The Nielsen Co. has bundled
psychographic data from Mindset Media into its Homescan Consumer Panel, allowing CPG brand managers to view the "mindsets" of their target consumers, and then make appropriate buys across Mindset's ad
network, as well as WPP's 24/7 Real Media.
Nielsen Homescan tracks the purchases of 125,000 U.S. households (participants enter their buys via barcode), and syndicates the data to
retail and CPG clients. With the addition of Mindset Media's personality profiles--which segment consumers based on characteristics like creativity, altruism and pragmatism--Homescan users can better
gauge the mentality of their buyers.
According to Sarah Welch, co-founder and COO of Mindset Media, that psychographic differentiation is what can help give one brand the advantage over another
within the crowded CPG market. "When it comes to the biggest brands and the most competitive products, the thing that keeps a devoted buyer from going to a competitor is what's in their head," Welch
said.
Jim Meyer, Mindset Media's co-founder and CEO, agreed. "Take a brand like Kashi," Meyer said. "A consumer of organic products is driven by a mindset that's way more important than a demo.
They're not demographically different then the rest of the population--they're different in the way they think about themselves."
And because brand managers can marry both the offline purchase
data and the personality profiles with the analytics and impression-reporting data from 24/7, Welch said that they can justify spending more dollars online. "Right now, CPG marketers tie some
percentage of their total budget to the Web, but it's relatively small," she said. "The ability to track and reach a Mindset target gives planners a reason to push them to shift dollars from other
media online."
But according to Yaakov Kimelfeld, vice president, director of digital research and analytics at MediaVest, the newly enhanced Homescan may actually better serve creatives than
media types.
"With a category like tooth whiteners, for example, this Mindset data would be good for helping brands come up with proper messaging for their target," Kimelfeld said. "But when it
comes to buying the media, at this point, it's a bit like a black box. While they have a transparent site list, it would be nice to see them take it further, and give us a psychographic planning tool
that wasn't tied to those two networks specifically."
Kimelfeld said that the Nielsen/Mindset Media collaboration was definitely a step in the right direction, however--as many interactive
planners and buyers rely on data mashups from multiple research tools, including MRI, Nielsen's @Plan and comScore's Plan Metrix to develop psychographically-targeted plans.
The Mindset profiles
are available to Homescan clients for an additional $30,000 annually. Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Mindset Media has developed each personality profile based on online surveys (also conducted through Nielsen
Online) that segment consumers based on over 20 attributes. Advertisers can also develop their own custom Mindsets.