Data Driven, Perception-Aware Marketing for Bentley Motors

The CEO of Bentley Motors asked me to research into tools that could give an insight into customer delight.

It’s easy to use social listening tools for mass market brands - but how do you selectively listen to a niche, High Net Worth (HNW) audience?

I pioneered methods of identifying customers from what they say, how they behave, and the platforms they use via GDPR compliant data matching and tools such as Brandwatch and Audiense.

The result was a digital monitoring programme for Bentley’s Centenary year, which enabled us to track how the centenary campaigns affected brand perception, in line with our brand transformation objectives, among customers and the general public.

For example, we were able to see when our EXP100GT concept car increased the brand’s credentials as a sustainable, collaborative brand, and reduced our reliance on traditional speed, power and materials messaging, as intended. As a result of this work, the brand secured a Silver DMA award for best launch campaign in 2020, beating Boots and Coca-Cola.

The work fed Bentley’s content strategy, digital marketing strategy, and the marketing strategy overall to establish a more user-centric, perception-aware style of marketing for the brand, and ultimately became part of a transformed digital ecosystem.