Marketing Evolution (ME) is a leading consulting group dedicated to helping marketers maximize return on investment (ROI) for their advertising budgets. Improving yield on marketing budgets is a constant effort.
Budgets for Marketing Evolution’s multinational clients can involve allocations of $50M or more, while portfolios of multiple marketing campaigns often run into hundreds of millions, distributed among multiple media including newspapers, magazines, television, digital ads, radio spots and social media.
Founder and CEO Rex Briggs has authored the best-selling books SIRFs-Up and What Sticks, and is a pioneer in marketing analytics. Rex recognized Analytica as a versatile and innovative analytics platform and saw an opportunity to deliver interactive decision support directly to their clients with Analytica.
The challenge
Marketing Evolution assimilates large amounts of research data and produces models that quantify the effectiveness of advertising based on the spending level among hundreds of various media levers.
The modeling tool had to be able to automatically import research data from external sources, adjust algorithms based on user inputs, and quickly find optimal spending strategies for maximum ROI.
Beyond these basic requirements, the tool had to be part of a system that would allow clients to directly run the model online.
Why Analytica?
Analytica Decision Engine (ADE) with Optimizer was a perfect fit for this job. In addition to Analytica’s basic advantages in scalability and efficient data handling, ADE offered a server based solution that could run behind Marketing Evolution’s custom designed application programming interface (API).
Analytica also provided access to some of the most powerful optimization engines available. ME is currently running Gurobi. But software was only part of the solution. Consulting support was key to the successful deployment of this tool.
Marketing Evolution needed an experienced Analytica expert to help migrate their existing models, train staff, and explore new directions in their analysis.
“Analytica was powerful enough to meet 100% of our technical requirements, and it could get us up and running immediately. At the same time, it was extremely economical in terms of time and resource efficiency.”
– Po Chen, Director of Software Services
“Analytica makes it easy to deal with large datasets while enabling rapid revisions and implementation. Its scalability not only increases our sophistication but allows us to expand our client base.”
– Qian Situ, Director of Software Operations
The solution
It was easy to see the benefits of Analytica from the very start. Lumina Decision Analysts migrated their existing Excel model to Analytica and demonstrated a ten-fold improvement in optimization processing time.
Lumina trained Marketing Evolution’s modeling team and introduced them to new analytical approaches. The team quickly embraced the platform and began to expand their capabilities right away.
Integration with the custom API was smooth and easy. Within a few short months, their ROI optimizing model was available to their clients online.
The Marketing Evolution team continues to add new features and enhance the sophistication of their models. Their internal user base has also grown with their business.
As new directions are considered, we continue to support Marketing Evolution as a fully integrated partner. A broad knowledge base enables the Lumina team to propose conceptual as well as technical solutions.
The Analytica software, in combination with the support offered by the Lumina consulting team, has provided a foundation for innovation affecting the culture and the way of thinking within Marketing Evolution.
“Analytica is the backbone of our entire decision analytics platform. Its role in our success is immeasurable. It has become part of our company culture. When new ideas are proposed, our staff is always asking ‘How can we apply Analytica to this?’”
– Graeme Pillemer, Senior Marketing Analyst
Authors
For more
Check out Marketing Evolution‘s tool and website.
Read more about decision analytics best practices.
