Client

My Role

Partner Agency

DTC Strategy, Audience Segmentation, Loyalty Mechanics, Customer Journey Design

Innovative Use Of

Designed a full DTC strategy and digital product framework to convert a 280M+ global fan base from passive audience to owned, engaged community.

Achievement

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The Coca-Cola Company

Rand Merchant Bank

World Gold Council

ALDO

JaSure

Apple

Ashburton

RYTE

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Lotus Cars

Robinhood

Inflection

Harrods

Google

Twelve South

Data and Media Director

**✍ Project Overview**

The World Gold Council needed to understand whether their marketing spend was actually working, and if so, then how much, on which channels, and with what lag. Gold is a considered purchase driven by macroeconomic sentiment as much as brand preference, which makes it a uniquely complex environment for marketing effectiveness modelling. I was tasked with building a Marketing Mix Model from the ground up to give WGC the ability to answer these questions with statistical confidence.

**📐 Building the Model**

The model was built in Python on Google Colab, using a multivariate regression framework with adstock transformations to account for the carry-over effect of media exposure over time, and saturation curves to capture diminishing returns at higher spend levels. Each channel was modelled individually before being combined into a unified model, allowing us to isolate the contribution of paid media from baseline sales drivers like macroeconomic conditions, gold price fluctuations, and seasonality.

**📊 The Google Sheets Effectiveness Layer**

Alongside the Python model, I developed a complementary effectiveness multiplier model in Google Sheets, designed to make the outputs accessible and actionable for non-technical stakeholders. This layer translated the regression outputs into channel-level ROI scores, budget scenario planning tools, and spend optimisation recommendations that the client could interrogate directly without needing to touch the underlying code.

**🔍 Benchmarking Against Meridian**

The model's methodology and outputs were benchmarked against Google Meridian, Google's open-source MMM framework. This validation exercise gave WGC confidence that the approach was methodologically sound and comparable to best-in-class industry standards, while also surfacing where the bespoke model offered advantages specific to their business context.

**📚 We Learned**

1. How to build a full MMM pipeline in Python, from raw data ingestion to model output.  
2. How to apply adstock and saturation transformations to media variables in a regression framework.  
3. How to isolate paid media contribution from macroeconomic and seasonal baseline drivers.  
4. How to translate complex statistical outputs into accessible planning tools for non-technical stakeholders.  
5. How to benchmark a bespoke model against an industry-standard framework (Google Meridian).  
6. How modelling for a considered, macro-sensitive category like gold differs from FMCG or direct-response contexts.

Marketing Mix Modelling

**✍ Project Overview**

New Zealand Rugby had built the most successful franchise in sporting history. But of their 280 million fans globally, only 15 million were actively engaged. The remaining 265 million had no meaningful touchpoint with the brand. No direct relationship, no owned channel, no way for NZR to reach them outside of match windows. Revenue was entirely dependent on traditional channels: ticketing, broadcasting, and merchandise. The brief was to change that. AKQA, in partnership with The Laboratory, was tasked with designing an end-to-end DTC strategy to turn a passive global fan base into an owned, monetisable audience.

**👥 Understanding the Fan**

The strategy began with a rigorous segmentation of NZR's global audience. Mapping fans across engagement levels, geographic markets, and relationship to the game. A 22-touchpoint customer journey was developed through a single persona, Marc, a mid-passionate French fan who had never been to a match and never would. Marc became the lens through which every product decision, content moment, and loyalty mechanic was pressure-tested. If it worked for Marc, it worked for the 265 million fans like him.

**📐 Two Propositions, One Platform**

The strategy produced two distinct value propositions for two distinct audience segments, unified under a single All Blacks app experience. Experience Eden brought the match-day atmosphere to the millions who would never set foot in the stadium. Live predictions, personalised commentary layers, fan-captured content, and real-time highlights. Rituals of Excellence gave the 286 million global appreciators with no match-driven entry point a reason to engage year-round. Daily workouts, nutrition and mindset programmes led by players, Māori culture immersion, and sustainable merchandise integrated into the journey.

**🏆 The Caps Loyalty System**

Binding both propositions together was a unified loyalty currency, Caps. Every interaction across the platform, content consumption, match predictions, ritual completions, social sharing, earned Caps redeemable across tickets and merchandise. The system was designed to make engagement feel like progress, turning passive fans into participants with a stake in the brand.

**🗓️ The Roadmap**

The strategy was phased around a defining cultural moment: RWC 2023 in France. Step one launched Experience Eden to build the data foundation and engaged fan base around the tournament. Step two introduced Rituals of Excellence for off-season engagement and new revenue streams, ensuring the platform had a reason to exist long after the final whistle.

New Zealand Rugby

**✍ Project Overview**

Pi, built by Inflection AI, was the world's first emotionally intelligent AI companion. The product was unlike anything that had been launched before, which meant the launch strategy had to be equally unconventional. AKQA was tasked with introducing Pi to the world through social media in a way that felt genuinely human, not like a product announcement. The answer was simple: don't talk about Pi. Let Pi talk.

**💬 The Core Idea**

Rather than broadcasting what Pi could do, the strategy put Pi directly into real conversations across platforms, responding to people the way it would in an actual one-to-one interaction. The launch became a demonstration, not a declaration. Every comment Pi left, every thread it joined, every reply it sent was the product proving its own value in real time.

**📐 A Platform for Every Dimension**

A full channel strategy was developed across seven platforms, each given a distinct role in Pi's social presence. Twitter was Pi's home for cultural moments and real-time wit. Instagram was built around warmth and one-to-one connection. TikTok gave Pi its sense of humour through pop culture video formats. Facebook served as a community resource for people who needed support. LinkedIn positioned Pi as a thinking partner. YouTube hosted longer-form conversations. Tertiary platforms including Reddit, Discord, and Twitch extended Pi's reach into communities where authentic, unfiltered dialogue already happened naturally.

**🎭 Defining Pi's Voice**

A six-dimension tone of voice framework defined how Pi showed up: Curious, Supportive, Humble, Welcoming, Humorous, and Intelligent. Each dimension was calibrated differently per platform, giving Pi a consistent personality that could flex its expression depending on context without ever feeling inconsistent or manufactured.

**🤝 Community and Influence**

Detailed community engagement rules governed how Pi entered and exited conversations: response speed, which threads to join, when to go deeper and when to close, and a clear escalation path from public comment to private one-to-one conversation. An influencer tiering strategy ran from nano to mega, with named targets across each tier, ensuring Pi's reach extended beyond organic discovery from day one.

Hey Pi

**✍ Project Overview**

Twelve South is a Nashville-born tech accessories brand, known for premium Apple-adjacent products like AirFly and Butterfly. Despite strong product recognition, the brand had a fundamental problem: customers knew the products but not the brand behind them. AirFly was outpacing Twelve South itself in search equity. AKQA was engaged to develop a growth strategy to address this, and to position the brand for significant commercial scale.

**🔍 The Core Finding**

Twelve South was competing in the wrong tier. The brand sat uncomfortably between design-forward and disruptive, without owning either position clearly. The strategic opportunity was to move upmarket into the accessible luxury segment occupied by brands like Dyson, Rimowa, and Herman Miller, targeting consumers who care deeply about the objects they use every day. That insight became the foundation of the brand framework: Twelve South as the only tech accessories brand for those who care enough.

**👥 Audience Prioritisation**

Six audience segments were identified and mapped against acquisition efficiency and revenue potential. Frequent Travelers, Apple Consumers, and Luxury Consumers emerged as the highest-value targets. A saturation model sequenced spend across these segments to maximise return at each stage of investment, avoiding the common mistake of spreading budget evenly across audiences with very different conversion economics.

**📐 The Investment Case**

The data revealed a reverse funnel dynamic: weak brand awareness was creating drag on performance media ROI, while owned and retail channels were significantly outperforming. The recommendation was a phased investment approach, sequenced to prove the model at lower spend before committing to a full brand campaign and platform redesign. The strategy gave Twelve South a clear, evidence-led path from where they were to where they needed to be.

New Zealand Rugby

Parties Involved

Project Facts