Earlier this year, News Corp Australia announced the launch of The Growth D_Stillery, a dedicated research and intelligence service offering consumer insights to help marketers navigate brand challenges, anticipate consumer trends and understand where best to invest.
See Also: Behind The Growth D_Stillery: News Corp’s newest research and intelligence offering
The Growth D_Stillery amplifies key research insights on trade marketing platforms, and on News Corp Australia channels. As a part of its release into market, the platform has launched a series of vodcasts hosted by News Corp Australia’s director, Growth Intelligence Centre Dan Krigstein, with guests from all corners of the marketing world.
Dan Krigstein
Released fortnightly, the vodcasts aim “to really humanise these insights,” according to Krigstein, and tackle a new marketing challenge every episode.
This week, Mediaweek spoke to Toby Harrison, chief strategy officer at Ogilvy.
Having come off the unveiling of their Fountain of Youthfulness research, Harrison says that joining the Growth D_Stillery Vodcast made sense when it came to getting the research out there.
“We’ve been undertaking a bit of work with the guys at The Growth D_stillery since October last year. We’ve done probably the biggest piece of research I’ve ever been involved in, in my professional career. It was a rather extraordinary journey that led us to some pretty significant and interesting findings concerning Australia’s relationship with youthfulness, and as a result, Dan Kriegstein, asked me if I’d be kind enough to come and sit down and discuss some of that with my partner in crime, Dan Robertson-Jones.”
Sadly for those who may have gone looking, the Fountain of Youthfulness isn’t a real fountain – instead, it’s a whole new resource for marketers and brands to work with.
“Essentially, what we’ve uncovered is a really, really powerful desire that exists across almost all Australians that’s hugely underserviced,” says Harrison. “People want youthfulness in their lives, but they’re really struggling to get it, and brands have huge potential to deliver upon this – but they’re not necessarily doing it in the right way. What we managed to do was decode it, and define it in a way that’s given brands route guidance and navigation, to be able to deliver exactly what people require to feel more youthful.
“It sounds ridiculous, but we’ve basically tapped this incredible seam of really rich desire in Australia. We’ve been able to define by the individual what youthfulness looks like to them, and how brands can service it specifically.”
Some things are easy to count and measure, and other things are a bit more nebulous. The concept of youthfulness falls into the second category, however, Harrison and the team found a way to bring it into clearer focus.
“When we were exploring it, we worked with the behavioural science team at Ogilvy, and we asked ‘How do we define youthfulness in an appropriate psychological manner that allows us to build up a portrait?’ – they all started to quiver a little bit and they went, ‘well, there isn’t a psychological profile of youthfulness, it’s actually broadly undefined’. So we went away, and we built one. We actually built the model for what youthfulness is, and whilst the concept of youthfulness is sometimes quite hard to explicitly define, the behaviours and the mindset that exists behind it are a little bit easier.
“Youthfulness is essentially driven by a mindset around wanting to make your life better. That mindset comes to life through four very specific behavioural avenues – people are seeking to make their life better through an exploration of identity, through an exploration of community, success, and enjoyment. These different avenues are really interesting spaces where youthfulness manifests really clearly amongst a host of audiences.”
With the episode of The Growth D_Stillery Vodcast out on Tuesday, Harrison says that he hopes the discussion will let people know that every brand in Australia has the potential to really service the youthfulness journey that exists amongst Australians.
“There are some really notable luminaries who I think just make us feel youthful, and they’re great at it, but every brand has the potential to do more of this.
“When you tap into it, it makes your brand incredibly magnetic and incredibly valuable. What I hope that people will take out of this conversation is that it’s a really interesting way to think about how your brand can show up, and how it can pose a different value equation for potential customers, or open the width of value that they can provide to a broader canvas of customers.”
Taking a broader lens on the industry, Harrison says that the cost of living crisis is a major hurdle to be overcome, but it also presents the opportunity to create bold work.
“We’re experiencing a cost of living crisis, at a time when we’ve been through probably the greatest period of flux that any of us have ever experienced. I think brands and marketers are desperately trying to understand where the new normal is, and what does appropriate look like? When we tend to be in periods of change, that change can be terrifying to people, and they tend to go back to tried and tested behaviours – doing what they think is going to deliver results.
“Actually, change is such a powerful environment to experiment within. Change presents an amazing opportunity. When we’ve got a whole bunch of people who are really struggling to make ends meet, you might think just posing a value equation to them is appropriate because good pricing might be the right answer. It’s not. I think what we should be doing, and we should be encouraging clients to do right now, is to have a look at alternative ways to show up. Look at alternative ways to pose the real value that your brand provides, to experiment with new opportunities in a period of change. Because if you don’t, your competitors will.”
–
Top Image: Toby Harrison