4 Minutes With Katja Brandt: Powering Human Connection With A Data-Driven Approach

Blending performance marketing with brand-building activities while working to break down product silos sets brands up for success — both in the short term and down the road. But how can companies balance data-driven decisions and human connection? Passionate innovator and marketing master Katja Anette Brandt, CEO of Mindshare DACH, joins host Peggy Anne Salz in the most recent “4 Minutes With…” episode to share her wisdom on the topic and to discuss how Mindshare client Booking.com harnessed an innovative strategy to increase brand awareness and market share.

Watch the full interview below.

Data Drives Human Connection

Brandt considers data “the core of successful marketing today.” Capturing data and deep insights enables brands to treat people as individuals — and produces impressive results.

She reveals Mindshare used “a combination of data intelligence, audience targeting, and large media reach” to align with customers and increase Booking.com’s brand awareness from 50% to 85% and market share from 29% to 54%.

More importantly, understanding customer data sheds light on customers’ actions across all channels, how they prefer to interact with brands, and the values they expect their favourite brands to uphold.

In Germany, sustainability is a core value, and consumers gravitate to brands and businesses that take a stand. Brandt points to data that shows 80% of German consumers expect companies to take responsibility for managing the climate crisis.

And this is not just a regional trend. The demand for sustainable growth and brand action is a global phenomenon. Research from Harris Poll, commissioned by Google Cloud, reports that 82% of consumers require a brand’s values to match their own to consider purchasing from it. While consumers value the personalisation enabled by data, they are unlikely to convert if the brand fails to consider customer expectations.

Cultivate Meaningful Agency Relationships

While attention to sustainability is essential to building brand trust, brands also need to foster connections with their customers and agencies.

In this scenario, Brandt says, brand-agency partnerships breed a deeper understanding of shared goals and help brands identify knowledge gaps about target audiences. Moreover, sharing goals is part of a wider, more “ integrative approach” with the power to break down silos and bridge the gap between in-house teams and agency partners.

It’s an approach that allows teams to divide tasks effectively, resulting in increased efficiency, better product delivery, and improved customer communication. “We often see silos between brand-building and performance,” Brandt says. This is why she focuses on driving deeper connections in her company and across the ecosystem. “In the end, these have to be together,” she explains. “They have to be hand in hand.”