How UNLIMITED Group’s Human Understanding Lab Has Helped Achieve Millions in New Business

Image credit: Google DeepMind via Unsplash

It’s fair to say that across the marketing and communications industry using some form of data or insight to inform strategy or campaigns is table-stakes.

Of course, not all agencies have this capability in-housed for teams and clients to access when they need. But even those that do have research and insight specialists all too often have them siloed away behind the scenes or dispersed across the business.

By putting researchers, behavioural, neuroscience and data science experts into one place at the heart of UNLIMITED; by creating products and processes that are repeatable and scalable and now, by building an AI-powered digital insight platform, LUCA, it empowers teams and clients to work smarter and achieve more sophisticated outcomes.

But don’t just take our word for it. This unique approach to modern marketing is delivering huge benefits for UNLIMITED’s agencies and clients – from boosting client satisfaction to helping drive new business successes and advancing clients’ strategic agendas.

In order to empower our teams using our Human Understanding Lab to work smarter we created a Group-wide planning framework that embeds insight products and solutions across UNLIMITED.

This was developed in closely consultation with our planning teams and allows them quickly and easily access the right insight solution they need by guiding them to the right solution. 

For example, is the client opportunity about understanding what motivates or influences our target audience? Or do we need to create or optimise powerful ideas to inspire action? Do we need to identify optimal channels or are we proving the effectiveness of a campaign?

This approach has been a game-changer when it comes to ensuring a repeatable and scalable process to achieve powerful, insight-led outcomes consistently across client work. Moreover, it makes it much easier for business leads to identify the right product or service to tackle a client’s specific need meaning it has helped turbocharge new business wins across the Group.

HOW?

The framework’s flexibility means that whether TMW UNLIMITED need consumer-level insight to guide a strategic shift in brand perception for Oak Furnitureland or whether they need a detailed understanding of the entire customer journey to seamlessly connect brand-building insights with customer growth data for Suzuki, the pitch team know what Human Understanding lab solution they need and where to find it.

This is proving a valuable approach. Latest figures indicate that UNLIMITED’s pitch-to-win rate is 66% more successful when the Human Understanding Lab is front-and-centre. This represents a year-on-year increase of 12% and shows how both clients and our industry is recognising it as a tool for competitive advantage. 

TMW UNLIMITED’s chief strategy officer, Dan Bowers, reinforces this when he comments: “Across all our clients the Human Understanding Lab insight has informed, optimised and validated our strategic and creative approaches. Success comes from a combination of many factors, but without doubt the Human Understanding Lab is a key ingredient and differentiator.”

And crucially, our codified data and insight planning process doesn’t end there. As new clients are on boarded the framework helps them to identify where research and insight may help them to solve enduring challenges. 

Meanwhile, LUCA, our AI-powered digital insight platform becomes a hugely important self-serve tool for client teams to continually explore, test and measure campaign performance. And because this platform is entirely built in-house we can rapidly iterate and build new features to meet teams’ or clients’ needs. 

For example, can we create a digital influencer vetting tool as part of our Instagram Intelligence solution? Yes, we can. Can we map posting volumes and frequency for our clients’ competitors in our TikTok solution? Yes, yes we can.

The consistent application of a repeatable and scalable framework to insight provided by UNLIMITED’s Human Understanding Lab is paying dividends with clients by improving perceptions of our work and deepening client relationships. 

For example, across all measures including quality of resources and skills, quality of data and insight and quality of strategic input we’ve seen significant uplifts in client satisfaction scores since launching the Human Understanding Lab. 

So, whether it’s supporting new business pitches, helping current clients identify and tackle pressing challenges or improving the quality of client relationships, our Human Understanding Lab is a differentiator in a marketing services sector where differentiation is not usually prevalent. 

More importantly, this unique fusion of science, creativity and strategic thinking means we can solve business problems for brands like no-one else.