1st June 2009

Reveals crucial behavioural differences when targeting - and that BMW drivers have something to prove

Customer insight agency Acquity has published the results of a survey that uniquely meshes people’s personal values, beliefs and attitudes with transactional data.  The results have then been fused onto Acquity’s whole-market database, Continuum, which maps every individual in the UK.

This represents a real step-change in clients’ ability to target their brands at those most likely to say ‘yes’ and at the same time to alter the message to different customers, based on what message is most likely to engage them. Clients and agencies have always had access to large amounts of transactional data and equally large amounts of lifestyle data; the Values tool adds a focus on the emotional drivers behind response to brands to maximise the value of this data.

Key findings include the fact that Strivers are very similar to Thrivers in terms of income and lifestyle.  However, because Strivers feel they have something to prove, they prefer to drive BMWs, whilst Thrivers, who don’t feel they have to prove anything, tend to favour Mercedes-Benz.

Acquity’s view is that this tool will hit the advertising hierarchy at the very top, helping to frame creative and communications messaging across all media. For direct marketers targeting at a 1-2-1 level, fusing the results onto the Continuum data platform means that you can select the values groups most likely to respond to your brand.

“The creative is the only thing that the customer ever sees or responds to”, points out Steve Barr, Head of Customer Insight & Planning, “and the targeting is invisible. Typically, data companies divorce the creative message from the targeting, because they don’t have anything of value to add to the creative process, and it’s no wonder so many creative agencies see data as irrelevant to the creative process and therefore don’t take it seriously, when of course they should.

“We did this first survey (of an ongoing series) because we wanted to challenge the assumption that, for example a 5% response rate was terrific.  We wanted to know why 95% didn’t respond.  If we can improve targeting and help the creative agency with some rich values-led briefing, then we can increase sales and reduce wastage. For example, Values has uncovered the fact that 50% of specialist insurer Hiscox’s response comes from just one of the 8 values groups, after taking account of other obvious demographics, Hiscox has a very focused brand image and it shows in the type of people who most ‘get’ the brand and want to buy it. Lots of other brands have equally finely tuned brand images which Values can capture, beyond the reach of standard criteria.”

Values will be offered as the latest component of Acquity’s suite of customer insight methodologies; Virtue, for ROI-based measurement of marketing effectiveness and Paragon, the geo-demographic predictive targeting tool