The variance in how individuals are feeling because of the pandemic hammers home the message that no human is the same. We all live, think, feel, act, and react differently to one another. For brands, this means having a thorough understanding of one’s audience is vital to reaching and truly engaging all members of that audience.

In the current climate of continuously changing consumer headspaces and behaviour, this kind of in-depth audience comprehension has never been more important. Of course, gender is just one demographic differentiating people. There is an abundance of other discoverable data that helps us better understand how people are feeling and thinking.

If a brand can identify demographic differences in their audience, as well as psychographics such as self-perceptions, and online behaviour like social media usage, highly granular audience segments can be produced. Hyper tailored content and messaging can then be promoted to each segment, ensuring all audience members are reached and engaged.

At iCrossing we have world leading audience intelligence tools at our disposal that allow us to do just this. Global Web Index (GWI) is a survey-based tool with available survey data spanning over 40 countries, 18 million consumers, 4,000 brands and 40,000 human attributes. The depth of the data means we can profile audiences in extreme detail, analysing robust data on characteristics, interests, preferences, and actions. Understanding favoured media channels, brand preferences, where people engage with content online and why, means we can build exhaustive insight-led targeting frameworks.

iCrossing stands out from the competition by amplifying audience insights with search and social listening. We take a holistic approach, not only unearthing what an audience looks like, how they view themselves, and how they behave online, but also identifying an audience’s thoughts and emotions in real time, as well as predicting their future wants and needs.

A second example of this multi-phase approach to our insights work is when Very.co.uk approached us, wanting to move away from pre-planned content. They recognised how unpredictable consumer trends can be and wanted to be able to keep their finger on the pulse to create truly reactive content.

Our response was to conduct bi-weekly search and social listening reports over a 6-month period. Very had shared their four campaign pillars with us – ‘Work’, ‘Relationships’, ‘Wellbeing’ and ‘Fitness’ – prior to the project. We took these core pillars and homed in on social conversations and trending searches within these themes specifically, ensuring relevancy by conducting research though the lens of Very audiences. Within each report, not only did we identify engagement triggers (and demographic variances in these triggers), but we also highlighted behavioural & attitudinal traits displayed by those engaging with the Very brand and products.

Ultimately, these insights enabled us to propose content recommendations, highly relevant to the brand, validated by robust data. Moreover, the timely monitoring of both social and search data ensured the campaign content was always culturally relevant at the time of production. For example, within the ‘Work’ pillar, accessories for home offices and comfy WFH clothes drove social and search demand for the first three months. However, as time went by, and the Covid climate shifted, demand was driven by a desire for new work wardrobes – with a focus on “office casual” – as people returned to the office, with revived attitudes to workwear.

Our parent company, Hearst, harnessed these reports to create content for Very’s Autumn Winter 2020 campaign which has been described as “the most data driven, agile and culturally relevant campaign to date”.