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Hello Marketing Chroniclers. This month I want to focus on the weeds of research.

Far too many marketers rush through diagnosis, or start at the end by thinking up tactics before the discovery process has even started. But once you stick to the fundamentals of marketing diagnosis, you will never look back.

In today’s newsletter I share my 1-2-3 research go-to process, why ethnographies and ride alongs should be prioritized in budgets, and the other 3Ps of marketing that are often overlooked by the industry.

Drop me a line on LinkedIn if anything stands out to you!

Enjoy 🧠

If you care about making marketing make sense in the boardroom, this is worth your time.

Tracksuit just launched a course led by James Hurman that cuts through the usual noise and gets to something more useful: how to actually communicate marketing’s value in a way a CFO will understand.

I took it myself, and it’s 90 minutes packed with insight and resources you can take beyond the virtual classroom. The kind of material you’ll come back to when you need to defend your work, not just execute it.

If that’s a gap you’re trying to close, you can check out the course here and use my promo code PPA20 for 20% OFF your purchase → https://university.gotracksuit.com/

RESEARCH/

Mental frameworks are the most important artifacts strategists can "collect" in their professional life.

And no, I don't mean "I'm a funnel guy" or "I'm an in/out of market guy". It means you could objectively use either, but which framework you choose will largely determine the outcome of what you observe.

As I prepare for an upcoming ethnographic field study, my dear friend PK Lawton suggested I read "After Method", by John Law.

It's not an easy read, but it's one of those books that massively expands your thinking around how we go about bringing things to life through research.

Two fascinating concepts in this book:

"Out-there" is the idea that the world exists as something separate from us. "In-here" is the opposite - it's the fact that our research methods, language, categories, and practices are always part of how that world gets noticed and made knowable.

It's the sociologist's take of what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Is unemployment a natural object, or is it a set of definitions that makes us decide what counts as unemployment? Meaning, do we bring unemployment to existence because of our definitions of it, or does it already exist prior to our conceptualization of it?

Super deep, I know. But when you think about it, all research is exactly that.

Our very definitions of what constitutes a category entry point, a brand, a consumer segment are just as important as the thing itself. If we don't define it, we can't put it to use in our work.

Therefore, all marketing research is an act of turning the world into mental frameworks that we can plug into other frameworks to drive some sort of objective. Without these heuristics (and methods to document them), we simply cannot make sense of the social world.

OPINION/

What marketers do is far from guesswork. In fact, it's more akin to interpretation than feel, though good taste is a major differentiator in output quality.

I recently spent a week in Jalisco doing an ethnography study for a client alongside 3 team members. This used to be common practice in our industry, but in the name of efficiency it was the first thing to be cut from budgets in recent years. And the work has invariably suffered.

In my opinion, the best 1-2-3 punch for marketing research that will get you 90% of the way there is:

Most of the time this won't cost any more than 5% of an SMB's budget, but it will disproportionally improve the work and stop future money from being wasted.

The reason why ethnography is such an important piece of this puzzle is because it allows for the intangibles to permeate the work (it's a well-known fact that most of human communication is conveyed non-verbally).

This helps the agency and client close the distance between them and the consumer, and oftentimes the best ideas and hypotheses emerge from this type of time spent on the field.

This is not a luxury - it's a necessity to build consumer-centric brands.

Marketing is a form of applied social science, and doing the work behind a computer screen is not suited for the job.

"Keyboard strategists" as they're called, can build lengthy PowerPoint decks, but rarely do they reach the required level of depth that marketers who get their hands dirty consistently do.

This is a contact sport, get out there and spend time with consumers!

OPINION/

Most brand growth doesn’t come from communications alone.

In fact, some of the biggest drivers of performance are the less glamorous building blocks:

While advertising can be a major amplifier of mental availability, it just can’t replace the fundamentals. Remember: marketing also encompasses pricing, place, and product. If those 3Ps are not well-taken care of, there’s no amount of promotion you can do to fix your woes.

As marketers who are serious about effectiveness, we have to look beyond comms and ask: did the business actually create more reasons, more occasions, and more access for people to buy us?

PODCAST/

In June I officially launched a new podcast in partnership with APG Canada titled “Grow Your Brain.”

For the inaugural episode I interviewed PK Lawton in a conversation that explored the intersection of sociology and marketing strategy, with an emphasis on the importance of understanding social actors, assemblages, and the limitations of traditional frameworks.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss our next episodes!

INSPIRATION/

Guinness is not typically known for being everyone’s “summer beer.”

To combat that, the folks over at Uncommon developed this campaign called “Golden Hour” to launch on the longest day of the year (summer solstice) showing the golden harp’s iconic glass shadow on the Guinness’ pint foam.

This is how you play with your distinctive brand assets.

These little moments that often go unnoticed by people, suddenly become topics of conversation.

And on top of that, it nods to the fact that this is a summer beer, one that should be enjoyed outside, in the afternoon, as the sun is moving across the horizon.

BRAIN FOOD/

QUOTE/

PPA

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing strategist with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across North America. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.