A Campaign Focused on Consumers from Start to Finish

Editor’s Note: Every year, participants in the GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report survey vote for the most innovative companies in market research. In Insights That Work, these top companies share the real-life challenges and solutions of their biggest clients.

---

Challenge

Over the past few years, the US retail market has been under fire. With many iconic brands in jeopardy, survival is no longer a given. In order to stay relevant and profitable, a major clothing and accessories retail brand asked YouGov to determine the attributes that were most indicative of its success. This major retailer hoped to identify what consumer perceptions have led to sustained growth and to use these insights to continue to differentiate itself from its competitors.

Solution

A YouGov Fast Turnaround survey was run to determine which attributes individuals most associated with the retailer’s brand. A qualifier was added to the survey to ensure that only customers of the retailer were included. These respondents were asked which attributes they associated with the retail brand, such as “Cool,” “Fun,” “Boring,” “Inspiring,” and “Changing for the better.” The results were loaded into YouGov’s consumer segmentation tool, YouGov Profiles, for further examination.

By connecting these attributes to other key variables in YouGov Profiles, the retailer created segmentations of potential target groups in order to assess where the budget should be focused to reach maximum return. The combined data showed that respondents who said the clothing brand was “Cool” were extremely likely to be in the market to purchase clothes in the next 90 days and significantly over-indexed in their intent to purchase merchandise from the retailer. This suggests that the audience who rated the retailer as “Cool” would be a critical target for future campaigns to ensure high ROI and increased revenue. Using this same process, it was determined that “Cool” was also the top ranking attribute for two of the retailer’s closest competitors.

The top clothing and apparel brand then took a deeper look at their key target audience – those who think their company is “Cool.” Using the variety of demographic, psychographic, attitudinal, lifestyle, and media consumption data available around this audience through YouGov Profiles, the retailer determined the best methods and channels to reach their ideal audience and further enforce their status as “Cool.” The retailer also used this wealth of data to identify key retail therapy moments to ensure maximum campaign value through successfully timed endeavors. Finally, they evaluated the best messaging to accompany these moments.

Outcome

By determining key audience targets based on perceived company attributes and analyzing the audience profile of the most critical group, the retailer was able to create an effectively targeted end-to-end marketing plan to help maintain their status as a key player in the clothing retail market. The learning was powerful, as prior to this study the retailer didn’t know the value of being perceived as “Cool.”