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WHAT WE DO
OK, so what do we do here at Forward 100? Let's think about
it in 2 groups:
(1) The "Usual Stuff" and (2) "The
Not So Usual But Really Interesting and Helpful Stuff".
Under
the "Usual Stuff", we have a demonstrated track
record of
success in:
Quantitative
areas
- Consumer and Product Segmentation
- Regression and Factor Analysis
- Price Elasticity Studies
- Survey Creation and Analysis
- Brand Equity Assessment
- Secondary Data Analysis
Qualitative
areas
- Ethnographies
- Focus Group Moderation
- One-on-One Interviews
- Semiotic Research
- Consumer Shop-Alongs
Trends
and Foresights area
- Scenario Planning, War Gaming and "What-If" Scenerios
- Ideation Facilitation (Synectics certified)
- Roper Starch, Yankelovich and other secondary source expertise
- Trend validation
Hybrids
of Quantitative and Qualitative like
- Portfolio Strategy
- Product Innovation and White Space Opportunity Mapping
- Program Efficacy Measurement and Diagnostics
OK,
those are some of the classics
many others to pick from
let
me know if you don't see what you are looking for
or
perhaps it is down here under the "Not So Usual But Really
Interesting and Helpful Stuff" section
. also known
as "Progressive Marketing Paradigms".
PROGRESSIVE
MARKETING PARADIGMS
My
vision involves supplementing (or displacing) traditional
MBA marketing approaches with an understanding and application
of what I like to call "Progressive Marketing Paradigms".
This means evolving our thinking to include awareness of the
opportunities presented by newer, cross-discipline opportunities,
including:
Social
Cause Marketing Linkages: Developing social cause
marketing linkages to enable companies and brands to more
effectively identify and pursue win/win opportunities to support
specific causes and messaging that will help the world and
support key consumer targets in an authentic and empathetic
manner. Such brand linkages will then translate into stronger
brand equity, preference, and positive differentiation among
consumers.
Life
Stage Insights: Helping the traditional 25-45 year
old brand manager and product developer to truly understand
and empathize with the concerns, frustrations, hopes and challenges
of younger and older consumers who have wishes and needs that
brands typically fail to recognize or address. One favorite
story in this area is when I had students in my college class
trying to perform simple tasks like tying their shoes, buttoning
a shirt button, opening a bottle of Sprite, or typing on their
keyboard while wearing oven mitts (to replicate arthritic
conditions that many elderly and nowhere near elderly consumers
face every day). They finally "got it" in terms
of the need to increase awareness and empathy regarding product
design and ergonomics.
Health
and Wellness: I spent years at The Coca-Cola Company
and The Minute Maid Company investigating Health and Wellness
(H&W) issues, dietary confusion, changes in social and
cultural context that have influenced food and beverage access,
consideration, choice, amount and timing, changes in caloric
exertion factors, and many other parts of the H&W puzzle.
This "real world" experience was deepened by the
health focus of my doctorate, a focus that merges health considerations
with important social, personal and economic context that
often gets overlooked by the marketing community.
Social
Network Insights: My favorite book section of the
last ten years is the piece from Malcolm Gladwell's "The
Tipping Point" that discusses the importance of "Connectors"
in our lives. This discussion is heavily based on the work
of a social scientist named Mark Granovetter (a little nerd
love shout out) who identified the critical importance of
"the great strength of weak ties". In an age of
increased social media proliferation (email, facebook, linkedin,
twitter, etc), the importance of social networks and the influencers,
connectors and other considerations has never been greater.
Add
to this the opportunity for efficient marketing, communication
and advocacy, and you have a really interesting area for consideration.
Personas,
Archetypes and Segmentation: When it comes to segmentations,
many of us know about the usual suspects
segmenting
people by gender, income, age, race, region, etc. Then it
evolved some with segmentation based on purchasing habits.
Now it has really gotten interesting because of the opportunities
to bring segmentations to life through the use of Personas
and Archetypes.
The
ability to successfully combine quantitative data with deep,
qualitative insights allows us to richly dimensionalize different
types of consumer targets
to learn of their daily lives,
challenges, hopes, wishes, habits, attitudes and practices.
This improved consumer understanding can then be leveraged
to develop richer strategic insights and relationship building.
Highly suggest you check out Mark & Pearson's The Hero
and the Outlaw, Mathews & Wacker's What's Your
Story and Doug Holt's How Brands Become Icon for
some GREAT examples of this type of work.
The
"Mission: Impossible" Ad Hoc: OK, this is my
personal favorite. I love when a client tells me what they
are hoping for, and fesses up that they have no idea if such
a project is even possible
they have no idea where to
even begin other than the end goal. Love This! There is nothing
cooler or more challenging than bringing the different tools,
lenses, experiences and perspectives to bear on such a challenge.
This includes frameworks and tools from academia, secondary
research, primary research (quant and/or qual
love 'em
both), trends and foresights, and many different disciplines
(e.g., marketing, sociology, economics). The fact that each
ad hoc is so different only adds to my interest and passion
for these types of challenges. I also love that our successful
outcomes tend to help raise the clients' halo perception (in
terms of creativity and impact) within their organizations.
The
"Building Your Brain" Project: You and your team need to learn something that is complex,
and you need to learn it quickly and effectively. This is
also where my hybrid background of wide and deep academic
research investigation merges with my real world practitioner's
lens. Unlike 99.9% of all academics, I have experience in
the literature, ideas and theories of many different disciplines
(e.g., marketing, economics, sociology, etc) as well as 15+
years of real world marketing experience to filter such thinking
through. Also, a dirty little secret in the academic consulting
space is that many highly pedigreed, "hired gun"
academic consultants seem compelled to force fit their prior
publications and viewpoints into the solution rather than
being open (in terms of an intellectual perspective AND from
a sense of humility) to the ideas of others
instead of
seeing ideas as collaborative, they often see others' ideas
as competing with their own.
I
bypass this nonsense by being a "hub" for reviewing
and considering the best thinking from across the board
in
other words (and using a baseball analogy), I can offer the
best thinking from an entire all-star team rather than just
one self-promoting MVP (whose thinking will likely be included
in my all-star team anyway). This "best of the best"
thinking is then merged with a real world, experience-based
pragmatic perspective to deliver actionable learnings, considerations
and recommendations.
The
"Inspector Columbo" Project: Gotta love Peter Falk's "Columbo". Cool guy
wheels turning fast inside his head, but he never lets on
lets
the bad guy keep on keeping on until he unravels. This
analogy is really great when it comes to vetting smiling consultants,
academics, and agency business development people. Before
spending a LOT of money on a project or investing with a supplier
that could result in a potential loss of your budget and credibility
or entail high switching costs later on, it makes sense to
spend a LITTLE to bring in someone who can ask the right questions,
kick the tires and check under the hood of proposed methodologies,
and help determine what is missing or non-essential. I love
being the "Columbo" in these situations
all
while being professional, friendly, and respect-based. It
tends to shave some padding off the supplier / agency's invoice
while raising the effectiveness of their deliverable. Plus,
it's fun.
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