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Exploring resource partnerships and the value of putting innovation to work, together.

Early in 2019, Mark Levin, The Basement’s former Director of Marketing Platforms, provided an overview of the work we’d been doing within the Amazon ecosystem, leveraging the marketing power of the platform in partnering with them on behalf of client Schlage.

A key takeaway, according to Mark, is the value of such collaborations and the benefits that they bring to our own client relationships.  We’ve been part of developing and implementing a number of new data-driven marketing strategies – with a number of adtech innovators – that are now becoming best-practices benchmarks throughout the industry. 

Key among those relationships is our partnership with Centro, the software and managed services leader whose Basis platform has been ranked the #1 DSP on G2.  Centro’s basis was also recently recognized as the top display DSP, top mobile DSP and top retargeting platform for the Best of Tech Awards in Adweek’s inaugural reader’s choice tech survey.

According to Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro, the technology that’s now driving the fundamental sea change in the industry puts power in the hands of the platforms and the agencies working to deliver efficiencies and yield optimization for their clients.

“With partnerships like the ones we’ve established with The Basement, says Riegsecker, “we’re laying a solid technical foundation and creating an innovative marketing dynamic utilizing cross-channel strategies that could never have taken place before.”

In Good Company.

Centro has invested more than $100 million in its Basis workflow management and technology platform. The Basement was among the first to be invited to use it and since then being the first agency in the Midwest to take the leap with Centro in fully implementing it within our media stack. Though we’re not their biggest partner, the innovative work we’ve done together allowed us to increase buying efficiencies, provide greater integration across channels and scale up our Business Intelligence capabilities.

“We work very hard to associate ourselves with AdTech leaders who share the same vision we do when it comes to delivering for our clients,” says Ira Maher, VP of Business Intelligence for The Basement. “Our relationship with Centro is a good example of that. Their technical preminance allows us to expand our service offerings exponentially, and in a way that allows us to be more flexible, responsive, effective and cost efficient.”

For the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, The Basement worked with Centro to implement a digital and social media strategy that marked a sizeable change from what had been a very traditional media approach. The team introduced a number of innovative new strategies, like Facebook attribution, to provide the IMS with far greater insights into the multi-touch consumer journey for ticket buying.  It was gratifying to see ticket sales for 2019 tracking better than both 2018 and 2017.

Centro fueled this shift for the agency by facilitating high-level engagement with channels such as Facebook and other display media bought through Basis.  The results justified our new digital marketing strategy for the speedway. This also led to the agency being awarded work for the speedway’s iconic Brickyard 400 NASCAR race, which was also successful.

For client TCC, the nation’s largest Verizon retailer, The Basement worked with Basis to implement new ways to more accurately collect, assess and apply data.  Centro facilitated the integration of LCI credit card data with verified walk-in data from partner NinthDecimal and aggregated it all through Basis. And that’s just scratching the surface. The Basis workflow allows for the consolidation of data from sources such as Facebook and Google with that from other partners. Its DSP powers audience buying at scale, making applications in programmatic, connected TV, streaming audio, display, paid social and other channels as efficient and impactful as possible.

“Thanks to Centro,  and the opportunity to collaborate with them as well as other partners and platforms, we’re the first agency in our area to apply data and workflow management at this scale,” says Mark Levin. “In fact,  we’re one of only five or six agencies in the whole country with that kind of access.”

Just The Beginning.

As strategies have evolved, The Basement has amassed a host of success stories exploring similar partnerships with marketing companies representing a range of AdTech and service offerings delivering results across marketing channels.

YouTube. Pushspring audience marketing.  Samba and its interactive smart TV platform. We’ve been afforded inroads – and enjoyed great successes – with each of them. Other non-media resource collaborations round out the marketing strategies, platforms, technologies and business intelligence services we’re able to provide to our client partners. Social listening and organic social with Sprout Social.  Optimizely for website testing and optimization.  Funnel and Google’s Data Studio for meaningful, real-time reporting and data visualization.  Collaboration between us and these partners helps us to deliver the right message to the right audiences in the right place at the right time. And optimize all of it, every step of the way.

Transactions: The Ultimate KPI

It is essential that our strategies are tailored to deliver across numerous platforms and screens as well as through myriad channels. Channels that are constantly evolving. We need to be where customers are and, today, that could be anywhere at any given time.  Our resource partnerships facilitate this.

Similarly, our tactics must closely align with the customer journey and reflect a cohesive, disciplined and creative approach to planning, visualizing, executing and reporting on integrated marketing campaigns and experiences. This includes driving to the transaction; whatever that might be defined as. That’s the ultimate key performance indicator in an entire sequence of them, aligned with the purchase funnel and the object of keen focus from awareness and influence through intent and the exploration of core destinations on through to the transaction itself.

As with Centro, mutually beneficial relationships with other such resource partners as Adobe, Amazon, Pinterest and the targeted neighborhood social network Nextdoor allow us to remain largely platform agnostic while giving us a range of options for delivering real results.

That’s the point. Leveraging these relationships, in and of itself, justifies the effort and shows just how truly important those partnerships can be to us and to our clients.