From the Eyes of an Intern: Phoenix Marketing Agency FabCom – Week 2
During this second week as an intern at FabCom, I have begun to delve deeper into the inner workings of this top Phoenix advertising and marketing agency. There is a prevailing pattern within the FabCom marketing process, even an over-arching theme per se. What continues to be the mantra for each marketing campaign is relevance, or as CEO Brian Fabiano refers to it… hyper personal relevance or emotional visceral relevance. So what is hyper-personal relevance and emotional marketing relevance? Being a college student I of course looked it up and according to Miriam-Webster relevance is the “relation to the matter at hand” …but what does that have to do with marketing and advertising?
Team FabCom emphasizes a key concept and necessary question to consider throughout the entire marketing process. The chief strategist continually reiterates, “Keep the main thing, the main thing.” The team at FabCom and their clients are disciplined in first defining the end goals and objectives for each “piece” or component of multichannel marketing campaigns.
What he’s referring to is the idea that there is always a larger goal of growth (for profits, margins or market share) that must be kept front and center in the creative and marketing strategic process. For example, a client of FabCom states in a meeting that they have a $5500 budget for a new landing page. Many working within the marketing business fail to remember what the client needs is not just an advertising medium or tactic that looks unique, but one that targets a specific type of customer and motivates a specific action to arrive at a measurable marketing ROI. The main thing is not the landing page; the main thing is creating awareness, as well as differentiation from the competitive advertising clutter and then converting customers to creating growth and profits.
I am learning that consumerism, as well as manipulating more effective consumerism, is all about understanding the fact that all humans exhibit particular attributes which can be “mapped” and influenced. The main drivers I have seen thus far include demographics (gender, age, race, etc.), psychographics (attitudes, lifestyles, etc.), and behaviors (acting patterns). When strategic marketing and advertising is created with these drivers in mind, prospects can be driven to prefer the products or services of one company above the competition with scalable consistency and predictability at a much higher percentage than the industry norms. I have learned that creating this balance is accomplished by finding hyper-personal relevance. This is why it is a vital foundational methodology in producing conversions from the advertising that FabCom, as a full service-marketing firm, creates for its clients.
In my previous blog entry, I detailed the four stages of an effective marketing approach (a.k.a. the customer lifecycle). To maximize marketing ROI, advertisers must influence their customer targets through this natural progression of investment or purchasing behavior in the most effective manner. When the advertiser’s prospects reach one of these stages, the prospects demonstrate different demographic, psychographic and behavioral needs that are markedly different from when they were in the previous stage. The purpose of FabCom’s pursuit of hyper-personal relevance is to generate the most effective advertising with the right messaging, imagery, timing and delivery method to create greater return on investment for their long-term clients. The results… marketing and advertising campaigns that are emotionally relevant and drive prospects to action by engaging that prospect and motivating them through each of the marketing progression steps.
This week I was also privileged to see a day in the life of FabCom’s production manager. He began by thoroughly defining his job and then he introduced me to tasks like opening and closing new projects, purchase of materials and supplies and the necessary communicative skills required to keep an office maintained. By the conclusion of my internship I will have shadowed each of the people behind FabCom’s success and I will have seen the business operate from various perspectives. My personal goal is to observe enough that I will know in what part of the vast marketing and advertising field I see myself working. This upcoming week I am scheduled to spend a day with one of the Art Directors as well as a day with one of the Account Executives. It should make for another remarkable week.
