Insights to Action Series [Part 7 – Brand Overlap]

Insights to Action Series
[Part 7 – Brand Overlap]

By Liz Emery, Senior Director, Product Marketing

Insights to Action Series [Part 7 – Brand Overlap]

Welcome back to Affinity’s “Insights to Action” blog series, exploring how to use Consumer Purchase Insights to solve complex business problems. Consumer Purchase Insights provides a complete, granular view of customer and prospect purchase behaviors, across and between brands and categories, to inform a wide array of growth strategies based on deeper audience understanding. This is part 6 of an 8-part series where we dive into different examples of how to gain insights into – who your consumers are, how they spend, and where they buy – to inspire meaningful action. If you want to read about market share, cross shop, new to brand, churn and loyalty, check out the first 5 blogs below.

Part 7: Brand Overlap

Brand Overlap analysis is understanding where else your customers shop or the overlap of shoppers between brands. It’s hard to walk through a Target and not notice their strong collaborations, from in-store Starbucks locations to designer partnerships with Zac Posen, Missoni and Lilly Pulitzer. These collaborations are exciting for both Target customers as well as the partner customers, offering a diverse set of brands throughout the store (and online) to enhance the experience. By running a brand overlap analysis, marketers and brands can answer key questions about who they should align with.

How much customer overlap do I have with Brand A?
Is it worth providing shelf space for Brand B products in my store?
What brands resonate the best with my Gen Z demographic?
How much are Boomers spending with Brand C?

The Problem

Having a solid strategy in place to measure the potential impact of a collaboration and sponsorships with the right or wrong partner is key to making the right decisions. Aligning with the wrong brand can impact everything from brand perception to actual sales, however, aligning with the right brands can open the door for new customers and increased return. So how do brands do this the right way? Affinity Solutions has purchase metrics that can be used to measure Brand Overlap and inform proper decisioning.

Using Insights to Create an Action Plan

Collaborations

There are many questions brands should be asking before choosing a collaboration. At Affinity, we recommend starting with “what is the customer portfolio of Brand A or the potential partner?” Diving deeper to understand the extent the brands share the same customers and equally important, to what extent does each brand A or the potential partner reach unique, unshared customers? Perhaps Brand A reaches a younger consumer than the main brand. Perhaps Brand A reaches a more affluent consumer. Understanding the overlap and sizing the pie can help both the main brand and the potential partner better understand the opportunity.

Evaluating an Advertising Platform/Publisher

Let’s flip the switch and look at brand overlap from a different angle. Brand A is considering advertising in a national news outlet and wants to better understand the shopper/reader overlap. The national news outlet wants to demonstrate the value of their readership to Brand A. By understanding the overlap, both parties have a way to discuss shared and unique audience reach. Drilldowns are important here; Affinity Solutions can deconstruct any part of the Venn diagram. What is the overall overlap, by market, by demographic, for each part of Venn diagram.

Sponsorships

Sponsorship is another use case for brand overlap. Let’s say the NFL wants a large QSR to consider becoming an official sponsor of the NFL. The ad sales team at the NFL needs the data to tell this story, and the QSR needs the data to understand the potential reach of the investment. Consider the following data in telling this story. From the table below we can see that 31% of NFL fans also ate at this QSR, while the remaining 69% were exclusive to the NFL. Think of the 31% as existing QSR customers and the 69% as potentially new to the brand. There is both a loyalty and acquisition opportunity here for the brand.

Diving deeper, the map below breaks down the overlap by State. In West Virginia 47% of NFL fans also ate at this QSR in the past 12 months so the brand can look by market if the investment is worth it based on company priorities.

By using brand overlap insights, you can understand shared customers to identify the optimal co-branding and partnership opportunities. To learn more about Consumer Purchase Insights brand overlap reach out to Sales@affinitysolutions.com.

That wraps up Insights to Action [Part 7 – Brand Overlap]! Stay tuned for Insights to Action [Part 8 – Visitor Insights] where we dive into the importance of understanding consumer visitation and how it impacts marketing strategy.