At the Professional Science Master’s program, we provide our students the opportunity to learn from experts. This semester, Professor Mark Burgess is hosting the MBS Fall Life Sciences series, inviting speakers to give guest lectures to students in his course Market Assessment and Analysis for Business and Science. In this series, industry experts share their marketing experience.
Professor Burgess recently hosted Kevin Sherlock at the Rutgers Inn and Conference Center, inviting MBS students to join via Zoom. Kevin Sherlock is the Vice President of Marketing, Personal Care at Church & Dwight Co., Inc. He completed his undergraduate education right here at Rutgers University before obtaining a master’s degree in marketing at Rider University.
Church and Dwight has been making consumer products since 1846. You may recognize some of their power brands, including ARM & HAMMER, Trojan, OxiClean, and TheraBreath.
In his presentation, Sherlock provided an overview of how Marketing Mix Analysis is used in the consumer product industry. He demonstrated analytics’ critical role in marketing decisions.
Here are the main takeaways from his presentation.
Marketing Mix Analysis: Why Is It Important?
It’s no secret: the advertising landscape has changed drastically since the early days of Church and Dwight in 1846—especially in the last few decades. There has been an exponential growth of marketing channels beyond the traditional areas of television, radio, and print. The rise of digital and online media, as well as the emergence of new and innovative media, have opened countless new marketing vehicles to choose from, including digital video, in-store merchandising, e-commerce, social/digital, influences/PR, and digital coupons—and that’s just scratching the surface.
Brands need a tool to sort through all these channels and decide what resources should be dedicated to each.
Marketing Mix Modeling
A Marketing Mix Analysis is a framework marketers use to evaluate and optimize their marketing strategies. Using a sophisticated algorithm, a Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) platform demonstrates sales across all marketing activities. This platform breaks down the return on investment (ROI) of every dollar spent on each marketing channel.
The platform helps marketers determine driving factors behind sales and provides clear recommendations for optimizing for the future. This is an iterative process of modeling, optimizing, activating, and validating.
Real-world examples
Sherlock provided three real-world examples of products from Church and Dwight and their outputs using the MMM platform.
One example demonstrated a product with a significant sales volume increase. The MMM platform revealed the main drivers of this growth, breaking down the ROI of each channel.
Sherlock provided two more examples of products that weren’t as successful. The platform showed how the media spend performed at each level. This platform helped determine what options to pick for the future to improve ROI.
Sherlock explained to students the law of diminishing returns, which concludes that changes in investment lead to changes in returns. Increasing investment in a product with a good ROI can eventually lead to a decrease in ROI. The MMM platform can provide scenarios of ROIs based on different budgets to help marketers optimize their decisions.
Stay tuned for more speakers in the MBS Fall Life Science series. To view all our upcoming events, check out our events page. You can also follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to stay up to date.