Search Results for:

Life’s a pitch. Especially if you’re an agency on a mission to secure your next big client. 

Whether you’re trying to win or retain existing business, it all comes down to whipping up the perfect pitch – and this is where GWI’s intuitive market research platform comes into play. You can spend weeks researching, planning, and strategizing but if you don’t have all the ingredients you need, it’s not going to come out right. That’s why we’re here with the recipe to perfecting the pitch process.   

Don’t get us wrong, we know there’s a lot that goes into the process but the main ingredient is simple: real consumer insights you can rely on.

Using deep consumer data you can’t find anywhere else to back up every pitch is how you win big.  

If you’re ready to get cooking, look no further. Here’s your guide to overcoming media planning challenges and closing high stakes deals. Think of this as a menu you can pick and pull your favorite tips from when you want to tell compelling stories that keep clients coming back.  

Do you want the secret sauce to winning pitches? Here we go. 

Your guide to winning agency pitches and new business with GWI 

1. Challenges of pitching for agencies
2. The agency pitching process with GWI
3. Agency pitch example with GWI
4. GWI in action: The pitching process with Zenith

Let’s talk about the challenges of pitching for agencies 

It takes guts to pitch. For every time you’ve put your hard work, creativity, and reputation on the line – we applaud you. It’s a tough job.

Making it easier for you to save time and money while cutting down on stress is our calling. Our mission to help humans everywhere better understand each other begins with understanding what’s stopping you from winning pitches.  

We zero in on the challenges you face to find solutions that actually make a difference. 

Here’s just a taste of what agencies are up against:  

1. Short turnarounds with little time for ideation  

Coming up with a good creative idea is kind of like making bread. The perfect mix of ingredients must be kneaded, everything needs adequate time to rest, and it must be fully-baked before it’s packaged. 

In a perfect world, you’d have all the time to make your bread and come up with your ideas, but things move really fast in the marketing world. After pouring in endless hours and resources, it’s hard to imagine all that effort – and non-billable pitching hours – not paying off at the end of the pitching process.

We can put you back in the driver’s seat by helping to cut down on wasted hours researching and strategizing. You’ll have on-demand access to audience insights so you can get the data quickly, create winning pitches in less time, and uncover something exciting about your client’s audience that they’d never guess. 

To keep up with the breakneck pace, we’ve made sure you’ve the tools you need to work just as quickly with instant charts and instant audience insights powered by deep consumer data. 

2. Burnout from excessive pitching 

Blink twice if you’re burnt out from late nights and the endless hamster wheel of pitching. Now raise your hand if you want a way to cut down on the stress. Now do the hokey pokey (just kidding). 

Back-to-back pitching is an extreme sport. It takes loads of preparation and it’s easy for your creative spark to flatline after stepping up to the plate again and again.

One way to get your inspiration back on track is with fresh data. With insights at your fingertips, you can showcase your insider knowledge, bring untapped audience truths to your client’s attention, and drive data storytelling with an undeniable “wow” factor.

The best part is you don’t need to be a data whizz to use GWI. 

Don’t have time to start from scratch? You don’t have to. We’ve got prebuilt audiences and dashboards ready to go that you can easily export and share with your team so you don’t have to recreate the wheel every time.  

3. Lack of details in the brief 

Forget looking for a needle in a haystack – try getting to the bottom of a complicated brief from a potential client that has a hard time articulating exactly what they’re looking for. 

With GWI, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks with the latest data from 52 markets and 250k profiling points. From demographics and income, to interests and behaviors, you can go global or local and get consumer insights that answer all the questions your client really needs to know. 

How to use GWI during your agency pitching process  

1. Research the client and set the scene 

Your first order of business is to show you understand their audience in a way no one else does. You’ll do that by finding as many details as possible. 

You can use instant insights for a quick snapshot of the audience you’re targeting, or build out your audience in full using over 250k attributes covering things like who they are, where they live, what they do, and more. 

You can also dive into one of our exclusive reports that zero in on the latest trends in every industry from social media to social issues. 

2. Personalize the findings

Zoom in on what matters most to your client to find an audience that’s on the same page when it comes to objective or core pillars. Depending on your client’s needs, you want to be the expert on their audience when it comes to things like who uses which platform most, what motivates them to shop, or what they want from brands.  

You’ll be able to explore what really resonates with them, or what interests them outside of the obvious stuff so you can analyze your findings and move to the next step.  

3. Use these insights to map your strategy 

With this pitch-defining data, you can start building your game plan and show the client that you know what audience they should target next including:

• Who are they?
• How will you reach them? 
• What kind of content will resonate? 
• What drives them?

This is where you can shine with unusual insights, unique demographics, or any other data that not only shocks and delights your client, but really shows them that your bulletproof plan is backed by actionable audience insights.

4. Hit the ground running 

When you win the pitch, you can get straight to turning data into action with all your insights ready and waiting. Save audiences for later and collate your findings in a dashboard so you can hop right back into the flow. 

Let’s set the scene with an example of agency pitching with GWI

Imagine your next potential client is an up-and-coming luxury beverage brand that wants to really stand out from the crowd. 

Your ultimate goal is to prove that you’re the creative agency for them with an industry-leading pitch that highlights your exceptional brand storytelling. In fact, you’re a triple threat with GWI: you’re the Bruce Lee of briefs, the Sherlock Holmes of insights, and the Shakespeare of data storytelling. You’re the full package. 

You know that to really win over this client, you’ll need a pitch that shows  you understand their audience better than anyone else – even them. But first, you have to prove that you can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. In other words, it’s time to impress.

From your market research with GWI, you discover an insight that blows your client’s assumptions out of the water: Gen Z and millennials accounted for all of the luxury goods market’s growth last year. Who knew?

But now you want to hone in even further to show your client that your pitch is not just precise, but laser-focused. 

With a little digging, you not only discover that 66% of Gen Z live with their parents but that they’re also purchasing luxury goods three to five years earlier than millennials did at their age. With more freedom to fund their expensive tastes, you know Gen Z are the ones to watch. Now you can introduce your client to the new audience they never knew they had with a pitch that proves you know what you’re talking about. 

GWI in action 

Zenith, the self-described “ROI Agency”, turned to GWI when they wanted to identify new engagement opportunities in the digital space. We helped them get market-specific insight with global consistency by taking an in-depth look at social media usage and engagement across a wide variety of audiences and demographics.

The result? With GWI’s help, Zenith was able to:

• Win key client pitches with exclusive insights they couldn’t find elsewhere
• Use consumer data to drive revenue for the agency 
• Create opportunities for increased engagement
• Improve efficiency with a single-sourced data solution

According to Rikkert Van Loo, brands and insight manager at Zenith Optimedia Belgium, “GWI provides essential data that no one else can offer in a platform that’s so easy to use.”

Overcoming the challenges of the agency pitching process  

We’re here to help you perfect your pitching process. Our intuitive platform gives you the power to become the expert on your client’s audience thanks to targeted insights that prove you really know what consumers want. 

We want you to hit more home runs, more often. How? With deep data that optimizes your agency pitch process, saves time, and boosts ROI. Oh, and makes it impossible for your clients to say no. 

Ready for your big yes? Let’s talk.

The launch of Meta’s new app Threads is a unique moment in the history of social media.

Most social networks start from scratch, and their culture evolves over time under the influence of early adopters and users.

Threads is different. Helped by an easy integration with Instagram users’ pre-existing social graphs, it had tens of millions of signups in its first week.

But none of these new users quite know what the vibe is yet. They’ve all had an invite to the party, but no-one knows the dress code. 

As we’ve pointed out with social media before, figuring out this elusive vibe is vital if brands, publishers, and advertisers want to really succeed on a platform. 

So with that in mind, here’s some key insights into Threads’ first batch of users.

The basics

As of August 2023, 1 in 10 internet users worldwide have tried Threads. Three-quarters of those early users say they’re likely to use it again, with half saying it’s very likely they’ll do so, making Threads’ chances of sticking around pretty good. 

The biggest reason why people have signed up is – you guessed it – because of its convenient integration with Instagram. But this goes deeper than just importing friends lists and followers; the second most popular reason people signed up was because they like the Instagram brand.

Trust of social media companies isn’t that high on the whole, but our research shows that Instagram is seen as one of the more positive places on the internet. 

But while Instagram was the cause of many initial signups, Threads’ early users are gravitating to more of a Twitter-style, “information network”, use-case. 

This is one of the key unanswered questions about Threads – will it be more like Instagram with text, or Twitter with pictures?

Thanks to our audience insights, we can provide a rough segmentation of Threads’ early user base in the US, and the biggest segment at the moment shows people expect it to look and feel a lot like Twitter. 

Threads users are news consumers

Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri has said he doesn’t want to encourage hard news and politics on the platform, but his user base seem to have other ideas. 

As we’ve seen, right now Threads users skew (slightly) towards a more-like Twitter use case. These users include:

• Retweeters (26% of people who use the retweet button have used Threads, more than any other audience)
• MSNBC readers (24%)
• TIME readers (23%)
• People who follow journalists and news companies on social media (21%)

Meta has good reasons to be nervous about getting involved with the news industry – just look at what’s happening with link sharing in Canada – but that’s exactly what many of its early users are looking for.

At the time of writing Threads had just released its desktop version, which is likely to spark yet more interest from journalists and publishers who’ll now be able to write in more of a long-form style that suits news stories. 

Threads users are community-focused, particularly in gaming

Another important segment is perhaps more surprising – people you might normally associate with community-focused platforms. Here Discord leads the way (23% of Discord users have tried Threads), but online multiplayer gaming spaces like MMOs and battle royale games also feature. 

Brands and publishers are having to nurture new communities almost from scratch, and to do that they’ll have to lean on the most active community members. By collaborating and potentially cross-posting with other platforms, they may be able to import some of their most active conversations into a space that needs more interactions to get up and running.

Another way to look at this segment is to think of them as gamers, or people used to gamification. One of the biggest user groups on Threads is people who respond to polls on Instagram stories, among whom 24% have used Threads. So it’s not just heavy social media users with an interest in Threads, it’s also those who’re used to actively engaging with social content. 

While Threads’ features may be limited at the moment, these constraints could spark creativity. For example this could be an interesting time to revisit classic campaigns from the early years of now-established social platforms – like Starbucks’ 2014 White Cup Contest on Instagram – for ideas on how to engage users in a new space.  

If Threads’ early users stick around as much as they say they’d like to, first-mover advantage will be highly valuable. While Threads doesn’t have the great equalizer of its algorithmic feed, TikTok shows how successful challenger brands can be when they crack a platform’s vibe early. The Savannah Bananas baseball team is just one example of how a less well-known brand can gather more followers than its more popular peers. 

Threads users are into fashion, art, and aesthetics

While Threads’ early users lean toward the news/information use case, others are expecting an Instagram-like feel and experience, including high-engaging audiences like:

• Fashion-conscious consumers (23% have used Threads)
• Fine art fans (20%)
• Modern art fans (18%)

This highlights the other big challenge Meta faces with Threads. As well as creating an appealing vibe in the hope of attracting an audience numbering tens of millions, they also need to appeal to both news fans and art fans, two camps that have historically found homes in different kinds of social media.

You could argue Meta has done this before. When it acquired Instagram in 2012, that led to an influx of users from Facebook and helped shift the app away from photographers and artists to a broader range of people. But that was more gradual, on a smaller scale, and in a very different environment. 

Threads users are early adopters

No great surprise there; by their nature, new devices and platforms attract audiences interested in new things, especially new technology. Looking closer, Threads audience includes people who:

• Are interested in computers and coding (20% have used Threads)
• Follow the latest tech trends and news (20%)
• Buy laptops (20%)
• Use voice assistants (18%)

So it’s fair to say tech websites like Wired and TechCrunch are going to find many of their readers on the platform. 

For brands and publishers more broadly, it may be worth tactically focusing on content from their tech sections, or from their tech journalists, during the initial stages of Threads’ development. 

What the future might hold

There are two big questions about Threads right now.

The first is, will the early sign-ups stick around? Based on our research, we think the prospects are pretty good.

But that depends on the second question – is Threads a Twitter-style app that looks like Instagram, or an Instagram-style app that looks like Twitter?

There are plenty of factors to consider, but judging by Threads’ early users, the appetite for news, information, and long-form text content is there. Meta will have to decide at some point if they want to embrace this or not, as right now it’s what their users clearly want. 

At the same time, they ideally need to satisfy a contingent crossing over from Instagram who want to keep that platform’s aesthetic. So a key challenge is to find a way to please both groups; if they can get this right they’ll be on their way. 

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve some idea of what market research companies in the UK do, and how research is the rocket fuel that powers your most effective campaigns, product developments, and marketing strategies. 

But for the avoidance of doubt and to make sure we’re all on the same page, market research is about gathering and analyzing data on customers, competitors, distributors, and other actors and forces in the marketplace.

That’s important because market research companies take the guesswork out of getting through to audiences. By studying consumers and gathering information on their likes, dislikes and so on, a brand can make evidence-based decisions rather than relying on instinct or experience.

If a business wants to know – really know – what sort of products or services consumers want to buy, through to where, when, and how those products and services should be marketed, then it makes total sense to ask the prospective audience. 

Without the certainty that market research companies provides, a business is basically hoping for the best, and while we salute their optimism, that’s not exactly a reliable strategy for success.

The point is, research matters. To help you take advantage of this, here’s what this blog covers:

1. How to choose the right market research company for you
2. Meet the major players: market research companies in the UK
3. Last words
4. Market research FAQs

How to choose the right market research company for you

Different market research companies are not created equal. Behind the snazzy websites and persuasive pitching, individual research companies can vary pretty dramatically in terms of what they do and how they do it – all of which can radically alter the benefit their service provides. How do you pick the right research partner for you? Some key things to consider are:

1. Does the market research company you’re considering work with or know about your audience?
2. Does the company have expertise in your industry and category?
3. Do they have a history of success with businesses like yours?
4. What’s their capacity? Can they actually do the job you need doing?
5. Does the company conduct the right sort of research to answer your questions? 
6. Are they transparent about where their data comes from and how they ensure quality?
7. Does the company have a track record of providing actionable insights?
8. What’s their process for collecting and analyzing data?
9. How do they communicate with their clients?
10. Will the market research company provide results in a timely manner?
11. Will their work add value for your business? 

While there are hundreds of market research companies in London out there, these questions should help you narrow the field to a handful of promising candidates. On that topic, let’s meet 12 of the UK’s major players, starting – unashamedly – with us, GWI, but otherwise in no particular order.

Meet the major players 

GWI

The world’s largest ongoing study of online audiences, with a powerful, intuitive platform that instantly puts high impact insights at your fingertips.

Locations: London, UK (with additional offices in the US, Greece, Czech Republic, and Singapore)

Specialisms: Every business has questions about its audiences; GWI has the answers. Powered by consistent, global research, our market research platform is an on-demand window into their world, giving GWI customers on-demand insights into the lives of billions of digital consumers in 53 world markets. As well as our flagship Core data set we’ve equally compelling additional data sets and add-ons that zero in on the USA, kids, gaming, sport, alcohol, B2B buying and work, consumer tech, and travel. Need even deeper insights into your target audiences? We’ve got you covered. Ask any question you like with our custom surveys, analytics and solutions, all tailored to your exact needs. Whatever the topic, whatever the question, GWI has the answer.

Clients: Publicis, Google, Spotify, Microsoft, WPP, Amazon, LinkedIn, and The Guardian.

Use cases: These fall into three intuitive buckets: marketing strategy, including media planning, content marketing, brand health, and ads targeting; product development, including product expansion and improvements, and partnership and collaboration opportunities, and competitive advantage, which includes market differentiation, winning pitches and retaining clients, sponsorship opps and market sizing/expansion.

If you’re looking for a market research company in the UK and you’d like to find out how GWI can help you uncover and maximize opportunities, book a discovery call.

Kantar TGI Consumer Data

Relevant and robust data about global and local audiences in an increasingly connected world.

Locations: London, UK ( with additional global as part of Kantar Group)

Specialisms: TGI Consumer Data specializes in media consumption (across print, TV, radio and online), as well as product and brand usage, attitudes, motivations, and beliefs, all under the banner of “connected consumer intelligence”. TGI uses Kantar’s data – they’re a subsidiary after all – based on a representative sample of over 700,000 consumers in 50 markets. Data is collected online, while offline panels of consumers provide detail on what each consumer does and how those activities are connected to each other. 

Use cases: TGI enables marketing and research teams to enhance strategic planning by segmenting customers and identifying gaps in the market. They help media agencies optimize media planning by identifying the most relevant target audiences against the right advertising activation choices. TGI works with media owners’ sales teams to understand their audience in lifestyle, attitudinal or consumer terms, and uses this to create competitive value.

Nielsen

A global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, Nielsen empowers clients with trusted intelligence.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specialisms: For Nielsen, “audience is everything”. They describe themselves as “Connecting clients to audiences, growth and new opportunities”, while “shaping the future of media” so their clients can “stay ahead of media’s evolution with our timely insight” by measuring behavior across different channels and platforms. They’re perhaps best known for their Nielsen ratings, an audience measurement system of television viewership that for many years has been the deciding factor in canceling or renewing television shows.

Use cases: Specific services include audience measurement (including cross media, digital, streaming and TV), media planning (including audience segmentation, competitor intelligence and scenario planning), market optimization (including marketing outcomes and sports/games), and content metadata (covering audio, sports, and video).

YouGov 

A global online community of 24 million people sharing their views daily. Clients can explore public opinion “about anything and everything”.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specialisms: YouGov’s mission is to supply a continuous stream of accurate data and insight into what the world thinks, so that companies, governments, and institutions can make informed decisions. Describing what they do as “Living Consumer Intelligence”, YouGov enables some of the world’s most recognised brands, media owners, and agencies to understand their customers using consumer data on 24 million+ registered panel members in 55+ markets.

Use cases: These fall into four buckets: Tracking, by continuously monitoring what an audience thinks about brands, campaigns, and the competition creates a powerful feedback loop for clients. Planning, with over a million data points to help users unlock the most complete profile of their audience and use it to plan marketing campaigns. Exploring, by allowing clients to get answers from their chosen audience using syndicated data products or customized surveys. Activating, enabling advertisers to optimize their ad spend by using research-based audiences to activate ad campaigns.

Attest

Attest pairs the expertise of a research agency with the speed (and price) of a self-serve tool for the best of both worlds.

Locations: London, UK

Specialisms: Attest is a consumer research platform that puts trustworthy insights in more people’s hands to minimize risk, increase decision-making confidence, and grow without guesswork. Based on the views of 125 million people across 58 countries, and combining the best bits of research technology and human expertise, Attest makes it simple for anyone to uncover opportunities with consumer data, continuously, at a global scale. They call it “growth without guesswork”. 

Use cases: Brand tracking (including brand health and performance), consumer profiling (for example finding audiences and building personas), creative testing (in terms of validating creative impact and qualifying campaign uplift), market analysis (like identifying new markets and de-risking expansion), and product development (including innovation and uplift).

GfK

Empowering bold sustainable action, GfK earns the trust of clients around the world by solving critical questions in their decision-making process.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specializms: As GfK puts it, “We specializes in solving critical questions in our clients’ decision-making process. We fuel their growth by providing a complete understanding of their consumers’ buying behavior, and the dynamics impacting their markets, brands and media trends.” With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights – delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms – GfK drives “growth from knowledge”.

Use cases: GfK divides these into 5 areas: Brand and marketing performance (including improving brand strength, optimizing marketing, and driving ROI), Sales and marketing growth, Consumer and shopper intelligence (in terms of consumer and shopper intelligence, and how customers think, act and buy), Media measurement (covering an audience’s media consumption and behavior, and understanding who’s consuming which media, when, how often, and on which platforms and devices).

Fieldwork Hub

Participant recruitment and project management experts, FieldworkHub delivers market research services in the UK, Europe and beyond.

Locations: London, UK

Specializms: FieldworkHub specialize in both qualitative and quantitative research fieldwork. Their qualitative expertise covers focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, online bulletin boards, market research online communities, and user experience testing. FieldworkHub’s quantitative specialisms cover online surveys, telephone interviews, and face-to-face interviews. As their name implies, their ultimate specialism is providing high-quality focus group recruitment as part of the full range of qualitative and quantitative fieldwork services.

Use cases: Recruiting audiences for consumer understanding (to highlight opinions, behaviors, and preferences in relation to a market, product, or service), B2B market research (using a combination of their own panel, specialist databases, social networking, and recruiters), tech professionals and users (focussing on consumers who use particular apps or hardware, and B2B technology decision makers), and healthcare professionals and patients (to provide insights on everything from branding to new product testing).

Statista

Statista is a leading provider of market and consumer data, constantly developing successful new products and business models.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specializms: Statista divides its offer into four specialisms: Content & Design focuses on research and information design, eCommerce Insights provides market analyses, benchmarking and lead generation, Consumer Insights analyzes consumer behavior and media usage on- and offline, based on the data of 1,700,000 consumers from 56 countries, while Market Insights covers market sizing and forecasts.

Use cases: Market Insights (covering a broad range of topics, from consumer goods to technology to automobiles), Consumer insights (highlighting consumer attitudes and behavior worldwide), Company insights (providing business information on 70m+ public and private companies), and eCommerce insights (offering detailed information for 39,000+ online stores and marketplaces).

Gartner 

Delivering actionable, objective insights to executives and their teams to help them make faster, smarter decisions.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specializms: From benchmarks to frameworks to rankings, Gartner provides the practical solutions that transform mission-critical priorities into measurable business results. Benchmarking leverages their best-in-class diagnostics to excel where it matters most, budget smarter, and make function more effective. Cost Optimisation identifies where to reduce, protect and invest to drive growth and efficiency, while Strategic Planning creates a clear and streamlined road map to meet business goals.

Use cases: Audit and risk, customer service and support, finance, human resources, information technology, legal and compliance, marketing and communications, product management, sales, strategy, and supply chain.

Dynata 

The world’s largest first-party data company, covering 70 million consumers and professionals, fully permissioned with billions of verified data points.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specializms: Dynata divides its specialisms into two broad categories: data and insight solutions, uncovering accurate and actionable insights to drive smarter decision-making, and advertising solutions designed to measure & optimize your cross-channel campaigns to improve your marketing ROI.

Use cases: Dynata’s use cases cover a broad sweep of market research tasks, including finding and selecting your ideal audience, building surveys to get you closer to your consumers, connecting data across silos, audience and campaign activation to drive better campaign results, creative testing to produce memorable adverts that maximize ROI, and sharing reports and analytics.

Comscore

A pioneering audience measurement company, accurately measuring audiences in an increasingly cross-platform world.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specializms: Automotive, FMCG, retail and travel (planning, transacting, and evaluating advertising across platforms to increase engagement and ROI), digital (accurate measurement across all platforms), financial (comprehensive reporting of competitive performance across acquisition and retention KPIs), pharma (privacy-focused, holistic measurement of campaign outcomes), and tech (understanding emerging consumer trends, device usage, and platforms). 

Use cases: Advertising (measuring and evaluating effectiveness across platforms), marketing impact (maximizing effectiveness), programmatic targeting (for cross platform audiences), TV audiences (measuring size and makeup), digital audiences (measuring all content types), movies (measuring global box office performance), social (understanding value of social audiences).

Streetbees

The world’s first “human intelligence platform”, Streetbees captures real life moments, at scale, and in people’s own words.

Locations: London and Lisbon

Specializms: Streetbees currently has two flagship solutions that reflect their area of specialization. Streetbees GO captures and communicates the context and emotion of 4.5m lives so brands can make the right growth decisions in terms of demand spaces, category development, market trends and brand growth. Its Cost of Living Monitor helps brands create winning strategies to combat inflation by observing how consumers’ spending is changing in their category.

Use cases: Observing the moment of truth, by capturing real life behavior at the moment a consumer makes a decision. Never rely on claims again. Getting closer to consumers at scale, by accessing rich data with photos and videos from millions of consumers around the world. Growth through AI also allows you to spot hidden growth opportunities by applying AI to millions of real life observations from real consumers.

Last words

Twelve different market research companies, with twelve different ways to help brands by taking the gut feel out of decision-making. 

Market research FAQs

Struggling to ace your media planning? You’re not alone. The challenges can seem endless and the days can seem long – especially when you aren’t seeing results. But don’t feel down.

You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just not doing it with GWI. 

If the media planning process was easy, every brand would be a household name. But it’s not; it’s hard. Despite all the tips and tricks you can find online the fact is there’s no magic solution. Instead it’s all about method. 

That’s why GWI is here to help you with a step-by-step guide to navigating a super competitive global media landscape so you can come out on top – even when consumers’ budgets are tight. 

This blog is your blueprint for not only understanding the benefits of media planning using GWI, but how our reliable insights can help you build a bulletproof marketing strategy, save time, and boost ROI.

1. Challenges of media planning
2. Example of media planning with GWI
3. Using GWI during your media planning process 
4. GWI in action: Media planning with Tequila Avión

Let’s talk about the challenges of media planning

How you choose to present media content to your target audience is a big deal. From television, outdoor, and print media to paid ads and digital channels, data-led media placement is the key to driving engagement, building brand awareness, and turning browsers into buyers. 

What are the benefits of media planning with GWI? Simply that we’ve got a wealth of valuable insights and deep data designed to help you showcase your brand in the right place, at the right time, so it’s seen by the right people. 

Let’s get into it. 

Your GWI media planning game plan

1. Conquer the attention economy
2. Keep up with quick changes in trends
3. Get answers that help you make decisions – fast
4. Understand what content drives real results 

1. Conquer the attention economy  

Einstein may have said that time is an illusion but the attention economy is very real. Every day consumers are choosing where to put their focus and as a media planner, it’s up to you to understand how to reach them.  

If you want to connect with your target audience, you need deep consumer data that shows you exactly where to find them – whether that’s watching TV on their phones/tablets (something that’s grown 54% year-on-year), or playing their favorite video game. You’ll be able to sharpen your media strategy and boost results with insights that go beneath the surface to show you consumers’ motivations, purchase habits, and more. 

2. Keep up with quick changes in trends

Trends move fast – really fast. If you blink, you may miss the next big thing like a new social media platform that appears out of nowhere (we’re looking at you, Threads), or waste your time on fading fads. 

GWI is your secret weapon for spotting, tracking, and staying on top of the latest trends. 

With new questions added, you’ll be able to stand out from the crowd thanks to instant access to fresh insights representing 2.8bn consumers worldwide. 

3. Get answers that help you make decisions – fast 

What’s something you can waste but can never earn? Time. It’s precious, it’s fleeting, and it can be expensive if your media plan doesn’t hit the mark. While you may not be able to stop the clock on trends or evolving consumer attitudes and perceptions, you can definitely stay ahead of the competition if you’ve the right audience insights to take your media plan to the next level. 

At GWI we’re all about fast, reliable data. With our intuitive platform, you can unlock valuable insights, build charts in a flash with our instant charts feature powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and understand your audience in seconds with instant audience insights. And that’s just the beginning. 

4. Understand what content drives real results

Tight budgets and looming deadlines can put a damper on the creative process but you still need to make sure your content will land with your customers. When dollars are involved, every message needs to make instant sense. Can you say “pressure”?

To make data-led decisions you need insights that go beyond basic demographics. GWI’s market research platform is designed to help you discover and understand your audience’s values, brand expectations (for example, being reliable), and the issues that matter most to them so you can smash the media planning process. 

Here’s an example of media planning with GWI

Let’s say you’re a beauty brand looking for the perfect platform to launch an exciting new advertising campaign. Your campaign objective as a media planner is to boost audience interaction, gain followers, and increase views – but this time you want to think outside of the box. Since you’re already on every platform, you need fresh insights to give you a new perspective.

You know that to really unlock new opportunities, you’ll need digital media plans that resonate with your target audience, but first you need to know where to find them. 

From your market research with GWI, you discover a slightly surprising statistic: beauty buyers are 35% more likely than average to prefer parenting and family podcasts. To connect with this audience you could pull off the perfect social media collaboration with a parenting podcast – but which one? 

Using our data, you’re able to find the details likely to make the biggest difference to your media plan.

You discover beauty buyers are 33% more likely than average to want brands to be cool and trendy – so you reach out to the hottest parenting/family podcast with the most listeners. 

To put a cherry on top – and supercharge your media planning strategy – you can even add in custom research to fine-tune your targeting and reach even the most niche consumers. 

How to use GWI during your media planning process

1. Build your audience

First, you’ll start by building your audience. Pick from over 250k attributes covering things like who they are, where they live, what they do today (and plan to do tomorrow), and even personal attitudes, values, and behaviors like how often they drink coffee.

The result is a picture of your consumers, as broad or as detailed as you need it to be.

In this example, we’ve used Gen Z but you can customize your own audience or choose a prebuilt audience.  

2. Add segmentation

Now that you have your audience, it’s about applying a media lens to understand their consumption habits.

You can uncover details like how much time they spend streaming music, scrolling social media, or listening to podcasts. With insights like these you’ll be able to dig deeper into the audience to see what type of content should be in your media plan.

3. Apply filters

After that you can apply filters like location.

These help you put your data into context and narrow the scope of what you’re analyzing so you don’t get stuck in the muck. 

4. Spot patterns and opportunities

Now you can see what’s hot – and what’s not – for your audience. For example, you can easily gauge the likelihood of Gen Z consuming various media types compared to other generations just by looking at the index figure for each media type. An index figure above 100 means they’re more likely to consume that media type (known as “over-indexing”), while an index figure below 100 means they’re less likely to consume (known as – you guessed it – “under indexing”). 

This simple but powerful view of audience attitudes is the key to unlocking campaign-defining insights, showing you where and how to reach consumers.

5. Zero in

Once you know what to focus on, you can zero in with laser-like precision on exactly the consumers you want to connect with.  

GWI in action: Media planning with Tequila Avión 

When award-winning spirits brand Tequila Avión wanted to drive awareness using traditional media, their agency – Fullsix – turned to GWI. With our help, they were able to shine in an oversaturated market despite budget constraints, audience complexity, and cutthroat competition. 

Here’s how they did it: 

Step 1. Fullsix analyzed a mix of online and offline data to understand exactly who was buying and engaging with the brand

Step 2. Next they combined the different profiling points to build robust audience segments

Step 3. They conducted a thorough target analysis to understand consumers’  lifestyles, interests, behaviors, and touchpoint affinities

Step 4. Finally they clustered the audience by key interests and behaviors   

The result? Not only did online clustering and optimization deliver 8% more efficient reach, but the offline results were 30% more efficient than traditional campaigns. Thanks to a data-driven campaign enabled by GWI, Tequila Avión’s digital marketing efforts achieved incredible brand lift across all their benchmarks.  

Overcoming the challenges of media planning with GWI

Our platform is designed to streamline your media planning process by offering consumer insights that help you understand your audience like never before. You’ll be able to expertly navigate the unpredictable world of changing trends, uncertain budgets, and waning consumer attention, using reliable data and insights to make faster, better decisions.  

Media planning is never simple, but GWI makes it easier. 

To see our platform in action and understand exactly how it can help you, just reach out to our team to schedule time to chat. 

When ancient prophecies of world destruction spread in 2012, most people took them with a pinch of salt. But when top scientists move the hands of an established “doomsday clock” closer to midnight, it can be harder to stay hopeful.  

People know the earth’s seen better days. While we can’t ignore environmental problems like wildfires or heat waves, it can be tiring to hear the same story told time and time again: that we’re not on track to meet our deadline, and probably won’t. This is where apocalypse fatigue can kick in. 

What is apocalypse fatigue?

 Resilience defines apocalypse fatigue as “the exhaustion of having to make endless moral choices when they don’t seem to make a difference”.

Consumers stand to benefit from seeing alternate endings to climate change and believing that government targets are an achievable team effort, rather than a final warning to individuals or businesses. For that to happen, brands need to help make eco narratives less apocalyptic, especially with inflation and other crises burning on in our minds.

Disaster prophecies have picked up in recent years

If someone were to ask whether you cared about the environment, chances are you’d say “yes, of course”. We’d be surprised by anyone who didn’t.

But when you ask millions of consumers whether they care about the planet on an ongoing basis, that’s when you start to see the bigger picture.

The number of people who say helping the environment is important to them has dropped in pretty much all of our tracked markets since 2020, and the most across Europe – where you’ll find some of the countries least threatened by climate change at the moment.

This time last year, Americans were the most likely across 11 markets to say climate change has had no impact on them personally, with Brits close behind. Meanwhile, #climatedoomism – the idea that humanity won’t survive anyway – is largely a Western trend, one that arguably absolves people of responsibility. 

This disaster prophecy makes our grounds for revamping the way we talk about global warming even stronger. 

What’s more, the environment’s perceived importance is just one of many sustainability-related trend lines pointing down, including recycling, calls for brands to be eco-friendly, and willingness to pay for green products. And we’re seeing these patterns emerge among kids too.

There are various explanations for this. To start with, ESG has come under fire from many directions, and the idea that consumers should do “the heavy lifting” on climate change has been repeatedly challenged.

But, on the whole, it’s not that people are suddenly less concerned about our planet; it’s more that they don’t have the financial means or emotional headspace to focus on it. Life’s difficult enough right now, and it can’t all be doom and gloom.

Sustainability shouldn’t cost the earth

If you’re worried about paying next month’s bills, climate change probably isn’t front of mind.

It’s safe to say that inflation’s contributing toward climate fatigue, with many people’s outgoings taking up an increasingly bigger share of their income, and sustainability looking more like a luxury.

In fact, those with low purchasing power are much less likely to prioritize sustainability when picking food, household products, and energy suppliers compared to a year ago – and compared to those with more disposable income.

But we shouldn’t stop at our bank balance. Many of the drops in sustainability attitudes we outlined above date back to 2021, a time when many countries had record savings due to consumers staying indoors or putting financial aid aside.

Pent-up demand is another thing to consider. Alongside these eco-related drops, we’ve seen a steady rise in Americans’ willingness to buy things they couldn’t otherwise afford using credit.

And holidays show the relationship between higher pent-up demand and less eco action more clearly. Since lockdowns, we’ve seen consistent growth in the number of consumers saying they’ve bought a vacation abroad in the last 3-6 months, and in the number planning to buy one.

In countries like Canada, Portugal, and France, intent to buy international breaks is now higher than it was in 2019.

It’s also on par with pre-pandemic figures in the United States, which is possibly why Americans’ concern about the environmental impact of travel has dropped by 11% in the latest wave, and is at its lowest point since we started tracking it.

The cost of eco-friendly items is the main barrier to purchasing them, and many people currently have an “either/or” mindset, with sustainability often losing out to something they weren’t able to buy in 2020, or wouldn’t be able to if they were to buy green.

A workaround for brands is to spotlight cost-cutting behaviors that have a positive impact on the environment.

While reusable coffee cups were a Covid casualty in some places, Starbucks reported a big rise in usage when it introduced a small fee for disposable ones back in 2018. And looking ahead, MAC expects to collect up to 500,000 kilos in packaging each year off the back of its takeback program, which offers freebies in exchange for taking part.

News and apocalypse fatigue go hand in hand

Take a moment to mentally list all the films you can about climate change; The Day After Tomorrow, Interstellar, or WALL-E might come to mind. Whatever you’re thinking of, it’s probably some kind of doomsday narrative based on a global warming disaster.

Some commentators feel we need a “more varied portrayal of climate change in film”, and the same lesson can be applied to the media.

Just like optimism toward the environment, engagement with news channels peaked in Q2 2020, as we all sought to keep up with what was happening Covid-wise.

Since then, news updates have centered around fresh strains of the virus, war, superpower tensions, the energy crisis, and inflation – with all these things happening alongside climate disruption.

Humans may have a negativity bias, but we can only take so much before switching off.

And this is what seems to have happened. Since Q2 2020, there’s been a 10% drop in consumers citing an interest in what’s going on in the world, and an even sharper fall in those saying they post opinions about environmental issues.

Reading and engaging less with crisis communications might be something some people have done without realizing. But in many cases, it’s been a conscious decision.

Americans have identified news/current events as one of the main contributors to society’s poor mental health, and 41% of those who believe social media damages their wellbeing say they often feel hopeless about the state of the world while using it. 

According to writer Rebecca Solnit, “every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis”, and it’s clear that global warming-based reports and films need to cool down in order for consumers to really engage with climate issues.

The effects of climate communication so far

So, if we were to tweak our approach to climate storytelling, where are we starting from?

Our past research gives us a benchmark.

In August 2022, we asked people if they were optimistic that progress is being made on climate change. Less than 1 in 3 Westerners agreed. And at the end of 2021, around half here thought it unlikely that the pledge to limit global temperature increases to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” will be achieved.

Generally speaking, people aren’t hopeful about the earth’s future, and many are cynical about climate targets.

To be clear, fear can motivate people to act. Americans who worry about climate change are more likely to recycle than average, for example.

But hope tends to be more energizing. Those predicting the environment will get better in the near future are significantly more likely to say they typically buy eco-friendly products than those expecting it to get worse – despite the fact that the former skew toward the low end of the income spectrum.

And other studies also show that fear can wear us down, particularly when we don’t have clear instructions on how to act. 

Less talk about carbon emissions, more about mankind

Going forward, here are some data-driven thoughts on containing apocalypse fatigue.

For starters, solutions-based, high-quality journalism motivates people. The publishing sector could showcase more success stories and innovation, proving that it’s possible to make a difference.

Fact-checking is also very important. Consumers often see climate messaging as less trustworthy than other categories, with over half of Americans saying they’re concerned about “greenwashing” in ads. Ensuring there’s no miscommunication between marketers, news writers, and academics will lower the chances of a slip up.

Next, don’t be boring. Climate science isn’t always digestible or presented in human terms.

People don’t want scary stats, they want to see themselves reflected in everyday stories.

Americans most want to see real people or individuals featured in ads that reference sustainability, ahead of scientists, CEOs, and actors; holding a mirror to their lives will give them a personalized reason to act. 

Communications also shouldn’t be left to a climate scientist or economist; companies should collaborate with creative industries to create compelling narratives – not just doomsday ones.

Just as the plant-based sector is trying to rebrand and move away from being seen as serious or self-righteous, climate experts should aim to make their content more laid-back and approachable. Netflix’s Cunk on Earth mockumentary is a great example of how factual information can be communicated through comedy. 

Apocalypse fatigue: Making positive action more sustainable

While they collectively make a big difference, consumer choices alone can’t solve the climate crisis. 

They shouldn’t set the sustainability agenda, especially with many people unsure on whether simple actions are enough to turn back the clock, and doomism rising to become the leading climate myth globally.

It’s up to brands to make large-scale changes, work with publishers and fans to inspire others, and re-energize the climate conversation.

It’s fair to say that millennials have had a bit of a glow up in recent years. Now in their ‘adulting’ era, they’ve seriously outgrown the unfavorable stereotypes of being snowflakes and serial renters. In fact, many are now managers, parents, and homeowners. 

As they approach their 40s, we’re taking a deep dive into the characteristics of millennials to understand what makes them unique, and provide insight into how you can score a direct hit with them.

Who are millennials?

Before we get into it, let’s take it from the top. Who exactly are we talking about when we say millennials? Let’s explain. Millennials are the generation born between the early 1980s to the mid 1990s, sandwiched between Gen X and Gen Z. They’re currently aged between 27-40. 

Top characteristics of millennials

1. They’re influential in the workplace
2. They’re confident with technology
3. They’re cautious about their personal data 
4. They’re quietly optimistic about the environment
5. They’ve avid savers 
6. They love to travel 
7. They’re nostalgic 
8. They’re competitive 
9. They’re obsessed with podcasts

1. They’re influential in the workplace

When it comes to millennials in the workplace, it’s safe to say they’ve earned their stripes. There are more millennials in the workplace than ever before; 79% are in full-time employment, up 32% since 2015. 

Over 1 in 4 millennials are in management roles. 

So what does this mean for businesses? Due to their newfound seniority, building connections with millennials is key for B2B brands looking to win new business. 37% of millennials who work full time are decision makers in their role, so if you want to get onside, it pays to understand millennials. 

2. They’re confident with technology

Millennials stand out from other generations for being confident using new technology. 46% of millennials say this, more than any other generation, even Gen Z, who’ve never known a world without it.

This confidence extends to AI with 45% of millennials saying they’re excited about it. Rather than seeing it as a potential threat, they’re optimistic about how it can be used for good, especially in the workplace. They’re actually 12% more likely than average to believe it’ll allow employees to save time on tasks.

3. They’re cautious about their personal data 

While they might be confident with new technology, the same can’t be said when it comes to their personal data. 30% of millennials say they’re worried about how companies use their personal data online, highlighting a need for greater transparency from brands if they want to win over this generation.

Interestingly, millennials are less worried about how their government tracks them online (only 19% say this), which may suggest they’re more concerned with their personal data falling into the wrong hands and scams that could hurt them financially. 

4. They’re quietly optimistic about the environment 

Overall, millennials care about the environment, and like Gen Z, they’re quietly optimistic about the future of the planet. 46% say they think the environment will get better in the next six months, and it seems they’re willing to contribute to the cause. 35% say they always try to recycle, and 59% say they’d rather pay more for an eco-friendly version of a product, the highest figure of any generation.

A standout characteristic of millennials compared to other generations is their attitude towards who’s responsible for helping the planet. They’re much less likely to say it’s up to brands; just 39% of millennials say they want brands to be eco-friendly, the lowest figure of any generation. So if you’re trying to impress your audience with your eco-credentials, it might not have the desired effect with millennials. 

5. They’re avid savers 

That’s right, the generation most berated for frivolous spending (who remembers avocado-gate?) are actually pretty savvy with their finances. 36% of millennials say they’re good at managing money, which is higher than Gen Z (34%) and even Gen X (33%).

Financial security is important to millennials (61% say this, globally) which may go some way in explaining their saving habits. 

Across 12 markets, nearly 1 in 3 millennials that save every month say they put away at least 26% of their monthly income – the most of any generation.

That said, on the whole, they still have far less in the pot than older generations; 34% of millennials who save monthly say their savings would cover their basic living expenses for six months or more, compared to 40% of Gen X and 43% of baby boomers who say the same. 

Despite their propensity to save, the good news for brands is millennials aren’t immune to an occasional splurge. They’re still the most likely to make luxury purchases so high-end brands still stand to benefit from targeting millennials. 

6. They love to travel 

One thing’s for sure, millennials love a vacation. And with the number of millennials that say they’re planning to purchase a vacation abroad up 22% from last quarter, that’s unlikely to change any time soon. While they may be keen savers, they simply can’t resist splurging on a vacay. Who can blame them?

Being interested in travel is a defining characteristic of zillennials in particular. Those on the cusp of Gen Y and Gen Z are known for splashing out on luxury goods and instagrammable vacations, while living at home with their parents, often rent-free. 

When it comes to millennials’ travel preferences and what they look for in a vacation, they stand out for saying they’re influenced by good facilities for children or families, and for enjoying holidays at theme parks, (Peppa Pig World, anyone?). This is perhaps unsurprising considering many are now parents. 

While some are living their best lives and splashing out on, others are prioritizing family fun, so there’s no one size fits all for travel brands looking to target millennials. 

7. They’re nostalgic

From Friends reruns and Disney revivals, to retro logos and Barbie, if it evokes nostalgia, there’s a good chance millennials will love it. While Gen Z are known for their love of 90s and 00s fashion, a key characteristic of millennials is their fondness of nostalgic media. 

The top media types millennials say they feel nostalgic for are movies (34% say this), followed by music and tv shows, but they stand out from other generations for saying they’re nostalgic for video games. 

For brands looking to make their move on millennials, nostalgia is a great place to start. 59% of millennials like it when they see brands or companies use old ads or logos, so creating nostalgic ads are sure to pique the interest of this generation. Don’t forget the 90s soundtrack.

8. They’re competitive 

Millennials are huge gaming fans. They may be older but they spend just as much time as Gen Z on games consoles. But what sets them apart from Gen Z is their reasons for playing. For Gen Z, it’s a social thing, but for millennials, it’s about competing. 

That may explain their interest in esports. Millennials are 31% more likely than the average gamer to be extremely interested in esports, making them a prime audience for esports brands to tap into. 

9. They’re obsessed with podcasts 

Podcasts are a big hit with millennials. In fact, they spend more time listening to podcasts than any other generation. Not only do they tune in for longer, but they’re also the most likely to discover new brands from podcasts. 

If you’re wondering where to target them, their top genres are comedy, music, and TV & film, but what sets them apart? Millennials stand out from other generations for listening to parents and family, gaming and technology podcasts. 

Hitting the mark with millennials 

Many millennials are reaching major life milestones such as becoming parents and homeowners, while others are flexing their spending muscles on luxury travel and tech. 

While this may present new challenges for brands, it also opens up new avenues and targeting opportunities to tap into. Brands should consider how they can align with their new priorities, and explore new channels to reach them where they are now. 

What’s one thing every successful brand has in common? An authentic connection with its target consumer that goes beyond just a product or service. 

As author Simon Sinek explains, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

That’s where brand purpose comes in. In the simplest terms, brand purpose is a company’s reason for existing beyond just making money. It’s a framework that helps to influence important business decisions. But let’s not confuse it with brand mission or brand vision – even though they all play a big part in brand identity.

Think of it this way: brand vision is what inspires you, brand mission is what drives you, and brand purpose is what guides you. 

The challenge becomes finding the right purpose; one that’s genuine, gets people on your side, but also makes commercial sense.

Here, we cut through the noise surrounding the consumer-led phenomenon that is brand purpose, outlining how consumer insights help shape, and maximize its impact.

The difference between brand purpose and CSR

On the surface, brand purpose may seem like just a new term for corporate social responsibility (CSR), but there are two key differences: 

1. The focus isn’t always social or environmental issues 

Although many brands are making strides to be intentional about their desire to do good, purpose is not exclusively about social or environmental initiatives, even though they’re undoubtedly the most powerful and commonly-seen examples. 

It’s more about the fundamental essence of the business and where it’s heading.

For example, Crayola’s purpose is to “help parents and educators raise creatively-alive kids.” And how do they live up to this? By creating products and offering tools that inspire kids and “give colorful wings to the invisible things that grow in the hearts and minds of children.”

2. Purpose is baked into the branding

CSR often runs parallel to the business, has an allocated budget, and (in its worst form) exists only to offset a company’s negative impact. Purpose doesn’t come from the marketing department alone. It’s visible in all elements of the business, from promotional material to operations. 

Put simply, where CSR is a commercial objective, purpose is a branding and culture objective.

Established brands need to find a higher purpose

Brand purpose has become a key talking point recently, so although CSR initiatives are becoming a top priority among established brands, building purpose into your business requires no small measure of brand strategy and analytical thinking. 

It’s much harder to add strong brand purpose to older, established brands with legacy baggage.

Bill Bernbach, founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, states, “A principal isn’t a principle until it’s cost you money.” 

But for young brands that structure their whole business models around strong principles, they turn what could be a challenge for larger brands into an opportunity to improve customer experience, drive consumer engagement, and eventually bank more sales.

Purpose drives engagement

There’s no hiding the fact that brand purpose has to make financial sense. But when the intent is genuine and the impact is positive, commercial gain and brand loyalty will follow.

We know consumers want more than a transactional relationship with the brands they buy from and interact with. 

Taking the luxury industry as an example, it’s clear that social responsibility is a huge deal to consumers. But people also want brands to be eco-friendly, listen to customer feedback, and make them feel valued.

With the right purpose, consumers will not only engage with your brand, they’re more likely to spread the word. Personal recommendations remain one of the most powerful awareness drivers.

Tread carefully: woke-washing 

Consumers are also aware of false purpose and they’re quick to pick up on misguided purpose, even if the campaigns reflect genuine sentiments to create a positive impact.

The term ‘woke-washing’ describes work that promises to improve the world but doesn’t take real action. Brands without a clear purpose, value proposition, and brand voice who jump on the bandwagon are actually doing more damage than good.

Even though things like price, purchase process, and availability impact what consumers are buying, there are other factors that come into play like social issues, political issues, and commitment to sustainability – especially among younger generations.  

With the pressure on to not only find a purpose, but the right purpose, brands should first seek to identify the trends that matter most to the people they’re targeting.

Steps to identifying your brand purpose

Finding the right brand purpose comes from listening to consumers at different levels. 

While purpose shouldn’t be driven by commercial gain, to ensure you get the best results as a business it’s important to look beyond purchase behaviors alone towards who your target consumers are and what they value as people.

1. Get a local perspective 

Why?

Sentiments change dramatically across borders and even within countries. 

Local data enables you to identify elements in consumers’ personal lives that trigger actions (both from a commercial and wider perspective) so you can tailor your brand purpose statement and messaging accordingly. 

How?

Regional data allows you to segment, compare, and analyze consumers in a specific area to see how their commercial and emotional responses relate to wider populations. Four key psychographic indicators should be highlighted in each region: 

• Attitudes, interests, and self-perceptions
• Lifestyle motivations
• Perceptions on wider life
• Brand advocacy

2. Cross-reference with global trends 

Why?

Knowing which trends carry the most momentum globally can help negate risks and maximize the potential impact of your message.

Global trend analysis will also help predict where specific trends are heading to ensure you don’t follow one that will fizzle out.

How?

With your local findings, compare them to wider, overarching trends to identify the most commonly-shared sentiments among your target market. 

Assess how the findings fit with your global trends to ensure scalability, continuity, and longevity at a local level.

3. Explore industry-specific sentiments

Why? 

Having identified trends and patterns on a local and global level, now you should look closely at consumers in your industry. 

These consumers are the most valuable source of information on trends in the industry. And knowing them in granular data is pivotal to finding the purpose that resonates in your industry. 

How?

Apply psychographic indicators to your specific market to find out how your consumers compare to the wider local and global populations.

4. Consult brand and competitor data 

Why? 

Brand data enables you to see your own brand’s reputation, alongside your competitors’. 

Looking specifically at your own reception among your consumers and wider markets is the final layer to truly identify how to challenge perceptions, improve opinions, and drive positive sentiment.

How?

Custom surveys get to the heart of what consumers think about your brand and others in the industry by letting you ask the most pertinent questions, tailored to your needs.

Uncover their opinions on specific brands and competitors, what they value about brands with a strong purpose, and analyze their attitudes about life. 

5. Test your ideas and concepts

Why? 

When purpose is misguided, it can backfire. It’s important to ensure your message is one that people identify with, and is transparent in its intent.

How?

Testing consumers’ responses to specific concepts or campaigns that encompass your brand’s purpose will help you shape and reshape before launch. 

Purpose starts at the top

Marylee Sachs, US CEO for brand consultancy Brandpie, says, “Purpose has always been integral to business, but the pandemic has caused business leaders at unprecedented scale to re-examine priorities across almost every area.” 

With that in mind, it makes sense that 83% of CEOs either have or want a brand purpose, while 73% agree that brand purpose has an impact on most of their decision-making. 

She continues, “The last three years will have lasting implications on how businesses operate and organize, and as a result most leaders have adopted purpose or are looking to bring purpose into their organizations to provide direction, to be a north star, for futureproofing the business.”

Woke-washing pollutes purpose 

According to our trends analyst, Ben Butling: “Shoppers are increasingly tuned in to the world’s social and environmental hurdles, and this growing sentiment means there is an expectation for brands to take a stand too. As of Q3 2022, over 4 in 10 consumers want brands to be eco-friendly or socially responsible.”

But a whopping 78% of consumers have no confidence in big brands. 

Brands suffer when they don’t take the time to move from awareness to action, and really walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. The bottom line is if you don’t mean what you say, it’s best not to pretend you do in your ads.  

The takeaway

Brand purpose dictates which direction the brand story takes, gives the message momentum, and invites consumers to be part of the journey. 

Purpose is not just a box-ticking exercise – it should support global progress. It’s also a necessary part of a compelling brand story.

Consumers hold the key to identifying the right purpose. One that balances the need to do good with commercial gain. After all, the two are not mutually exclusive.

With all brands under the microscope for their impact, a unique opportunity arises for those prepared to consider purpose deeply, look to understand what it is consumers want, and respond with a genuine, pragmatic approach.

Now that millennials are officially part of the 40s club, it’s time to take stock of what’s going on in their lives. They’re buying houses, settling down, and starting families – putting them into contact with certain businesses for the first time. 

Armed with insights from our latest millennials report, we take a deep dive into millennial marketing statistics that reflect the biggest trends concerning this generation today, and answer the following questions:

• How are their priorities changing?
• What do millennials’ media habits look like in 2023?
• How do millennials feel about AI?
• Do they still respond to influencer marketing?
• What do brands need to know when engaging with millennials?

2023 millennial marketing stats 

1. The number of US millennials who say raising a family is important has risen by 13% since 2020

Millennials are growing up. Aged between 27-40, they’ve got responsibilities and priorities that set them apart from their younger counterparts; the number of millennials who are married or are parents/expecting a child has more than doubled since 2015.

They’re making waves in the working world too. Over 3 in 4 are in full-time employment – a 32% increase since 2015 – while the number who work in executive, senior, or management roles has grown 8% since 2020. 

That’s a lot to think about, and it’s impacted the way they see the world – and themselves. Take, for example, the growing importance of raising a family among American millennials; which displaced the more personal goal of “staying fit” in Q4 2021. 

Globally, millennials have fallen behind Gen Z for saying being successful is important to them, and are more concerned with spending time with their family instead (65% say this). Subtle changes that reveal how their lifestyles are maturing. 

This makes a lot of sense in context. A generation that’s been shaped by their share of financial hardships, millennials might be looking at family life as a distraction; a safe space from the unpredictable world they grew up in. Brands need to remember this, and think about how to speak to these newfound values.

2. Millennials are spending 48 minutes less online per day compared to 2017

The increase in time spent with family could be having another impact. While millennials were among the first to use social media, their time spent using it every day is falling.

Millennials are turning away from the digital world. Their priorities are moving offline as they place more value in physical experiences – no doubt a side effect of the post-pandemic landscape. 

That’s not to say they’re ditching social media entirely; they still spend 2 hours 34 minutes using it every day, just second behind Gen Z (2 hours 51 minutes). It is, however, a staunch reminder that social media (like all forms of media) sit firmly in contention with each other, and other activities. 

There’s increasing competition for millennials’ attention, at a time where their priorities are moving offline. Post-pandemic, they’re focusing more on real-world goals. When comparing their lives now to 2019, 77% of millennials say they’re more conscious about their health and wellbeing, and 61% are more likely to be seeking out new hobbies.

Brands should recognize the motivations behind millennials’ break from digital platforms, by doubling down on their desire for balance and wellness; promoting self-care and fostering genuine connections. 

3. Millennials are the most likely generation to use AI daily in the workplace

There have been many recent controversies around AI-generated art, with musicians, writers, and illustrators being some of the most-affected. 

But the millennial perspective on this issue is more liberal than average. The stats show millennials are the most likely generation to be interested in using it, and the same can be said for using it instead of a traditional search engine. 

Almost 4 in 5 millennial ChatGPT users would consistently use ChatGPT over a search engine to help answer questions.

They trust AI tools too. Millennials are 10% more likely than the average in 11 markets to say AI tools should be able to imitate human art/music, or use copyrighted material, without legal concerns. In fact, many see AI as a workplace ally. They’re 10% less likely than average to say that AI will put jobs at risk, and are 12% more likely than average to believe they’ll allow employees to save time on tasks.

There are still some concerns, however. Millennial ChatGPT users are 47% more likely than Gen Z to think that the tool is not reliable enough to be used consistently, and big supporters of regulation – something the EU is ramping up.

So, to maximize opportunities, brands hoping to engage with this generation should look to implement AI tools where they can.

4. 80% of millennials trust influencers, only slightly behind Gen Z

As early users of social media, millennials were some of the first consumers to be exposed to influencer marketing. They’re very receptive to these individuals as a result – 80% trust them (to any extent), and they’re 15% more likely than the average consumer to trust them completely. 

That’s good news for brands actively seeking partnerships with influencers, but there’s still some hurdles to take into account. De-influencing, where creators advise against buying certain products or cheaper alternatives has made recent headlines.

With the backlash against overconsumption, growing financial pressures, and ever-growing need for genuine recommendations, millennials want authenticity from the individuals they follow. De-influencing is still influencing, but it showcases how tastes have changed.

Brands wanting to capitalize on influencers should just be wary about selecting the right partners. As more markets step up their measures to address misinformation, it’s vital for brands to find the right fit and ensure any partnership aligns with their brand values.

5. Over half of millennials want brands to be reliable – their number one priority

When it comes to engaging with millennials, reliability is front of mind. During times of economic crisis, this is more important than ever since consumers want more bang for their buck.

And if a company is reliable, this can increase customer loyalty – particularly as far as millennials are concerned. 

Almost half are loyal to brands they like, and a further 46% say they would advocate a brand online if they provide high-quality products.

This is important; brands who take these wants seriously can create valuable advocates at a time when trust is crucial. 

There’s not just one factor consumers consider when making a purchase, especially in the midst of a financial crisis. A useful stat to highlight here is that over 4 in 10 millennials want brands to be innovative, smart and authentic. Nail as many of these qualities as possible, and brands will better their chances at engaging with millennials now, and for the long term. 

Why stop with the purchase though? Brands can reinforce reliability further by supporting long after they buy a product. Millennials are 10% more likely than average to cite a live-chat feature as a purchase driver, and the number one thing they expect from brands is to listen to feedback. By being on hand with methods like live-chats, they can interact with customers and prove that they are there for them when they need them.

The next chapter…

Throw away the misconception that millennials are still ungrateful teenagers – they’re much older than you think, so it’s time to take a different approach.

Millennials are branching out into new stages of their lives, putting them on a collision course with new brands and services. They’re becoming more family focused and taking time away from screens to focus on other activities. If the fight for their attention wasn’t already difficult enough, it just got a whole lot harder, so brands need to think about how their changing lifestyles open up new avenues of engaging with them. 

Looking for the latest social media statistics to fuel your strategy, growth, and ROI? It’s your lucky day.

Social media’s growth is showing no signs of slowing down. The scene is changing rapidly, with new apps and channels popping up to cater for ever-more specific consumer needs. 

To supercharge your social media marketing strategy, you need to understand why people are behaving the way they are. It’s a pretty big deal.

To get you started here are the 10 biggest social media statistics for 2023 that all marketers should know about.

1. What are the most popular social media platforms? 

There are some clear winners in the global race for social media domination. Outside of China, Facebook is still the most widely used app worldwide and has a lot of staying power among younger consumers. There’s often a huge focus on trending platforms, but Facebook is still incredibly popular and shouldn’t be overlooked.

But which platforms are the favorites? WhatsApp and Instagram are the most-loved outside of China, with 21% of users saying one or the other of these is their favorite.

WhatsApp is especially popular among older groups, so don’t neglect it if boomers or Gen X are your target audience.

Instagram is a firm favorite among Gen Z (30%), with WhatsApp in a fairly distant second place (18%).

Knowing which platforms resonate with your target market is key. Trending apps often generate the most excitement, but platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram still have strong appeal.

2. What are people using social media for?

The number of TikTokers in Western markets who say they use the platform to keep up-to-date with news has risen by 41% in the last two years. There’s also been a 52% increase in the number using it to find information about products and brands during this period.

North Americans’ most distinctive reasons for using social media platforms are keeping in touch, posting about their lives, and filling up spare time. In APAC, on the other hand, watching livestreams is the most stand out motivation, while finding products takes the top slot in Latin America.

Interestingly, engagement with TikTok has increased most among older consumers, demonstrating its cross-generational appeal. These older consumers are using social media for a wide variety of reasons and expanding their use cases for different sites.

3. How is time spent on social media changing?

In 2023 the average daily use of social media worldwide dropped for the second time since we began tracking it in 2012. Of the 48 markets we’ve tracked since Q1 2022, users’ daily time spent on social media has declined in 36 of them. 

Looking deeper into generational data sheds light on this change. The number of Gen Z in the US who say they’re trying to limit their time on social media has grown 15% since Q1 2022. Blasting the misconception that younger consumers are glued to social media, this insight proves they’re taking time to step away from screens, something we cover in our Gen Z report.

4. Which generation’s use of social media is growing fastest?

Prepare for a slight surprise. Since Q1 2020, baby boomers’ daily use of mobile has increased by 35 minutes (that’s up 31%), driven at least partly by their growing love of social media.

Baby boomers’ daily use of social media is up by 14 minutes (+18%) since Q1 2020,  the most of any generation. 

The pandemic created barriers that pushed many baby boomers to increase their time on social and mobile. They were forced to play “digital catch-up” to remain connected with family and friends and get their basic essentials.

The really interesting thing is that today, years later, instead of returning to pre-pandemic usage levels, boomers’ time on both social media and mobile has continued to rise. It seems that now they’ve got over their initial reluctance, they’re firm converts, and that their increased use of social media wasn’t just a lockdown fad.

5. How are different generations worried about social media overuse?

There’s a growing awareness across the board that too much time spent on social media can have a negative effect.

Overall, 28% of social media users are worried they overuse their chosen platforms.

That said, there are huge differences by age, with 35% of Gen Z acknowledging this fear, compared to only 23% of Gen X, and 18% of baby boomers. 

These insights may help explain our earlier stat on why Gen Z are spending less time on social media. Factors like mental health may play a role here, as just 30% say they’re comfortable talking about it – a figure that’s declined by 8% since Q2 2020. 

The rise of the de-influencer and a craving for authenticity are also likely to be pushing younger generations away from fake, filtered versions of reality. More on this next.

6. What’s the importance of social media for brand discovery?

78% of internet users say they use some form of social media when looking for more information on brands.

Social media is being increasingly used as an inspiration tool, with almost 3 in 10 Gen Z using it to get inspired. Since Q1 2019, “finding new ideas or inspiration” has jumped from 9th to 6th place as a reason for using the internet, overtaking product research in the process.

Older consumers have embraced this trend too – the number of baby boomers who use social media to find products to purchase has jumped from 6th to 4th place between Q1 2021 and Q1 2023.

These stats show why it’s so important to incorporate social media into your digital marketing strategy. You don’t have to be on every social platform, but as this data makes clear, you do need some sort of solid social media presence. Because if social media users can’t find you, then your more discoverable competitor will do just fine.

7. Which social media apps are big in China?

Xiaohongshu – known as “Little Red Book” or just “RED” internationally – is a social ecommerce app that enables users to discover and share product reviews, recommendations, and experiences.

Brands have been betting big on this platform, and it’s easy to see why. Daily users of Xiaohongshu in China have grown by 22% since Q1 2021, more than Douyin (the same app that the rest of the world calls TikTok) at 13%, or WeChat (the world’s largest instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app) at 14%.

8. What’s the latest social media trend among Gen Z?

While videos remain popular for Gen Z, it’s audio that’s gaining the most traction right now.

17% of Gen Z say they send a voice note at least once a day.

It’s not hard to understand why. Young people are sometimes criticized by their older counterparts for not picking up the phone and relying on texting too much. There might be some truth to this: Gen Z in the US and UK are the least likely of all generations to make a phone call, but they’re the generation most likely to send voice notes at least daily – 28% more likely than older generations. 

9. Do people trust social media influencers?

It’s a mixed picture that changes significantly by age. 33% of Gen Z say they trust influencer recommendations a lot/completely, compared to just 13% of baby boomers.

That said, brands can still build trust in older generations and appeal to younger consumers in the process.

One place we see this is in advertising. By featuring older influencers and showcasing diverse body types, brands like Dove can not only appeal to older consumers but also meet the demands of younger generations who value authenticity and inclusivity. This approach can bridge the gap between generations and foster a sense of connection and relatability.

10. How is social media shopping changing?

In North America, the number of people who use either Facebook Marketplace or Instagram Shopping every month has grown by 16% since Q1 2021.

The impact of social shopping varies worldwide, and is continuously changing. Consumers in Latin America come out top for clicking on sponsored posts or ads on social media, while social media users in North America are most likely to make in-app purchases.

Brands should prioritize creating seamless and convenient shopping experiences within social platforms. Integrated features that enable users to buy directly from posts has the potential to really enhance the shopping experience so they’ll come back for more. And what retailer doesn’t want that?