How Large Agencies Are Becoming More Creative With Data

Leo Burnett seems to be making serious efforts in changing the way their strategists and planners think. Their latest attempts include publishing a book titled ‘Humankind’ and now they have publicity revealed one tool they have developed, which is based on “behavioral archetypes.” Carol Foley, Burnett’s VP Director of Research Services, explains the initiative:

“Behavioral Archetypes” is based on a review of the theories followed by a series of research and development surveys and more than 10,000 interviews allowing for the classifications of 1,500 to 1,800 discreet behaviors. Based on the data, those behaviors were clustered into eight “buckets” along two axes.

… What we created was a data-informed way of organizing behavior. Data drove the organization. There’s huge quantitative research behind this, but we’re not encouraging people to use it in a quantitative way. What we’re saying is, “This is a way to help strategists think about behaviors and craft intentions.”… The central question that you’re trying to ask is, “What are people doing now with regard to a brand?” For example, if you said people are using cash instead of debit cards and we were advertising the debit card. If you interview enough people about why did they go in and buy the Slurpee for their kids and why did they use cash, you would eventually find that they don’t know. It’s just habit. ‘It’s less than $20, so I use cash.’

… When you come through a human lens you want to create behavioral tensions — you want to say you’re doing this, you could do this. By having what we call the behavioral enemy, it dramatically helps the planner be able to talk about what the desired behavior is.

This is a clear trend for large agencies, which are collecting and leveraging more data everyday. In 2009, Omnicom began hiring 300 employees to grow Annalect, a company dedicated to specialize in analytics and digital data.

The movement is expected to sweep nearly all large ad agencies; they have the man-power and resources to create these types of proprietary tools and specialized-companies. The core thing to focus on is whether it will simply create tools that enhance the insights of strategists and planners, or simply slow down the process of delivering them to clients.

AdAge: “Oh, Behave. Leo Burnett’s New Tool Will Tell You Why You Do”