Case Study
Building a connected data strategy for a region.
5 min read | Operating Model Design & Adoption
A global consumer goods company set out to build connected consumer data across a priority growth region. We designed the strategy in one pilot market and built it to roll out across the others. Twelve months on, the pilot market has the numbers to show the model works.
Results
Twelve months on, in the pilot market
3.5x
Average ROAS from retail media off site using retail partner first-party data
+172%
Rise in click-through rates
-33%
Lower cost per click
The opportunity
Across the region, the company had strong commercial and channel data, but almost no connected consumer data. In the pilot market alone, a large addressable consumer population, and virtually none of it captured as known consumer profiles.
That gap was the opportunity. A large, addressable population, a company with the commercial data and brands to reach it, and no shared plan for turning that into connected consumer relationships.
The brief was to build that plan in one market first, get it right, then roll it out across multiple priority markets in the region.
The challenge
Consumer data was being captured tool by tool, brand by brand, with no shared view of what good looked like or how to get there. Without structure, investment was hard to justify and progress hard to measure. And whatever got built in the pilot market had to be repeatable, or every other market would start from zero.
01
Strong commercial data, thin consumer data
Excellent sales and EPOS coverage to build on, but almost no connected consumer profiles to activate against.
02
No shared plan
Capture was happening tool by tool, brand by brand, with no agreed roadmap or definition of progress.
03
Built to repeat
The job was bigger than one market. The approach had to work across multiple priority markets at different stages of maturity.
What Pivot & Co did
We built a connected data strategy that the pilot market could take to its leadership for approval and delivery, with a framework designed for wider regional adoption.
The work started with a structured readiness assessment, scoring the market across the foundations of a working data capability: the data available, the tools in place, how data fed into media, and the conditions needed to win. That gave everyone a shared, honest picture of the starting point.
We set the target as a share of the market's large addressable consumer population rather than an arbitrary headcount. That anchored the ambition to the actual size of the prize and made it directly comparable from one market to the next.
From there we built a staged three-year roadmap. Each phase deepened the quality of every consumer profile, from two data points, to three, to four, while a rising share of media moved onto connected data. Each phase had defined targets, owners and the conditions to get there.
The result was a single, costed plan the pilot market owned, built to be repeated across the region.
How we assess readiness
Built on a clear framework
The strategy rested on a model that separates a working data capability into parts you can assess and build in order, the same model every market in the rollout would use.
Foundation
The data and tools needed to capture and activate, from sales and EPOS data through to consumer capture platforms.
Acquisition
How the market grows known consumer profiles, across owned channels, paid media, experiential and retail.
Utilisation
How that data gets used in media and CRM, from audience building and retargeting to suppression and personalisation.
Conditions to Win
The operating layer that makes the rest hold: business alignment, a dedicated data lead, partner onboarding, and KPI tracking.
A three-year roadmap, built to travel
Results- the first year in market
The pilot market delivered against the plan, with the clearest gains in the two pillars where the work started
Acquisition
Every known consumer profile now holds at least four data points, the depth the roadmap set as its longer-term target.
Experiential pilots proved out alongside it, with first-party data captured at event registration and flavour preferences gathered and put to work through personalised product sampling.
Utilisation
The share of media data-driven climbed from under 1% to 6.5%, reaching 13% in the strongest months, across retargeting and lookalike audiences.
Click-through rates rose 172% and cost per click fell 33%.
Off-site retail media campaigns built on retail partners' first-party data returned 3.5x ROAS on average.