See how the Digital Strategy and eCommerce team at Microsoft used GWI Spark, our AI market research assistant, to empower their people and uncover expert-level insights in record time.
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years operation
global offices
market valuation
Ram Iyer
Senior Director of Digital Strategy and eCommerce, Microsoft
Microsoft’s regional marketing teams often need quick access to audience insights to help them create targeted campaigns, proactively resolve sales issues, and a dozen other use cases.
Addressing time-critical challenges like these means they don’t have the luxury of waiting for the relevant data to arrive from a central research team. Instead they need to be self-sufficient, with the ability to do their own high quality research, fast.
Easier said than done. Data tools can be highly sophisticated and require research expertise to use well. Not everyone can be a research expert, yet demand for research-based insights is massive - and growing.
So how exactly do you make it easy for non-experts - who excel in execution rather than deep analysis - to uncover expert-level insights in record time?
That was the challenge Microsoft faced, and that we were able to solve with GWI Spark, our AI market research assistant. GWI Spark combines the power of artificial intelligence with our rock-solid research to serve up stunning insights the moment they’re needed.
GWI Spark democratizes data by making insights accessible to literally everyone. Using GWI Spark, teams can make data-driven, evidence-based decisions at the speed of business.
The team at Microsoft used GWI Spark to explore the profile of AI shoppers in Australia to help them create an executive briefing for a large consumer electronics retailer.
GWI Spark immediately showed that these shoppers have strong interests in wildlife, nature, DIY projects, and reality TV. This was a breakthrough insight: the retailer belongs to a major Australian group that also owns a DIY and hardware chain that’s perfectly aligned with its shoppers’ interests.
Suddenly the team at Microsoft had an ultra-reliable, real-world insight on which they could build their briefing. Instead of talking in the abstract, they now had a concrete connection between the retailer’s audiences and another member of their brand family that gave them a highly promising angle.
Microsoft marketing team members were able to jump onto GWI Spark and get incisive insights that drive strategic breakthroughs like this in the time it takes to type a question. It’s literally that simple.
This insight uncovered by Microsoft using GWI Spark suggested an opportunity to make use of its parent company’s loyalty program. They could engage this particular group of customers in a way that spoke directly to their personal interests.
This is a great example of how GWI Spark can uncover connections that aren’t immediately obvious. This potential to explore “what if?” scenarios adds a powerful layer of optimization.
In this situation, agility is everything. It’s the difference between reacting and leading, between looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the road ahead with clarity and purpose. Using GWI Spark to inspire, test, and refine strategies before execution meant Microsoft could shift from reactive adjustments to proactive, data-driven decision-making, redefining how they leverage data at scale.
The bottom line here is that GWI Spark empowered Microsoft’s marketing teams to quickly access actionable insights without the need for deep analysis, freeing them to focus their energy on driving results. As Microsoft themselves put it:
