By Ed Zuber

Last week, our President was representing our country as the UN assembled in Manhattan, and I was there.  Well, I was in Manhattan, but attending Advertising Week proceedings.  Slightly less glamorous perhaps, but more relevant to my profession.  The UN did, in a manner of speaking, detain me and make my conference experience all the more interesting.

With even greater demand placed on Manhattan hotels last week, I decided to stay across the Hudson and take NJ transit into Manhattan.  The UN also happens to draw more attention to Manhattan, and my first experience with the 165 line was capped by an evacuation from the Port Authority bus terminal.  Evacuations are always good for getting the heart pumping, but everyone was surprisingly calm, so I played along.  After being funneled outdoors and away from the subway, I undertook a long and unplanned walk to my first Ad Week event, making me later and more perspired than I had planned.  So that’s the story of how the UN indirectly detained me, but heightened my senses and prepared me to fully engage with the Advertising Research Foundation’s Council sessions.

First, kudos to the ARF for making industry learning accessible to everyone by providing free sessions where experts discuss marketing’s current challenges and solutions.  After listening to all four council sessions, I heard a core message that we need to better understand our customers, whose demographics, attitudes, motives and media habits are continually evolving and diversifying.  Only by understanding customers can we effectively engage and communicate with them, using relevant messages and context. 

Social media and online communities were noted as a particularly useful way of building customer relationships to accomplish both understanding and communication.  Such forums offer the opportunity for an authentic experience, where participants are empowered to co-create and hopefully develop as brand advocates, not brand detractors.  The “virtual” degree of separation should not, however, tempt community hosts to take these relationships less seriously.  Just like in person, any violation of social norms for interacting and conversing places the relationship at risk.  Emotional dissatisfaction is at least as potent as emotionally-driven satisfaction.

In fact, one representative from a well-known company noted how her company would not hire a vendor to host and moderate an online community; the client relationships were simply too valuable to place in the hands of someone outside the company.  Whether you agree or not with that stance, it is a philosophy that walks the talk of customer importance and customer care.  (Furthermore, her overall presentation and responses to audience questions served to demonstrate what her company culture is actually like, and in fact elevated my opinion of her company’s brand.)  Participants in a community expect that if they are providing their time and opinions, someone is actively listening and prepared to provide support.  Not reacting to stated customer concerns is a violation of the trust customers place in businesses.