Phoenix Marketing International, a 14-year-old market research firm, is launching a platform that it believes puts traditional advertising data at the fingertips of brands in the same way they have become accustomed to for digital campaigns.
Called "Research Reborn," it's essentially an ads-analysis dashboard that combines TV, print, digital display, etc., along with non-media factors such as pricing models. What's most notable, though, is the fact that client McDonald's, according to Phoenix Marketing, has helped develop the platform.
"Take the buying cycles of Internet ads that run down to the millisecond or smaller," explained Allen DeCotiis, CEO at Phoenix. "Those systems are designed to get the best price at the best moment for the largest number of ads. We are providing similar data to target TV advertising, to target print advertising or to revise copy in real time to maximize an offering. We also do Internet. But digital and [traditional] are very much integrated at this point."
In addition to ads analysis, the New York-based firm's data dashboard is built for scientifically modeling purchase behavior, product development, product pricing, customer experience and direct marketing. And a brand's data can be cross-referenced against industry norms to zero in how the larger consumer marketplace may react to an offer.
For McDonald's and other Fortune 500 brands that plan to use it, per DeCotiis, the system will connect the dots between traditional market research and new-media analytics. "You don't have to call up the consulting firm to ask them what would happened if you changed the price of the product," he said. "Our system will run it for you."
His company's platform announcement underscores how various kinds of marketing services have been aiming the last few years to combine traditional and digital ads data. Players such as Nielsen, comScore, Facebook, Twitter—to name only a few of dozens of varying kinds of examples—have been attempting to get the idea right.
So while Phoenix doesn't appear particularly early to the game, having a brand juggernaut such as McDonald's on board certainly doesn't hurt. And who knows? DeCotiis & Co.'s seasoned mindset could give the services provider an edge with big brands over some of its bushier-tailed competitors.