Sponsor Profile: Quarry Integrated Communications
“The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife.” David Ogilvy, in Ogilvy on Advertising

David Ogilvy took some flack for that statement. And he probably had some explaining to do at home. But truer words were never spoken by any marketer — and Ogilvy was among the best. The point Ogilvy was making, before he was so rudely taken out of context, was about the idea of value. Most customers approach a purchase with far more sophistication than mere penny pinching, he said. Customers are complex, intelligent people living in a complicated world. And their approach to making a purchase reflects that.

We can put his point another way: if we never get beyond a superficial understanding of our customers, we’ll never get beyond the first date. In the marketing and communications business, whether we’re in an agency or client side, we need the customer as our lifelong partner. We have to embrace them as the flesh-and-blood people they are, not statistics or target segments laid out in pie charts.

Read the full article.

May Luncheon Recap: Marketing with Digital Media

Brian McDonald, Marketing Director, Zencos
Photos by Greg Plachta, Plachta Studios

Brian Carnell, Business Manager World Wide Channels, Cisco Systems was the AMA guest speaker for our May meeting. Carnell’s topic was “Marketing with Digital Media Solutions,” and demonstrated how digital media and signage is becoming a key communication tool. Digital media is important as it communicates critical information while reducing operational costs. At the same time it can drive revenue and personalize the customer experience.

Read the full recap, view photos and presentation from the meeting.

McNeilly's Sun Tzu & the Art of Business

What can you learn from history to apply to business strategy and marketing in these turbulent times? Companies face the same challenges that military organizations and leaders have dealt with for centuries and businesspeople can learn from these examples. Mark will provide you time-test principles for strategy, marketing and leadership based on the classic book on strategy, The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general. These principles will be illuminated with modern business examples to make them applicable to today’s environment.
Mark’s presentation will focus on six strategic principles for managers he has developed from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

• Win All Without Fighting: Capturing Your Market Without Destroying It
• Avoid Strength, Attack Weakness: Striking Where the Competition is Vulnerable
• Foreknowledge: Maximizing the Power of Business Intelligence
• Speed and Preparation: Moving Swiftly to Overcome the Competition
• Shaping the Opponent: Employing Strategy to Master the Competition
• Character-based Leadership: Leading by Example

Date: Thursday,June 18, 2009 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Venue: Brier Creek Country Club, 9400 Club Hill Drive, Raleigh, NC 27617

Online registration for this event.