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Beyond metrics — Imagination 2020 trend

22 January 2020
blurred people walking past a white wall

As part of our series exploring the major experience trends of 2020, our Lead Data Strategist, Zhao Zhang, explores the importance of measuring the effectiveness of brand experiences.

What outcomes do my marketing investments generate? This is a question that almost every marketer, both brand owners and agencies, will need to answer at the end of a campaign — no matter if there’s a proper measurement plan or not. IPA Culture First paper showed that over three quarters of organisations have increased resource, or created major new decision/reporting systems for effectiveness in the last three years.

Measuring the effectiveness of brand experiences is not only important to demonstrate the value of marketing investment, but also helps us learn where to improve. The advent of integrated data and measurement tools now allow us to analyse the data and gain insights in real-time, therefore taking actions to improve the ROI while it's still live, not just a post learning afterwards. This is a really important development.

Who did it well?

Jaguar Land Rover global motor shows

Imagination delivers a motor show programme with Jaguar Land Rover annually. The motor show platform showcases key product benefits in a digitally connected space with a series of immersive and interactive experiences. Behind the scenes of the experience, there is a real-time measurement system that tracks the performance of the event, including footfall of visitors, dwell time, digital interactions, CRM leads and social listening. From day one, the data is monitored and analysed to generate insights to feedback to the project team. They have been used to optimise the experience where it can. For example, data showed one of the most compelling activations (proven by qualitative survey) wasn’t getting the level of interactions we expected. We inferred that the layout of the activation wasn’t welcoming, and was putting users off entering the area to interact and learn. We made a simple change to rotate the screen 180 degrees so they were facing out of a circle, It resulted in an 86% increase in engagements immediately.

Jaguar Land Rover vehicles

Formula One events

Formula One is using sensor technology to detect visitors footfall and movement. Using this data and insights, organisers can understand where people are in real time, identify hot spots, and stats such as repeat visits and dwell time. Looking at peak foot-fall periods and areas has helped F1 to identify new revenue streams, such as concert attendees and fanzone participants. In line with this, F1 is also making changes to merchandise store placements and size, in favour of taking merchandise to attendees in the stands directly.

Formula One

What to consider — three key insights

With many years experience of measuring brand experiences, we have developed XPKit, a technology layer that enables us to monitor, assess and evolve individual journeys through them in real time. There are three key pillars we believe will play a big impact on measurement of brand experiences:

  1. Build a connected experience ecosystem

We now live in a much more connected world. When measuring a brand experience, it’s important to connect all the touch points and integrate this data to create a complete view of the experience. Digital and physical need merge into one ecosystem - including footfall, mobile, brand activation, web, social and CRM.

  1. Agile optimisation

Sometimes brand experiences are limited to physical layout and design, it’s not as easy as optimising the web experience when building a website. However, if we plan ahead, we can identify the opportunity areas to be prepared for optimisation practice. For example, modular design may provide the flexibility of moving things around to optimise the visitor flow. Digital activations can utilise AI to optimise the choices of content based on previous users’ behaviour.

  1. Live lab

With the advance of other tracking technologies such as emotional detection, wearables, haptic tech, there are opportunities for brands to turn measurements into a live lab to enhance the experience; brands can trigger engagements based on mood or other type of user data, making a responsive experience, and transform the key touchpoints with a stronger connected call to action.

Click here to explore the other major trends shaping the world of experience in 2020.