At A Glance
Brands can scale local marketing without losing brand consistency when they separate fixed brand elements from variable local decisions and automate only where the stakes are low. In this Ask the Expert conversation, Experian and Butler/Till discuss how brands can spot real local signals, decide what to automate, and keep people in the loop on decisions that carry brand risk.Key takeaways
- Manual oversight of local marketing tends to break down at around 100 store locations, according to Butler/Till, since decision latency makes it hard to keep pace with simultaneous market-level calls.
- Butler/Till recommends separating fixed brand elements, like voice and positioning, from variable ones, like media mix, audience targeting, and local partnerships, when scaling marketing across many store locations.
- When comparing a local campaign’s performance against a market baseline, a gap of 20% or more usually signals something real, while a gap of just a few percentage points is more often noise.
- Brands running local campaigns across thousands of store locations can automate budget allocation within clear guardrails, but should keep people in the loop on creative selection and other brand-risk decisions.
In our Ask the Expert series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in advertising. Today’s interview is with Ryan Lammela at Butler/Till.
When a national brand says it wants to market locally, what does that usually mean to them, and what does effective local marketing require? Where’s the biggest gap between the two?
Most national brands think “local” marketing means communicating the same message with different prices. They want consistency at scale, without surrendering national control. Effective local marketing requires something more demanding: adapting strategy, not just price, to each market’s competitive intensity, seasonal patterns, media preferences, and regulatory environment, while keeping brand integrity intact.
The biggest gap between national and local marketing is structural. Brands underestimate how different markets actually behave. A media mix that works in Seattle might fail in a small rural town in the Mid-Atlantic. Local audiences respond to different messaging angles. The friction comes from centralized decision-making trying to enforce one strategy across fundamentally different market dynamics.
What we’ve found is that successful brands need a framework that distinguishes fixed elements from variable ones. Brand voice and core positioning? Fixed. Media mix, audience targeting, local partnerships? Variable. Without that clarity, you get either chaotic fragmentation or missed local opportunity.
At what point does scale fundamentally change how you have to operate? What starts to break when you move from 50 or 100 locations to tens of thousands of campaigns?
In our experience, the breaking point tends to show up around 100 physical locations. Below that, marketers can still oversee most decisions. Beyond it, you hit the wall: you can’t have people make thousands of media decisions monthly and stay competitive on timing or cost.
Coordination breaks first. When you’re managing multiple channels across multiple markets, decision latency becomes critical; manual approval chains that worked at 50 locations can’t keep pace with thousands of simultaneous market-level decisions. Execution consistency degrades because there’s no visibility into what’s actually running everywhere.
Then measurement becomes a nightmare. You’re collecting data from dozens of sources: platform dashboards, local partners, point-of-sale systems. The noise drowns out signal. Without a consistent way to tie those sources back to the same person or household, you’re comparing apples to oranges across markets.
What’s a pattern that can come to light when you can compare results across thousands of campaigns, something you wouldn’t have trusted from a single market?
When you run 5,000 campaigns across 4,000 locations, patterns emerge that a single market would never reveal. A media mix that looked like a failure in one market? It works in similar demographic clusters. A creative asset that seemed like an outlier? It’s the winner among underserved audiences nationally.
You also spot seasonality patterns you’d miss regionally. When you compare July performance across 2,000 markets, you learn that summer media preferences shift in ways single-market data would dismiss as noise.
Local markets behave differently. How do you decide which local signals are worth acting on versus which are noise, and what data are you leaning on to tell the difference?
Telling a real local signal from noise starts with a baseline: establish expected performance benchmarks across similar market clusters, then look for deviations that are large relative to a market’s normal swing. A gap of 20% or more usually warrants investigation; something in the low single digits is more often noise.
Layer in market context: competitive intensity, demographics, media consumption patterns, seasonality. When a campaign spikes in one market, ask why. Is the market fundamentally different, or are we optimizing for the wrong thing?
Local signals worth acting on are consistent across similar market types, tied to something measurable (seasonal shift, competitive move, audience behavior change), and actionable without breaking brand consistency.
The data that matters most is comparative data, not absolute performance. When Phoenix outperforms Denver on a tactic, and both are similar sunbelt markets, that’s worth investigating.
With that volume of decisions, where do you let the system decide and where do you still want a person in the loop?
Automate based on decision complexity and consequence, not based on volume.
Budget allocation across channels within a market? The system could handle it. The variables are clear, the data is clean, and wrong decisions are recoverable. We set guardrails—don’t shift more than 15% week-to-week, don’t kill a performing channel below threshold—and let optimization work.
Creative selection or messaging? That stays with people. Those decisions carry cultural and brand risk that algorithms can’t weigh. Same with market-level strategic pivots or major partnerships.
Audience targeting is trickier. There’s a lot of data, patterns aren’t always obvious, and bad targeting ripples through the program. We build algorithmic recommendations, but a strategist validates them against market context. The algorithm says shift audience targeting toward women 35 to 44. The person asks why and either confirms the insight or catches something the algorithm missed.
We also keep humans in the loop for anything that breaks the established playbook. When a market starts behaving unexpectedly, we escalate.
The rule: automate routine, standardized decisions with clear success metrics. Keep people in the loop on decisions that shape strategy or carry brand risk.
What have you learned running local programs at this scale that a brand with 50 or 100 locations could apply on Monday?
Brands running campaigns for 50 or 100 locations should start by building their decision framework before they build their system. Know which decisions are local and which are national before you automate them. We’ve seen brands implement tools that actually slow them down because they skipped this step.
Establish market benchmarks now instead of waiting until you’re at scale. Group your locations by similarity and start comparing performance across similar markets. You’ll spot inefficiency fast and understand what good performance looks like in different market types.
Treat automation as a channel tool, not a thinking replacement. Ask yourself what decisions are slowing you down. What insights are you missing because you don’t have bandwidth? Start there, not with the fanciest tech.
Invest in measurement rigor. When you’re coordinating across multiple locations, measurement becomes competitive advantage. Know which metrics matter locally and which are noise. Build data infrastructure to compare performance across markets without creating reporting chaos.
And here’s what matters most: successful local marketing at scale gives local teams better information and faster decision velocity while maintaining brand guardrails. That balance—autonomy with consistency—is where real leverage lives.
Thanks for the interview. Do you have any recommendations for our readers if they want to learn more?
If your brand is managing multiple locations and feeling friction, the question isn’t “should we automate?” It’s “which decisions are slowing us down, and why?” Start there. Talk to teams running campaigns in the field. They’ll tell you where the friction actually is. Then build systems to solve that friction, not to solve a problem you think you have.
Contact us
Click here to view Experian’s U.S. Consumer Data Privacy Notice.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
About our expert
Ryan Lammela
VP of Channel Activation, Butler/Till
Ryan Lammela is VP of Channel Activation at Butler/Till, an independent media agency. He leads media execution strategy for brands managing distributed marketing across hundreds or thousands of locations, translating integrated strategy into measurable market impact at scale.
FAQs
Butler/Till defines effective local marketing as adapting strategy, not just pricing, to local market conditions like competitive intensity, seasonality, and media preferences, while keeping core brand voice and positioning fixed. Most brands think local marketing means the same message at different prices, which misses the structural differences between markets.
Manual oversight tends to break down around 100 locations, according to Butler/Till. Below that threshold, people can still review most decisions directly; beyond it, decision latency and inconsistent visibility start to undermine execution.
A performance gap of 20% or more against a market baseline usually signals something real, while a gap of just a few percentage points is more often noise. Butler/Till recommends grouping similar markets, setting expected performance benchmarks, and investigating deviations tied to a measurable cause like seasonality or a competitor’s move.
Budget allocation within clear guardrails is well-suited to automation, since the variables are clean and mistakes are recoverable. Creative selection, messaging, and market-level strategic decisions should stay with people, since they carry brand and cultural risk that algorithms aren’t built to weigh.
Experian’s identity resolution and measurement capabilities help brands tie data from disparate local sources, like platform dashboards, local partners and point-of-sale systems, back to the same person or household. That consistent view is what allows comparative analysis across markets to actually hold up, rather than comparing apples to oranges.
Latest posts
Early successes include revenue increases, global partnerships and fundraising NEW YORK, March 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad’s entrepreneurial mentorship initiative, the Propeller Program, has seen extremely positive results since it began in September 2016. The five early-stage startups selected from Norway have gained momentum in establishing a U.S. presence. Tapad, now a part of Experian, is the leader in unified cross-device marketing technology. The company was acquired by the Telenor Group in 2016. Among the successes within Propeller: Xeneta, the leading ocean freight price comparison platform and contracted rate database, has raised an additional $12M in funding since beginning the Propeller Program. Before the end of 2016, the company had exceeded its revenue expectations by nearly 30 percent, proving the European-focused business could succeed in the American market. “Aside from directly impacting our revenue, the Propeller Program has provided us with incredible access to a countless number of external resources, including subject matter experts from the fields of fundraising, public speaking, corporate structuring and immigration law,” said William Di Ieso, GM of North America for Xeneta. “We remain extremely grateful for the opportunity and exposure the program has provided for Xeneta.” Bubbly, an in-store real-time engagement tool for non-buyers, now has clients on four continents. After only a few months in the U.S. market, Bubbly has signed deals with one major retail brand, one major toy manufacturer and a major global consulting firm. The Propeller Program has also opened doors for greater opportunities in Scandinavia and EMEA. After an introduction to Telenor Group’s President and CEO Sigve Brekke, Bubbly is currently piloting its IoT kiosk with the company. “The mentoring sessions have been very valuable and have given us guidance as to how to best enter the U.S. market,” said Marianne Haugland Hindsgaul, Bubbly CEO and co-founder. “Learning to do business in the U.S. is not something you can necessarily learn from a book. The most impactful lessons are based on real-world experience, and that is what the Propeller Program has given us.” BylineMe, a marketplace for freelancers, publishers and brands to connect for content creation and distribution services, has built an extensive network of potential clients and investors. The company has tested its product in the U.S. market and gained valuable feedback for further development. Eventum, a property-sharing group that digitally assists in securing venues for meetings and corporate events, has closed a seed round of funding for nearly $1M. Eventum has also made key hires in the areas of business development and engineering “It is so rewarding to be able to support these Norwegian startups in a meaningful way,” said Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder at Tapad. “Mentor relationships are critical for strategic growth, and I am proud to be able to pay forward the experiences I have gained as an entrepreneur. To me, the Propeller Program is a shining example of the magic that can happen when Norwegian innovation meets American opportunity.” Contact us today
Tapad’s TV analytics solutions now include premium national cable inventory– Travelocity asserts industry need, praises partnership — NEW YORK, February 28, 2017 — Tapad, a part of Experian, has announced its partnership with clypd, the leading audience-based sales platform for television advertising. By integrating clypd’s national cable network inventory, the partnership will expand Tapad’s extensive supply of TV inventory to include premium national cable inventory. Tapad is the leading provider of privacy-safe, cross-screen marketing technology solutions and was first-to-market with a device graph. Clypd’s robust sell-side advertising platform was one of the first built exclusively for the television industry, empowering media owners with solutions that deliver workflow automation, data-enhanced decisioning and, overall, maximize TV campaign performance. Through this partnership, Tapad’s Device Graph-powered TV tools will work in tandem with clypd’s sales platform to enable more precise audience engagement for TV ad buys. This will enable marketers to integrate their customer data or third-party digital segments into Tapad’s TV platform and use them to precisely engage their audience across clypd’s industry-leading footprint of national TV inventory. Campaigns are then optimized using Tapad’s graph-powered TV attribution, ensuring ads are aligned with the best context for each brand’s message. “Clypd is a pioneer in building TV marketplaces,” says Marshall Wong, SVP of TV market development at Tapad. “They were quick to recognize the benefits a device graph could bring to TV so that advertisers can activate linear inventory curated for any digital audience.” “Tapad’s TV activation platform increases the efficiency in which marketers can reach their intended audience on traditional linear TV,” says Doug Hurd, co-founder and EVP of business development at clypd. “Their customized, data-driven campaigns launch with precision and really increase the value marketers can extract from linear TV inventory.” “At Travelocity, we are always looking for ways to more efficiently reach our target audiences,” says Ashley Parker, head of brand marketing at Travelocity. “The combination of traditional linear TV and solutions like this offering from Tapad and clypd are bringing both the tools and the supply to make this vision a reality.” Contact us today
Dextro clients to achieve increased accuracy in cross-device consumer measurement and engagement NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Dextro Analytics, a pure play analytics company that harnesses the power of human learning and artificial reasoning to drive more informed and effective consumer marketing, is partnering with Tapad, the leading provider of unified, cross-screen marketing technology solutions and now a part of Experian. The deal is effective immediately and the scope of the partnership covers North America. Additional terms were not disclosed. Leveraging Tapad’s privacy-safe Device Graph™, Dextro Analytics will be able to significantly bolster its insight engine to decode complex customer journeys. Armed with more relevant, actionable insights, marketers can use Dextro’s cross-screen, closed-loop measurement systems to reach and engage the right customer at the right time through the right channel. “Being able to accurately map consumer preferences, behaviors and journeys in a privacy-safe and unified way across devices is still one of the biggest pain points for marketers,” said Ajith Govind, co-founder of Dextro Analytics. “At the same time, this partnership engages customers with the right message at the right time.” “Detecting latent patterns and signals, and tracing backward- and forward-looking behavioral characteristics, are keys to sustaining a competitive advantage in a crowded space,” said Manmit Shrimali, co-founder of Dextro Analytics. “With the proliferation of data and devices, connecting the dots is of paramount importance.” “Dextro is solving some of the biggest challenges in analytics today,” said Pierre Martensson, GM of Tapad’s data division. “Our partners consistently see notable improvements in both budget allocation and device optimizations after integrating with the Tapad Device Graph, and I have every confidence that Dextro will be among them.” For more information about Dextro Analytics’ revolutionary approach to using human learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to solve business and analytical problems, please visit http://dextroanalytics.com/. For more information about Tapad’s cross-platform advertising solutions, please visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync. Contact us today