We interviewed Gravy Advisory Board Member Jeff Hackett about why location intelligence is the next big thing and the future of the location data industry.

Gravy would like to welcome Jeff Hackett to our Advisory Board. Jeff comes to the Gravy Advisory Board as an experienced leader in the marketing and advertising space. We discussed how marketers and advertisers can unlock new insights with location intelligence and what the future holds for the industry.

Gravy: Tell us about yourself…
Hackett: If you ask LinkedIn, I’m an experienced business leader with a passion for driving results and team success. I’ve spent my entire career in advertising and marketing, having worked on the buy-side, sell-side, platform-side, and spent many years in data/analytics. If you ask my wife and two boys, I’m sometimes clumsy (okay more than sometimes!), decent on the BBQ, play too much Grateful Dead in the car, always ready to play outside, and love our summer trips to Lake George. If you ask me, I’m a guy who believes that positivity and paying it forward truly matters.

Gravy: What brings you to Gravy’s Advisory Board?
Hackett: It starts and ends with Gravy’s people. I’ve been impressed with Jeff, Matt and Anurag from our first conversation. I’ve also worked closely in the past with a few Gravy employees for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration. 

Gravy: Why is location intelligence the next big thing?
Hackett: Location data, collected in a privacy-compliant manner and cleansed properly, is an extremely powerful asset in helping to understand customer segments and answering tough business questions. It  helps unlock fresh insights that would otherwise be impossible to get or very difficult to gleam. I have a love for cars and may search online for expensive imports from time to time, but in the real world I just visited our local GMC dealer. (True story). Location data can also complete the attribution loop when combined with other data sets. As we continue to rush head on towards a more connected world, it continues to become more useful. For example, we know that connected TV (CTV) viewing is on the rise and offers the promise of sight, sound and motion together with the accountability of digital advertising. Want to know if your CTV ad drove a viewer to visit your drive-thru? Or your competitors’ locations? Curious if reaching sports TV viewers who also frequent live sporting events leads to higher purchase intent for your brand? Location data unlocks these answers. Truly an exciting time to harness the power of location intelligence in a responsible and accurate manner!

Gravy: What is your favorite Gravy product, and why?
Hackett: I’m really encouraged by Navigate. We’re living in a very different time right now and marketers need help. Whatever they used to know about their customers has now changed in a very short period of time. As they restart advertising, they’ll have to ask themselves if it’s working. Any tool that unlocks these key insights in an easily digestible format with unlimited portability is a winner to me.

Gravy: How do you see your industry using location intelligence in the next 5 years? 10 years?
Hackett: Marketers continue to look for and demand more accountability in all of their advertising efforts. The days of holding only digital and direct response channels to performance-based outcomes is coming to a close – and that rate is only accelerating due to the financial stress of COVID-19. Every dollar spent must be accountable. Also, the more relevant the ad is to the viewer, the more likely they will be to respond. If I know even just a bit more about the shopping habits of my customer, I can tailor messaging appropriately. I have no doubt that location intelligence will continue to play an ever-increasing role in marketers’ quests for both advertising accountability and relevancy across their entire marketing budget. Up and to the right!