SXSW is a prime opportunity for brands and agencies to discuss the latest in marketing innovation and strategies that drive business success. At this year’s festival in Austin, Swayable offered a deep dive into a key element that fuels performance: iterative pre-testing, which helps companies in sectors from sports entertainment to influencer marketing generate valuable data that informs creative approaches.
Darolyn Pierce, Vice President of Data Analytics and Insights at BSE Global, and Chris Detert, CCO at Influential, joined our CEO and Co-Founder James Slezak for the “Winning With Rapid Pre-Testing: From Stadiums To Boardrooms” session to discuss why marketers must rely on data over gut instinct to create impactful campaigns and remain agile and competitive.
Keep scrolling for a breakdown of key insights we explored at SXSW, including:
- The importance of investing in granular market research to understand consumer values and preferences
- How access to relevant and up-to-date metrics helps brands create authentic, timely marketing moments
- Why iterative pre-testing is paramount for companies to prove brand lift and fuel proactive creative decisions
Data unlocks consumer passion points, social preferences, and new demographics
For Pierce at BSE Global—a Brooklyn-based entertainment platform that markets the Barclays Center, Brooklyn Nets, and New York Liberty—the key to creating the most engaging, relevant creative is truly understanding audience interests and values.
Initial market research helped Pierce’s team identify consumer passion points such as music that transcends genres and the impact of sport beyond the court; values such as authenticity and diversity; and go-to social channels such as TikTok and Instagram.
“We sit in the middle of the organization and we’re in lockstep with our marketing team. They don’t make decisions unless there are metrics they feel confident in to say something is really working,” said Pierce. “The partnership that data and technology play in our organization is in a place it’s never been before, where we can really influence the decisions of our leaders.”
Maintaining a robust data-driven strategy has been instrumental in brand growth for BSE Global. Pierce shared that the company used its consumer insights to launch two products over the past six months: Brooklyn Wine Club and Brooklyn Magazine. Market research also helped the company identify China as an international market with a key demographic to prioritize, leading to partnerships with local merchandise companies and sponsors.
Quick insights help brands leverage trends in a fast-paced environment
Influencer marketing is a valuable channel for brands, but also a challenging one to get right without a strategic, data-backed framework. Detert at Influential—the world’s largest influencer marketing platform—shared that his team uses analytics to stay on the pulse of social trends and help brands remain agile. Specifically, the company identifies TikTok trends for brands to capitalize on, and brings those trends to life through creative concepts and authentic influencers.
“We identify the perfect influencer for a brand based on demographics, contextual relevance, and psychographics,” said Detert. “We often say it’s a marriage of data, science, and marketing that really creates the best results.”
Influential’s data-fueled approach has helped legacy brands find unexpected success through creator partnerships that leverage long-term or evergreen TikTok trends. Campbell’s Soup is one brand that found relevance on TikTok by incorporating #rizz (an internet slang term for “charm”) into influencer recipe videos. The campaign drove a 4x ROAS return compared to CPG benchmarks, and generated a 2.8% lift in offline sales.
The platform has also worked with the NBA to increase female viewership. The basketball organization tasked influencers to incorporate the #GRWM (“Get Ready With Me”) trend on TikTok, which resulted in a 15.6% tune-in lift among women across three games during the 2024 NBA playoffs.
Iterative pre-testing fuels a proactive, agile strategy
Maintaining an agile marketing strategy not only requires access to relevant lift metrics—it also demands a process for analyzing how metrics change over time.
“Marketing is evolving and a key to success is to lean into what the data is saying,” said Pierce. “Do some controls and some measurements. What you’ll find could be very surprising from what you previously thought.”
This is why companies like BSE Global and Influential use Swayable’s testing platform to perform rapid, consistent pre-testing of different brand messages. They’re able to take advantage of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology to quickly and easily understand the difference in attitudes between those who viewed a brand’s ad and those who didn’t.
Detert explained that this “rinse and repeat” approach to pre-testing is a vital component of agile marketing, and one that’s specifically aligned with influencer marketing. “In the middle of a campaign, we have the ability to change an influencer if they’re not resonating with the audience,” he said. It’s really data science, more than anything, wrapped into influencer marketing.”
As a final takeaway, marketers can expect pre-testing to fuel dramatic storytelling improvements in the long run. Slezak highlighted one national campaign that achieved 10x more lift after conducting five rounds of iteration on the Swayable platform.
“It’s a combination of learning what kinds of stories are moving an audience, and which ones they find authentic. It’s about taking the messaging out and doubling down on the good messaging,” said Slezak.
For a complete rundown of insights about the impact of pre-testing and data-driven creative, watch our full SXSW session below:
Interested in learning about what content will resonate best with your audience before you launch it? Book a demo to see how Swayable can improve your brand's campaign production process.