A Year In Review: 2013 Blog Highlights |

A Year In Review: 2013 Blog Highlights

Marketing trends, behavioral economics, social media, text analytics, key interviews, and much more!

It’s been an exciting year on the Optimization Group blog. We’re extremely thankful to all of the people who helped make this year a big success. Our goal in 2013 was to provide content that matters to our readers. Articles you can’t help but share with your friends. Articles that raise the hair on your skin and challenge the “norm”. By sharing some of our experience and consistent contributions from industry experts, we accomplished this goal. We had the honor of our posts being featured on CMO.com, Agency Post, and in Greenbook’s “Top 10 blogs of the week” twice (finishing 1st and 3rd). In 2014 we plan to raise the bar even higher and we hope you join us for the ride. Before we begin this journey, let’s take a quick look back at some of the highlights from 2013.

Pick your favorite article and share it with your network. Tell us which article was your favorite in the comments section below.

20 Tweetable Stats on the State of Market Research

As the Market Research industry has been thrust into the social media universe, what better way to celebrate than to give you “tweetable” stats about the state of the industry? These stats come from GreenBook’s 2013 Research Industry Trends Report. If you would like to know more about the report, check out our Key Takeaways from GreenBook’s 2013 Market Research Report. Read the full article

How Behavioral Economics Impacts Marketing Strategy and Research

As a woman, I don’t always take too kindly to being called “irrational.” It’s pretty easy to accidentally hear “you’re crazy and I think you’re crazy because you’re female.” But when Dan Ariely (@danariely), Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University is the one calling me irrational, it’s hard to stay mad at someone with so much research to back up such an accusation! (Not the crazy lady part – but the irrational part.) Read the full article

Market Research as We Know it is Unsuited for the Digital Economy

Market Research, as we know it, is perfectly unsuited to add value in the digital economy; companies still use traditional methods which do not address the complexity of our times; they require more resources and achieve less impact. Every company needs to figure out how to utilize social media and the data deluge coming from different sources, in order to understand their customers’ behavior and how to influence it. Read the full article

How to Measure the Impact of a Brand (with numbers)

It’s widely been documented that a brand name has an impact on purchase decisions. We’ve all been guilty of choosing one product over another simply by the brand recognition. Looking at this from a brand’s perspective, how do you quantifiably measure the impact of a brand? Let’s approach this problem from the messaging stand point. For example, are there certain marketing messages that resonate better when attached to a specific brand? If so, wouldn’t this knowledge change how a brand speaks to their consumers? Let’s look at how you can quantifiably answer this question. Read the full article

The High Cost of Cheap Surveys

Recently I was shopping online and came across a website that featured knock-offs – famous brand name products that are made cheaply oversees and sold at amazing low prices in the U.S.. This particular website showcased knock-offs that really missed the mark. Ever purchased “Adidos” running shoes or a shirt from “Dolce and Banana?” Read the full article

Is Social Media Hindering the Advancement of Text Analytics?

Text analytics is a fascinating space that people are eager to understand. Many leading text analytics influencers suggest that we’ve only reached the “tip of the iceberg” on the potential of text analytics. This may be why the “Future of Text Analytics” is such a hot topic. This topic was one of the main themes of the Text Analytics World conference recently held in Boston. The program chair, Tom Reamy, gave a keynote presentation on that theme, Future Directions in Text Analytics. In addition to Reamy’s presentation, leading text analytics expert, Tom H. C. Anderson, was asked for his opinion on the matter. A few of his responses stuck out to me and so I reached out to Tom for clarification. I think his responses go along way into understanding where the Text Analytics industry is currently and the things that are holding the industry back. Anderson’s original conversation with Reamy and my follow up interview are outlined below: Read the full article

Hottest Marketing Trend: Weird is the New Cool?

As with all great marketing ideas, many imitators soon follow. Who would have guessed 5 years ago that the hottest marketing trend in 2013 would be to “be as weird and unrealistic as possible”? In hindsight, I guess we should have seen this coming with the paradigm shift of what is commonly viewed as “funny” these days. Take the hit show “The Office” for example. Many of the character storylines involve them being as weird as they possibly can. Somehow the shock of someone being surprisingly weird has turned comical. Regardless of whether or not you think being “weird” is funny, the reality is that it’s an incredibly successful marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at three companies who have executed this strategy to perfection. Read the full article

The Evolution of Agencies and Market Research

We often write about different ways agencies can use market research, all from a researcher’s point-of-view. Today we flip the script. We have the esteem privilege of hearing about the evolution of agencies and the current and future role of market research, all from an agency point-of-view. The following is an interview with Andy Prakken, former EVP/Chief Media Officer at Team Detroit and current President at Prakken Marketing & Media LLC. Read the full article

If Analytics Are So Important, Why Do Marketers Struggle With Them?

Research firm, Gartner Inc., recently conducted their 2013 Data-Driven Marketing Survey. Gartner surveyed 242 marketing analytics professionals from November to December 2012 to understand how organizations collect analyze and use customer data. The overhanging theme of the survey results showed that while companies allocate a large amount of their marketing budgets to marketing analytics, organizations are still struggling to mine value from their analytics programs. So this begs the question, why are they struggling? Read the full article

A Year In Review: 2013 Blog Highlights