The Challenge: A major beverage company was experiencing a PR crisis with one of their brands.
Keller Fay Research: A Custom Study was conducted and determined that the problem was not nearly as big or as fundamental as the client initially thought. A key reason was that while there had been a surge in negativity in online social media, a representative sample of offline conversations revealed that the problem was not widespread, and unlikely to persist very long. The brand’s future performance was consistent with Keller Fay’s offline word of mouth research.
Actionability: Client was able to refocus efforts away from the crisis to long-term brand health.
Follow-up: Client asked Keller Fay for monthly monitoring for all their brands, with word of mouth reporting up to the C-Suite. Client is providing data to its media agency to manage planning and buying in order to optimize positive WOM.
The Challenge: Telecom provider was having a significant sales problem in a major region of the country.
Keller Fay Research: TalkTrack® analysis and custom qualitative research among their customers and competitors’ customers. The research identified new targets to be focusing on in marketing, and identified a potential strength they weren’t aware of to leverage in their messaging.
Actionability: Client asked Keller Fay to present the results of the research workshop-style to both regional and national management of the company. Creative briefs were requested to help guide their agencies. Ideas were employed in sales, marketing and media strategies.
Follow-up: Client expanded scope of research to support marketing on national basis. Most recently, Client analyzed TalkTrack® data among a hundred different data sources and identified it as one of the most predictive of sales, leading to its continuing use in market mix models.
The Challenge: CPG company wanted to see if WOM research might shed light on how contact points work along the purchase funnel.
Keller Fay Research: Data showed so many word of mouth contact points client was hesitant to believe it. Had a 3rd party corroborate the research successfully. Follow-ups were conducted in multiple global markets, also corroborated by third party.
Actionability: Client gained deep understanding of how WOM worked in their markets as well as an understanding of how to get customers to try the brand following WOM. Currently use it to find which marketing touch points to utilize to generate maximum WOM.
Follow-up: Client has incorporated Keller Fay data into its conceptual models for marketing optimization, to increase brand adoption. Data are reviewed at the board level.
The Challenge: Media agency wanted to understand the role of influencers in marketing.
Keller Fay Research: Client subscribed to TalkTrack® for annual access to all brands, all categories.
Actionability: Client created a WOM opportunity grid to help their clients understand how to target influencers in their marketing. They also built a media model to evaluate media for WOM potential.
Follow-up: The client says that ad-generated WOM models behave quite differently from awareness models, and WOM models are a closer predictor of sales than are awareness models.
The Challenge: Consumer electronics manufacturer won marketer of the year recently, and specifically cited their word of mouth strategy which Keller Fay had helped inform. They were interested in launching a major new technology platform using a primarily WOM strategy. Wanted to target a non-traditional Influencer segment they had identified. Despite being a tech company, they took the view that the most powerful WOM would NOT be online, but rather face-to-face. Therefore they saw TalkTrack® as offering a unique opportunity to define strategy and monitor success.
Keller Fay Research: Monthly & quarterly assessments of their position vis a vis their competition.
Actionability: Enabled them to evaluate effectiveness of their different marketing channels from a WOM perspective, and provides a system for the urgent diagnosis of problems or developments in the market that can only be answered with WOM data.
The Challenge: Automotive company came to Keller Fay with a non-traditional influencer segmentation and wanted us to validate it, while also creating a standardized approach to thinking about influencer targeting.
Keller Fay Research: Custom Study and TalkTrack® analysis.
Actionability: In the process of conducting the research we opened the client’s eyes to a new segmentation approach which was more powerful in predicting conversations and recommendations in the auto category and for their brand, in particular.
The Challenge: Personal Care and Beauty Products company was launching a significant effort to market to men. Came to Keller Fay looking to understand how WOM works in the male market for grooming products.
Keller Fay Research: Custom analysis of TalkTrack® data pointed out that women not only give the most advice to men about these products, but that their advice is much more valued by males than advice they get from male peers.
Actionability: Study led to new tactics to activate women in giving grooming advice to men.
The Challenge: Personal Care and Beauty Products company was experiencing a crisis situation for a diet food brand in which there were rumors of a health problem associated with the brand. Sales were declining.
Keller Fay Research: TalkTrack® analysis demonstrated that their sales were being undermined by a prolonged period of under-marketing during the crucial pre- New Year’s period so vital to the dieting category, and the health rumors bore no effect on the decline in sales. We also identified that the workplace was an extremely important venue in the discussion of diet products, providing new opportunities to the Client.
Actionability: Client was able to redeploy resources away from the “rumor” crisis. Began beefing up marketing to take advantage of New Year’s holiday and the workplace opportunities.
The Challenge: Investment company wanted to see if word of mouth research could help them optimize their workplace marketing.
Keller Fay Research: TalkTrack® analysis provided them a comparison of workplace WOM to WOM that happens in other places and demonstrated that they were performing less well at work versus elsewhere. Analysis further pointed to problems they had with men speaking too negatively about the company and females, though positive, were not talking often enough about the company.
Actionability: Based on research results, the client was able to develop an amplification strategy for women, and to work on more positive messaging to men.
The Challenge: Quick-service restaurant chain was trying to understand how the teen market, a prime target of theirs, differed from adults from the standpoint of WOM.
Keller Fay Research: TalkTrack® analysis uncovered a counterintuitive but rapidly growing teen concern about the health issues of their product – teens were talking even more about health than their moms. The research provided an early warning about the countertrend on health and obesity issues among youth.
Actionability: The client, understanding the primary issue, was able to improve their messaging to teens.
