Whatever happened to the more disciplined marketing period we grew up in? Do we even remember that time? I think I was in diapers… but thanks to AMC’s show – MadMen, I can define, even if I can’t relate, to the way the marketing world operated. Here’s what it was like:

It was easy to find, target and reach a large and well-off homogeneous group (we used to call them the middle-class😊), with one all-encompassing brand message.

Our basic way of getting information and insights was (now considered traditional and old-fashioned) consumer and market research techniques.

We used validated qualitative and quantitative methods. We used test markets. We used tracking studies. We got share and distribution reports from Nielsen or IRI. We had everything to create, validate and execute a complete marketing program.

There was a clear process and a fairly robust tool kit that we all used to develop “world-class” marketing programs.

Interestingly, a key approach within this process was a way to get compelling, differentiated and sustainable consumer and market insights. I still remember the long process and intense sessions scheduled to generate “a-ha’s and got-chas”. The brand was built around the “one insight”. And, we faithfully and consistently executed advertising campaigns as a way to build brands.

That world no longer exists. We now live in an environment where complexity is the name of the game. And, incoherence has become a standard in marketing and business discussions. Like it was, I suspect, during the time of the Tower of Babel. According to Genesis 11:1-9, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth. Leading to confusion everywhere.

The same is happening in the world of business today. With all the changes taking place, it is a wonder that we feel like there’s myriad languages and dialects in play. Most that we find hard to comprehend, let alone understand.

Every CMO and most CEO’s I know, find themselves struggling to understand and define what they should do next in this world of huge amounts of data, huge number of channels, huge increases in competitors, huge number of new apps and services and declining amounts of money, time, people and consumer attention.

This is the problem I’ve been solving.

I believe the answer is unearthing enduring human truths, ones that integrate your customers’ beliefs with their behaviors in a way that it can make your brand a part of their Brand Ritual™.

These enduring truths are found by digging into your core customers’ hard-wired rituals that have been integrated over millennia; then combining this understanding with contemporary primary research + analytics of recent transactional and behavioral data + social listening – to get to game-changing ideas that lead to category-busting innovations and differentiated marketing programs. We all want to be responsible for delivering top line growth and super-charged profitability for our businesses.

Find the one enduring truth for your brand or your category and you’ll be able to do this consistently. Ready to get started?