i Branding | Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research
Thoughts by Joel Rubinson, Chief Research Officer of The ARF
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Feel the stories of people who grew up in cultures without choice where daily existence was defined by deprivation rather than hope. Freedom is spelled C-H-O-I-C-E, and that is the importance of marketing and brands.

Management intuition based on past behaviors and preferences are becoming increasingly inaccurate predictors of the future, which makes a future-focused marketing research/consumer insights function more important than ever. Use a full range of listening tools to guide the marketing organization based on anticipatory insights.

Media strategy principles in a 360 world should take priority over the analysis of benchmark brands. The benchmark approach locks you into a recursive trap so you are probably observing strategies that reflect a 5-7 year old media environment

Marketers, take note: the curiosity impulse can lead people to discover and engage with your brand. Curiosity short-circuits the linear funnel from awareness to interest to desire, blah blah. Curiosity leads to purchases that are serendipitous and often spontaneous.

In a long-tail world of choices that are sometimes not very functionally different, perhaps “interesting” is the new “better”.

Baseball has amazing assets to on which to rebuild its brand. In the movie City Slickers, around the campfire one the friends said, “When my father and I had nothing else to talk about, there was always baseball” True dat.

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