The Marketing Reality Movement
Or as we say: "Reality First, Brand Second"
Every year, WARC publishes a paper called the Future of Strategy in which it outlines its findings from an annual survey it conducts with strategists all over the globe. You can see the final report here.
One of the key findings that piqued my interest was this one:
A staggering one fifth of strategists don’t conduct in-person qualitative research.
To be honest it didn’t come as much of a surprise, as when we share our training or debriefs with our agency clients, we tend to get messages afterwards from the strategists telling us it was something they used to do, but rarely have the time any more.
It prompted Richard to write a brilliant article here calling for a reality check for marketers.
He and we share similar thoughts on this subject (not surprising as we have a good relationship!), and we shared our thinking just the other week in The Veneer Corner:
Subsequently, we were invited by WARC to share our thoughts on the WARC Podcast. We touch on a lot in our 33 minutes - if I do say so myself I think it’s an interesting listen.
“The Future of Strategy, and why marketers need a reality check” can be listened to On Spotify/ On Apple / Other Platforms
In it we mention lots of things including our approach of Reality First, Brand Second:
Lastly - one of the workshops we run for agency Planning Departments (that is equally as applicable to client marketing teams) is our ‘From Slides to Sofas’ training.
It delivers the basics of how to set yourself up for success for at-home interviews.
You can read more about it here.
We’ve ran the training for the APG and for several Top-10 London agencies. Drop us a line if you’d like to know more.