2023 Innovation of the Year: Freemavens

Freemavens has created Tilt (The Impact Lever Theory), which is a machine learning tool that uses advanced analytics to predict which trends and signals help or hinder business performance and which ranks those trends by sales impact and predictive strength.

The tool models historical data against real performance and analyses tens of thousands of trends tailored to specific business needs.

Tilt also harnesses machine learning and novel signal integration to focus clients not just on a diagnostic, but a primer for activation areas across marketing and business functions.

The tool is a data-agnostic, boosted regression tree model which uses a variety of signals including cultural touchpoints, consumer confidence, category-specific trends, competitor performance, brand-related shifts and macro-economic factors.

These signals are fed into a singular model and linked directly to sales, a method that breaks performance measurement siloes and conflict of interests, as all signals fight for their right to be considered impactful.

Clients can try any input and there are no limitations on the of number of brands, topics, or themes that can be ingested and tested against each other through Tilt.

Tilt has several technical features, including triple band input ranges. This includes looking at not only the impact of the entire signal, but also at the signal when the values are low and high on an individual basis, which means Freemavens can considerably reduce signal noise – a key problem which helps tackle causation versus correlation fallacies.

The company’s models each contain 1000s of individual trends across social, search, weather, sales and consumer confidence, with a dimensionality reduction technique used to organise these signals into cohorts and allow them to be harmonised into more understandable macro-signals.

Category level sales data allows for changes to the target variable, including competitors’ past performance. This feature therefore creates a model from the vantage point of the competition to see what threats both companies share.

Tilt was launched by founder and innovation partner Andrzej Moyseowicz alongside the firm’s data science department, with input from strategy, sales, analytics and marketing.

Freemavens managing director Eleanor Lloyd Malcolm said: “We’re absolutely thrilled and humbled to have won the MRS Research Live Innovation of the Year award and be recognised by our industry as a pioneering leader.

“Innovation is a bold journey that would not have been possible without the entire Freemavens team partnering with change making clients. We thrive on pushing the boundaries in both advanced analytics and human intelligence to gain richer insights and sharpen growth strategies.

“A big thank you to our amazing people, our clients, and the MRS for championing bolder ways of unearthing impactful insights.”

(Pictured: the Freemavens team)