Moneyball Baseball Moneyball Marketing and Marketing Research

Bill James defined Sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball."

Guide marketing in a digital age away from trade journal characterizations and towards evidence of how people consume media, and shopper impact

Oakland A’s made $40MM payroll work as well as $100MM 1. Cut tracker survey budgets in half2. Use behavioral and contextual targeting wherever possible, moving away

from demographics to make ad dollars work harder

Write a book about it, focused on exploding myths replaced with new insights, and proof that the new approach works

Convey results with a story, focused on exploding myths replaced with new insights, and showing evidence that the new insights are correct

Challenge all longstanding measures of player performance. Nothing is sacred.

Challenge all analog era measures of brand performance that persist in a digital age. Nothing is sacred.

Use big data to create a granular database of all pitch outcomes (over half a million pitches per year) so we can datamine to understand what drives positive outcomes.

Use big data to create a granular database of all marketing efforts and digital behaviors, tagged by type of ad, brand, publisher, network, type of targeting, creative element, etc. so we can understand what drives positive outcomes

Use stats to understand potential player contribution rather than old school scout observation of size, speed, etc. (the ‘5 tool player’ idea). Ex: Speed is judged on results (e.g. stolen bases), batting is based on getting on base not batting average because that is what correlates with wins.

Don’t just rely on attitudes to measure brand equity and preference. Create naturally occurring digital and social measures of brand engagement that must be proven by correlation to downstream shopper outcomes

Create new stats for position players that better correlate to wins, like weighted On Base Average (wOBA)

Develop new metrics of success that directly relate to sales rather than using attitudinal measures of brand equity that “sound good”

Change the way players are evaluated for trades or to be drafted based on performance modeling against prior best matched players (the Nate Silver PECOTA method)

1. Change the way we research how to segment consumers around predictive analytics of consumer response to messages

2. Change the way we choose new products for introduction, moving towards examining best matches of prior launches

New stats to evaluate player impact on a season’s outcome lead to new rankings of player contribution

New techniques, emphasis on experimentation, that go beyond marketing mix regression modeling can improve our understanding of what works

Real time stats affect on the field manager decisions Real time metrics should drive agile and real time marketing

Move management towards stat geeks, away from insiders Create a data science team

Never forget the beauty and optimism of baseball plays out nearly every day. It keeps the kid in us alive forever.

Never forget that marketing is about connecting brands to people that improve their lives each and every day. It is a noble cause.

Smartphone understanding. For AOL, consulted on award winning project to understand smart phone owners’ usage and motivations, published in HBR

Social sharing behaviors. For ShareThis, led one of the largest analyses of sharing behavior Value of a Facebook fan. With Compete, determined the value of a Facebook fan is real but only if they pay

return visits to the fan page Path to purchase research: What is media’s influence on shopper actions, not just awareness and intention Workshops on shopper and digital marketing

Rubinson game changing assignments

Digital media use cases. Consultant to Moat and Solve Media

Innovation

Brand guidance

Consumer understanding

Next generation Marketing Mix Modeling:, RPI has created approaches for improved estimation of digital and social media impact

Measurable model of media in a paid, owned, earned, media world. For large CPG marketers, created the first contemporary measurable model of media

Sense, respond, anticipate. Designed one of the most comprehensive shopper insights listening and digital sensing platforms ever created in CPG.

Reinventing brand tracking. For leading CPG marketers, created a next generation approach to brand tracking that fully leverages instant digital and social data, integrated with survey and mobile research

Innovating Innovation. In partnership with InsightsNow, Inc. RPI offers an award winning system called BehaviorLens ™ based on moments marketing

Rubinson Partners, Inc. (RPI) founded in 2010 by the former Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation

Includes a network* of world class talent

Clients include leading marketers, marketing research firms, and digital media companies.

Founder was the Chief Research Officer at the ARF, 25 years as chief research officer at The NPD Group, Advanced methods practice leader for Vivaldi (leading branding consultancy), and head of analytics in North America and global lead on shopper insights for Synovate. Joel started his career at Unilever.

Joel has an MBA from the University of Chicago, with concentrations in Economics and Statistics.

Joel is a widely read blogger, published author and frequent speaker.

A bit about Rubinson Partners, Inc…

*Senior resources formerly at Procter, Kraft, Mastercard, and current NYU and Fordham faculty, and two leading research and analytic firms are all part of the RPI network

Joel is also on the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches social media strategy.