Rachel discusses the rise of retail media and other emerging trends, how marketing effectiveness helps with business challenges, and why Dark Matter is a must-watch.
Describe your job in one sentence…
I help brands to achieve their growth ambitions by using data and analytics to generate actionable insights that support key marketing and business decisions.
What exciting new areas are marketers wanting to explore when it comes to marketing measurement?
They’re increasingly interested in measuring retail media, experiential marketing, and influencer collaborations. These channels offer unique opportunities for insights and performance optimization.
As marketing evolves and investments grow, it’s important to include these emerging channels in measurement frameworks. Doing so helps businesses understand their impact, find growth opportunities, and balance brand and sales results. Building flexible and detailed measurement approaches, and connecting them to implementation, ensures insights lead to effective actions, driving sustainable growth and long-term success.
What are some of the key challenges marketers are facing up to currently?
One of the biggest challenges is keeping up with the rapid pace of change. The rise of automation, AI, and evolving privacy regulations mean that constant change is the new normal. The wider business environment has also faced significant headwinds recently, challenging former long-established investment strategies and measurement baselines.
How does marketing effectiveness help to solve these challenges and mitigate the headwinds?
It plays a key role by engaging stakeholders in data-driven strategic conversations, identifying new growth opportunities, and ensuring insights are actionable in the market. It also helps businesses to improve performance by aligning marketing goals with business goals and by optimizing resources.
At Gain Theory, we provide insights that enable all key stakeholders to understand the value of marketing activities. We also aim to expand the scale and coverage of marketing investments, so a business is best placed to adapt to future challenges.
What campaign has impressed you recently?
Diageo’s “Baileys Sound Scales” campaign caught my attention thanks to its creativity and relatability. It aims to solve a problem that I’ve experienced – guessing how much Baileys is left in the bottle! To get around this, the campaign pushes consumers to visit SoundScales.Baileys.com on their mobile device, tap ‘Listen’, and blow over the bottle. The Sound Scales feature tells them the amount of Baileys remaining in the bottle and suggests creative uses for it.
It’s a great example of using AI to create a unique and helpful consumer experience. By addressing a common problem in a new way, Baileys increased engagement, sales, and positive brand sentiment. The campaign also won two Silver awards at Cannes this year.
Have seen any great TV recently that you’d recommend?
I recently finished watching Dark Matter on Apple TV. Based on a novel by Blake Crouch, it follows a physicist who is taken into an alternate reality where he must navigate a complex web of parallel universes to return to his original life.
It shows how life can quickly become complicated and full of unexpected twists, and makes you think about identity and choices. It explores how our decisions shape our lives and the different possible outcomes. I like to remember that there’s often a different reason behind each decision. The series reminds us that good leadership needs a balance of logic and emotion, understanding what drives decisions, and being adaptable to changes.
Contact Rachel to discuss any of the issues raised in this Q&A.