Rather than focusing on familiar terrain, the role of media analysts will increasingly be to identify brands’ blind spots, according to Lisa Penelton, SVP Marketing Science at Critical Mass.
“The real creativity is identifying the white space,” Penelton told attendees of MediaPost’s Brand Insider Summit, on Friday. For analysts, carrying their weight will increasingly require “finding something new in the market.”
Penelton also took time to discuss the hugely success “Diehard Fan” app that Critical Mass developed for Nissan -- which Nissan’s Robert Brown discussed earlier in the day.
While developing the strategy around the app, Nissan and Critical Mass were fully aware of the fact that their target audience wouldn’t be in the market for a new car for 10-to-15 years.
Talk about “playing the long game,” Penelton joked. As such, the app was “not designed to sell cars,” she said. Therefore, one of the challenges was figuring out how best to measure the app’s success, and evaluate its value for Nissan.
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The result was a strong focus on brand attribution and brand recall, Penelton said. That way, “We were able to get an understanding of what that app meant.”
As Brown boasted earlier in the day, Nissan’s app achieved 68% unaided brand attribution.