On Monday morning, News Corp Australia announced the launch of its newest tool to assist marketers, The Growth D_Stillery.
The platform is a dedicated research and intelligence service, offering consumer insights to help navigate brand challenges, anticipate consumer trends, and understand where best to invest.
Ahead of the launch, Mediaweek spoke to News Corp Australia’s Director, Growth Intelligence Centre, Dan Krigstein, about what The Growth D_Stillery brings to the current landscape ad the product enters the market.
The groundwork for Growth D_Stillery began almost three years ago, with Krigstein saying that “we’ve been working on this in the background for quite a while.”
“The Growth D_Stillery is a really pointed and targeted service offering to the decision makers across Australia when it pertains to consumers and brands. We do a lot of insight and research work as a major publisher, and we serve a number of different masters, so to speak – informing our editorial team on what keeps people up at night, what the issues that matter are, all the way through to supporting behavioural change programs with governments.”
The Growth D_Stillery launches with The Essentials D_Stilled report, the first of many reports the team will release. Essentials D_Stilled focuses on new research looking at how Australians are spending right now – and the key emotional triggers that will drive spend in 2023. When asked why this was the place to start for The Growth D_Stillery, Krigstein says that he believes in “a slightly different framing on what this year holds for brands and for businesses.”
“I deeply respect the very many positions that we are in – particularly with the screws tightening on households. But if I’m to take what I would call an organisational-centred view of the world, I think that there is more opportunity to be had here for brands that are willing to be brave. I think it’s not about winners and losers, but fundamentally how we are reappraising what we can and cannot live without.
“What we wanted to do with Essentials, and the D_Stillery more broadly, was to try to equip brands with authentic narratives to reintroduce, and to reengage their customers in a really uncertain backdrop. We wanted to give them a meaningful set of tools to be able to, at minimum, maintain their share of voice in market and maintain their relevance with their customers – but at best, capture new value for their brands.”
Also launching this week is the first episode of The Growth D_Stillery Vodcast, which sees Krigstein in conversation with some of the brightest marketers in the country.
“The decision there was to really humanise these insights,” says Krigstein. “With the vodcast, what we’re hoping to do is push the boundaries of thought leadership storytelling – we are a business of storytellers, and if not us, then who?
“What we’ve decided to do is find a really healthy balance. Each month we run an A-Side and B-Side – these business luminaries run on the A-Side, and then a fortnight later with the B-Side, we follow up with the senior leaders from the research partners from across the globe, to really get into the science and the psychology of why we do what we do as Australians.
“I’m hoping that pushes the boat out even a little further for marketers and for business leaders that want to understand not just the insight, but why that’s the insight and how might they predict this behaviour in other contexts and other circumstances further down the garden path.”
For advertisers, Krigstein says that The Growth D_Stillery team have been focused on their role as a partner for brands that put their faith in News Corp as an organisation. As a result, the Growth D_Stillery team are “really leaning into what marketers and business leaders need to know right now about the current backdrop.”
“In a nutshell, my ambition is that it’s just another arrow in the marketer’s quiver. It’s a dedicated service offering to authentically and honestly support the brands and industries that have put their faith in media publishers for years and years and years past.
“What brands can expect from it is really illuminating insights that push the boundaries of traditional research methodologies to get under the hood of the behaviours that they are observing, and to really understand the why. My ambition is to give business decision makers, marketers, and agencies a best-in-class understanding of what’s happening at a macro level.”
Overall, Krigstein ultimately hopes that “we connect with brands at all of the touch points that matter to them” – and will be taking The Growth D_Stillery out to meet marketers face to face.
“You’re going to see The Growth D_Stillery across all of the major marketing and creative storytelling events – from AdWeek to AANA’s Reset, and we’ve got a session at South by Southwest Sydney. If people like what they see through the Growth D_Stillery and the vodcast, we have some really, really special pieces of work coming to market at those tentpole events. We can’t wait to share them with everybody.”
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Top Image: Dan Krigstein