Deez Interviews: meet the audience researcher who knows how crucial it will be to understand Gen Z

Happy Friday, Deezers! This week’s interview is with Jess Duncan, an audience research aficionado who’s been helping media brands like Clique Media, Time Inc, and The Atlantic truly understand their audience data and make the case to advertisers about the valuable readerships they command:

The interviewee: Jess Duncan (follow her @JESSmad11)

Current job: Ad sales research associate

The Hustle: On a daily basis, I’m in charge of handling all RFP and sales call research and data requests. I work on putting together all sales materials for calls and meetings. I help to arm the marketers with all consumer marketplace insights that can help them pitch the most relevant ideas and then work with the branded content team to provide them with data that they can lean on to create branded content that will ACTUALLY perform well. I also work on writing, programming and packaging the results of our proprietary research studies.

The world of audience data and research can be pretty intimidating for a layman/woman to understand. What's the business case for a media outlet to invest in it?

Let’s take a step back and think about media pre digital age. If I were Gucci, I would 500% be spending a set number of dollars with Vogue because I believe(d) that Vogue would reach my target audience — because the way to track audience data was very VERY limited.

Fast forward to an insane amount of media company saturation within the marketplace, and super increased capabilities to track audience data and performance. Now media companies can invest in audience research to prove that they actually reach advertiser X’s target audience.

And then on the other end of that, you have to show that your advertising campaign successfully reached that audience, to ensure that advertiser X will continue to spend with your brand.

As media companies, we also want to improve efficiencies when reaching our target audiences, so we’ve started to invest in tools like DMPs (data management platform) in order to make sure we can 100% target specific audiences and better track where those audiences are going outside of our sites. And then we take that information that we get about our audiences and use it to inform all avenues of the business strategy.

Why should someone who isn't involved on the business / marketing side care about this stuff?

It’s important to recognize that audience data is important to the entire media company, not only the business side. I actually work under the Business Intelligence team at Clique, which services the entire company, from marketing to edit to audience development to consumer products.

Editors need to have insights into the ins and outs of their current audience and also the other audiences who they are missing out on. Especially if you’re working at a smaller, more targeted brands, it’s important to understand our audience as well as potential new consumers who we can reach through new content, partnerships and/or adding new sites into the media brand’s existing portfolio.

You've split your time between media outlets and straight up advertising/marketing firms (like Ogilvy, Rogers & Cowan, RPA). What is something you think media outlets could stand to learn from their agency brethren?

When it comes to agencies, there are teams dedicated to each individual client. And planning teams that are fully dedicated to best understanding the consumer journey and how the customer thinks and the best way to reach them. And then you have social teams, who are fully dedicated to devising and managing social strategies for brands. Therefore, agencies have the manpower and capabilities to fully research, understand and successfully execute large scale campaigns/strategies (not saying that they ALWAYS successfully do that).

So that being said, media companies have smaller and leaner business teams. Your turnaround time will always be tighter, and the amount of time you are able to dedicate to a client will be a fraction of what an account management has at an agency. I think something that business teams at media companies struggle with is that team members enjoy staying in their silos. And what we can take away from agencies is how to better work across all departments to create the most effective outcomes.

At Clique, you spend a lot of time thinking about the young female audience. As they increase in buying power and decision-making power, what do you think this next generation of women will come to expect from media/brands, and vice versa?

Clique lives in the space of female millennials with spending power. But we also own brands like Obsessee and College Fashionista, two titles that focus on the Gen Z audience. And this is really the next generation of women — think girls who are seniors in high school through women who just graduated college (17-24).

What media companies and brands need to understand is that Gen Z women and millennial women are pretty different. Gen Zers are more culturally astute (re: Teen Vogue circa GODDESS Elaine Welteroth), and they spend differently. They are actually much more likely to save more and spend on investment purchases.

These women will also be the first generation to have exclusively grown up fully in the scope of digital technology. Which means that the way they obsess over their phones and when and how they choose to consume media is different than the millennial generation. It’s not only important, but necessary, for all companies and brands to fully listen to and understand who these two generations truly are — and not just make assumptions that all consumers below the age of 34 are the same.

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Hear, hear! Now go out there and brave that cold. We’ll see you next week!

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