Uncovering Aha! | Data-Savvy Brand Strategy

Now’s the time to assess your retail strategy, review your playbook, and think about your KPIs. Retailers and brands have permission from their customers right now to implement unprecedented levels of change. This is the opportunity to rethink and reinvent what the future looks like for retail, whatever brand or business you're part of, and incorporate those ideas into your goals for 2021. In our final podcast of the 2020 Retail Wrap-Up Series, Joe Cox, Director of Communication Strategy, talks with Kristin Demel, Retail Strategy Director, about the biggest "aha" moments uncovered in the past holiday retail episodes, the three key takeaways for retail in 2020 and how retailers and brands can be intentional, versus reactionary, in 2021.

Combine the traditional scramble for loyalty during and proceeding the holiday season with the fact that 75% of shoppers have tried a new product this year, and it makes for an exceptionally top of mind topic for C-suite executives and marketers. Kristin Demel, retail strategy director talks with Joe Cox, director of communication strategy, about how brands can address shifting loyalties, why it's different for everyone based on the specific needs and values of your consumer, and which brands were ready for this loyalty shift and the brands that weren't.

Retailers and brands must consider Black Friday ethics in the midst of the 2020 holiday shopping season. Safety is obviously top of mind, as is the financial situation many shoppers are in, due to the pandemic, which creates many challenges and ethical issues to address. In this episode, Kristin Demel, Retail Strategy Director at Callahan, talks with Joe Cox, Director of Communication Strategy, about the top three ethical considerations for retailers and brands this season.

In this third episode of a multi-part holiday retail series, Joe Cox, Director, Communication Strategy at Callahan talks to Kristin Demel, Retail Strategy Director, on the five shopper modes and how retailers and brands must evolve their online, in-store and digital experiences to meet consumer expectations and shift from reactionary tactics to intentional action.

In the second podcast of this multi-part holiday retail series, Kristin Demel, Retail Strategy Director at Callahan talks with Mark Tribble, VP of Brand Management on why the phrase omni-channel is outdated as part of a discussion on the top five holiday retail tactics that are likely to see drastic changes this year.

The 2020 retail holiday season will be one unlike any others, with new challenges and major shifts for most retailers. This is the first podcast of a multi-part holiday retail series designed to discuss upcoming challenges and opportunities this holiday season with the goal to help brands and retailers make the shift from reactionary to intentional. 

Teams are spending a lot of time compiling massive amounts of data, to prepare reports for the next status meeting only to run out of bandwidth to analyze and recommend optimizations…only to have taken too long to inform the next media cycle. Jan-Eric Anderson, president at Callahan, and Zack Pike, head of data at Callahan, explains three ways your team can stop wasting time in media reporting by utilizing front-end data analysis, leveraging technology and getting comfortable trusting the algorithms.

Front-end analytics means using the data you have, to drive decisions when planning. It's about predicting the areas of marketing with the highest potential. You have access to the data, but how do you make it actionable? Jan-Eric Anderson, president at Callahan, and Zack Pike, head of data at Callahan, explain three important components a marketer must have to make data actionable, and discuss the benefits to implementing front-end analytics.

Maximizing the productivity of your marketing analytics team is always about the data, and the time it takes to analyze large sets of data to uncover key insights. In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike talk about what technology they use, and how to staff an analytics team with the right roles to get the most out of a team of analysts.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are phrases that get used frequently and oftentimes interchangeably. However, the two are quite different in their abilities to inform your data and marketing plans. In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike talk about what the two technologies can do and how to leverage them within a your proprietary data.

Guest experience - and customer feedback about their experiences, is a critical component to sales performance in a store.  In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike talk about how to integrate customer experience feedback into and alongside more numerical data, and what sources of customer feedback you can start with.

Incorporating free data into your marketing dashboard can be a good way to add additional insights. In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike discuss the pros, cons and challenges of utilizing third-party data, how you can get started, and what to watch out for.

What happens in a post-pandemic world? How have consumer behaviors shifted, how do we continue to meet their needs and how do these changes affect our company as a whole?  In this episode, Callahan’s activation strategist, Joe Cox, and chief strategy officer, Jan-Eric Anderson, discuss what brands should be considering and why the time is now to make big changes.

Navigating your marketing plan and brand response during this COVID-19-generated pandemic is no easy feat to say the least. In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike discuss how to use data from health organizations and make informed business decisions about how best to navigate the coronavirus’ effect on commerce and community.

Coronavirus has reshaped a lot of consumer behaviors in a short amount of time. In this episode, Callahan’s activation strategist Joe Cox and chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson discuss what consumers are expecting from companies, and what the differences and similarities are between a company response and a brand response.

As companies around the world make coronavirus preparations, they are making decisions that affect their business, their employees and their marketing strategy. Decisions that may change as the situation evolves. Jan-Eric Anderson, chief strategy officer at Callahan, offers some perspective and explains why you should not wait to take action within your company.

The only constant is change - so how do you navigate the change inside your business as C-Suite leadership and other key personnel leave an organization? In this episode, Callahan’s retail strategy director Kristin Demel and chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson discuss data-driven tactics you can use to navigate this kind of transition and make sure your business is set up for success with new leadership and employees.

Callahan's senior business analyst used his spare time once again to construct an algorithm - this time to determine which movies have the highest chance of winning "Best Picture" at the 2020 Oscars. In this episode, we explain the correlation between his Oscars model and how this same predictive modeling approach can uncover aha when applied to business and marketing challenges.

Callahan’s senior business analyst built his own statistical model to investigate the college football ranking system. In this episode, he explains his method, how it could be applied to a business’ own marketing and analytics efforts, and whether or not the selection committee let the “best” four teams in this year.

It would be tough to find a company that would say data isn’t important. But, what is the expectation of data as a marketing function or resource: does it drive, or inspire your decisions and planning? In this episode, Callahan’s chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson and head of data Zack Pike discuss how organizations end up having a tendency for one or the other, and how you can position your leadership to focus more on being inspired by the opportunities your data uncovers.

Black Friday has shifted from being “the” shopping holiday of the year to “a” shopping day amidst a calendar year full of perpetual sales. How do retailers find success - and what should they measure to define that success? In this episode, Callahan’s retail strategy director Kristin Demel and chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson discuss the metrics that should matter most to retailers on the eve of 2019’s Black Friday, and how to build affinity for your product or brand in the months leading up to the holiday shopping season.

Having product on shelves is an obvious requirement for customers’ ability to purchase it. But, why drive a consumer to a store if the product’s not on shelves - and why isn’t it there? In this episode, Callahan’s retail strategy director Kristin Demel and head of data Zack Pike discuss the importance of understanding the factors behind out of stock products and how to incorporate that data into your marketing plans.

Virtual reality has become mainstream enough that it’s time for brands to think about what kinds of experiences to offer. In this episode, Callahan’s director of social and emerging media Ben Smith talks about VR’s emerging trends, what brands should really be prepared for, and how to start thinking about VR from a marketing perspective.

Customer journeys are nothing new to marketing plans. But, there are more personal factors - and context - to consider now. In this episode, Callahan’s activation strategist Joe Cox and chief strategy officer Jan-Eric Anderson discuss the major trappings of a traditional customer journey, and identify three questions you can ask to start to evolve your approach to developing them.

What’s really behind a football fan's decision to go to a game? In this episode, Callahan’s senior business analyst James Meyerhoffer-Kubalik walks Jan-Eric through a predictive model he built that measures variables from concessions to the weather that effect a football game’s attendance by fans.

Knowing how navigate retail is critical to the success of any brand with shelf space. In this episode, Jan-Eric talks about emerging retail trends - challenges and opportunities - with Kristin Demel, Callahan’s Retail Strategy Director. She has some recommendations for your channel strategy and how to evaluate Amazon for your brand. 

It's easy to generalize performance of your retail locations when looking at data. Sometimes, the true aha insights are lurking in the details. In this episode, Zack and Jan-Eric discuss the potential power of those insights in micro sets of data, how you can separate them and uncover what they mean to the bigger picture.

Analytics are a critical component of any marketing campaign. But who should be in charge of that reporting? In this episode, Jan-Eric and Zack make a “controversial” case that your ad agency is the most qualified to take on the responsibility of marketing analytics, and detail four factors to consider to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.

Often, a company’s internal analytics functions are housed somewhere within the finance department to monitor things like cash flow and other operational data. In this episode, we make a case for establishing marketing analytics as part of that team’s function, which would then be able to inform a CMO’s decisions with more detailed sales data.

Ben Smith, Callahan's Director of Social and Emerging Media, recently attended Facebook's F8 conference for developers. In this episode, Ben shares his insight and perspective on the overall health of Facebook, its coverage in news, and what emerging trends could shape future marketing tactics on the platform.

Inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we’re taking our own marketing-specific angle to his pyramid. In this third episode, we detail Level 5: Prediction – how you can leverage the insights established within the previous layers to predict your marketing activity.

Inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we’re taking our own marketing-specific angle to his pyramid. In this second episode, we detail Level 3: Internal factors, and Level 4: External factors – and how you can establish and define both within your existing business plans.

Inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we’re taking our own marketing-specific angle to his pyramid. In this first episode, we detail Level 1: Delivery of activity, and Level 2: Efficiency and optimization – and how you can establish and define both within your existing business plans.

Done right, business analytics can allow a marketing team or a golfer to understand the problems that are worth solving. In this episode, we talk about how a research model that predicts professional golfers'  future performance can inform your own approach to marketing and help identify what really matters to maximize your ROI.

When running a marketing automation program, most systems provide adequate campaign reporting analytics. But often, these systems make it tough to discover insights that go much deeper than basic performance metrics. In this episode, we talk about what it takes to pull your data out of systems like Marketo and uncover new insights by overlaying additional data sources.

Callahan's senior business analyst used his spare time once again to construct an algorithm - this time to determine which movies have the highest chance of winning "Best Picture" at the 2019 Oscars.  In this episode, we explain the correlation between his Oscars model and how this same predictive modeling approach can uncover aha when applied to business and marketing challenges.

Recurring analytics and data reporting can help a company track overall performance of product sales over time. In this episode, we look at how to inform traditional data reports with predictive analytics, which can predict the future for a business – but they may not tell you want you want to hear.

A CMO is under pressure to make informed decisions that affect a company's short- and long-term goals and initiatives. Oftentimes, data and analytics are a great resource for a CMO - but not always. In this episode, we discuss how a CMO can use predictive analytics as a powerful tool alongside more traditional data and analytics reporting.

Callahan’s senior business analyst built his own statistical model to investigate the college football ranking system. In this episode, he explains his method, and how it could be applied to a business’ own marketing and analytics efforts.

In a previous episode, we explained the Callahan Intelligence Platform tech stack. Since then, we've made some changes both big and small. In this podcast, we talk about those updates and the benefits of implementing innovative new technology.

Oftentimes, the data that’s right in front of you is more useful than you think, though not necessarily on its own. In this podcast, we explain how to think creatively with your data, and where to find combinations that can make all the difference.

Callahan’s Director of Social and Emerging Media, Ben Smith, recently attended several tech conferences and took a Callahan client on a tour of the Facebook HQ. Today, he shares his thoughts on where consumer technology is headed, what that means for brands and marketers, and how they can leverage early adoption opportunities in meaningful ways.

Some marketing analytics myths are so common, they get asked and answered without much consideration as to whether or not they’re the right kinds of things to be asking. In this podcast, we bust five recurring myths that every marketing leader has heard.

Ever struggled to get your social media ROI to mean more than likes, shares and comments? Callahan’s Ben Smith explains the importance of having a thorough data strategy when it comes to marketing on Facebook – and how to move well beyond just boosting your posts.

Where others see challenges surrounding the use of data on Facebook, Callahan’s Ben Smith sees opportunity for marketers.

Anyone involved with media planning has an appreciation for data. In this episode we discuss how a greater volume and depth of data can be applied and integrated better than ever before, which can lead to an increasingly positive impact on business results.

To make decisions with data, you need an analytics team to manage and analyze it all. But what kind of people - and positions - do you need? Because no two businesses are alike, here are the kinds of questions to ask, and personality traits to look for, when hiring for data and analytics-based roles.

If you've got 500 or 1,000 locations spread across all or part of the country, it's reasonable to assume that there are different types of locations in that ecosystem. But marketing plans and media support are often uniform, as if they are all the same. That’s a major disconnect - and a major opportunity.

We've talked previously about tech stacks that can assist in analytics. This episode, we're talking about if you're interested in building your own, what are the types of things that you would need to build, and why technology alone is not the key to success.

In marketing, we have a real problem with messy data. There are thousands of systems, and nothing talks to each other. We explain how to deal with it.

If you've ever worked with an attribution model, or are considering investing in an attribution model, we have some bold opinions and practical advice you should hear.