Our Approach

We exist to help brands turn complexity into opportunity.

Brands have relied on their agencies to control their data. At Haystack, we see the opportunity brands have to truly own their data and position it to empower their business.

Media is one of the largest costs brands have. With those costs comes an incredible amount of data generated, including spend, performance, audience, reach, etc. across traditional and digital channels. Traditionally, agencies have led the access to this data, including how it’s reported on, how it’s shared and how it’s used for optimizations. We believe this should change. Here are some of the key responsibilities of the marketing organization and operations team:

  • Owning your data means real transparency with partners
  • Owning your data means a faster rate of speed to insight
  • Owning your data means empowering data-led workstreams

Building a brand's intelligence system is like a fingerprint. It's unique and specific to the brand's needs.

Owning your media and the data it generates means controlling your destiny today and into the future across paid, owned, earned and shared contexts. Some of the largest usecases are supporting change, QA and realtime optimization. Change including partners, strategy, context and more that allows you to evolve strategies and data to new opportunities. This empowers the business to lead knowing they can pivot as needed.

Our approach covers two areas.

One, the guidance to help you navigate the challenges in understanding change, setting up your learning agenda to optimize strategy for the business and help navigate change in partners and platforms.

Two, the technology to connect the data, organize it for use and action it via dashboards and related outputs.

Data Strategy Starts with Great Questions

Great Inputs Lead to Great Outputs

Your Learning Agenda is where all data strategy begins. Establishing your queue of questions the business is trying to answer sets the foundation. Starting with data sources is not ideal as questions help direct us toward potential sources.

Your System Should Power Answers

With questions in hand and a supporting process of inputs, we start to look at data sources. Data comes in different forms from different sources and should connect in smart ways. Business context is then added to ensure the data is understood and usable. Finally, views are organized by audience to provide answers to questions. Ideally, those questions generate new ones.

Embracing Change

Answers lead to questions. Those answers should produce opportunities to pivot. Change happens, especially when we can lead it vs. disruption from the outside.