PMG Reinvents Strategic Planning and Insights, Enhancing Agility for Digital Marketers

On the left, Shelina Taki, PMG’s director of strategic planning and consumer insights. On the right, PMG’s head of strategic planning and insights, Angela Seits

Today PMG formally announced the launch of a new Strategic Planning and Insights (SP&I) practice designed to help brands navigate the acceleration of digital and emerging behaviors spurred by the global pandemic. Led by award-winning industry leaders Angela Seits and Shelina Taki, the new practice will bolster the agency’s data-driven model with a deep understanding of cultural insights and human behavior, to help brands drive engagement and greater impact across the customer journey.

Read more about the launch on Adweek. 

“Digital Made for Humans™ has always been our mantra, but never has it rung more true for marketers than as we prepare for a post-cookie future that is dependent on using first-party data, insights, and creative in ways that respect consumers’ growing desire for privacy,” said PMG CEO George Popstefanov, who founded PMG in 2010 to deliver transparent, data-driven digital advertising and business strategies. “2020 was a call for the industry to transform for the better, and for brands to forge stronger and deeper connections at every stage of the customer journey. Angela and Shelina are putting PMG at the forefront of reinventing strategic planning and insights to bring together the emotional needs, functional needs, and transactional needs of today’s brand audiences, to ensure that the brands we work with break through.” 

“Digital isn’t a channel, it’s a lifestyle, and this has fundamentally upended the traditional awareness to intent approach to marketing,” said Seits, who created the vision and roadmap to launch the new practice based on growing client demand and her work driving strategic planning, insights, digital and content strategy for Fortune 500 brands Toyota, AT&T, Sephora, Expedia, Old Navy, and the Gap Inc. portfolio. “From ‘curbside delivery’ to ‘Zooming’ to ‘revenge travel’ and ‘quaranteams,’ it’s undeniable that the pandemic is reshaping people’s lives and everyday experiences, and it’s redefining how we build brands. In a digital-first, mobile-first environment, every micro-interaction is a brand-building touchpoint with real people. The pandemic has accelerated the need for marketers to pivot their strategies in a span of days and weeks, not in a quarterly strategy workshop session.” 

Seits and Taki, who first met at Saatchi & Saatchi LA more than a decade ago while working on Super Bowl campaigns and global vehicle launch strategies, will lead a team of ten strategic planning and consumer insights hires from backgrounds ranging from The Richards Group in Dallas to Annalect in New York in the agency’s evolution toward digital-first integrated planning that connects data and culture to business, media and creative outcomes at speed and at scale, including: 

Working alongside PMG’s Data Science and Product Innovation teams to enhance its proprietary Alli technology, to integrate panel and survey data with agile location data, and trending social and influencer signals.

Building out a scalable research arm that delivers customer segmentation reports, cultural & trend analysis, and brand strategy consulting. 

Partnering with media, creative and consulting teams to build dynamic and actionable personas and customer journey maps, clustered around interests, communities and platform behaviors that can be targeted within media channels.

Creating empathetic, diverse and inclusive approaches to using data and bringing it to life via cultural insights and context.

In addition to helping clients like Madewell, Tommy Bahama and Tripwire accelerate their human-centric marketing strategies and keep pace in a dynamic market, the group has already led PMG to win new assignments from TikTok and the USTA for the 2021 US Open.

“Marketers can no longer rely on performance-based outcomes driven by clicks and cookies alone,” said Taki, who has a proven history of building out agency strategic planning, insights, and analytics teams, and whose work has focused on high-profile brands such as Apple, Toyota, Expedia, and Starbucks. “Digital is essential to ensuring that brands find their way into people’s hearts and minds by connecting with them where they are in the real world. Modern marketers that adopt a model of integration, rather than interruption, can forge genuine relationships with their desired audiences while leveraging every advantage digital offers. Brands that want to be part of the zeitgeist must find ways to authentically contribute to it.”