blog Archives - Page 3 of 45 - Mindstream Media Group

Mindstream Media Group Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Dillard’s

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Lisa Wytrwal

On September 11, Mindstream Media Group celebrates a 20-year business relationship with Dillard’s. We are proud to have maintained such a lengthy partnership with the national department store chain, as it confirms the value provided to the brand through innovative and impactful advertising and media strategy. We are looking to the future and are excited to continue bringing integrated, multichannel solutions with positive business results to the Dillard’s brand.

Dillard’s Inc. was founded by William T. Dillard in 1938 in Nashville, Arkansas and is now headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Dillard’s Inc. department store chain now ranks among the nation’s largest fashion retailers, with 250 locations and 32 clearance centers spanning 29 states and operates online at dillards.com.

Dillard’s “focuses on delivering style, quality and value to its customers by offering premium fashion apparel, beauty and home collections from both national and exclusive brand sources. Dillard’s complements this curated merchandise assortment with exceptional, client-focused customer care.”

When Dillard’s joined the agency client roster in 2001 (formerly as Southwest Media Group), it grew the size of the agency business by almost 50 percent. It also was the first of many retail clients to follow. Now, 20 years later, the partnership continues to grow and evolve along with the rapidly changing media landscape.

About Mindstream Media Group

Mindstream Media Group is a national, full-solution media agency comprised of bold, strategic advisors who exist to Fast-Forward Your Business. We understand the need for urgency at all times, operating at an energetic pace to deliver meaningful progress on well-defined goals. With a full range of digital and traditional capabilities, Mindstream Media Group works with national and multi-location brands to scale momentum and growth.

[Case Study]: Omni-Channel Digital Campaign Drives 19% Increase in Sales

Posted on August 31, 2021September 9, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Bonchon Chicken, a South Korean-based international fried chicken restaurant franchise, struggled with a lack of brand awareness but enjoyed an almost cult following among food enthusiasts with their crispy fried chicken wings and unique flavors. They needed a media partner that could help them not only gain awareness and new customers but drive online orders while indoor dining was restricted due the pandemic. It was also critical that the strategy be scalable to accommodate the anticipated growth in the number of franchise locations. After being introduced by their creative agency and long-time Mindstream partner, we began collaborating with the Bonchon marketing team to create a recipe for success by leveraging a digital-first media plan with mouth-watering creative.

Challenge

Lift awareness for 90+ locations and capture demand for delivery and online order options during the pandemic shutdown.

Design a streamlined grand opening media strategy to scale with the growth of franchise locations quickly and efficiently.

Solution

We took a holistic, full-funnel approach with a variety of tactics to reach consumers at every stage of the customer journey. Multi-channel digital marketing campaigns including paid search, paid social and programmatic display were deployed around each of Bonchon’s 90+ locations driving customers to order online for delivery or pick-up at their local restaurant. Lifting awareness and capturing demand for these options during key (pandemic shutdown) times played a pivotal role in generating a positive outcome.

Our account setup and structure created efficiencies that allowed the ad budget to be utilized to reach a more relevant and targeted audience. We implemented first-party data to exclude current customers from prospecting and search campaigns. For a more relevant ad experience, messaging was also segmented to serve different creative to previous and new website visitors. Tracking on the online order site allowed campaigns to be optimized to the conversion point furthest down the funnel while Google Local campaigns were optimized to helped increase foot traffic and sales as well. Our responsiveness to creative changes, starts/stops, Grand Openings and LTO promotions also contributed to the success of the campaign.

Focused on the customer journey, we activated a multi-channel campaign and optimized towards KPIs that aligned with each tactic’s position along the path to purchase.

Results

Mindstream helped introduce Bonchon to new audiences who were hungry for something different; Bonchon did the rest. Year-over-year performance shows significant growth in sales as well as gains in efficiency.

Sales: 19% increase
Online Order CPA: 18% improvement
Paid Social CPA: 32% improvement
Paid Search Conversion Rate: 59% increase

Vice President of Marketing at Bonchon, Christina Coy loves our work. “I just wanted to thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put forth for Bonchon. We’re loving these numbers and appreciate all the support you’ve provided whenever we had issues with LinkedIn or with the online ordering site.

You’re an amazing team and I’m thrilled we brought you on board to be a part of the Bonchon team!

Thanks again for being such great partners.”

Meet the Mindstreamer – Amber Helton

Posted on August 18, 2021August 18, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Based in the agency’s Dallas headquarters, Amber Helton oversees client strategy campaigns within multiple media platforms, works closely with clients to recommend the right platform for their goals, builds social campaigns and manages their launches.

A lover of all things social media and a self-proclaimed member of “team TikTok,” Amber knew she wanted to pursue a career in social media. “I am really interested in helping brands, companies and businesses build up their brand and reputation, and help them reach their goals through an advertising perspective verses an organic approach.”

What Amber likes best about her role with the agency are the challenges inherent in the media industry and in working with multiple accounts and platforms. “I love the challenges that clients bring to us! My mantra is “you learn something new every day”–and that is certainly true working at Mindstream Media Group and in the advertising industry. Platforms are always changing in the digital realm of marketing. I love hearing about new opportunities platforms are bringing to us that really excite our clients, and learning more and more where the people are, what platforms are trending and how we can reach and exceed our clients’ goals through them.”

To stay informed, Amber keeps up with the latest news from Social Media Today and the Daily Carnage, listens to the Up First podcast by NPR to know what is going on in the U.S. and other countries and follows Digital Chadvertising on Instagram.

Amber is also inspired by her agency coworkers, although she claims it’s a little “cheesy.” “I really enjoy working with our social team. They continue to encourage me and help me grow every day. My team inspires me. I know, cheesy.”

Her almost two-year tenure with Mindstream has taught Amber a lot in a relatively short amount of time. She loves the industry’s fast-paced style and constantly changing landscape and shares the following advice to someone pursuing a career in this field, “I definitely recommend that you keep an open mind to change because social media platforms are always bringing in new updates and opportunities for clients. If you love a challenge and coming up with new ways of thinking outside of the box, join in! There is always an opportunity to learn something new and expand your knowledge.”

One interesting development in the media landscape that Amber notes in her time with the agency is how fast TikTok grew into popularity, and as a result, how quickly other platforms responded to compete. She has also become the agency’s resident “TikTok expert” and recently presented to her coworkers on the value of this platform. Amber also compiled a helpful article for marketers, Harness the Power of TikTok For Your Brand and invites future conversations on how to best utilize the platform, “I am always open to discuss this ever-growing app.”

Amber truly embraces challenges as opportunities and prides herself and her team on overcoming them for clients. “When clients come to us with social strategies that seem impossible, I am so proud when we do the work and make growth happen for them.”

Some of Amber’s hobbies include traveling with friends, reading, trying new restaurants, volunteering with Watermark Community Church and walking her new black lab puppy. She also loves to cook, listens to 90s-2000s rock music and is a huge My Chemical Romance fan.

An enormous part of what makes Mindstream Media Group successful is the collective talent and collaboration of its employees across the country. While we as an agency love to share stories about client successes, industry news and product updates on our MMG Blog, we also want to feature the actual people behind the work we are doing to grow client business.

Our recent video series, Fast-Forward the Conversation, discusses the HOW behind supporting client growth through media strategy, with topics like shopper marketing, franchise work, QSR challenges, agency partnerships and more.

We’re also now featuring a Mindstreamer (as we like to call ourselves) periodically to share their stories and celebrate the diverse people, backgrounds, interests and qualities that make us unique.

[Video]: Measuring The Unmeasurable: A Unique Approach to OOH Attribution

Posted on August 12, 2021August 12, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Varo Bank is a mobile-only neobank providing financial services through its mobile app. The transformational brand turned to Mindstream Media Group to raise brand awareness and drive app downloads in the rapidly growing and fiercely competitive category. In this episode of Fast-Forward the Conversation we discuss how our partners at Billups helped us measure OOH and its impact on app downloads in a successful, first-of-its-kind, conclusive study with exciting results.

We believe the daily pressure on CMOs to move their business forward is real, intense and not going away. Join our media practitioners as we discuss the HOW behind making meaningful progress on well-defined targets.

Catch the Highlights

Varo, an app banking solution, came to us for help with their national brand launch in Q1 2021. The goal was to begin with a test in 6 markets to increase brand awareness for their relatively unknown brand. While the ask was to increase brand awareness, we knew there would also be an expectation of measuring app downloads and conversion activity as well.
We began by researching Varo’s target audience, “The Builder,” to learn how they live, work and play. We found that they typically commute and may not own their transportation so they frequently take the bus or subway. This led us to incorporate non-traditional placements beyond billboards and posters into our OOH strategy to reach the target audience. Additionally, we learned that the audience is comprised of bright, vibrant people who like to go out and have a good time, making impactful units in entertainment areas or near restaurants or downtown areas a perfect fit.
We partnered with Billups for two primary reasons.
1. Their ability to access the inventory of hundreds of providers. Based on our clearly defined parameters, they were able to quickly and easily select the most appropriate units to reach the target audience.
2. Their measurement capabilities. Aside from a consistent methodology across all units regardless of the vendor, they also have cutting-edge measurement techniques for conversion attribution.
Billups already had the ability to understand lift in website and location visitation based on exposure to OOH advertising, but their data science team took that a step further. Within 48 hours they built a one-of-a-kind solution for attributing app downloads to OOH advertising.
Another reason for the campaign’s success was culture-crushing creative like hand-painted wallscapes and an interactive AR filter designed to “change the face of money.”
Results:
- Mobile devices exposed to the OOH were 2.6 times more likely to download the Varo app than those that were not exposed.
- According to brand health surveys, a high percentage of exposed audiences would now consider downloading the Varo banking app in the next 6 months.
- Across the 6 test markets launched in Q1, all channels combined showed about an 11% average incremental increase in app downloads with some markets as high as 30%.

Meet the Mindstreamer – John Hughes

Posted on August 4, 2021August 4, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Since starting his marketing career with Mindstream Media Group just a few short months ago, John Hughes has learned from the industry’s best and continues to expand his knowledge of all things related to search marketing. As a Media Associate, Paid Search in our St. Louis office, John helps build and supervise the execution of client campaigns, and also aids his team with keyword research, writing ad copy and structuring campaigns based on clients’ business goals.

In the rapidly evolving marketing industry, what excites John the most about his job is the fact that no two days are alike. “Every day I learn something new that I can apply to my role. I love how fast paced this job is and there is always something new to discover.”

John first became interested in marketing after his brother and sister both pursued careers in the industry. From shadowing his older siblings in their college classes as well as their current places of work, John fell in love with the marketing industry and knew that’s where he was meant to be. Crediting his current role as his “first marketing job out of college,” John was nervous to dive right in, but also excited to take on new challenges and opportunities.

Despite his short tenure thus far, John shares some words of wisdom for anyone wanting to pursue a career in this industry. He recommends constantly staying up to date on the latest technology, trends and industry news, and does so himself by following AdAge, Digiday, Adweek and Search Engine Land. John adds, “Another piece of advice I would give is not to be afraid to ask for help. There is so much to learn and understand in this industry and that extra help can be very beneficial.”

Being newer to the industry gives John the opportunity to learn and develop his expertise daily. “Every day I am being introduced to something new. From creating a campaign in Google Editor to managing campaign budgeting, I have covered a lot of ground in just a few months. The training has been amazing and support from everyone at Mindstream has been incredible. I think it’s great to work as a team to overcome obstacles and prepare for what the future may hold.”

In his spare time, John enjoys grilling, traveling, going to concerts, going on float trips, hiking and watching the Colorado Rockies. He played college baseball and can also play the piano.

John is optimistic about his team, his role and his future career path. “From just my brief time with Mindstream, my experience has been wonderful. I cannot thank my search marketing team enough for all of their support and for welcoming me to the Mindstream family. I cannot wait for the future as I continue to learn and grow with the company.”

And on a personal note, he’s always ready to chat and find common interests with coworkers and beyond. “I am always interested in any new music and recipe suggestions and always down to talk anything baseball so please feel free to message me!”

Leveraging the Industry’s Top Research Tools

Posted on July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

As an agency, Mindstream Media Group invests over $1 million annually in the media industry’s best research, intelligence and analytics tools, which help to define and drive our media recommendations, as well as help our agency partners flourish.

Whether we are forming a comprehensive media partnership with another agency or working as a consulting partner for services like media buying, reporting or analytics, we’re able to leverage these valuable industry tools to guide and inform our strategies and maximize success for all parties involved. Our agency and client partners rely on us, as well as our tools, to answer challenging questions and propel their brands forward.

In some instances, we’re filling the gap for agency partners that have found themselves with limited media and research capabilities after the last year of possibly shifting or reducing resources.

While all of our tools like Nielsen, SQAD, eMarketer, SEMRush and Comscore provide value to our clients and partners, the top three that we use most are Kantar, Pathmatics and MRI-Simmons.

Here’s a closer look at each.

Kantar

We rely on Kantar to gain insight into the competitive landscape from a directional sense on where brands are spending across traditional and digital media. Kantar is an advertising intelligence tool that helps our clients’ creative, paid, owned and earned media be more effective. With the ability to research competitive activity and spend, including traditional (TV, radio, print and OOH) and some digital spend, as well as view competitive creative placement and assets, Kantar allows us to measure and optimize the effectiveness of content and activity across all media channels and provides actionable insights to improve performance. We are also able to understand how and where consumers are seeing client and competitive content and gain insight into how each channel impacts the brand, market share and sales growth.

Kantar helps advertisers stay ahead of the competition by giving access to industry spend and media mix trends, the ability to view and analyze competitive brand investments and evaluate creative messaging strategies. Kantar also helps brands understand their own campaigns’ performance to help gauge and optimize omnichannel strategies.

Source: Kantar

Recently, Kantar used analytics to determine what consumers expect from brands in regard to the social justice and human rights movements. By conducting contextual research on personal values and actions, and combining that with Kantar’s artificial intelligence tools, they were able to identify consumer trends related to their personal values. They found “demand for values showing momentum including bravery and improvement, while actions such as donations, supporting black-owned and anti-racism are likely to disrupt.”

At Mindstream Media Group we use Kantar in developing RFPs, client media planning and for identifying agency growth opportunities, as well as to aid clients with their own projects. MedStar Health, a hospital system based in the Northeast U.S., inquired about a recent competitive ad that had just started running on TV. Since TV data as recent as two days prior is available in Kantar, we were able to quickly identify and view those ads, find out when and where they started running, how many times they had run in each market, as well as pull the spend data, thus aiding in determining the competitive messaging strategy. We were then able to provide a more detailed competitive overview back to the client.

Pathmatics

Recently acquired by Sensor Tower, Pathmatics is a suite of marketing intelligence tools that help our team better understand the marketplace to identify key opportunities for clients. It allows us to get an idea of spend by brand and shows how creative messaging changes throughout the year. This has been especially helpful given the challenges using the right voice and messaging to resonate with consumers throughout the pandemic. Pathmatics allows us to create data-driven digital marketing strategies based on marketplace trends, competitive spend, messaging and budget allocation.

Pathmatics’ competitive spend tools for digital media provide robust insight into the most difficult to track ads like targeted and retargeted, mid- and post-roll, click-to-play video and even ads behind paywall sites and walled gardens. Spend data for multiple platforms is available including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, as well as video and display channels.

Using Pathmatics, we’re able to quickly understand creative, targeting, device, buying and media placement strategies of advertisers across the digital space. We can research which brands are spending on specific channels, how much they’re spending, see share of voice achieved and the creative messaging being used. We can compare strategies of a set of advertisers within an industry, analyze tactics across industries or drill into a single brand to gain competitive insight.

Source: Pathmatics.com

For example, imagine you’d like to know when your competitor’s ads are running, where they’re appearing and the number of impressions they’re receiving to identify gaps in coverage that can be used as an opportunity for your brand. Or perhaps you’re looking for intel to help design creative that will stand out from the crowd while resonating with your target audience. Pathmatics can provide all of these details and more and even shows the ads on the sites on which they appear.

MRI-Simmons

MRI-Simmons helps us identify and paint a more complete picture of an audience segment by going beyond demographics to reveal their attitudes, opinions and beliefs. This consumer and media analysis tool allows us to access consumer insights such as demographics, psychographics, brand affiliations and media consumption trends. Powered by thousands of attitudinal and behavioral data points obtained through ongoing surveys and passive measurement techniques, MRI-Simmons sheds light on the “why” behind consumer behavior. This level of granularity gives us the ability to drill down to the local level and target specific market segments.

We rely on the MRI-Simmons Insights Platform to quickly access consumer intelligence that allows us to identify behaviors that can be used to shape target audiences and media strategies. With the platform’s powerful search engine, we can gain a better understanding of specific consumer sets, efficiently build segments and develop personas. By reviewing historical trend reports we can learn more about particular behaviors and the mindset of a select audience. We’re able to identify media preferences and consumption habits as well as determine the interests and motivations of consumers.

Source: MRISimmons.com

This tool was the perfect solution to help an agency partner develop user personas for a new business prospect. We began by plugging in the prospect’s demographic data to identify media behaviors (where they consume, what they are watching/reading, etc.) and touchpoints by time of day as well as the factors that influence their purchases. This allowed us to better understand who these consumers are and paint a clear picture by creating a “day in the life” for each. Using raw data like indices and projected percent of the population, we were able to create a full-blown presentation of various personas, complete with names which really helped build the story for the overall pitch that was being prepared.

Complementary Insights Provide Holistic Viewpoint

The various insights gleaned from each of these tools is often combined to create a more comprehensive outlook. For example, Kantar, Pathmatics and MRI-Simmons were all used at various stages of a market research project conducted for a client seeking to expand into a new market with a new concept of their business. Kantar and Pathmatics were used to identify competitive activity like spend levels and placements in two markets to assess the potential to dominate a particular channel. One market clearly stood out by investment alone with $40+ million in expenditures compared to $3 million. Using another of our market research tools, SQAD, we took a deeper look at costs by market to determine which was actually the most efficient.

We then utilized MRI-Simmons Insights at the local level for each market to analyze concentration of the target audience. While both areas were top growing markets, one was slightly larger than the other; however, we found that the target audience made up a larger percentage of the total population in the smaller market. MRI-Simmons Insights also allowed us to analyze the media consumption habits of the target audience at the local market level. This was then compared to the highest indexing media channels to assess overlap with the gaps identified earlier where we found less competitive noise. Finally, current market conditions like the number of competitors, trends in unemployment rates, home values, tourism, etc. were evaluated to determine if one market was growing at a faster rate than the other. This collective intel was used to create a scorecard for each market which informed our overall market recommendation.

All three of these tools were also used to craft a successful digital media strategy for newcomer Varo in the fiercely growing and competitive neobank category. MRI-Simmons was used to analyze target audience media consumption habits and identify over-indexing media channels in select markets. We then used Kantar and Pathmatics to pull expenditure data for competitors and found they were spending heavily in the same tactics (primarily national TV and paid social) with limited expenditures in print, radio and OOH. When overlayed with the audience media consumption data, we found that radio and OOH indexed very high in these markets making these channels a clear winner for connecting with the target audience with less noise from competitors.

The value that each of these industry research tools brings is undeniable. Even better, brands and agencies can leverage our access to these tools through strategic partnerships and project work. At Mindstream Media Group, we are built to be an extension of your team, working closely with you to drive better results for your business. Whether you’re with a brand or an agency, if you’re looking for a partner to help take your work to the next level, connect with us to explore the opportunities.