In this episode of "Now that's Significant, a market research podcast," host Michael Howard, the Head of Marketing at Infotools, engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Jeffrey Hirsch, founder and president of the Right Brain Studio and adjunct professor at USC's Annenberg School, about the increasing dominance of short-termism in marketing and its potential consequences for brand building. Hirsch, a seasoned marketing professional with a passion for qualitative insights, argues that the shift towards digital and social media marketing, driven by the need for measurable ROI, has led to a decline in long-term brand-building initiatives.

Here are five key takeaways from the episode:

The marketing landscape has shifted dramatically: The rise of digital and social media has led to a significant decline in traditional advertising spending, with a corresponding increase in short-term, performance-driven marketing tactics.

Short-termism can hinder long-term brand building: The pressure to demonstrate immediate ROI can lead marketers to prioritize short-term gains over long-term brand building, potentially sacrificing brand equity and customer relationships.

Brands need a clear purpose and values: To navigate the changing marketing landscape, brands must define their core values and purpose, ensuring that all marketing activities align with these foundational elements.

Qualitative insights remain crucial: Despite the popularity of quantitative data, qualitative research provides valuable insights into consumer motivations, emotions, and brand relationships, which are essential for effective brand building.

Balance is key: Marketers must strike a balance between short-term performance goals and long-term brand building, utilizing a mix of quantitative and qualitative research to inform their strategies.

Don't forget to check out other episodes of "Now that's Significant" on YouTube and all major podcast platforms!

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Infotools Harmoni is a fit-for-purpose market research analysis, visualization, and reporting platform that gives the world’s leading brands the tools they need to better understand their consumers, customers, organization, and market.

www.infotools.com

Established in 1990, we work with some of the world’s top brands around the world, including Coca-Cola, Orange, Samsung, and Mondelēz.

Our powerful cloud-based platform, Harmoni, is purpose-built for market research. From data processing to investigation, dashboards to collaboration, Harmoni is a true "data-to-decision-making" solution for in-house corporate insights teams and agencies.

While we don't facilitate market research surveys, provide sample, or collect data, we make it easy for market researchers to find and share compelling insights that go over-and-above what stakeholders want, inspiring them to act decisively.

One of the most powerful features of Harmoni is Discover, a time-tested, time-saving, and investigative approach to data analysis. Using automated analyses to reveal patterns and trends, Discover minimizes potential research bias by removing the need for requesting and manually analyzing scores of cumbersome crosstabs – often seeing what you can’t.

Discover helps you easily find what differentiates groups that matter to you, uncover what makes them unique, and deliver data points that are interesting, relevant, and statistically significant, plus see things others can’t. Add to all this an impending GenAI feature, and you have an extremely powerful, future-proofed tool.