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Unleash the power of CampaignPulse: Quick evaluations without compromising on quality

November 28, 2023

Karen Chandler


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Observation, sender recall, message comprehension, and liking are some of the key metrics collected by regular Campaign Evaluations. Did your consumer see your campaign? Did they know it was your brand? Did they understand the message you were trying to convey, and did it make them more likely to buy your brand?

CampaignPulse asks all of these questions, and then delves even deeper. What in particular resonates with consumers? How unique do they think your brand is? How does it compare with industry benchmarks? Does the ad align with consumer’s expectations of your brand? These are the factors that truly drive engagement and loyalty.

The best part of of a CampaignPulse evaluation? You can receive your insights whilst your campaign is running. These near-time results provide a distinct advantage in today’s fast-paced marketing landscape. If your campaign isn’t performing well and you only find out after the fact, the damage is already done. This flexibility is a game-changer, allowing you to respond agilely to consumer feedback, emerging trends, and the ever-evolving consumer landscape.

The pitfalls of a poorly executed campaign

If done incorrectly, your campaign may inadvertently be a boost for your competition. A lack of strong brand assets, such as tagline, colour palette, audio, and typography, can mean that the time and resources you’ve spent simply go to waste.

CampaignPulse helps you to minimise this risk by giving you a clear overview of which brand assets drive recognition and liking, which may inadvertently boost competitors, and how to mitigate this to create the strongest campaign.

Campaign Evaluations v. CamapignPulse

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Introducing AI Trend Boost by Nepa: Make your brand tracking data go further

October 04, 2023

Woman with red hair working on laptop

Karen Chandler


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Survey-led brand tracking is a constant trade-off between accuracy and cost. The larger the sample size, the more reliable the insights, but invariably the larger the budget required. Nepa’s AI Trend Boost is your solution.

This revolutionary machine-learning based approach takes historical tracking data, analyses context and covariance between key variables, and then creates a model with the same accuracy as a sample with five times the data. It also reduces sampling variances by up to 75%, bringing you closer than ever to your consumer.

– Offers a 5 times increase in the depth and granularity of your data

– Enhances low incidence target groups to create meaningful business insights

– Produces insights with the smoothness of a moving average, combined with the responsiveness of near-time data

How does AI Trend Boost Work?

If you have a small sample, unboosted raw data in your brand tracker can have notable weekly shifts. How do you make confident business decisions when you can’t tell what’s a concrete trend, and what is simply noise?

AI Trend Boost uses a proprietary algorithm to analyse several key data variables and past-time series data to generate an accurate model for your brand’s KPIs. It learns and improves over time – the more data it is given, the more refined its predictions become, making it an invaluable tool to optimise your brand’s performance and stay ahead of trends.

In almost all simulated cases, the output of a tracker with AI Trend Boost applied is far superior to a simple moving average in terms of real-life population trend accuracy, including in those with decreased sample sizes. Error metrics are reduced by up to 75%.

Plus, AI Trend Boost is easy to integrate into our core Brand Trackers, letting you effectively enhance your insights with a single click​.

Industry recognition for AI Trend Boost

AI Trend Boost’s Brand Noise Reduction methodology has been recognised by industry experts as cutting-edge technology, and it is trusted by the biggest global brands including IKEA.

“Applying Nepa’s Brand Noise Reduction algorithm to Marketing Mix Modelling really gives us peace of mind that we’re making decisions based on the best data possible.”​

​Brinda Matthew​, Head of Brand Marketing Performance, IKEA Canada​

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MTV trusts Nepa to prove TV advertising is key

MTV logo

The story

Launched in 1957, MTV was one of Europe’s first commercial TV companies. Over the decades it has expanded from news and current affairs programming to include streaming services, free TV channels, multi-channel current news, and paid TV channels. MTV is part of Telia Company, one of the Nordics largest TV and telecommunications companies.

Today Finland’s leading commercial TV broadcasting company strategically leverages a long-term partnership with marketing intelligence company Nepa to prove that TV advertising is a key brand-building tool for the Finnish market.

“At MTV, our aim is to enable sustainable business growth for our clients by offering effective advertising solutions. Through our collaboration with Nepa, we have empowered our clients to substantiate impact that TV campaigns can deliver results for their brands.”

— Nina Eriksson, Insight Manager

People watching TV

The plan

MTV and Nepa have a long history of collaboration. Nepa had previously worked on Brand Tracking and Consumer Panel projects with MTV in Finland, along with other campaigns for their sister company TV4 in Sweden.
Adverts are a core component of MTV’s business so it was suggested that the Campaign Evaluations they were running for their advertisers should be managed by Nepa too. The company understood MTV’s business model and competitive landscape and could use this background to supercharge their Campaign Evaluations.

The result

Nepa’s Campaign Evaluations are used by MTV as part of their partnership with their advertising clients. Ads are tested to quantify the impact of the campaign and creative implementation. However, this is not where the benefits end for MTV.
Over the years Campaign Evaluation data was collected for lots of different industries, of lots of different sizes, with lots of different consumers. Nepa realised that more could be done with these insights, and MTV’s Meta Analysis was created. This report takes the historic data and quantifiably proves the benefits of TV advertising, and how it can help with long-term brand building.

The utilization of individual campaign measurements has contributed to the cultivation of enduring customer relationships with our advertising clients. Moreover, the implementation of the Meta Analysis has played a pivotal role in fostering a deeper comprehension and validation of the efficacy of TV and program sponsorship advertising. said Nina Eriksson, Insight Manager.

The result

1957

launched

330

employees

2019

acquired by Telia

Our Approach

We convert data into
opportunities for growth

Marketing is an investment

Many brands are seeing budget cuts. But focusing only on short-term goals means you can miss the contribution of long-term brand building to growth. To demonstrate the ROI of your marketing you need a team that is experienced in linking your brand KPIs to your company’s financial performance, over time. We help you make those connections, which are essential for making marketing decisions that drive growth.

Ensure brand relevance

As technologies, trends, and industries shift, so do your customers. You need to keep on the pulse of people’s perceptions and behaviours by understanding how your brand is used, its personality, and how your communications are working in order to make adjustments over time.

Select the right channels

Assessing the strength of each individual media channel helps you to focus on the right investments. But most media measurement does not integrate and evaluate all the different channels now available. Our Media Mix Modelling assesses the ROI of all media investments including social, allowing brands to make decisions around budgets for every media, execution, campaign duration, and creative.

Increase market share

There are several ways to increase market share. Sell more to existing customers. Expand your customer base. Sell through new channels. However, in order to choose the right option, you need to understand your potential customer base.

 

Our Market Segmentation gives you clear, useful information on both current and potential customers. It splits people into different groups based on needs and values, offering insights on how to grow your brand in these different markets.

Improve campaign performance

As media changes, so do people and their behaviour. To improve performance, you need to evaluate and evolve your campaigns constantly, so that you can make and measure adjustments over time. We help you find the right mix of channels, messaging, creative, and format to increase your impact and ROI.

OUR WIDER OFFER

Adapt to win

Our 360-degree, continuous approach shows how consumers think, helps realise growth potential, and demonstrates return on investment.

Marketing Mix Modelling

Adjust activity in near real-time with models that are continuously learning from your media activity, sales performance, and brand health.

Campaign Evaluation

Running campaigns is all about constant evaluation and evolution. Find the right mix of channels, messaging, creative, and format to get the most out of your communications.

Custom Modules

Use additional modules to manage pricing, brand personality, brand assets and category drivers and place customers at the heart of your marketing decisions.

CONTACT

Get in touch

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ESOMAR Congress 2023 Paper

September 22, 2023

ESOMAR Congress Papers 2023

Karen Chandler


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If, after all of our posts, you’re interested in reading the full paper behind our ESOMAR Congress 2023 presentation ‘The New Marketing Renaissance’, you can find it below.

The New Marketing Renaissance: The merging of creative work and scientific evaluation of communication‘ was co-authored by Karin Haglund, Cajsa Wirén, Oliver Engist, Hugo Englund, and Thomas Berthelsen. It looks into how new techniques can be applied to Marketing Mix Modeling to specifically measure creative quality, thereby providing insights on how this quality relates directly back to market effectiveness. If you have any questions, do please get in touch.

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Nepa in Amsterdam | ESOMAR Congress 2023

September 15, 2023

Karen Chandler


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ESOMAR Congress is over for another year, and what a Congress it was for Nepa. Artificial Intelligence was the buzz word of the week, with sessions on topics such as using predictive analytics and natural language processing to revolutionise your marketing strategy and unlocking travel’s new frontier with AI-powered dream destination bookings. And we were also there to talk AI!

The Young ESOMAR Society (YES) Awards

Nepa Data Scientist Valere Demelier was chosen as one of the nine brightest young research minds to present at this year’s conference. A 60-second pitch was voted on by conference attendees, and the three with the most votes were invited back the next day to showcase their full presentation.

Valere’s topic was the one on everyone’s lips at the event – Artificial Intelligence. He showcased a project he worked on with a large global retailer who wanted to learn more about what their key personas searched for online.

AI and machine learning were used to cluster millions of search terms into specific segments, identifying which topics each digital consumer profile was interested in. Not only did machine learning speed up the analysis, but using GPT technology made the reporting more accurate.

Valere won silver for his presentation.

This year I was invited to ESOMAR Congress 2023 as a YES awards finalist, where I was delighted to have won the silver award. The congress was an incredible experience filled with inspiring presentations, innovative research projects, and new friends.

Amongst the many incredible papers presented one of my favourites was the brilliant “Uncovering the Human Voice for Deep Insights”. This presentation elegantly explored how consumers build relationships with brands they interact and over time develop “Brand Love”. The integration of market research and psychology concepts as well as advanced language modelling techniques created a compelling story rooted in sound research methods and powerful conclusions and real-world implications.”, said Valere.

The New Marketing Renaissance

Nepa‘s R&D Manager Cajsa Wirén joined forces with Klarna Bank‘s Global Consumer Insights Manger to present their talk on how to merge the creative with the technical.

There are high demands on marketers today. They need to produce content of such high quality that people actively want to consume it, whilst understanding the technicalities of tailoring content to the multitude of different channels. They also simultaneously need to not get lost in all the choices, and overlook the fundamentals for a successful campaign, be it objectives, measurement KPIs or execution: a true DaVincian feat!

The talk covered how new techniques can be applied to Marketing Mix Modeling to specifically measure creative quality, thereby providing insights on how this quality relates directly back to market effectiveness.

The full paper can be found here.

Dynata RISE Awards 2023

Nepa won the Market Research Agency category (EMEA) in Dynata’s 2023 RISE awards. Nepa’s Chief Product Officer Robert Beatus collected the trophy that assessed Dynata’s best-performing clients, with a focus on respondent engagement.
Read more about this award here.

Nepa’s Interim CEO Ferry Wolswinkel commented: “This was my first year at ESOMAR Congress, and what a first year it was. I was immensely proud to see Nepa’s Data Scientist Valere earn a well-deserved silver medal at the YES Awards, and receiving Dynata’s RISE award is truly a testament of the hard work put into our surveys by our teams globally.

I would also like to thank Klarna’s Karin Haglund for joining R&D Manager Cajsa Wiren on the Supercharger stage to present ‘The New Marketing Renaissance’. Such an inspiring session by both”.

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2023 RISE Award Winner: Nepa

September 11, 2023

Karen Chandler


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And our ESOMAR Congress continues to get better! Not only have two Nepians been chosen to impart some of their market research wisdom during the conference, but we’ve only gone and received an award! We are proud to announce that we won the Market Research Agency category (EMEA) in Dynata’s 2023 RISE awards.

The RISE “Recognising Innovation in Survey Engagement” awards are all about publicly recognising Dynata’s best-performing clients, with a focus on respondent engagement. Dynata has assessed all of their clients’ surveys over the last 12 months against 3 areas of respondent impact (efficiency, engagement, and trust) against 8 different variables, such as conversion rate, abandon rate, and survey length. Once analysed, the data was ranked and the top companies identified.

So what does this mean for Nepa? This means that clients can be assured that the insights collected are based on the best possible data, ensured by best-in-class respondent engagement. Winning this award is not just a testament to our dedication and expertise, but also a reflection of the value we place on research design, panellist engagement and operational best practices.

“Surveys are at the core of great research. This award reaffirms our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of data quality, ensuring that every insight we deliver is built on a foundation of trust.

I would like to say a massive thank you to our internal expert and client teams for making this award possible. From research and design to scripting and operations, their work is the foundation of every successful project.

Ferry Wolswinkel, Interim CEO
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Nepa at ESOMAR Congress 2023

August 16, 2023

Amsterdam canal side buildings

Karen Chandler


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It’s less than a month to this year’s ESOMAR Congress in Amsterdam, and we’re delighted to let you know you’ll have (possibly!) more than two chances to watch a Nepian in action.

Monday 11th September, 09.25

The Supercharger Stage

Nepa UK’s Data Scientist Valere Demelier is one of the finalists of the YES Awards, and during this 60-second elevator pitch will discuss AI for Consumer Digital Profiles. He will (very quickly!) take us through a recent project that utilised open AI’s embedding tool to distil shopper search queries into an embedded data frame, which was then subjected to unsupervised machine learning clustering to identify patterns among shoppers. 

Tuesday 12th September, 14.30

The Supercharger Stage

Nepa Sweden’s R&D Manager Cajsa Wirén will be presenting ‘The New Marketing Renaissance; The merging of creative work and scientific evaluation of communication’ alongside Klarna’s Global Consumer Insights Manager Karin Haglund.

This 20-minute session will cover how marketing mix modelling can be combined with survey-based measurements of campaign content, to quantify the value of creatives. This case study will provide insights on how different aspects of creative executions impact marketing effectiveness, and highlights how clear branding in campaigns is the most important challenge for brands to crack.

Tuesday 12th September, 16.20

The Supercharger Stage

If Valere’s pitch wows the ESOMAR delegates, then alongside two other finalists he will be showcasing his full pitch mainstage Pecha Kucha style for 6min40 in front of senior business leaders. Event attendees have the final word, so if you’re there in person please vote!

Alongside Valere and Cajsa, CEO Ferry Wolswinkel, Account Director Andrea Goeres, Senior Account Manager Malin Larsudd, and Marketing Manager Karen Chandler will be attending to explore the latest trends, innovations, and insights in the field of market research. All are more than happy to meet up over a coffee, just get in touch!

About ESOMAR Congress

ESOMAR Congress is ESOMAR’s flagship event that serves as a prominent platform for industry professionals, researchers, and experts to converge and learn. The event showcases a diverse array of sessions, including keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and interactive sessions led by thought leaders and pioneers in the industry.

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Nepa at Cannes Lions Festival 2023

June 30, 2023

Karen Chandler


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If you work in marketing, or a marketing adjacent field, then your LinkedIn feed has probably been full of Cannes Lions posts over the last couple of weeks. Between the 19th and 23rd of June, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity returned to the The Palais in Cannes. The largest gathering in the creative marketing community, the event celebrates creativity, effectiveness, and innovation in the global advertising, marketing, and communication industries. And Nepa were there too!

Insights Manager Charlotta Lundberg and Data Scientist Jessika Ödling spent the week yacht hopping between panels, discussions, and presentations, with some personal highlights of theirs including watching Les Binet discuss The 3rd Age of Effectiveness and stressing the importance of video in brand building, and the COO of Open AI Brad Lightcap discussing how AI is not there to take jobs, just enhance productivity.

The key themes

Throughout the festival there were three key themes that kept coming up, time and again.

Maximising the effects of your campaigns

One thing that was mentioned across the days was how to use different platforms correctly to build a brand. You can’t just use the same content and hope that it will achieve the effect you desire. Every platform has a very different audience, with very different expectations, and a very different language. However, even though the delivery is different, you need to maintain some consistency across every platform to build brand recognition.

You also need to stand out and, as our recent blog post by Head of R&D Robert Beatus demonstrates, those that create strong positive emotions are the ones that drive ad awareness.

AI

A big topic that will undoubtedly be front and centre at events for the coming years was Artificial Intelligence. Mentioned in almost all sessions, even those focused on inclusivity and diversity, the main takeaway was that we should see it as a tool – It’s not here to take our jobs!

“This industry [marketing] will be busier than ever in 5 years“, said Brad Lightcap, COO Open AI.

It should be there to enable people to be even more creative, and push the limits of what is possible to achieve. For example when Dall-E was created people were worried that it would be the death of art. However, it’s led to the rise of impressionism and helped develop the art world further.

Inclusivity / Diversity

The final major theme was inclusiveness and diversity. No matter what kind of marketing activities or materials people are creating, these two things should be at the centre. Rather than act performatively, brands need to walk the talk – Be it including a wider range of people in leadership, a variety of people in production teams, or setting specific diversity KPIs. Bias is bad for business.

And that’s a wrap on 2023. We hope to see you there in 2024!

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What is the value of emotions for a brand?

June 26, 2023

The Taj Mahal Hotel - Mumbai

Karen Chandler


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Cadbury’s 2007 “Gorilla” campaign was a remarkable display of the power of emotions. Instead of relying on a brand message, product offering, or category-specific benefits, they instead took a bold approach by focusing purely on evoking strong feelings. The ad featured the iconic Cadbury purple as a backdrop, and showcased a large gorilla seated at a drum kit, skilfully playing the iconic drum solo from “In the air tonight”. Following its release, a staggering extra 20% of the UK population held a ‘favourable’ view of the brand. This impressive number firmly illustrates the immense influence of strong emotions in capturing consumer attention, and driving both short and long-term success.

In our recent blog post, “Have your cake and eat it: How brand building campaigns can drive both short and long-term sales”, we talked about how some companies earmark separate budgets for long-term brand building and short-term sales activation, and how an increasing number of brand-building creatives have been driving short-term sales by triggering these kind of emotions.

When we analysed our campaign performance database, we can clearly see campaigns with high emotional liking – the typical objective for brand building – not only drive a positive brand perception but also trigger call-to-action effects like purchases or website visits.

Campaigns with high ad-liking have a significantly higher short-term impact than campaigns with a lower score. The more an audience likes the creatives, the more inclined they are to act directly.

Which emotions should you trigger?

So what are the right emotions to trigger in a successful brand-building campaign? We again analysed our database, this time using our N-Emotion intelligence tool to look at the spectrum of emotions that were evoked across more than 3,000 campaigns. Even across the vast range of brands and industries, there were several common emotional factors that could be seen in campaigns that had a high ad-liking.

Firstly, regardless of how well executed an advertisement is in other aspects, if it leaves your audience with a feeling of irritation, scepticism, or distrust it will have a poor impact. Conversely, ads that leave people feeling happy, entertained, or high-energy tend to achieve average or higher performance levels. However, generally ‘happy’ is not enough by itself. An ad must also engage the audience. We see the the emotional barrier stopping ads reaching the top 20% of ads in our database as indifference or disinterest.

Only 5% of ads reached level 5; representing campaigns with the highest short and long-term interest. These are the make-or-break ads. Interestingly, here we find a significant number have taken a brave approach by successfully creating elements of surprise that evoke strong emotions. But striking the right balance is crucial. While some bold endeavours triumph others falter, sparking anger or unease. These ads tend to have no positive effects for the brand.

In conclussion

Triggering the right emotions makes an ad stick in the consumer’s mind, and it plays a crucial role in shaping brand perceptions. However, it is essential to strike the right balance in order to achieve the desired effects. Significant rewards are there if you can balance the tight-rope. A well-crafted emotional experience leads to a deeper processing of your ad, creating stronger associations between the campaign and your brand. Providing an emotional experience will also make consumers focus their attention on the content, thereby improving sender recall (which is one of the growing challenges in marketing communication). Furthermore, stronger associations increase the likelihood your brand will be front of mind in future purchase making decisions.

This post was written by Robert Beatus, Nepa’s Head of R&D.

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Embracing AI for business success

June 05, 2023

Focused Indian businessman wearing casual clothes working typing on laptop sitting at table in light office room on background of window.

Karen Chandler


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We are embarking on an exciting journey with our pioneering new artificial intelligence initiative. It’s part of our commitment to innovation, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and shaping the future of technology.

By seamlessly integrating AI technologies into our operations we can unlock new levels of efficiency; streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks, and driving productivity gains. Our AI-driven solutions help to empower our organisation to maximise resource utilisation, minimise costs, and accelerate time-to-market, enabling us to stay one step ahead of our competition. We are currently under an explorative phase where multiple AI tools are being investigated to see which ones have the greatest impact, both on internal developments and client deliveries.

One of our development initiatives, Brand Noise Reduction, is based on an AI and machine learning model. It utilises pattern recognition and time series analysis to make our weekly Brand Tracking data both more accurate and granular. This ultimately enables our clients to make better, faster, data-based decisions.

Other explorations of AI solutions focus on predictive and prescriptive capabilities. Synthetic Respondent Solutions is one such area of investigation, whereby we will be leveraging the vast amount of historical brand tracking data we have collected over the years. Such a machine learning model could predict current KPIs based on historical trends, without the need of additional data collection. Another initiative we are running focuses on creating an AI solution that generates suggestions based on data and survey results.

Through this initiative, we are fostering an environment that encourages experimentation, prototyping, and knowledge-sharing. By continuously learning from our findings and experiences, we are shaping a future where AI plays a pivotal role in driving sustainable growth, delivering exceptional customer experiences, and fostering a more connected and intelligent world.