period of three years we generated $400M in incremental revenue, $100M in incremental profit and a analytical capability unrivalled in the retail sector.

This project was awarded the Best of the Bullseye award from the CMO. We were recognised with a full page thank you in Ad Week, Brand Week, Media Week and Ad Age.

Using AI to locate salient human truths hidden in customer feedback

When GSD&M decided to revive Wanna Get Away for Southwest Airlines, more than 50% of their most loyal customers reported having heard the phrase in the last week, despite the campaign having been off the air for 10 years. Few pieces of marketing have entered pop culture in such a sustainable way.

To create the next generation of Wanna Get Away material, we started with the Southwest approach: we listened.

Via Twitter contest, customers were encouraged to submit their own Wanna Get Away stories. With a machine learning algorithm, we analyzed and classified the more than 10,000 responses. It discovered that, while the people and places were different, the same 12 story arcs manifested over and over again.

This insight formed the basis of the new campaign, with each spot based on one of the 12 stories that represents an enduring human moment. Backed by actual customer experiences, the messages became immediately relatable. This novel use of AI unlocked customer intelligence inaccessible by traditional research methods.

Spots from the new Wanna Get Away campaign have achieved categorically higher sentiment ratings than all previous Southwest work, as measured by iSpot.tv.

150% increase in leads under budget sequestration

The all-volunteer United States Air Force is facing their most difficult recruiting period since the Vietnam War ended over 40 years ago. Above and beyond the already rigorous physical, mental and moral standards, qualifying to become an Airman requires a high degree of technical competency. Increasing private sector demand for those high-tech skills comes as the force's charge to defend Air, Space and Cyberspace grows ever more critical, leading their 2017 recruiting mission to jump from 22,000 new Airman to 32,000.

In meeting their most aggressive goal to date we needed to produce more leads, maintain lead quality and keep within the already established appropriation. We started by reassessing how we allocated investment resources across media, events and platforms by developing an analytical engine to build Marketing Mix and Multi-Touch Attribution models in tandem. This approach resolves discrepancies in measurement between online and offline investment and allows optimization to happen across channels and within channels. Next, we redesigned airforce.com to listen and respond to each unique user using a collaborative filtering algorithm that changes site the content with new images, headlines, and copy that offers a customized experience as a potential Airman explores the site. Lastly, we conducted extensive conversion rate optimization through the use of creative and content testing.

The data-driven budget allocation, a machine learning powered website, and an incredible effort by the 1,500 USAF recruiters on the ground culminated in a successful recruiting mission- welcoming in the largest Airman class in recent history.

This project was awarded a Cannes Silver Lion in the Digital Craft Category.

Erasing the gap between lead generation and sales conversion

Delivering on HSBC’s strong growth agenda for SMB in Asia Pacific requires digital channels to deliver increasing acquisition volumes across markets in varying stages of digital transformation. However, funnel analysis revealed that although digital lead generation volumes were high, conversions were low, and in some markets not a single lead had been converted to a new account. Relationship Managers responsible for follow-up and conversion of these leads stated that the high volume of inquires, combined with the sparse information provided from the contact form, was scarcely of more value than cold calling. No compelling reason existed to prioritize digital leads over offline contacts.

Following our philosophy of Designing for Data creation, we re-imagined the SMB website, content strategy and PPC campaigns so that user interactions explicitly create signals about a prospect’s value, product interests and banking needs. Enriched with publicly available data from government agencies and LinkedIn, it is synthesized using predictive models that guide the Relationship Managers in evaluating how to prioritize a lead based on their future value and likelihood of becoming a customer.

To make it actionable, Artificial Intelligence summarizes the collected insight into a single page visual briefing, supporting the Relationship Managers by suggesting specific conversation pathways and content most likely to result in a new customer. Thus empowered, the Relationship Managers are able to quickly establish rapport with a prospect, demonstrate an understanding of their business, correctly identify products that fit their needs and close deals more quickly. The time saved from rapid conversion allows Relationship Managers to engage with twice as many prospects as previously feasible.

This approach resulted in massive uplifts across Asia Pacific. In our pilot market of Singapore, their business moved from delivering 0 new clients from digital channels in 2018 to achieving 100% of their annual target within the first six months of 2019.

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Displacement of a champion creative after fourteen attempts

AT&T is the world's largest telecommunications company. Their Home Solutions division (which provides broadband internet, cable television and digital security services) operates a massive Direct Response Television program that is used to generate product inquires for their call center and their e-commerce storefront. In an effort to maximize response for these communication efforts, we developed an extensive testing methodology that culminated with an in-market 'Champion/Challenger' test.

To become a Champion, a new piece of creative to go head-to-head, as a Challenger, against the current Champion creative for five weeks and produce superior results. This approach minimized risk for our client and created substantial improvements in response for many years, but eventually diminishing marginal returns took their toll and 14 consecutive Challengers failed to unseat the Champion.

In order to build a new piece of communication that could beat the long reigning Champion we needed a new way to evaluate what creative factors most influenced performance. Deeper analysis also showed that confounding factors, like fluctuating media costs, different rotation weights and daypart mixes were having a profound effect on the outcome of the tests. We used a mixed-effects regression model to solve for both of these challenges at once- simultaneously controlling for factors unrelated to the creative and analyzing which characteristics the top performers had in common.

Under the guidance of this model, we constructed a new creative that ran head-to-head against the Champion. The Challenger outperformed the Champion in every week of the test, lowering the Cost per Call by up to 24% in a single week and 12% overall during the test period.

This project was nominated for an I-COM Data Creativity Award in Attribution.

The single largest global Marketing Return on Investment project

Visa is the worlds leading electronic funds transfer network, processing more than 100 billion transactions worth over than $7 trillion annually. Their marketing operations are funded at the global level, which allocates money from a common pool to the individual markets, who then manage it's execution. Economic and regulatory factors cause these markets to differ widely because of their cash dependency, product availability, and transactional data granularity. This leads to significant challenges in deciding how to allocate the global funds.

To create a strategic framework capable of balancing these factors, we developed a new type of measurement model that blended time-series regression with bass-diffusion. We also developed several innovative approaches for dealing with fluctuating exchange rates and reconciling data from different periodicities without losing degrees of freedom. This approach allowed us to measure the impact of each channel on each product, in every market, relative to its economic maturity and, using a non-linear optimization model, balance growth and harvest investments between markets.

This solution was deployed at Visa for over 10 years and was conducted annually across 17 International markets until the acquisition of Visa Europe. During that time, it drove annual allocations between markets and across channels and gave Visa leadership an unprecedented view of their global marketing effectiveness.