A top FMCG brand in the food space felt that rather than continue with business as usual and setting budgets and marketing costs on historical understanding, they would like to use their data assets to improve the effectiveness of marketing spends, both ATL and BTL. Given that this brand operates in a large number of markets, with regional differences, the task was to build models at a market level with all key inputs that drives their sales. Over 14 different models were built and the final recommendation was to change the ATL/BTL mix in ATLs favour, focus on growth markets where the ROI was more robust and also suggested a mix of different sub- brands by market.
Specifically, while spend was reduced on BTL, most of the cuts were made in the activities that were either not working or returning a very poor ROI. This meant that the reduction in sales from the axed BTL activities was minimal and in some cases, there was zero reduction as these activities were actually redundant. The money thus saved was redeployed into much more effective channels including TV advertising, which had been neglected to an extent. Specific media plans were suggested for the mother brand and the sub-brand ensuring that spends are above the threshold level – and this lead to more visibility for the campaigns and a high uptick in sales. The media recommendation also suggested specific TV channels to be used and also the scheduling of spends.
The net result was a high growth in sales – more than double that of earlier years – all achieved without a change in budgets.
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.
With the regulatory regime changing for insurance companies, the focus is on sufficient capital to cover risk. One of the key aspects of this new regime is to estimate the probability of Surrender, Lapsation and Claims. With a well specified model, the insurance company was able to operate with the optimal capital based on the risk its portfolio carries.
Inventories in store comprise the largest investment in a fine jewellery business. For a chain of jewellery stores, the issue was to identify what SKUs to stock, in what quantities and in which outlet. The objective was to optimize the inventory at a store level. The secondary objective was to improve the new product indents for these stores given the history of sales by product types.