Re-thinking Our Industry

Hands down, the best thing about my job is learning what the customer has been able to do with our results.  Quite often, our projects are engineered for advertising/claim support.  While I genuinely enjoy delivering good news to these clients, the liberal in me has difficulty linking the success of marketing and legal departments to the success of an entrepreneur or small business owner.  

Small business owners are a breed of their own.  These gutsy men and women offer up their entire business model so that unforgiving respondents can pick apart their brainchild.  Personally, I’d rather sandpaper the inside of my eyelids than take that big of a gamble.  But that’s why I’m an analyst and not an owner.

These are the studies that I can really get excited about: when you speed-dial the client as soon as you see the results.  A few months ago I had the privilege of delivering results to a local business owner.  The company had spent a small fortune developing their advertising, hours debating the most effective mediums, and all of it hung on the thoughts of 300 telephone respondents.  The verdict was in: his advertising was working!  The percentage of respondents that were aware of his business had more than doubled from his pre-wave results, a highly significant increase! 

These fearless clients are not very common.  And unfortunately, such reassuring results are even less so.  I might not be the one willing to go all-in on such a risky bet, but I will be always be the obnoxious face-painted fanatic rooting for the underdog.   So next weekend, let’s all give proper kudos to these clients by supporting Small Business Saturday.  These entrepreneurs might not be the meat of our industry, but they most certainly are the heart of it.    

Lisa Rodgers
Research Analyst