Next Wednesday, May 23, at 1 pm (EDT), Copernicus’ resident consumer packaged goods maven Jeff Maloy will explore the topic of shopping occasions in part 3 of our continuing webcast series on developing and launching transformational shopper marketing strategies and programs.

To register visit copernicusmarketing.com/our-thinking/webcasts.

Retailers and manufacturers want to drive traffic and increase market baskets with their shopper marketing efforts. In order to give their brands an edge vs. the many competitors retailers also carry, manufacturers need to dive deeper into the reasons shoppers have for visiting a bricks-and-mortar or online store.

“The ‘trip mission’ greatly influences the choice of channel, and the types of marketing and promotional tactcis that are effective in driving sales,” explains Jeff. “By fully understanding the different types of shopping occasions, shopper marketers can deliver retailer- and channel-specific planning guidance to improve turns.”

Jeff will describe an approach to classifying consumer buying occasions and develop a richly-descriptive typology for the channels and “media” they use.

If you’re in the greater San Diego/Orange County California-area on or about May 17, you should catch Eric Paquette’s presentation on using market segmentation—one of the most powerful strategic research tools available today—to build a digitally savvy marketing strategy at the Art of Marketing 2012 Conference.

The San Diego chapter of the American Marketing Association is bringing together speakers from a variety of organizations, “to illuminate, educate, and paint the varied yet blended picture we call marketing.”

“Answering the call for relevant, timely insights and actionable take-aways in a one-day, fun, intensive learning environment, the Art of Marketing 2012 promises to deliver real-world solutions in a lively forum,” conference organizers explain.

For more information about the conference and to register, visit sdama.org/2011/11/05/art-of-marketing-2012.

Coming up Wednesday, April 25, at 1 pm (EDT), Eric Paquette, SVP at Copernicus, will give the next installment of our continuing series of webcasts on shopper marketing strategy. His area of focus: shoppers in a brand’s ecommerce channel.

More and more brands that primarily sell through retail, use their websites as a secondary channel to sell direct to customers. Ecommerce is an attractive option for brands for many reasons. Among other things, they break down geographic and retail distribution barriers; they typically drive high margin revenues; and a brand’s ecommerce site can deliver a unique brand experience that’s near impossible to replicate at retail.

Marketers, of course, recognize a brand’s ecommerce shoppers not only differ in important ways from their retail targets, but also from each other. Understanding these distinctions is critical to optimizing site effectiveness.

In this webcast, Eric Paquette will describe tools to identify, size, and profile a brand’s ecommerce shoppers and develop strategies to drive increased sales. He will demonstrate how to identify the most valuable ecommerce shoppers for your brand, understand their needs from the brand’s ecommerce site, and measure how your site delivers against those needs.

He will also describe how to ensure the end results of this kind of strategic research help drive:

• Site design and available shopping tools
• The user experience
• Social, mobile and search strategies
• The role of branded content on the site
• Merchandising, pricing and promotion strategies
• Direct marketing activities to drive ecommerce sales

Register now!

The Advertising Research Foundation selected Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy as the grand prize winner of the 2012 Great Minds Awards in Innovation.

The “innovation” category recognizes the development of the most innovative research ideas in the past year and the contributions they make to the industry.

In his 9 co-authored marketing and social science books and more than 400 articles, published papers and presentations; in his teaching at the Wharton School and Boston University; and in the three companies which he founded, Kevin has been a pioneer in the fields of innovative marketing consulting and marketing research.

This past year, Kevin focused on making the results of market segmentation research more actionable for marketing and advertising decisions, culminating in the publication of a chapter on state-of-the-science market segmentation in the anthology, Leading Edge Marketing Research.

His work on this topic helped distinguish him from the more than 70 other finalists in the innovation category.

Congratulations to Kevin!

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has just announced that Copernicus’ venerable chairman Kevin Clancy is a finalist for the Great Mind Award in Innovation. The “innovation” category recognizes the development of the most innovative research ideas and the contributions they make to the industry.

Established in 2006, the ARF’s Great Mind Awards honor research innovation, rising research stars, outstanding ARF member contributions, lifetime achievement within the industry, and quality in research. Now in its seventh year, the ARF Great Mind Awards continue to recognize notable individuals who have truly made a difference to the advertising research industry.

The Awards will be presented at The Great Mind Awards luncheon on March 28, 2012, during the ARF’s annual Re:think Convention.

Congratulations to Kevin!

The 2012 Copernicus webcast season kicks-off next week on March 13 with an idea-rich presentation from Copernicus’ CEO Peter Krieg on transformational shopper marketing strategy.

Tuesday, March 13, 1 pm (Eastern)

Transformational Shopper Marketing Strategy: 3 Things You Can Do Today To Improve ROI Tomorrow

The first in a 4-part series on the hot topic of shopper marketing, Peter will demonstrate how you can apply profit-driven insights to capitalize on the biggest opportunities to move shoppers towards your brand and drive sales in different channels.

Register now

For those of you in and around Richmond, VA, Kevin Clancy will give a talk at the American Marketing Association luncheon at the University of Richmond on Thursday, March 15.

Thursday, March 15, 11:45 am (Eastern)

Inspiration, Aspiration, and Transformation: Building Extraordinary Marketing Strategies

Kevin will describe tools you can use to build an inspirational, aspirational, transformational marketing strategy infused with digital insights that will change your brand’s trajectory, career path, and perhaps your entire company.

Learn more

Copernicus has signed on as a sponsor of the 2012 Shopper Marketing Summit, April 16-18, at the Westin O’Hare in Rosemount, Illinois.

“The Shopper Marketing Summit is much more than your average conference,” explains the Path to Purchase Institute, the organzation behind the Summit.

“It’s a gathering of industry intelligence; an intimate setting where senior-level executives across the entire ecosystem of shopper marketing-–consumer product marketers, retailers, agency executives and solution providers-–converge over three days to collaborate, learn and share experiences and insights about the ever-evolving path to purchase.”

On Day 2 of the Summit, Copernicus will host the Mobile Solutions track, featuring four in-depth presentations on this increasingly hot topic for shopper marketers:

Beyond the Check-in: Using Mobile to Close the Purchase Cycle
Doug Galen, Chief Revenue Officer, Shopkick, Inc.
W. Don Wortley, Digital Marketing Manager, Best Buy

Using Mobile to Engage Customers Along the Path to Purchase and Beyond
Dan Cooke, Director, Digital Shopper Marketing, Kellogg Co.
Jeff Hasen, CMO, Hipcricket

Mobile Shopper Marketing 2015: The Future of Shopper Intelligence Through Smartphones
Corrine Sandler, CEO, Fresh Intelligence Research Corp.

LBS - Location Based Shopper?
Patrick Moorhead, SVP, Group Managing Director - Mobile, DraftFCB

For more information about the Shopper Marketing Summit and to register, visit shoppersummit.com.

The Boston chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) will host renowned marketing research and strategy expert Kevin Clancy on Tuesday, February 28, at 6 pm (ET).

Kevin will highlight proven techniques that can help you build an inspirational, aspirational, transformational marketing strategy infused with digital insights that can change your brand’s trajectory in 2012.

Take advantage of the early bird discount and register today!

The details….

Inspire, Aspire and Transform: Overcome Testosterone-driven Decisions To Build Extraordinary Marketing Strategies

Tuesday, February 28
6:00 p.m. - 6:45 p.m., Eastern
Hyatt Regency Boston

To register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2598407908

Take a deeper dive into some of the marketing hot topics and business issues we’ve covered on The Marketing Fray these past few weeks in the latest edition of The Copernicus Mzine.

Featured discussion includes:

• 5 ways to eliminate advertising ROI Anxiety in 2012
• Is the American middle class disappearing? Is it time to shift your strategy?
• Facts and fictions about Steve Job’s decision-making style
  
  

You’ll also find our featured marketing cartoon and a list of up-coming events.

So have at it!

In the just-published anthology Leading Edge Marketing Research: 21st-Century Tools and Practices, Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy and Ami Bowen make the case to marketers that a truly state-of-the-science approach to market segmentation focuses as much on ensuring the relevance and applicability of the outcome to fundamental strategic decisions as it does on the technical complexity of the algorithm or analytical technique used to sort buyers into groups.

The duo contributed Chapter 6, “State-of-the-Science Market Segmentation: Making Results Actionable for Marketers,” to the book, interweaving the thinking and tools that guide our market segmentation and targeting strategy work at Copernicus with client case studies and examples ripped from the headlines of the business press.

“For approximately 50 years,” Kevin and Ami begin their chapter, “knowledge of how a market segments and what constitutes a good market target has been the sine qua non of marketing strategy. No wonder most marketing textbooks include among their introductory chapters a discussion of market segmentation and targeting.”

“Yet some in the research industry say market segmentation is no longer relevant in today’s marketplace. We say unless it achieves state-of-the-science standards of actionability, it probably isn’t.”

With an eye towards who within an organization will use the results and how they will use them, along with clever measures of profitability and a range of descriptive variables to test, the two describe how marketers can tap into the full potential of this critical strategic research tool to improve performance and ROI.

They join nearly 40 other authors–many considered visionaries in the field of research and marketing–providing rich new tools to measure and analyze consumer attitudes, combined with existing databases, online bulletin boards, social media, neuroscience, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, behavioral economics, and more.

To learn more about Leading Edge Marketing Research and order a copy, visit Amazon.com.

It’s going to be a busy week for Copernicus’ Chairman Kevin Clancy.

He is set to give two live webcasts, one for Brand ManageCamp and one for the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

The details….

Advertising ROI: A Review of Past Performance And Recommendations To Make Dramatic Improvements

Tuesday, November 1
1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

To register: www.brandmanagecamp.rsvp1.com/webcasts/

Your Gut Is Not Smarter than Your Head: Three Things You Can Do Today to Improve Marketing Performance Tomorrow

Thursday, November 3
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

For more information about MENG: www.mengonline.com/index.jspa

We’re looking forward to Brand ManageCamp coming up next week, October 4-5, in Las Vegas.

We may be a bit biased–we’re one of the sponsors after all–but we think ManageCamp puts on one of the best marketing conferences out there.

Each year, the breadth of the topics covered, the relevance of the subject matter, and the quality of the speakers brings in an ever-increasing audience of marketers hungry for some truly fresh thinking and new ideas they can use.

You’ll see what we’re talking about when you take a look at the line-up of speakers at managecamp.com.

Headed to the conference? Make sure to find us in “The Lab,” in the Fresh Thinking Zone outside the presentation areas.

Hope to see you there!

The Marketing Research Association (MRA) put Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, written by Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg, at the top of its list of “‘Business Reads’ that will help you to push your marketing efforts and business to the next level.”

As the MRA reports, “Marketing consultants Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg explain how you see quantifiable results by implementing disciplined, accountable marketing practices into your business.”

Three other books made the short-list:

• Marketing Your Business: A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan, by Ronald Nykiel
• Social Media: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media Marketing, by Liana “Li” Evans
• The Marketing Accountability Imperative: Driving Superior Returns on Marketing Investments, by Michael Dunn and Chris Halsall

Visit Our Books to find out more about Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head and other marketing books written by Kevin and Peter.

When we opened the doors to Copernicus in 1993, we had a driving mission to change the way companies think about and practice marketing. We wanted to prove that marketing should be, can be, is the engine that drives business growth and quickly set out to help firms of all shapes and sizes develop and launch transformational marketing strategies.

As we close in on 20 years in the marketing consulting business, we remain as committed as ever to our original mission. Now more than ever, companies need to grow and the only way to do that is with exceptional marketing and new products/services.

We’ve seen a whole lot change in marketing and business over these past few years, so decided it was about time for us to take the same advice we give our clients when it comes to keeping their brand, products, and services relevant and meaningful to their customers.

We spent a great deal of time asking the question, what do we bring to the table when it comes to helping marketers dramatically improve revenues, profits, and brand equity?

We’d like to share our new answer:

Profit-focused outcomes
Everything we do—from our blog posts, to our speeches and articles, to our work for clients– is geared towards helping marketers make decisions that will yield the highest ROI.

Frontline experience
Thanks to the decades we’ve spent working for companies around the globe, we offer all kinds of advice that is practical, actionable, as well as “expert.”

Business-building ideas
We bring new ideas for growing your business…and show you the best ways to optimize them.

State-of-the-science tools
We continue to push the envelope of marketing research in order to ensure marketers get the best insights and marketing direction.

Senior management involvement
We all get our hands dirty.

Digitally-savvy thinking
We tap into our sister firms at Aegis Media Group—including digital strategists iProspect, Isobar, and Carat—to keep our thinking and tools on the forefront of all things digital, social, and mobile.

Great marketing strategies don’t happen by accident, at least not very often. And you can be sure we’re razor-focused on helping marketers understand what they need to do in order to achieve and exceed even their wildest business objectives.

Take a look at our new website and send us an email or chat with us on Twitter to let us know what you think about it. As always, stay tuned for more insights, thoughts, and big-picture perspectives on marketing and business issues!

The next installment of the Copernicus Marketing webcast series:

Tuesday, June 28, 1 pm (EDT)
Kevin Clancy, Ph.D.
Chairman, Copernicus

Digital Insights that Drive Strategy

View on-demand

But wait! There’s more!

Copernicus’ Jeff will give describe a process for building a brand strategy that’s impactful and highly executable as part of Brand ManageCamp’s webcast series.

Wednesday, June 29, 1 pm (EDT)
Jeff Maloy
Senior Vice President, Copernicus

Branding 2.0

View on-demand

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has just invited our chairman Kevin Clancy to give a talk at the organization’s upcoming virtual conference, Driving Research Transformation, on June 23 at 11 am EDT.

The 2011 virtual conference will pack the same punch as last year’s event, which, according to the AMA, broke industry records when it brought together more than 1,500 marketers and researchers from around the globe.

Attendees will get, “an online learning experience focused on strategies and applicable how-to’s on marketing research that will provide attendees with the insights and tools they need to take charge of their future.”

Kevin’s talk, “Four Ways to Determine the Impact of Marketing Investments in 30 Days or Less,” will describe how marketers can use four widely-available tools including social listening and assessments of campaign penetration to get insights into marketing campaign or new product performance within 30 days post-launch.

Registration is free! Learn more at: marketingpower.com

We’re pleased to announce that the American Marketing Association has selected our chairman Kevin Clancy to speak at the newly title Research and Strategy Summit on September 11-14, at the Hilton Bonnet Creek, Orlando, FL.

His topic: Common Research Approaches That Are Killing American Business.

For more on the conference, visit: www.marketingpower.com

The next installment of our continuing marketing webcast series featuring special guest, Rolf Olsen, Marketing Sciences Director, Carat US.

“I’m Listening”: Key Questions to Ask About Social Media Listening

Wednesday, May 25, 2011
1 pm - 1:30 pm (EDT)

Get front-line perspectives on:

• The importance of establishing a formal social listening program
• Taking a balanced approach to filtering the data coming from social sources
• Best practices for selecting a listening partner

To view on-demand, visit our webcast channel.

We’re pleased to announce that the ABP named our esteemed colleague Alberto Cerqueira-Lima, President of Copernicus Brazil, the “Most Prominent Marketing Research Professional” in 2010.

Considered one of the most important and egalitarian in the advertising industry, this prestigious award recognizes Cerqueira’s more than 30 years of marketing experience.

“We’ve always known that Cerqueira is one of the brightest minds in marketing today,” says Kevin Clancy, co-founder and Chairman of Copernicus, “To see him recognized publicly by his peers makes us even more proud to call him a colleague.”

For 20 years, Cerqueira worked at Companhia Cervejaria Brahma, at the time one of the two top brewers in Brazil. He rose through the ranks to the position of marketing director when he met the principals of Copernicus during a consulting engagement the firm did for Brahma.

Impressed by the firm’s work and convinced of its potential to help other brands with serious marketing issues, he approached Copernicus about opening an office in his home city of São Paulo.

Since 1999, he has pursued new business in a variety of industries and opened a branch office in Rio de Janeiro as client relationships have grown in that area of the country.

Founded in 1937, ABP draws members from the country’s leading advertising agencies and advertisers. As Brazil’s oldest marketing industry organization, it consistently works to advance the advertising profession and sponsors the International Advertising Festival in Rio de Janeiro.

Marketers looking to reach the super-influentials in their category may just want to keep blogs at the top of their list of social media tactics, according to the preliminary findings of a first-of-its-kind study released today by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research.

An Aegis Media company, Copernicus is a research-driven marketing consulting firm in the business of transforming companies.

Copernicus surveyed a national cross-section of 808 men and women, ages 18 and older, about their blogging behaviors and their personal influence patterns across 21 categories, ranging from products and services such as soft drinks and fast food restaurants to social/cultural topics such as sports and politics. The firm identified five groups that varied in terms of blogging engagement and three groups that differed in personal influence across the categories.

Copernicus discovered that study participants who scored “high” in cross-category personal influence were twice as likely to have posted a comment to a blog they regularly read and/or write their own blog than people who scored “low.”

Though many previous studies demonstrated the wide-spread awareness of blogs and varying levels of participation, no other study done to date has included direct measures of personal influence.

“Many marketers pushed their brands into the blogosphere based on the assumption that bloggers and ‘influentials’ are one-and-the-same person,” explains Kevin Clancy, Ph.D., Chairman of Copernicus. “Now they’ll have some definitive evidence that suggests a relationship between blogging behavior and personal influence across a broad range of categories.”

According to Peter Krieg, President and CEO of Copernicus, most marketers know that in the increasingly important word-of-mouth channel, “the messenger carries more weight than the actual message.” As a result, they regularly seek out “influentials,” also known as the people who tell friends and neighbors what and where to buy and have an impact on an increasing number of purchase decisions.

“And these influentials we’ve found are more engaged with blogs.”

Adds Krieg: “Reaching influentials via blogs—a medium created to disseminate opinions and recommendations—makes it all the easier to share and spread information about your brand.”

While marketers may not reach a sizable portion of the potential market for a product or service directly through blogs, they can still impact their purchase decisions indirectly by getting to the influentials:

• A combined 53% of the study participants who scored “high” in terms of cross-category personal influence also scored “high” in blogging engagement.
• In contrast, 60% of those who scored “low” on cross-category personal influence reported that though they know about blogs, they don’t read them on a regular basis.

Copernicus also found a particularly strong relationship between blogging behavior and personal influence in selected categories. For example, take computers: among those who scored “low” in blogging engagement, only 23% agreed with the statement “I have a lot of opinions about computers and can often persuade other people to accept my point of view.” In contrast, among those who scored “high” on blogging engagement, 59% agreed.

Interacting with those most likely to influence the personal decisions of others in a medium in which they more actively engage can boost the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing efforts, says Clancy.

About the study: The online survey, conducted in May, tabulated the responses of a national cross-section of 808 men and women ages 18 and older. Jennings Consulting Group managed the fieldwork for this study and Tabtec handled data processing and tabulation. Henry Gamse, a Senior Vice President at Copernicus, managed the analytics.

Copernicus evaluated cross-category influence using 63 scales adapted from the academic literature on personal influence. The firm captured measures for 21 different categories including cars, food and beverages, prescription medications, and politics. For each category, respondents were queried about three different indicators of personal influence. Scores were averaged across all categories to derive a metric for cross-category influence.

Known for pushing the envelope of marketing research to advance the practice of marketing, Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research announces a “digitally-enhanced” approach to market segmentation that will help marketers understand and execute against the digital behaviors of buyers in their category or industry.

According to Eric Paquette, a senior vice president leading the digital charge at Copernicus, “The digital revolution in marketing has added a layer of complexity to the information marketers need to capture about customers and how to value them.”

“Marketers need to not only understand where targets go digitally, for example, but also how they want to interact with a brand in a digital environment. Are they ‘spectators’ or ‘commentators’ or ‘authors’ in the digital world? What are the implications for how marketers design websites, iPhone apps, and other content?”

As marketers shift more and more of their attention and budgets towards digital efforts, adapting their market segmentation research to help make more effective and efficient digital media decisions is the next logical step.

An Aegis Media Company, Copernicus tapped into the knowledge and frontline expertise of Aegis’ network of traditional and digital agencies to boost the relevancy of market segmentation research results to new and established media decisions. The firm has a special understanding of the critical importance of actionability thanks to its direct involvement with more than 300 market segmentation exercises for B2B and B2C companies around the world.

“Marketers routinely struggle with how to apply the results of market segmentation research to key decisions, and now–thanks to the digital explosion–the world has become even more complicated,” explains Kevin Clancy, chairman at Copernicus. “Delivering insights marketers can use to build a high-performance marketing strategy and tactical plan drives the work we do for clients.”

Towards that end, every Copernicus market segmentation:

1. Identifies market segments that clearly differ in terms of their profit potential for a brand so marketers can easily chose a target.

2. Describes the groups in terms of clear sets of attitudes, motivations and brand perceptions so marketers can develop effective positioning and messaging strategies to address them.

3. Integrates “brand advocacy” in the assessment of segment value so marketers can select a target predisposed to driving positive word-of-mouth.

4. Profiles market segments in terms of digital and traditional media behaviors and habits so marketers have a guide for advertising and communications planning.

5. Finds the groups in syndicated traditional and digital media databases so marketers can more wisely allocate their media budget.

Now more than ever, marketers need solid, profit-oriented customer insights to guide critical marketing decisions, especially when it comes to reaching and impacting customers, explains Clancy.

“Our revamped approach overcomes the issues that undermined the success of market segmentation research efforts in the past and gives marketers much needed help tapping into digital opportunities.”

For more information on using market segmentation research to guide digital media decisions, read Eric’s interview with The Marketing Fray about adapting marketing research tools such as market segmentation to the digital age. You can also contact Brett Goodwin at (203) 831-2374 to discuss the Copernicus approach in greater detail.

Copernicus provides customized and growth-oriented insights and recommendations that help clients increase the performance of their marketing programs and new products/services. Working across categories and industries, the firm uses state-of-the-science marketing research tools and innovative techniques to empower clients to make high impact, profit-driven marketing decisions.

To view the complete release, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/market/segmentation/prweb4058484.htm.

Known for pushing the envelope of marketing research to advance the practice of marketing, Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research announces a “digitally-enhanced” approach to market segmentation that will help marketers understand and execute against the digital behaviors of buyers in their category or industry.

According to Eric Paquette, a senior vice president leading the digital charge at Copernicus, “The digital revolution in marketing has added a layer of complexity to the information marketers need to capture about customers and how to value them.”

“Marketers need to not only understand where targets go digitally, for example, but also how they want to interact with a brand in a digital environment. Are they ‘spectators’ or ‘commentators’ or ‘authors’ in the digital world? What are the implications for how marketers design websites, iPhone apps, and other content?”

As marketers shift more and more of their attention and budgets towards digital efforts, adapting their market segmentation research to help make more effective and efficient digital media decisions is the next logical step.

An Aegis Media Company, Copernicus tapped into the knowledge and frontline expertise of Aegis’ network of traditional and digital agencies to boost the relevancy of market segmentation research results to new and established media decisions. The firm has a special understanding of the critical importance of actionability thanks to its direct involvement with more than 300 market segmentation exercises for B2B and B2C companies around the world.

“Marketers routinely struggle with how to apply the results of market segmentation research to key decisions, and now–thanks to the digital explosion–the world has become even more complicated,” explains Kevin Clancy, chairman at Copernicus. “Delivering insights marketers can use to build a high-performance marketing strategy and tactical plan drives the work we do for clients.”

Towards that end, every Copernicus market segmentation:

1. Identifies market segments that clearly differ in terms of their profit potential for a brand so marketers can easily chose a target.

2. Describes the groups in terms of clear sets of attitudes, motivations and brand perceptions so marketers can develop effective positioning and messaging strategies to address them.

3. Integrates “brand advocacy” in the assessment of segment value so marketers can select a target predisposed to driving positive word-of-mouth.

4. Profiles market segments in terms of digital and traditional media behaviors and habits so marketers have a guide for advertising and communications planning.

5. Finds the groups in syndicated traditional and digital media databases so marketers can more wisely allocate their media budget.

Now more than ever, marketers need solid, profit-oriented customer insights to guide critical marketing decisions, especially when it comes to reaching and impacting customers, explains Clancy.

“Our revamped approach overcomes the issues that undermined the success of market segmentation research efforts in the past and gives marketers much needed help tapping into digital opportunities.”

For more information on using market segmentation research to guide digital media decisions, read Eric’s interview with The Marketing Fray about adapting marketing research tools such as market segmentation to the digital age. You can also contact Brett Goodwin at (203) 831-2374 to discuss the Copernicus approach in greater detail.

Copernicus provides customized and growth-oriented insights and recommendations that help clients increase the performance of their marketing programs and new products/services. Working across categories and industries, the firm uses state-of-the-science marketing research tools and innovative techniques to empower clients to make high impact, profit-driven marketing decisions.

To view the complete release, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/market/segmentation/prweb4058484.htm.

Marketers looking to reach the super-influentials in their category may just want to keep blogs at the top of their list of social media tactics, according to the preliminary findings of a first-of-its-kind study released today by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research.

An Aegis Media company, Copernicus is a research-driven marketing consulting firm in the business of transforming companies.

Copernicus surveyed a national cross-section of 808 men and women, ages 18 and older, about their blogging behaviors and their personal influence patterns across 21 categories, ranging from products and services such as soft drinks and fast food restaurants to social/cultural topics such as sports and politics. The firm identified five groups that varied in terms of blogging engagement and three groups that differed in personal influence across the categories.

Copernicus discovered that study participants who scored “high” in cross-category personal influence were twice as likely to have posted a comment to a blog they regularly read and/or write their own blog than people who scored “low.”

Though many previous studies demonstrated the wide-spread awareness of blogs and varying levels of participation, no other study done to date has included direct measures of personal influence.

“Many marketers pushed their brands into the blogosphere based on the assumption that bloggers and ‘influentials’ are one-and-the-same person,” explains Kevin Clancy, Ph.D., Chairman of Copernicus. “Now they’ll have some definitive evidence that suggests a relationship between blogging behavior and personal influence across a broad range of categories.”

According to Peter Krieg, President and CEO of Copernicus, most marketers know that in the increasingly important word-of-mouth channel, “the messenger carries more weight than the actual message.” As a result, they regularly seek out “influentials,” also known as the people who tell friends and neighbors what and where to buy and have an impact on an increasing number of purchase decisions.

“And these influentials we’ve found are more engaged with blogs.”

Adds Krieg: “Reaching influentials via blogs—a medium created to disseminate opinions and recommendations—makes it all the easier to share and spread information about your brand.”

While marketers may not reach a sizable portion of the potential market for a product or service directly through blogs, they can still impact their purchase decisions indirectly by getting to the influentials:

• A combined 53% of the study participants who scored “high” in terms of cross-category personal influence also scored “high” in blogging engagement.
• In contrast, 60% of those who scored “low” on cross-category personal influence reported that though they know about blogs, they don’t read them on a regular basis.

Copernicus also found a particularly strong relationship between blogging behavior and personal influence in selected categories. For example, take computers: among those who scored “low” in blogging engagement, only 23% agreed with the statement “I have a lot of opinions about computers and can often persuade other people to accept my point of view.” In contrast, among those who scored “high” on blogging engagement, 59% agreed.

Interacting with those most likely to influence the personal decisions of others in a medium in which they more actively engage can boost the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing efforts, says Clancy.

About the study: The online survey, conducted in May, tabulated the responses of a national cross-section of 808 men and women ages 18 and older. Jennings Consulting Group managed the fieldwork for this study and Tabtec handled data processing and tabulation. Henry Gamse, a Senior Vice President at Copernicus, managed the analytics.

Copernicus evaluated cross-category influence using 63 scales adapted from the academic literature on personal influence. The firm captured measures for 21 different categories including cars, food and beverages, prescription medications, and politics. For each category, respondents were queried about three different indicators of personal influence. Scores were averaged across all categories to derive a metric for cross-category influence.

We’re pleased to announce that the ABP named our esteemed colleague Alberto Cerqueira-Lima, President of Copernicus Brazil, the “Most Prominent Marketing Research Professional” in 2010.

Considered one of the most important and egalitarian in the advertising industry, this prestigious award recognizes Cerqueira’s more than 30 years of marketing experience.

“We’ve always known that Cerqueira is one of the brightest minds in marketing today,” says Kevin Clancy, co-founder and Chairman of Copernicus, “To see him recognized publicly by his peers makes us even more proud to call him a colleague.”

For 20 years, Cerqueira worked at Companhia Cervejaria Brahma, at the time one of the two top brewers in Brazil. He rose through the ranks to the position of marketing director when he met the principals of Copernicus during a consulting engagement the firm did for Brahma.

Impressed by the firm’s work and convinced of its potential to help other brands with serious marketing issues, he approached Copernicus about opening an office in his home city of São Paulo.

Since 1999, he has pursued new business in a variety of industries and opened a branch office in Rio de Janeiro as client relationships have grown in that area of the country.

Founded in 1937, ABP draws members from the country’s leading advertising agencies and advertisers. As Brazil’s oldest marketing industry organization, it consistently works to advance the advertising profession and sponsors the International Advertising Festival in Rio de Janeiro.

The next installment of our continuing marketing webcast series featuring special guest, Rolf Olsen, Marketing Sciences Director, Carat US.

“I’m Listening”: Key Questions to Ask About Social Media Listening

Wednesday, May 25, 2011
1 pm - 1:30 pm (EDT)

Get front-line perspectives on:

• The importance of establishing a formal social listening program
• Taking a balanced approach to filtering the data coming from social sources
• Best practices for selecting a listening partner

To view on-demand, visit our webcast channel.

We’re pleased to announce that the American Marketing Association has selected our chairman Kevin Clancy to speak at the newly title Research and Strategy Summit on September 11-14, at the Hilton Bonnet Creek, Orlando, FL.

His topic: Common Research Approaches That Are Killing American Business.

For more on the conference, visit: www.marketingpower.com

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has just invited our chairman Kevin Clancy to give a talk at the organization’s upcoming virtual conference, Driving Research Transformation, on June 23 at 11 am EDT.

The 2011 virtual conference will pack the same punch as last year’s event, which, according to the AMA, broke industry records when it brought together more than 1,500 marketers and researchers from around the globe.

Attendees will get, “an online learning experience focused on strategies and applicable how-to’s on marketing research that will provide attendees with the insights and tools they need to take charge of their future.”

Kevin’s talk, “Four Ways to Determine the Impact of Marketing Investments in 30 Days or Less,” will describe how marketers can use four widely-available tools including social listening and assessments of campaign penetration to get insights into marketing campaign or new product performance within 30 days post-launch.

Registration is free! Learn more at: marketingpower.com

The next installment of the Copernicus Marketing webcast series:

Tuesday, June 28, 1 pm (EDT)
Kevin Clancy, Ph.D.
Chairman, Copernicus

Digital Insights that Drive Strategy

View on-demand

But wait! There’s more!

Copernicus’ Jeff will give describe a process for building a brand strategy that’s impactful and highly executable as part of Brand ManageCamp’s webcast series.

Wednesday, June 29, 1 pm (EDT)
Jeff Maloy
Senior Vice President, Copernicus

Branding 2.0

View on-demand

When we opened the doors to Copernicus in 1993, we had a driving mission to change the way companies think about and practice marketing. We wanted to prove that marketing should be, can be, is the engine that drives business growth and quickly set out to help firms of all shapes and sizes develop and launch transformational marketing strategies.

As we close in on 20 years in the marketing consulting business, we remain as committed as ever to our original mission. Now more than ever, companies need to grow and the only way to do that is with exceptional marketing and new products/services.

We’ve seen a whole lot change in marketing and business over these past few years, so decided it was about time for us to take the same advice we give our clients when it comes to keeping their brand, products, and services relevant and meaningful to their customers.

We spent a great deal of time asking the question, what do we bring to the table when it comes to helping marketers dramatically improve revenues, profits, and brand equity?

We’d like to share our new answer:

Profit-focused outcomes
Everything we do—from our blog posts, to our speeches and articles, to our work for clients– is geared towards helping marketers make decisions that will yield the highest ROI.

Frontline experience
Thanks to the decades we’ve spent working for companies around the globe, we offer all kinds of advice that is practical, actionable, as well as “expert.”

Business-building ideas
We bring new ideas for growing your business…and show you the best ways to optimize them.

State-of-the-science tools
We continue to push the envelope of marketing research in order to ensure marketers get the best insights and marketing direction.

Senior management involvement
We all get our hands dirty.

Digitally-savvy thinking
We tap into our sister firms at Aegis Media Group—including digital strategists iProspect, Isobar, and Carat—to keep our thinking and tools on the forefront of all things digital, social, and mobile.

Great marketing strategies don’t happen by accident, at least not very often. And you can be sure we’re razor-focused on helping marketers understand what they need to do in order to achieve and exceed even their wildest business objectives.

Take a look at our new website and send us an email or chat with us on Twitter to let us know what you think about it. As always, stay tuned for more insights, thoughts, and big-picture perspectives on marketing and business issues!

The Marketing Research Association (MRA) put Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, written by Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg, at the top of its list of “‘Business Reads’ that will help you to push your marketing efforts and business to the next level.”

As the MRA reports, “Marketing consultants Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg explain how you see quantifiable results by implementing disciplined, accountable marketing practices into your business.”

Three other books made the short-list:

• Marketing Your Business: A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan, by Ronald Nykiel
• Social Media: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media Marketing, by Liana “Li” Evans
• The Marketing Accountability Imperative: Driving Superior Returns on Marketing Investments, by Michael Dunn and Chris Halsall

Visit Our Books to find out more about Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head and other marketing books written by Kevin and Peter.

We’re looking forward to Brand ManageCamp coming up next week, October 4-5, in Las Vegas.

We may be a bit biased–we’re one of the sponsors after all–but we think ManageCamp puts on one of the best marketing conferences out there.

Each year, the breadth of the topics covered, the relevance of the subject matter, and the quality of the speakers brings in an ever-increasing audience of marketers hungry for some truly fresh thinking and new ideas they can use.

You’ll see what we’re talking about when you take a look at the line-up of speakers at managecamp.com.

Headed to the conference? Make sure to find us in “The Lab,” in the Fresh Thinking Zone outside the presentation areas.

Hope to see you there!

It’s going to be a busy week for Copernicus’ Chairman Kevin Clancy.

He is set to give two live webcasts, one for Brand ManageCamp and one for the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

The details….

Advertising ROI: A Review of Past Performance And Recommendations To Make Dramatic Improvements

Tuesday, November 1
1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

To register: www.brandmanagecamp.rsvp1.com/webcasts/

Your Gut Is Not Smarter than Your Head: Three Things You Can Do Today to Improve Marketing Performance Tomorrow

Thursday, November 3
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

For more information about MENG: www.mengonline.com/index.jspa

In the just-published anthology Leading Edge Marketing Research: 21st-Century Tools and Practices, Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy and Ami Bowen make the case to marketers that a truly state-of-the-science approach to market segmentation focuses as much on ensuring the relevance and applicability of the outcome to fundamental strategic decisions as it does on the technical complexity of the algorithm or analytical technique used to sort buyers into groups.

The duo contributed Chapter 6, “State-of-the-Science Market Segmentation: Making Results Actionable for Marketers,” to the book, interweaving the thinking and tools that guide our market segmentation and targeting strategy work at Copernicus with client case studies and examples ripped from the headlines of the business press.

“For approximately 50 years,” Kevin and Ami begin their chapter, “knowledge of how a market segments and what constitutes a good market target has been the sine qua non of marketing strategy. No wonder most marketing textbooks include among their introductory chapters a discussion of market segmentation and targeting.”

“Yet some in the research industry say market segmentation is no longer relevant in today’s marketplace. We say unless it achieves state-of-the-science standards of actionability, it probably isn’t.”

With an eye towards who within an organization will use the results and how they will use them, along with clever measures of profitability and a range of descriptive variables to test, the two describe how marketers can tap into the full potential of this critical strategic research tool to improve performance and ROI.

They join nearly 40 other authors–many considered visionaries in the field of research and marketing–providing rich new tools to measure and analyze consumer attitudes, combined with existing databases, online bulletin boards, social media, neuroscience, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, behavioral economics, and more.

To learn more about Leading Edge Marketing Research and order a copy, visit Amazon.com.

Take a deeper dive into some of the marketing hot topics and business issues we’ve covered on The Marketing Fray these past few weeks in the latest edition of The Copernicus Mzine.

Featured discussion includes:

• 5 ways to eliminate advertising ROI Anxiety in 2012
• Is the American middle class disappearing? Is it time to shift your strategy?
• Facts and fictions about Steve Job’s decision-making style
  
  

You’ll also find our featured marketing cartoon and a list of up-coming events.

So have at it!

The Boston chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) will host renowned marketing research and strategy expert Kevin Clancy on Tuesday, February 28, at 6 pm (ET).

Kevin will highlight proven techniques that can help you build an inspirational, aspirational, transformational marketing strategy infused with digital insights that can change your brand’s trajectory in 2012.

Take advantage of the early bird discount and register today!

The details….

Inspire, Aspire and Transform: Overcome Testosterone-driven Decisions To Build Extraordinary Marketing Strategies

Tuesday, February 28
6:00 p.m. - 6:45 p.m., Eastern
Hyatt Regency Boston

To register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2598407908

Copernicus has signed on as a sponsor of the 2012 Shopper Marketing Summit, April 16-18, at the Westin O’Hare in Rosemount, Illinois.

“The Shopper Marketing Summit is much more than your average conference,” explains the Path to Purchase Institute, the organzation behind the Summit.

“It’s a gathering of industry intelligence; an intimate setting where senior-level executives across the entire ecosystem of shopper marketing-–consumer product marketers, retailers, agency executives and solution providers-–converge over three days to collaborate, learn and share experiences and insights about the ever-evolving path to purchase.”

On Day 2 of the Summit, Copernicus will host the Mobile Solutions track, featuring four in-depth presentations on this increasingly hot topic for shopper marketers:

Beyond the Check-in: Using Mobile to Close the Purchase Cycle
Doug Galen, Chief Revenue Officer, Shopkick, Inc.
W. Don Wortley, Digital Marketing Manager, Best Buy

Using Mobile to Engage Customers Along the Path to Purchase and Beyond
Dan Cooke, Director, Digital Shopper Marketing, Kellogg Co.
Jeff Hasen, CMO, Hipcricket

Mobile Shopper Marketing 2015: The Future of Shopper Intelligence Through Smartphones
Corrine Sandler, CEO, Fresh Intelligence Research Corp.

LBS - Location Based Shopper?
Patrick Moorhead, SVP, Group Managing Director - Mobile, DraftFCB

For more information about the Shopper Marketing Summit and to register, visit shoppersummit.com.

The 2012 Copernicus webcast season kicks-off next week on March 13 with an idea-rich presentation from Copernicus’ CEO Peter Krieg on transformational shopper marketing strategy.

Tuesday, March 13, 1 pm (Eastern)

Transformational Shopper Marketing Strategy: 3 Things You Can Do Today To Improve ROI Tomorrow

The first in a 4-part series on the hot topic of shopper marketing, Peter will demonstrate how you can apply profit-driven insights to capitalize on the biggest opportunities to move shoppers towards your brand and drive sales in different channels.

Register now

For those of you in and around Richmond, VA, Kevin Clancy will give a talk at the American Marketing Association luncheon at the University of Richmond on Thursday, March 15.

Thursday, March 15, 11:45 am (Eastern)

Inspiration, Aspiration, and Transformation: Building Extraordinary Marketing Strategies

Kevin will describe tools you can use to build an inspirational, aspirational, transformational marketing strategy infused with digital insights that will change your brand’s trajectory, career path, and perhaps your entire company.

Learn more

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has just announced that Copernicus’ venerable chairman Kevin Clancy is a finalist for the Great Mind Award in Innovation. The “innovation” category recognizes the development of the most innovative research ideas and the contributions they make to the industry.

Established in 2006, the ARF’s Great Mind Awards honor research innovation, rising research stars, outstanding ARF member contributions, lifetime achievement within the industry, and quality in research. Now in its seventh year, the ARF Great Mind Awards continue to recognize notable individuals who have truly made a difference to the advertising research industry.

The Awards will be presented at The Great Mind Awards luncheon on March 28, 2012, during the ARF’s annual Re:think Convention.

Congratulations to Kevin!

The Advertising Research Foundation selected Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy as the grand prize winner of the 2012 Great Minds Awards in Innovation.

The “innovation” category recognizes the development of the most innovative research ideas in the past year and the contributions they make to the industry.

In his 9 co-authored marketing and social science books and more than 400 articles, published papers and presentations; in his teaching at the Wharton School and Boston University; and in the three companies which he founded, Kevin has been a pioneer in the fields of innovative marketing consulting and marketing research.

This past year, Kevin focused on making the results of market segmentation research more actionable for marketing and advertising decisions, culminating in the publication of a chapter on state-of-the-science market segmentation in the anthology, Leading Edge Marketing Research.

His work on this topic helped distinguish him from the more than 70 other finalists in the innovation category.

Congratulations to Kevin!

Coming up Wednesday, April 25, at 1 pm (EDT), Eric Paquette, SVP at Copernicus, will give the next installment of our continuing series of webcasts on shopper marketing strategy. His area of focus: shoppers in a brand’s ecommerce channel.

More and more brands that primarily sell through retail, use their websites as a secondary channel to sell direct to customers. Ecommerce is an attractive option for brands for many reasons. Among other things, they break down geographic and retail distribution barriers; they typically drive high margin revenues; and a brand’s ecommerce site can deliver a unique brand experience that’s near impossible to replicate at retail.

Marketers, of course, recognize a brand’s ecommerce shoppers not only differ in important ways from their retail targets, but also from each other. Understanding these distinctions is critical to optimizing site effectiveness.

In this webcast, Eric Paquette will describe tools to identify, size, and profile a brand’s ecommerce shoppers and develop strategies to drive increased sales. He will demonstrate how to identify the most valuable ecommerce shoppers for your brand, understand their needs from the brand’s ecommerce site, and measure how your site delivers against those needs.

He will also describe how to ensure the end results of this kind of strategic research help drive:

• Site design and available shopping tools
• The user experience
• Social, mobile and search strategies
• The role of branded content on the site
• Merchandising, pricing and promotion strategies
• Direct marketing activities to drive ecommerce sales

Register now!

If you’re in the greater San Diego/Orange County California-area on or about May 17, you should catch Eric Paquette’s presentation on using market segmentation—one of the most powerful strategic research tools available today—to build a digitally savvy marketing strategy at the Art of Marketing 2012 Conference.

The San Diego chapter of the American Marketing Association is bringing together speakers from a variety of organizations, “to illuminate, educate, and paint the varied yet blended picture we call marketing.”

“Answering the call for relevant, timely insights and actionable take-aways in a one-day, fun, intensive learning environment, the Art of Marketing 2012 promises to deliver real-world solutions in a lively forum,” conference organizers explain.

For more information about the conference and to register, visit sdama.org/2011/11/05/art-of-marketing-2012.

Next Wednesday, May 23, at 1 pm (EDT), Copernicus’ resident consumer packaged goods maven Jeff Maloy will explore the topic of shopping occasions in part 3 of our continuing webcast series on developing and launching transformational shopper marketing strategies and programs.

To register visit copernicusmarketing.com/our-thinking/webcasts.

Retailers and manufacturers want to drive traffic and increase market baskets with their shopper marketing efforts. In order to give their brands an edge vs. the many competitors retailers also carry, manufacturers need to dive deeper into the reasons shoppers have for visiting a bricks-and-mortar or online store.

“The ‘trip mission’ greatly influences the choice of channel, and the types of marketing and promotional tactcis that are effective in driving sales,” explains Jeff. “By fully understanding the different types of shopping occasions, shopper marketers can deliver retailer- and channel-specific planning guidance to improve turns.”

Jeff will describe an approach to classifying consumer buying occasions and develop a richly-descriptive typology for the channels and “media” they use.