Mindshare leads experiential learning project with Fordham University

Mindshare’s Business Intelligence & Advanced Analytics team and Fordham University partnered on a seven week experiential learning program with students to bring their innovative ideas and perspectives together to deliver a project in a real-world context. 

The program was led by Mindshare's Ikechi Okoronkwo, Executive Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics, while Hanna Kobor, Director, Advanced Analytics, and Hannah Hutchinson, Director Business Intelligence & Analytics served as program sponsors for the student teams.

The first activity was called “Metrics that Matter,” where teams addressed the issue of optimizing media performance, an approach that can involve manually looking at several hundred ways to slice and dice data to evaluate media performance, which is time-consuming and prone to human bias. The Metrics that Matter module enables investment teams to objectively identify and rank the media metrics that have the greatest impact on advertiser KPIs, empowering more impactful optimizations. 

Teams were asked to create a dashboard to help address questions such as: 

• What fast moving metrics matter to deliver against business goals?  
• How can I influence my buy (i.e., optimizations) with this information? 
• If a metric matters, do we know the ideal value range (i.e., benchmark)?  
• How can I understand my delivery reporting in context of this model? 

The second activity was focused on the Social Impact Index, which aids us in reshaping the traditional brand safety model, allowing clients to plan towards making an impact in any community and creating accountability in media investments. This is because, historically, media has suppressed the voices of underrepresented communities and published skewed images of the truth, putting pressure on Brand Safety practices that ensure we align with the right environments. 

The teams’ goal was to create a dashboard to help address questions such as:  

• What is the impact of my investment on certain marginalized communities? 
• How can I influence my buy (i.e., optimizations) with this information? 
• If we identify and measure the intention of certain editorial content, what insights are relevant to position my delivery reporting in context of this outputs? 

At the end of the seven weeks, the teams presented their final projects to employees at Mindshare across different levels and disciplines. This partnership with Fordham is a great pipeline for talent as the team already hired several students from Fordham through previously held case competitions.