PJA: Bow & Arrow

A few months back I noted that thanks to an inspiring conversation with a planner who was laid off for about six weeks and then snatched up by Saatchi New York, I have begun to call research by its appropriate name, at least for the advertising and marketing world: insight work. I’m not attempting to field this term as a euphemism; rather, to point to the essential task that insight about customers, markets and marketing performs.

Just as you can’t differentiate yourself these days without outbehaving the competition (to borrow a term from Dov Seidman), you can’t differentiate your marketing presence without great insights.

Even if the national trend shows anemic growth in research, there are several reasons why insight work makes sense right now:

1. The economic slowdown has radically changed the consumer’s sense of value and order of priorities. Are your customers and targets thinking differently or looking for a simpler offering from you? How else would you know unless you went out and asked them?

2. Social media is changing the marketing equation on a daily basis. PJA clients who didn’t know what Twitter was six months ago are Tweeting daily to growing groups of followers about their corporate philanthropy and point of view. How do you know which channels are relevant now unless you go out to the market and look for these insights?

3. Just as the companies that lead the way out of the last economic trough (Google, Salesforce.com, Juniper, Trend Micro) were actively plotting and innovating during the nadir of 2002 and 2003, tomorrow’s leaders are plotting today, identifying new audience needs, markets and attitudes that will lead them to develop the next break-out medical device, router, or killer app. Unless you can intuit what your audience wants, you’re traveling in the dark without a flashlight.

Which brings me to the point: PJA’s OpinionPulse online insight groups. Over the past four years we have developed two of these groups:

OpinionPulse Life Science: 50 highly opinionated biological and chemical scientists from across big pharma, biotech, government and academia, with titles ranging from Bench Scientist to VP of Discovery. Currently Domestic US.

OpinionPulse Information Technology: 60 equally highly opinionated technology knowledge workers from financial services, software, hardware, retail, government, manufacturing, insurance and many other industries. Currently Global.

How can you make use of these groups to add insight to your positioning, creative development and test strategy, as many of our clients have done? Just shoot me an email at hjkennedy@agencypja.com and let’s discuss.

On yesterday’s episode of This Week in Social Media, host Mike O’Toole was joined by PJA colleague Hugh Kennedy, EVP, Planning, and Fast Company writer Adam Penenberg to discuss Penenberg’s recent article about the affect social media has on the brain and how marketers can leverage this. Here are some highlights from the show:

Social networking is like falling in love. At least in terms of brain chemistry. Neuro-economist Paul Zak discovery that social networking triggers the release of oxytocin, a chemical in the brain that heightens feelings of trust, empathy and generosity similar to when we fall in love.

Friends help people live longer. This is a pretty well-known theory at this point, but what’s particularly compelling is that in most studies, those friends don’t have to be in the same room, or even the same town or country with you. You get the same benefits – better health and a longer life – Just by having friends and interacting with them over telephone, e-mail, and social networks.

Engagement with customers and prospects should build out of a brand organically. A great example of a brand effectively leveraging the connection between brain chemistry and emotional reactions  is Chipotle. Their recent No Junk campaign encourages people to forward all their junk mail to an email box with the promise that when it hits  500,000 pieces of junk mail, Chipotle will make a donation of 50,000 to The Lunch Box. Chipotle has successfully linked their mission to be selective about the products they let into their store with the fact that people don’t like junk in their lives either, whether they’re eating it or whether it’s in their mailbox.

Trust is the essence of everything you do as a company. If your customers trust your product and your company, you’ll be able to create a relationship with them. With social media, everything is instantaneous, so if a customer has a bad experience with a company, they have a place to complain about it and potentially reach millions of people. It’s important for companies to acknowledge this reality.

Listen to the full episode here: Social Media Affects Brain Similar to Falling in Love – What This Means for Marketers

I’m happy to announce that PJA has partnered with the Corporate Executive Board and its Marketing Leadership Council on a new research study called “Marketers’ Use of Social Media.”

The topic is less about how you might be using social media to market or promote your company, and more about how you’re using social media for your own professional and career advancement.

In case you’re not aware of the Marketing Leadership Council, it’s a group of 2800 marketers at 600+ participating organizations where, to quote CEB, “the world’s best marketing executives turn for guidance on Marketing issues and challenges.”

The survey has just gone live here.

In thanks for taking it, PJA and the Corporate Executive Board will randomly choose one respondent to receive a free Apple iPad. We’ll also issue a benchmarking report that will let you compare your results to the respondent pool as a whole.

If you have something interesting to share we’d love to hear it. Otherwise we’ll report back in a month or two on the results.

AdAge recently asked seven agency leaders to collaborate on a white paper titled, What Small and Midsize Companies Need to Know About Marketing. As a regular AdAge blogger, I joined six of my peers to answer the following five questions:

1. How should we measure marketing ROI?

2. How should we leverage social media?

3. What agency-compensation alternatives are available to us?

4. How much should we be spending on marketing and where?

5. What kinds of skills and talent do we need to achieve our marketing goals?

If you want to read what seven seasoned and opinionated agency executives think, download the white paper here. There’s some good stuff and plenty of free advice. While there are fewer disagreements than you might expect, there are also seven distinct points of view. Collectively the answers to these questions add up to a well-rounded and thorough approach to the big marketing challenges that every business faces.

Download the white paper: What Small and Midsize Businesses Need to Know About Marketing

This morning I received an e-mail from the editors over at SlideShare with some good news: the presentation I created with my colleagues Emmanuel Ording, Multimedia Designer and Doug Parrish, Senior Art Director, and uploaded to the PJA SlideShare page just yesterday has been featured on the SlideShare homepage, acquiring over 1,000 views in less than 24 hours.

I hope I have this kind of luck with the next installments of Social Media Points of Practice, a series I’ll be working on with my PJA colleagues that will provide marketers and social media enthusiasts with advice and how-to guides.

For now, check out this first SlideShare on optimizing a LinkedIn profile to improve SEO for your company.