Dom Boyd, managing director UK& Ireland for Kantar Insights (pictured, left), and head of media Richard McLeod, who becomes head of marketing effectiveness (pictured, right), will jointly lead the practice.

Part of Kantar Insights, the UK-based team will work with clients globally, brings together expertise, data and insight from across the company’s analytics, media, creative, brand and consulting services.

Work will include advising clients at the planning stage, monitoring and measurement, and using econometrics and campaign performance tools to predict brand and sales impact of different marketing activities. The team also plans to help clients implement marketing effectiveness within their organisations.

The practice will work across consumer sectors including FMCG, retail, financial services, healthcare, and travel and tourism.

Kantar has set up the team with the aim of helping clients to balance long-term brand building and short-term marketing activities.

The establishment of the new practice follows Kantar’s launch of advertising intelligence business Vivvix in North America last month, merging the advertising intelligence units of its media arm and its consumer and market insight company Numerator.

Dom Boyd, managing director of Kantar Insights UK, said: “The conversation around marketing effectiveness has been evolving for some time, but the broad 60:40 split between long-term brand building and short-term activation remains generally accepted. The challenge for brands now is how to apply this rule of thumb in practice in the cookieless, connected on and offline world they’re in, and drive additional value in an inflationary environment.”

Boyd added that the team would take “an end-to-end objective view grounded in leading technology, data and expertise”.

Richard McLeod, head of marketing effectiveness at Kantar Insights UK, said: “Marketing effectiveness is top of the agenda as chief marketing officers battle to defend budgets during the current economic climate. Many teams will be tempted to switch spend to short-termist tactics in the coming months as stakeholders ask for immediate sales impact from activity, but we know this is the wrong way to go, slowing down brands’ recovery in the long run.

“Our new practice will help guide teams through this storm – shaping marketing strategies rooted in data and insight that can deliver sustained growth.”