Win the pitch with the businesses beside them.
Five clients or fifty, one town or thirty markets — whichever client has locations, the businesses beside them before the first meeting, Mauritius and Mauritius included.
Who is beside their locations?One street in three has the rival on the brief. Nearly all of them have a business it leaves out.
Ask the question you carry into the pitch.
Eight things agency leads say, and the answer to each — as a chart for the call, a written study for the client meeting, or a deck under your own logo.
What agency leads say
What goes on the slide
Who is beside their locations?
A fast-food place sits on nearly every one of their streets. The rival the brief names sits on one street in three.
The named rival, on 34% of their streets. A fast-food place, on 98%.
Open the pitch on the businesses beside them.
A first slide that names who is beside them.
Is their gap in what they sell or in how they serve it?
What they sell lands. The way it is served is where it goes.
What they sell, 74% positive. How it is served, 22%.
Write the brief on how it is served, and name the part it aims at.
A brief pointed where the gap sits.
Which markets is this format landing in?
One brand, one format: ahead of the businesses like it in three markets.
Ahead in 3 markets of 32. 55 points in the share of positive opinions between its best market and its worst.
Weight the markets it lands in. Brief the rest separately.
A split that can be defended line by line.
Did they gain on the businesses like them, or did the market carry them?
A brand’s own direction and the direction of businesses like it often disagree.
Of 381 brands, 37% moved the opposite way to the businesses like them.
Open the renewal meeting on its share of positive opinions, beside the number it posted.
A renewal that opens on results.
Did those locations fall, or did the businesses beside them?
Half of what moved, moved against its own street.
30% fell while their street held. 21% rose while it fell.
Point the local budget at whichever fell alone.
A local plan that stops paying for easy markets.
How does one shop stand against the ones around it?
One shop has a street, and the street is what it is judged against.
Beside one brand’s locations, 97% of the businesses are a different kind of business from it.
Set the comparison to the businesses beside them.
A comparison a one-shop client can use.
Will this answer a category we have never worked in?
The same instrument answers every category on the list, in every market they trade in.
15,113 market-and-category pairs, across 134 markets.
Answer the next brief the same way as the last one.
One answer for every client, in every market.
Do the names they lead with match the experience?
The formats their customers rate highest are the ones the brief leaves out.
The indoor formats, 93–95 positive opinions in a hundred. The names the brief leads with, 69–73 in a hundred.
Order the list by what customers rate, then weight the plan to it.
A campaign built on what customers rate highest.
Name the businesses their locations sit beside.
Whoever holds the account holds its numbers. One coffee brand, one country: the kinds of business on its own streets. The rival the brief names sits last.
Open on the businesses beside them — and the slide goes out under your own brand, with recorded authorization.
The rival on the brief is on one street in three.
Tell them which brief this is.
What a brand sells and the way it is served are two different briefs. The gap sits in the second.
All four brands checked this way had a gap of this size: 52 points in the share of positive opinions at the narrowest, 66 at the widest.
Write the brief for the part the gap sits in.
Order the markets the format lands in.
One brand, one format, 32 markets. In every one of them, the share of consumer opinions that are positive is set against the businesses like it.
One format: ahead of the businesses like it in 3 markets of the 32 measured
Each mark is one of the 32 markets measured. The three tall marks are the markets where the format is ahead of the businesses like it.Weight the budget where the format already lands.
Split what they did from what the market did.
A location’s own direction and the direction of its street are two different questions. In eight brands, half of what moved went against its own street.
One country, eight brands: half the locations moved against their own street
Out of every hundred locations, how each one’s consumer opinion moved on the year, set against the street beside it.Point the local budget at the locations that fell alone. The rest fell with their street.
Give the whole agency the same view of the client.
What divided the agency’s teams was the evidence each could reach — and this is what each takes from one set of numbers.
The one thing about a prospect the brief leaves out
- Which kinds of business stand on nearly all of their streets.
- Where the rival their brief names actually sits, street by street.
- The first slide, carrying the agency’s own brand.
Which brief this is, before it is written
- What a brand sells and the way it is served, scored apart.
- What their customers keep naming, and where the praise stops.
- How each of those sits against the businesses beside them.
The markets that take the budget this quarter
- Every market they trade in, against the same kind of business.
- Which of their locations the visits pool around, and which they leave.
- Who turns up around each location, by generation and gender.
A client meeting that opens on the street
- Their own movement on the year, and their street’s beside it.
- Which locations fell alone, and which fell with the street.
- Where they gained on the same kind of business while their number held.
Every unit judged against its own street
- Each location’s own street, and how it moved on the year.
- What consumers around each unit praise, and what stops them returning.
- What the businesses beside each unit charge for the same thing.
One instrument for the whole client list
- One taxonomy that means the same thing in every market.
- The same numbers behind whatever any team answers.
- The next category on the list, analysed like the one before.
Whoever in the agency asks, the answer comes off the same record.
Run any of these on a client’s own market.
The same six insights, pointed at whichever client walks in next.
Every client on one measure; each question on its own page.
Weekly refreshed, since 2020
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