Atomic 212° has partnered with marketing mix modelling platform, Mutinex, becoming the first independent agency to join its Platinum Partnership Program.
The partnership will see the Mutinex GrowthOS market mix modelling platform, and the marketing ROI metric will become central to planning and evaluating media spending at the independent agency for eligible customers.
Claire Fenner, Atomic 212° national chief executive officer, and Henry Innis, Mutinex Co-Founder and CEO, spoke to Mediaweek about the aims of the partnership, what that means for clients and their respective outlooks ahead.
The Mutinx Platinum Partnership Programme and what it offers Atomic 212°
Established in 2018, Innis explained that Mutinex is a market mix modelling software leader that models growth for more than 30 enterprises across the market. Its primary aim is to help enterprises make better decisions regarding business outcomes and growth across their marketing mixes. The Platinum Partnership is how their working relationships with agencies are formalised.
Innis noted that there are a few components of such partnerships, working much more closely with agencies as partners to distribute the product. He highlighted Atomic 212° as a data-mature partner, which was one of the key reasons the agency was accepted into the Platinum Partnership.
“With a product like ours, there are two very important criteria; one is that we need partners who are relatively data mature and data sophisticated – and that’s not a universal truth across the agency landscape.”
Innis said that Mutinex requires partners who will commit to training against MROI outputs, are willing to build and scale and have the right talent to link MROI data to media and market to make decisions that deliver better business performance and customer outcomes.
“If we have partners doing that, that’s a good win and value for our product. It’s also a win for partners who are able to use our products to deliver great outcomes for their customers,” he added.
Henry Innis
Fenner on the importance of delivering for their clients
Fenner shared that Atomic 212° and Mutinex have been in business together for several years, working on a mutual client.
The agency has championed media mix modelling and market mix modelling for a long time, which is core to its business and the product they deliver for clients. Fenner noted that while Atomic 212° has its own media mix modelling products internally, the value for the agency in the partnership is to leverage GrowthOS, which is tested and optimised across several different verticals and a large volume of spend.
“Critically, for us, the ability to leverage a third-party supplier and offer that to our clients is valuable so that there’s never a question of us marking our own homework, to put it simply.
“We’ve always been unbiased in the modelling we’ve delivered for clients. But offering that third-party view of the output allows us to ensure that our clients have 100% trust in that output and the insights gained from it, which is our prerogative,” she said.
“We want to make sure that the work we’re delivering for our clients is 100% trusted and allows us to build on it and continue to optimise it based on the insights,” she added.
Fenner noted they can add value to the partnership as the data collection process is quite labour-intensive.
“A critical part of the modelling process is getting the right data and structure to ensure that the output is as valid and robust as possible.”
Fenner also noted that the agency is leveraging the insights for their clients, so they are fully engaged in that process, which is the core of their product and service delivered to clients.
“We have a lot of experience in leveraging the insights and continue to optimise and test and learn based on the insights that GrowthOS is driving for each of our clients,” she added.
Claire Fenner
What makes the Mutinex GrowthOS platform unique, and what the agreement means for Atomic 212° clients
The Mutinex GrowthOS platform is an always-on model, which can process data close to real-time and turn that into usable outputs.
Innis explained: “The difference is that the MROI market mix has historically been confined to PowerPoint decks versus platform infrastructure. The reality is that for agencies, the wider market, and customers to be able to use data, it needs to be built as infrastructure and accessible as an infrastructure.”
“Market mix and MROI hasn’t been able to do that for many years, and Mutinex has been the market leader in changing that and making that a reality,” he added.
For Atomic 212°, the agreement means it can continue to deliver valuable insight to inform how it can continue to drive growth for its clients from what its specific media mix is delivering.
Fenner noted that each client’s media mix to drive growth is different, and to be able to gain that allows them to continue to support them, drive growth and inform the right mix, which will be the most significant benefit in the long term.
Innis and Fenner on the outlook ahead for Mutinex and Atomic 212°
In addition to Atomic 212°, holding company Dentsu has also signed up as a partner in the Platinum Partnership.
Innis called Atomic 212° “the right type of agency” to partner with because of its historical focus and lean-in on modelling.
“Atomic 212° has certainly been one of the champions in the landscape of using modelling to make better decisions in the marketing landscape. I think it’s pleasing that our two groups ever come together around this… We wanted to select two solid groups to test this out and to understand it deeply,” Innis said of Atomic 212° and Dentsu.
“Part of that is an acknowledgment that we’re working with these two groups because we believe that there are insights that they’re going to happen to the process and how that how we can be able to frame that, that we can work collaboratively on as well,” he added.
Innis noted that Mutinex is moving toward a broader partnerships program over time, with partners who understand the data side well and can do it at scale. He said the hope is that Mutinex will be able to set a standard for an MROI vendor relationship between an agency and an MROI platform vendor.
Fenner shared that she hopes Atomic 212° will continue to roll out models with the Mutinex and the GrowthOS platform across their client base to give all clients insight, provide recommendations, enable its test-and-learn approach, and build on the broad insights from the platform.
“Our focus is not changing our product. It’s leveraging a different platform to deliver what we’ve been doing for a number of years and what has given us success to date,” Fenner concluded.
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Top image: Henry Innis and Claire Fenner