Contest Winner/Agency of the Month Proudly announcing the winner of the Ad Agency Hub contest ….drum roll…. Marcia Wasser- EVP/CMO at Source Communications! Marcia’s excellent submission beat…

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…

The Privacy Debate Today when people talk about the plethora of data available it is often from a positive perspective. This viewpoint is focused is on the…

Benchmarking Consumer Participation in Research One aspect of research that can never be investigated enough is the role of consumer participation. Without it, the research industry is…

Research Solutions for Everyday Client Objectives Have you ever been asked to solve a problem but didn’t have a clue how to solve it? Well, good news,…

2013 ESOMAR Congress “Tweetable” Takeaways I love conferences, specifically for the networking aspect, but unfortunately due to a limited number of hours in the day I’m not…

Promote your Agency and get tickets to your favorite concert We love success stories and seeing the power of research in action. We also love music. Combine…

LOOMIS: the voice of the underdog Today we are excited to honor LOOMIS as the Advertising Agency Hub’s first “Agency of the Month”. The Advertising Agency Hub…

Feature Friday: Finding New, Influential Partners in Your Social Media Marketing Guest post by Mark Meloon Studies have shown that staggering 90% of people rely on peer…

Feature Friday: Optimizing Your Marketing With Voice-Based Marketing Automation Guest post by Olivia Cole Marketers—or at least marketers who are interested in improving their campaigns—are always seeking…

Feature Friday: Market Research as We Know it is Unsuited for the Digital Economy Guest Post by Michalis Michael Market Research, as we know it, is perfectly…

Feature Friday: The Art of Project Management Guest Blog by Alison Andreoff Do you ever think to yourself as you’re leaving work for the day, “I could…

Feature Friday: Jay-Z and Your Phone: a Magna Carta for Tomorrow’s Mobile World Guest Post by Cole Hanson Anyone who is a fan of pop culture has…

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…

Feature Friday: The 15 Year-Old Marketing Research Time-Capsule? Guest Post by Chris Ruby More than 30 years ago while I was in the 3rd grade, our entire…

The Marketer’s Dilemma: Data Limitations Precise response data like leads, click-through rates, conversions and sales is valuable in making decisions about future marketing efforts. But what do…

Feature Friday: Understanding Consumers: When Analytics and Ground Truth Collide Guest Post by Steve August Recently, I was involved in a project where the client brand had…

Feature Friday: How Behavioral Economics Impacts Marketing Strategy and Research Guest Post by Allison Vale As a woman, I don’t always take too kindly to being called…

Feature Friday: Three Opportunities to Stay in Tune with Your Core Audience Guest Post by Jessica Dewell You’ve heard this before: know your audience in order to…

Importance of Market Research Remember back when you were in the 5th grade and your teacher said “We have an important history quiz on Friday, make sure…

Leveraging Marketing Analytics I think it’s safe to say the importance of Marketing Analytics is widely understood. A recent MarketingSherpa study, 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report, really…

Feature Friday: Fatal Flaws of the B2B Marketer Guest Post by Heather Hinman Do you feel like your monthly marketing meeting is like the blind leading the…

“Black Box” Marketing If you’re like every other Marketer on the planet, you’ve wrestled over the task of planning your Marketing Communications budget. Questions like “Well, what’s…

Brand New Website! We’re very exciting to announce the launch of our new website! We’re not big on self-promotion here on our blog but we thought we’d…

A recent report on MarketWatch, an NPR business news program, examined how we make buying decisions based on the number of choices we are offered (Choices: Too…

Over the past decade, the complexity and sophistication of the marketing function has grown by leaps and bounds. And, the pressure on the Chief Marketing Officer has…

Recently, one of our team came across a blog post by Christine Champagne at FastCo.Create. It talked about a research study on subject near and dear to…

My bank knows a lot about me. They how much money I have with them, how much of that I spend (too much), what I spend it…

Earlier this week a client joked that she is working on her Black Belt in IdeaMap®, an online message optimization tool popular with our clients. For those…

This month’s Harvard Business Review features an interesting article on the value of conducting business experiments (A Step-by-Step Guide to Smart Business Experiments). It’s a topic that…

One of the great things about the holidays is that almost everyone celebrates them. We come together to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or other traditions. By participating…

March Madness Analytics For sports fans, the end of March is a highly anticipated time of year. Fans spend hours struggling over which team(s) will be this…

Several LinkedIn Groups have been discussing the effect of the various Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tools now available to those who want to create online surveys. Many of those…

Roughly 100 years ago, Thomas Edison was credited with first defining genius as “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” It seems to me that he may have had…

Consumer confidence has long been looked to as a bell weather of the health of the economy. Yet no such index exits to measure the confidence of…

This morning, I spotted a link to an article on LinkedIn® entitled “The Old Marketing Methods Are Dead.” And, I clicked on the link – I guess…

Daniel Burstein recently published an article in The Marketing Experiments Quarterly Research Journal entitled Anti-Crowdsourcing: On (Not) Getting Marketing Ideas from Your Customers. The author critiques the…

Recently, it seems as though every time I turn around, there’s another new catch phrase or technology demanding to be seen as the centerpiece of marketing: mobile…

Regression Modeling Regression Modeling can be quite confusing if it’s your first time at the rodeo. The history of Regression Modeling is fascinating and its applications continue…

Omniture, an online optimization company has released the results of an Online Analytics Benchmark Survey (Omniture Survey Reveals Significant Opportunity to Measure Marketing ROI and Increase Effectiveness…

The Baldrige National Quality Program announced recently that, based on research provided by the Optimization Group, the program is changing its name to the Baldrige Performance Excellence…

My Mom always said that the best parties are the ones where people do not already know each other. If they are all “office people” they will…

Traditionally, non-profits have been viewed as “following the pack” when it comes to marketing innovation. Commercial marketers tend to have bigger budgets which allow for greater access…

Recently, there has been much discussion that social media may drive down the use of surveys and focus groups. Some have claimed that surveys could become obsolete…

A simple question from a client at a recent research presentation. And I’m sure they expected a simple Yes/No answer. But (as you may guess), the right…

We have tested thousands of marketing messages and campaigns over the last ten years. Why so many? Simply put, marketers want to have confidence that their marketing…

Optimization Group was recently invited to participate in an important meeting held by the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB). The Board’s mission is to “Establish marketing measurement…

UPDATE: MONEYBALL starring Brad Pitt almost wins the Oscar for Best Picture! Imagine that you are a movie mogul looking for the next big hit. Two screenwriters…

The Coca Cola Company’s vice president of marketing strategy and insights Stan Sthanunathan opened last week’s American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference with news that he plans…

Recently, I was in the car, half listening to talk radio, but mostly in deep think mode trying to develop a topic for this column. Since this…

Precise response data like leads, click-through rates, conversions and sales is valuable in making decisions about future marketing efforts. But what do you do to if you…

I was recently asked by Analyst Lauren Carlson to comment on a blog post discussing the new concept of Revenue Performance Management (RPM). As stated there and…

Over the past few years, organizations have realized the importance of effectively tracking and managing customer interactions. Customer Relationship Management systems capture critical information about each individual…