“Do me a favor, imagine you are at a party, what person is eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream? Describe him (or her) to me. Is the person a he? Or a she? Young or old? Dressed up? Or down? ” a hypothetical question that Scott Madden would ask if he is conducting a focus group for a ice cream brand.
Programmatic advertising and real-time bidding — those may be the big words for marketers in these days, but Scott, the Senior Partner and the Director of Strategy & Integrated Services at Connelly Partners, takes a holistic view on the consumers’ mindset. He is tapping into the emotional bonding and subconscious between consumers and the brands, controlled by the back brain while the front brain controlling rational thinking.
Ranked as one of the top places to work in the Boston Globe since 2012 for fours consecutive years, Connelly Partners, found in 1999, is a full-service advertising agency located in Boston.
The agency, located on the corner of Washington and Waltham street, is a converted piano factory remade to resemble a house. The entrance leads to a dining room and full kitchen where employees often sit around during lunch. Living rooms serve as conference rooms, furnished with large couches, where employees lately watched the new Mad Men episodes. The agency also has a recreation area with a ping-pong table.
They have recently became the partner with Google last month, which would most possibly add tremendous values on their SEM and strategy planning.
Besides being a father of three, Scott is an expert in brand messaging, who worked at Arnold for more than 10 years prior to his tenure at Connelly Partners, approaching to his 13th year at the agency. He pioneered Connelly Partners’s proprietary IQ/EQ process on its notion of empathy engineering, which emphasizes the importance of identifying shared values between a brand and its audience through affective empathy.
Let’s sit down with Scott to dig deeper into the Back Brain of Boston.
What was the biggest change in the past 5 years?
The volume of data that we can use to make decision has been overwhelming. Everybody talked about Big Data few years ago and there are many different sources appeared to inform and influence consumers. A department could be paralyzed by analyzing 300 metrics, 400 million IP address or 50 billion data cells a day. It’s important for a brand, or an agency to filter and bring the useful ones to a aggregate level and make informed decisions.
How do great works produced here?
People here don’t sit by department. So there aren’t people sitting by skill set or project, which is not very often to happen at a agency. We believe more in collaboration and interactions. Our agency has three floors. Strategic people will sit with the creatives, and if you want to find the other strategists, you may need to take a walk.
Three years ago, we may have the account people give the brief, planners deliver the insights, and creatives work on the pieces. But now we get everybody together. We share the brief internally and creatives will help us to refine the brief. It’s a collaborative exercise.
Creating a fun and open work environment helps cultivate friendships between employees and encourages them to work harder and stay longer at the agency. The environment actually helps creative thought and it’s hard to be productive without it.
What attributes makes you a good brand strategist?
You have to be conscious of your own personal actions. Most people don’t think about why they buy, why they consume and behave, and what drives them to do this. I am interested in finding the mentality behind a thought or a behavior. It’s important for a good planner to be conscious about feelings and emotions. Think about yourself as a consumer. It helps you to apply that thinking to help clients.
The second thing is the real energy and the passion for uncovering something new and the new insights. Always look for some untapped original emtions. You will be amazed when you go ahead with dissecting, analyzing and leveraging them on a emotionally value base.
The last thing is, to be a dedicated student all the time. There are constantly new things out there, a new theory of science suggested, or a new medium created. Our agency is doubling our size and is getting more and more sophisticated. Never ceases to learn and maintain your curiosity. I guess I would never be bored by analytics and the actionable insights that we found in the market. This helps you to become a great strategist.
Do you think Programmatic Advertising would cannabalize human being?
Programmatic ads have been around for a while but it definitely will grow in the coming years. Technology grows very quickly and human will thank it as it improves people lives. As a marketer, it let us to get things more relevant to you and create dynamic content to trigger behavior, which are specifically for you instead of blasting out the same email. But human will always be part of the equation as we understand human nature. On top of the rational dissection on how people consume, we know how brands are emotionally connected with their consumers, which is the biggest part of decision making.
Any advice to young people who want to get into advertising?
Internship. Until you go and do it, you will see the inner world of what a strategist’s or creative’s work is. It is far less glamorous. It takes someone who is resistant, resilient, and fine to take rejection to stay in the business. From an employer’s perspective, we don’t want to be their testing ground. We would like to hire someone who has already learned what the industry is really like, and how to work in a professional environment. Everybody wants to get into the ad game, they think it’s fun, party, city, or whatever. But if you take it seriously and get an internship, it shows that this person is a hard worker, mature and they know they want to get into this. You are ahead of the game.
Scott plays about two games of ping pong a day, listens to ’80s music and spends a lot of time sitting at the bar which is at the center of the agency while at work. This shows how creativity and emotions spin.
