An Alco-Bev major wanted to understand the sizes of each of the categories of alcohol such as Whisky, Vodka and so on into the future for a plan strategy for a 5 year period. Over 15 years of sales data by SKU was available. RainMan also collected environmental data such as per capita income, growth of certain demographic segments as well as the growth of other categories where data was available.
In such instances ARIMA models are built on the trend but generally do not take other factors into account. To get a better and more sensitive estimate, RainMan built an ARIMA PLUS model by bringing in relevant factors from the environment. This produced estimates which were more realistic especially in a fast evolving market which had been seeing a lot of dynamism.
The advantage of this methodology is that ROI of key digital channels can be compared and spends optimized in line with these insights, significantly improving overall efficiency.
The problem this CPG brand was faced with was a typical problem- Brand had presence across multiple connect points, paid media, owned media ( website, Facebook page etc) and earned media ( Twitter and other social mentions) but not knowing clearly what works across market clusters, and the interrelations between these connect points.
Using the insights derived from the modelling exercise, marketing budgets for various key inputs was reallocated in favour of digital using an advanced optimization process. This resulted in an additional 8% lift in sales, more than half its overall growth in the year.