Most brands don’t collapse overnight. They fade quietly one lost user, one forgotten reason to choose. Each month, we’ll use our data tools to uncover 5 familiar brands losing real buyers while their categories grow or sustain. This isn’t criticism. It’s an early-warning system. See the patterns before decline becomes destiny.

Sometimes the most powerful growth insights don’t come from a brief—they come from the data. While analyzing MRI-Simmons audience data for Panasonic’s HomeHawk security camera, Left Off Madison uncovered an unexpected buyer segment: tropical fish and reptile owners using the camera to monitor their tanks. The discovery led Panasonic to pivot its content strategy, outperform traditional home-security messaging, and ultimately rethink product packaging and retail distribution—proof that rigorous audience analysis can shape not just media plans, but product strategy itself.

Left Off Madison is an independent agency founded by former Dentsu and Merkle executives Rob Douglas and Boris Litvinov, built to reunite media and creative without holding-company overhead. The agency specializes in precision multicultural targeting, using real-time purchase data from independent retailers through its proprietary Tiendita platform—an approach that has delivered outsized sales lift for brands like Panasonic and Ajinomoto.

Gen X was built for this moment. As the original latchkey kids turned pandemic-era anchors, we’ve weathered every major crisis from the crack epidemic to 9/11 to the Great Recession—and came out adaptable, self-sufficient, and steady. Now, as the nation’s ultimate “sandwich generation,” Gen X isn’t just coping through COVID-19—we’re leading.