CANNES – Marketers should stop settling for “decent” results and instead push for greatness by eliminating inefficiencies and rethinking how they measure success, says Jeremy Cornfeldt, president of performance marketing firm Tinuiti.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Cornfeldt laid out the company’s approach to cutting waste and maximizing impact for brands.
“Our ‘Love Growth, Hate Waste’ messaging is definitely reasonable. We really like it,” Cornfeldt said. “There’s a lot of waste in the industry in general, and our focus has always been around efficiency, having a heritage in performance marketing.”
Importance of precise targeting
For Tinuiti, eliminating waste goes beyond basic budget management. It requires understanding that most audiences are not ready to buy at any given time, making precise targeting essential.
“Studies have shown at any given time there’s only 5% of the people on the market ready to buy,” Cornfeldt said. “That said, you still want to make sure that you’re talking to the right people where it’s not only about identifying when they’re ready to buy or when they’re ready to take an action, but people that will resonate and engage and be receptive to whatever your brand has to say.”
Central to Tinuiti’s strategy is its proprietary Bliss Point technology, a suite of tools designed to expose inefficiencies and optimize marketing spend. The platform offers applications ranging from measurement and incrementality to scenario planning and creative analysis.
“What we do with Bliss Point that’s really effective is we not only look at how the individual channels are performing and what results they’re delivering, but we’re looking at the relationship between the channels,” Cornfeldt said. “If we’re investing dollars in one area, how is it impacting another area? Are we driving consideration through one channel and conversion within another channel? Then there’s a relationship there. And both of those channels have to work equally as hard to ultimately achieve the best result for the client.”
Actionable audience profiles
Tinuiti also emphasizes the strategic use of first-party data, enhanced by third-party identity tools and psychographic insights, to build more actionable and expansive audience profiles.
“Your first-party data has got to be your foundation,” Cornfeldt said. “We use our clients’ first-party data, we marry it up against our identity spine, which is a third-party identity spine that we license, because then that gives us a real, true perspective of who the audience is.”
On the rapidly evolving role of AI in search, Cornfeldt sees opportunity rather than threat. He argues that AI-powered SEO is an evolution that allows brands to shift from rigid keyword strategies to more conversational, influential engagement.
“It’s not just about indexing results and indexing content,” Cornfeldt said. “It’s about answering questions, starting a dialogue, and having some level of influence. You want that kind of opinionated information to come back to you, because that’s going to help inform your decision.”
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