“Brands keep investing in interruptions and the audience keeps running away. Consumers want immersive content and tools that fight friction.” – JEFF ROSENBLUM, FOUNDING PARTNER, QUESTUS
To say that how we do business today has changed may be the mother of all understatements. The switch has unequivocally flipped to the buyers’ side, not only giving them all the control, but also forcing brands to review everything and anything they ever knew about getting their message in front of their customers. It’s a conversation Jeff Rosenblum loves to have. In his book, “Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption,” which he co-wrote with Jordan Berg, Rosenblum explains how some iconic brands are losing marketshare to up-and-coming companies that have found how to creatively capture – and hold – our collective consciousness. Great brands, Rosenblum and Berg argue, are no longer built through interruptive advertisements. Today, success is more than just clever messaging or shiny technologies drilled into our subconscious via traditional advertising methods. Today, success comes from refining your business strategy to fit the new narrative. The playbook involves employing simpler messages that can be communicated in more visual, emotional and engaging ways. “Your customers must go on a lengthy journey with many critical touch points,” says Rosenblum, who also is founding partner of the market research and strategic planning firm, Questus. “Successful companies provide the critical emotional and rational information that prospects need at each
THE ANSWER IS
IN THE (SMALL) DATA
BIG DATA. There aren’t many marketing conversations happening today without that term working itself into the mix. But what about small data? Whereas big data is all about seeking correlation, small data is about seeking causation. Why did something happen? As a modern day Sherlock Holmes, as he has been called, Martin Lindstrom often is hired by the world’s leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick.
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A JUNE
For his most recent book, “Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends,” the best-selling author spent up to 300 nights a year in strangers’ homes carefully observing every little detail of their hidden desires to uncover the next multimilliondollar product. The truth, as Lindstrom freely admits, is that brands need to know the hypothesis before beginning the search for correlations. As the business landscape continues to shift, big and small data are becoming equally as important in the race to uncover consumer desires. For example, just recently, a major American bank’s big data research concluded
step of the journey. The brand story grows and is optimized for each channel. It’s not the same message repeated over and over.” If Rosenblum could emphasize the criticalness of one strategic element from this playbook, it would be empowerment. When brands empower prospects to make smarter purchases, and empower customers to get more value out of the products they purchase, it creates meaningful conversations. “People don’t simply want to be interrupted with slick ad campaigns,” he says. “They want brands to help them remove friction and solve problems. That’s what leads to engagement and conversations.” Winning on this new playing field means your consumers are interacting with every touch point along the way, producing behavioral data that enables brands to optimize their sales and marketing efforts. They do this by understanding the psychographic profile of each prospect and identifying their unmet needs. “It’s all about providing value through their journey,” Rosenblum says.
GETTING PERSONAL
When done correctly, the sales and marketing landscape is completely integrated. Unfortunately, as Rosenblum and Berg discovered, few companies are doing this successfully today. Hamstrung by legacy marketing models, too many sales and marketing departments sit in silos, causing valuable