Audience Precision launched its proprietary end-to-end technology platform Precise360 in July.
The agency’s platform is the brainchild of Haydon Bray, the former chairman of Carat, and technologist Jeremy Cath, who previously worked with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Alexa, who worked on developing it for the past seven years.
Bray spoke to Mediaweek about building the platform, how it simplifies their work and what clients can expect from it.
Precise360 is a suite of proprietary tools that refine the technology platform to achieve faster and more successful business outcomes for brands.
Among the many things it delivers to clients are quality improvement, greater audience connection and engagement, attention scores for video, campaign builds delivered in days, integrated metric calculators and a global process.
The road to launching Precise360
Bray shared that he was incredibly proud to launch the product. “We’ve known for quite some time how powerful it is. Our agency is essentially proof of concept on the software.”
The CEO explained that with Precise360, their team of 22 can manage a significant workload without needing to hire more people.
“It’s a proud day because it means we can confidently move forward. Our clients and potential new clients will start to see amazing results.”
Bray explained that the development for Precise360 started as a range of tools that started around research, which turned into insight and ultimately became a communication strategy with media planning and buying components.
The CEO shared that he first floated the idea with Cath 11 years ago while at Microsoft in Seattle. Bray said: “The easiest option for us was to try and create media-specific tools and focusing on psychographic segments was the core.
“In the process, we just started to think through what was important and what was next. It’s grown dramatically in the last three years. We probably had five or six tools three years ago.
“We’re now at about 25 or 26, which is all part of the platform. That’s because Jeremy is now a full-time CTO and has been for three years,” he added.
Bray credited that Cath and his work have accelerated the platform’s growth and expansion.
“It’s been interesting, I had a vision for it, tried to explain it, and Jeremy is one of those rare individuals who could get into my head and understand what I was saying.
“He thought in code and was able to put a wireframe down quickly for me, which allowed that to grow as we started to shape not only each tool but the whole platform,” he added.
See also: Audience Precision unveils proprietary technology platform Precise360
Developing world-first technology
Audience Precision has described the technology offering as a world first. Bray noted that this is due to several factors, such as speed, productivity, quality improvement, reduction of wastage and the ability to get to market faster with granularity and Precision with what they are trying to do and whom they are reaching.
“So, all the way through from efficiency, productivity and speed point of view. But also, the ability to save clients some money, or at least make their budgets go further,” he said.
The CEO noted that they integrated attention scores from Professor Karen Nelson-Field, the founder and executive director of Amplified Intelligence, into what they do.
“This means we can bring to life an attention metric across the whole video landscape, which will turn into other environments as Karen expands her offering. She’s very excited about what we’re doing and seeing her data come to life in a robust model,” he added.
Customer experience on the platform
According to Bray, clients using the platform can expect a granular outlook of who their high propensity customers, existing or potential, are. He said: “We’re able to identify who they are, what they look like, and everything about them. That becomes a very sophisticated insights report called Game Plan.”
“Game Plan allows the business, all the way through to the C suite, to identify every component of their marketing touchpoints, around who this potential person is,” which the CEO noted allows them to validate their thinking or give them fresh ideas.
Bray said that when they go into campaign mode, they move into their comms and media strategy using the agency’s insights and data, along with the client’s first-party data.
“From there, clients will be expecting a streamlined campaign that moves from a comms strategy that can fuel a powerful creative brief, a powerful PR brief and every other marketing component that a client may have an engagement with.
The CEO said that such information could fuel every element of a marketing message, so it goes into suitable environments and is told the right way. “This means that by the time we get into media, we’re able to identify very granular levels of media connection, performance, and attention,” he added.
Simplifying productivity at Audience Precision
Precise360 has simplified productivity for Audience Precision. “We’re minimum three-time what the big agencies are doing. We’ve automated all of the menial processes, which means that we have higher staff retention and engagement and faster team progression,” Bray said.
The CEO explained that someone who may have spent only a few years in media, after training on the platform, can make decisions and build campaigns beyond their experience level without having to trawl through a range of disparate data sets to find something interesting.
“For our team, this is a touch of a button for them to find information, think about that information, and then deliver a great result using that information.
“It allows us to deliver better campaigns for our clients, which is more satisfaction and empowerment for each team because they’re enjoying and confident in what they’re delivering, Bray added.
Results from the user experience
Bray shared that Warner Music and Lyre’s Spirit Co. have had great results from using Precise360, “not just in terms of the media component, but their full understanding of their audiences is significant. It changes everything for them,” he said.
“We’ve been able to do some interesting segmentation work for Lyre. Paul Gloster, the global CMO, can get consistent strategy documentation on any country he is marketing in. We’re currently doing all the planning for him for 20 different countries, which will rapidly move into 40 and 60 over the next year or so,” he said.
The Audience Precision CEO said Gloster will get a consistent presentation and streamlined management of multi-country clients. “This means he’s getting better deliverables and more engagement from the people in all the markets.
Bray noted that the CMO could be clear on his expectations in each of those countries. He added: “It’s all part of a consistent format that has changed his whole approach, and he feels very confident in global expansion because of what we’re delivering for him.”
Audience Precision’s outlook
Following the successful launch of Precise360, Bray noted that Audience Precision will continue to grow and maximise its potential.
“We have some clever people now using very clever technologies; that means they don’t need to be diving into menial tasks and going into the boring components.
“They’re using this tool to rapidly build options and start thinking about what they might want to change, add or delete from campaigns, and they might want to explore different processes and strategies,” he said.
Bray said a campaign synopsis and sense check could be done quickly with their kit. “They can build four or five different campaigns and options. For us, it’s all about doing things better, smarter and allowing clever people to use clever technologies to deliver better results,” the Audience Precision CEO added.