Starry Blue Brilliance

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Brilliance@Work: Danny Blatt Directs Great Customer Experiences at Prudential

Welcome to Brilliance@Work, a series of profiles about stellar marketing professionals and their best practices at work.  During the next couple of months, we’ll feature market research experts.

Organizations that put customers’ needs at the center of their brand marketing and advertising strategy will strengthen their overall business performance. Danny Blatt knows this first hand as Director of Market Research at Prudential. He’s also a presenter at The Market Research Event (TMRE) on Nov. 5-7, 2019 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Daniel Blatt

Danny Blatt

As a preview to his presentation, Danny shares his perspectives on “Redirecting a Big Ship: How an Enterprise Segmentation Can Drive Brand Marketing and Advertising Strategy.”

Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC: How can leveraging an enterprise wide needs-based taxonomy help shape an organization’s future success?

Danny Blatt: We use the enterprise wide taxonomy and segmentation to enable the organization to move faster and be more focused. This data-driven approach to customers allows us to use a common language internally and focus on customer challenges in both development and communication.

PB: What are some examples of how you leverage an enterprise wide needs-based taxonomy at Prudential?

DB: We are using the segmentation in a variety of ways. First of all, we made tough decisions on which segments to focus on for each business, based upon market size and attainability, among other factors. We then mapped our solutions to the segments allowing us to understand from the individual’s perspective how our solutions help them achieve their financial wellness. We are now developing customized messaging based on solutions and need to appeal to our audience. We will then target our customized needs based messaging to our target customers.

PB: How does this approach help tell a compelling marketing story?

DB: We are using personas to bring the needs to life for our marketers, product developers and customer experience professionals to truly understand the challenges and needs of our customers. When they understand this, it builds empathy and real connections. This understanding is key to helping us be customer-focused and consumer-centric.

PB: What will people gain from your conference presentation?

DB: People will see how a using a data-driven, customer-centric approach as opposed to a top-down company based approach can help to align efforts across a huge organization.

Want to hear more from Danny? Join us at The Market Research Event (TMRE). Learn, network and share best practices with the most influential leaders in market research. Stay connected at #TMREVENT.

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What’s Missing from Your Corporate Videos?

Flickr_-_paul_bica_-_skywalkPhoto by paul bica

Following up on last week’s post, How to Create Your New Slant on Corporate Videos, here is another example of a powerfully compelling video containing the one important element missing from many corporate videos: empathy.

Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care by Cleveland Clinic

You can also find The Cleveland Clinic video and an article about creating more empathy through video at www.teamworkandleadership.com.

As you can see, making a difference in people’s lives builds trust and credibility and of course, creates a better world for all of us! Want to learn how? Check out In Video, Connecting is King, from www.ragan.com, for some advice on how to get started.

How are you developing more empathy in your professional and personal lives?


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Create Your Organization’s Face with Visual Storytelling

Photo: Sculpture Per Adriano, work of Igor Mitoraj, Square of Isla de Madeira, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, License CC-BY-SA 3.0

Photo: Sculpture Per Adriano, work of Igor Mitoraj, Square of Isla de Madeira, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, License CC-BY-SA 3.0

“A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.” – Vincent Van Gogh (www.goodreads.com)

Artists know the value of creating compelling visuals to tell their stories. Communicators can use this same concept of visual storytelling to engage their audiences on a personal level.

This article from prnewsonline.com can help you get started on the road to “visual storytelling mastery:” http://www.prnewsonline.com/water-cooler/2013/10/29/6-tips-for-visual-storytelling-mastery/

If you take your own photos, you’ll want to read “Telling Stories” by Phil Douglis, ABC, IABC Fellow and a master of visual storytelling. In his article from IABC’s Communication World, Phil shows you how to engage your audiences and draw them into your story to help them develop a deeper understanding of your organization. For more inspiration on visual storytelling, check out Phil’s “cyberbook” of photo galleries at http://www.pbase.com/pnd1

How do you incorporate visual storytelling into your organizational communication?


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It’s about sharing success

Ideas are the foundation of success. This timeless concept was best expressed by a Deutsche Bank advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in April 2001 that proclaimed: “Ideas are capital. The rest is just money.”

Sharing ideas about corporate communication best practices will help us create and carry out highly effective communication plans and programs to support our organization’s continued success.

The work of my favorite artist, Vincent Van Gogh, inspired the name for this blog. The header is a partial photo of one of his most well-known masterpieces, “Starry Night.”

As Van Gogh said, “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” (www.goodreads.com). We can succeed together by creating and sharing ideas, one inspiration after another, until they form a collective “masterpiece” of corporate communication best practices known as Starry Blue Brilliance.