industry thoughts from Clarteza

My team works with incredible clients and on some amazing projects. We are privileged to be able to look for interesting insights and connect them through different cultures. We get to learn about people’s needs and behaviors, so we can help our clients come up with great solutions or products. It’s exhilarating!

Over the years, however, I have observed the curse of three consistent issues: “marginal thinking”, “sunk cost” and “conformity” which, as trifecta, can stifle innovation and overwhelm any good decision-making process.

Let me demonstrate what I mean. Coming up with a new … Continue Reading

Earlier this year, I set a goal for myself to review brands and services to look for delightful experiences they could create for a customer.

This time I tried MM.LaFleur. A clothing brand which aspires to revolutionize workwear with a slightly Japanese flair. I’ve heard about the brand at the NRF conference in January. In this case, PR worked, at least for me.

What interested me about MM. LaFleur at first, was their purpose “When women  succeed in … Continue Reading

People look for relationships. They are essential to us, and to our well-being. Interestingly, people also long for  brand connections…or relationships, which share a lot of similarities of those, with people.  They identify  themselves with those brands.

Like with regular relationships, brand relationships can have their ups and downs. Ultimately though, if you do      have the bonding, you will be more likely to “forgive” if things don’t go right.

People want to be understood by brands. (Not literally, at least yet!)They like to have products and services that are tailored to … Continue Reading

It is wonderful to feel important; who doesn’t want to feel that his or her needs are being heard and met?  It’s the basis of any strong relationship.  And good marketers know this and use it as they carefully target individual consumer groups with relevant products, messages, and mediums.  But when it comes to women in particular, there is a fine line between getting it right… and going about it all wrong.

Take for example, the BIC Cristal for Her Ball Pen. Its description on Amazon emphasizes its sleek, elegant design (“just for her”) and a thin barrel to fit a … Continue Reading

In our recent post on qual vs. quant research, we touched on one of the critical issues facing market researchers today, the question of how we use, store and re-use data we obtain from the investments we make in research and information.  The amount of data available to us continues to grow in magnitude and scope.  We have qual data, quant data, syndicated data, social media data, competitive intelligence data, all coming at us all the time in … Continue Reading

Both quantitative and qualitative research data play important roles in understanding consumers, developing and designing products, and creating effective marketing strategies and executions. Quantitative research provides a wealth of broad-based data on market sizes, demographics, and user preferences and helps us understand differences between groups of people, products and usage occasions.  But, quantitative research can also lead to an over-reliance upon numbers, leading researchers to analyze percentages and statistical significances, rather than people.  Qualitative research, on the other hand, can sometimes lead to biases based on the opinions of a small set of people, at a certain place or time.  … Continue Reading

The term “re-frame” has never been more appropriate than in marketing today.

It is apparent that a massive paradigm shift in the way marketers approach their marketing and communication plans is well underway (for those who haven’t previously embraced it).  For years now, front-loaded plans where the bulk of thought and resources are spent influencing the consumer well before she sets foot in a store have been giving way to a more holistic approach where the integration and synergy of brand messaging across multiple consumer touch-points is not only important, but essential.  But more recently, the key player in the game … Continue Reading

We read a lot of press about the information overload and time-pressed nature of consumer lives.  They are inundated with information from more sources, on more screens, more of the time.  The average consumer is exposed to thousands of advertisements per day, smartphones keep them from ever turning off and tuning out, and they live in a society in which there is often simply not enough hours in the day.  As the consumer environment has changed, marketers have adapted by investing more funds in the clutter, to ensure their brands are seen across all screens, across all formats, and across … Continue Reading