If you’ve read our content you know we have a strong partnership with Brand Keys.

A primary motivation for that partnership is the unique insight they provide into consumer expectations and loyalty drivers. Their findings uncover specific characteristics and key components of loyalty that consumers insist sit behind their decision-making process.

Knowing what the drivers are is the science of marketing; the other side—the art in what we do—is crafting effective strategies that tap into the most important of these drivers and drawing them through all parts of the marketing discussion (strategy, customer journey, message hierarchy, programs, tactics, etc.)

In short, their insights enable us to first, make strong and defendable recommendations on where to invest marketing dollars; and second, illuminate what influences initiatives often owned by operations, human resources and sales, but have indirect impact on marketing objectives.

[Brand Keys’] insights enable us to make strong recommendations on where to invest marketing dollars, and illuminate what influences initiatives often owned by other departments.

For example, if one of the drivers of your category is “there when you need them”, this will be translated to reflect the obvious hours of operation, access to personnel etc., but it will also be tied to subtle consumer anxiety and fears; what happens if they can’t find the right solution or possible time sensitivities, and there are a number of opportunities in being able to resolve those fears.

Here’s where it gets really fun, given that Cult isn’t at all vested in what the “solution” is, we get to be creative with looking at the client’s organization with fresh eyes and a sense of healthy irreverence for what has been done previously. We sometimes end with traditional approaches to communication and marketing, but we’re not beholden to start there.

Cult gets to be creative with looking at the client’s organization with fresh eyes and a sense of healthy irreverence for what has been done previously.

Today’s marketing solutions cannot come without the benefit of understanding the consumer, but understanding what emotions sit behind their decisions is only one part. The other is being able to have an unbiased look at what you’re currently doing and pinpoint how you could be investing resources to achieve different results.