At ZLRIGNITION we’re big into audience research.  We think that if you put your customer first in communications, your communications will be more effective.  And we don’t think it’s a numbers game.  Knowing that 64  percent of the audience bank where they bank because of convenience doesn’t exactly lead to more dynamic or creative communications for the bank.  Afterall, you can’t move the building to be more convenient.

Conversations lead to more dynamic insights that lead to more creative and effective communications.  That’s why we think social network sites have a great future in customer research.  Imagine a community of customers discussing your advertising, product or company.  How much could you learn from that?  Then imagine that you can communicate with them personally for more insight.  How much could you learn from that?

The best thing about research using social networks is that it can be ongoing and inexpensive.  You can test ideas.  Test creative.  Or just seek understanding.

There are some dangers though.  The biggest of which may be the insincere, but vocal, participant with an agenda.  You can weed them out and control them in a focus group, but they are difficult to control in a social network setting.  If they are articulate enough, they can skew your result.

There’s a marketing lesson to be learned from the Tour de France.  The race is won on the hills.  It’s not the downhill easy selling that wins, it’s the selling against the wind, up hill, against the odds.

Everywhere we turn, we hear how bad this recession is…or is going to be.  How marketers are hiding in their shells and budgets are being devastated.  It won’t be until after the recession is over that we hear about those companies that chose to make gains during the bad times.  They’ll be the heroes.

I don’t know what our competitors are doing, but here are our strategies:

1.  Focus on our clients success–There’s no question we have clients who have cut their budgets, but we have come to the collective conclusion that we have to work harder to make every dollar they spend count.  Our goal is to help them come out of this challenging time as a winner in their category.

2.  Investing in ourselves–We all know there’s a great convergence of communications capability.  We are investing in cross training to significantly improve our capabilities across all communications venues.  We believe that the future lies in the capability to bring convention, non-convention and what some call “new” media together into an integrated marketing effort focused on results.

3.  Focus on creativity–The tougher the challenge, the better the creative needs to be.  Our goal is to produce work that is a multiplier in terms of effectiveness.  Work that creates buzz and ingrains our clients’ brands in the hearts and minds of our target audiences.

4.  Demand more–We are going to demand more of ourselves and our vendor partners.  We’ll pay for performance and extra effort.  We’ll negotiate so our clients win but nobody loses.  Fortunately, we have vendor partners in the media who work with us as partners for a common goal.

5.  Focus on results–This is a time where everything we do for our clients, must meet the test of results.  If something works, we’ll find ways to do more of it.  If something does not work, we’ll dump it fast and invest in what does.

6.  Be smart, but be bold–No time for the brash or timid.  We’ll do our homework and swing for the fences.

If you haven’t read Blue Ocean Strategy, it is a highly thoughtful discussion of how a product strategy can make the competition irrelevant.  A red ocean represents bloody competition and a blue ocean represents a market where there is no competition.  To zig, while competitors zag.

Books like these have great examples of successes and few examples of failed attempts.  Still there is much to be learned. The simple truth is it’s very hard to succeed doing what your competitors do.  Sure you can sell some product, but you never can really break out.  Yet the temptation to follow a successful competitor’s lead is great.  It feels safer.

The key to sleeping at night is to make a breakthrough idea feel safe.  We’re not talking about deluding ourselves into warm feelings of security, we’re talking about doing homework with your target audience to develop breakthrough communications, or strategies. After all, if you know that your audience will act on your communications, or buy into your strategy, there’s not much risk in implementation.

Start with foundational research that explores how your consumer relates to you and your competitors.  How do you fit in your consumers’ lives?  What are the rational reasons to buy your product and what are the emotional attachments to your product?  Once you gain that kind of understanding, you’re ready to develop a potential creative strategies.  We suggest developing three to five strategies to test with your target audience.  You’ll know which strategies have the best chance of success.  Many times the creative that wins, is the one you thought would lose.  That’s when you know you have created Blue Ocean Creative.