The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘clarity’ as: ‘The quality of coherence and intelligibility’.
Clarity of thought leads to focused, effective actions. Today, in these most challenging times, just when we need to be coherent and intelligible we often find ourselves confused and misdirected.
We believe there are three factors that compromise businesses’ ability to see clearly:
• The data fire hose
• The proliferation of marketing suppliers and disciplines
• The relationship between finance and marketing
The Data Fire hose
In 2020, around $74bn was spent on market research and data.
[Source: Market Research Services Global Market Opportunity and Strategies to 2030. The Business Research Company]
At the same time the amount of marketing-relevant data collected, stored and analyzed has exploded, leading the analyst and online sage Mary Meeker to comment that ‘consumers, businesses and regulators are increasingly drinking from a data fire hose.’
The sheer amount of data available (and this situation is going to continue) might have made marketers appear more accountable – but when you’re thirsty a fire hose isn’t the best place to get a drink.
One experienced marketing leader put it like this: “I’ve got more data than ever before; and I’m more confused than ever before.”
More Specialists; More Noise
Along with more research, and more data the industry has spawned more specialists, operating in ever deeper and narrower silos.
The days of the do-it-all, full-service ad agency are long gone; today the average marketer is dealing with a media agency, an ad agency, a CRM specialist, several market research suppliers, a data fulfilment specialist, web-designers, online experts, market mix modelling partners, direct sales from major media vendors. And more.
All these players are skilled instrumentalists, but together what they produce is often just noise.
There’s a need for everyone to play the same tune on their different instruments.
Marketing and Finance
The noise often continues internally when marketing and finance meet. Misunderstanding and a lack of respect for each disciplines’ individual skills often follow.
To turn noise into music, marketing needs to learn to speak ‘finance’, whilst finance gains an appreciation of the role and skill of marketing in creating demand and growing profit.
The Who
We are Crater Lake, a collective of four experienced professionals, used to working together within our different specialisms.
With 17 decades of experience between us we’ve learnt to recognise our industry’s shortcomings when it comes to sharing and communicating across disciplines.
We believe that these shortcomings are behind advertiser calls for greater integration, greater consistency in messaging, and less ‘in-fighting’ amongst suppliers.
We’ve seen first-hand the benefits of collaboration; which is why we’re coming together to
bring these benefits to our clients.
Our goal is to make sense of it all, to use our client’s investment in research and data to create a single narrative that runs through all marketing efforts, from the formation of the creative strategy, through to the construction and execution of the media plan.
A narrative that makes as much sense to finance as it does to marketing.
The What
We have developed a guideline process designed to deliver a single, clear narrative flow.
Within this we identify / build predictive models fuelled by consumer research and proprietary / industry data.
We use research and data to create a narrative that makes as much sense to finance as to marketing.
Our team includes creative and media planners, fluent in the language of creative and media agencies.
We would be delighted to have the opportunity to explain how we can bring clarity to your very specific business issues.
A Postscript
We chose the name Crater Lake in honor of the Oregon beauty spot that is home to the world’s clearest waters.
We aim to bring the same clarity to our clients that nature has brought to that lake.
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