CANNES – What do Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin have in common? They’re both between the ages of 25 and 54—a heretofore one-size-fits all demographic for brands like Special K but a meaningless metric for today’s more precise targeting, says Aaron Fetters, SVP of Marketing Solutions at measurement and analytics provider comScore.
Fetters should know about breakfast food. He spent four years at Kellogg Company before joining comScore one year ago, preceded by a stint at Procter & Gamble. In an interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions festival, Fetters welcomes the buzz about data-driven creative at the world’s largest advertising celebration.
“We go to so many data-based conferences and the conversation is 99% about media and the reality is there’s such a huge opportunity for creative and for data to impact the creative process,” says Fetters.
He acknowledges the current struggle by brand marketers to accurately measure reach across all of the devices consumers use to view content, along with trying to prove effectiveness.
“It starts with the simple ‘am I even generating the reach that I feel is necessary to grow my brand’ to the much more complex ‘how do I attribute any effectiveness I might see back across the various channels that I do choose to advertise in,’” Fetters says.
While not divulging whether he’s a fan of either Swift or Palin, Fetters observes that age brackets are practically meaningless given hyper-targeting opportunities gleaned from comScore “literally observing” consumer behavior.
“Certainly the type of creative and the type of message that’s going to resonate with those two individuals can be very different,” Fetters says, adding that the key to using data to drive creativity enables brands to determine “what’s going to resonate with those consumers on a more personal level.”
This video is part of a series titled “Exploring Data & Technology as Catalysts for Creativity.” This series was produced at Cannes Lions 2016 in cooperation the Xaxis. The series is sponsored by comScore. For more segments from the series, please visit this page.
