Inspiration Anywhere: Messaging and Research

You know what I love? Reading an article unrelated to my career that has parts that inspire my career.

Like today, I was reading the Sept. 29th article in The New York Times by Robin Marantz Henig called, "Understanding the Anxious Mind." It was about the psychology of anxiety (you inferred that from the title I'm sure), which was fascinating altogether (that's a permalink up there if you want to read it!). BUT there were two different things that inspired my thinking of strategy.

The first was a line the author wrote that feels like a great strategy, copy or message for healthcare clients or maybe even other brands. It was brilliant. She wrote these words, "draw conclusions about trends but not about destinies." I just love that. It's along the same philosophy as more than a number or more than a statistic, but it's got a unique twist and I've never heard it put that way at all.

The second was description of research that I really appreciated. The author describes two types. Here is the quippet: "There are two kinds of great research,” Susan Engel, a developmental psychologist ... told me... “There’s research that is counterintuitive, that shows you something you’d never guess on your own, and there’s research that shows you irrefutably what you had an intuition about, something you thought was true but didn’t have evidence to support.” Kagan’s research was of the second type, she says: “a beautiful, elegant experimental demonstration of an old intuition.”

In strategy, the best creative is typically a byproduct of research of the former but look at how energetically she describes research of the latter. It makes me wonder in what ways we can use such research to inspire and appeal to consumers.

Fresh Thoughts.

The other day I went grocery shopping. 

It got me thinking about the word fresh. It was only after working in an agency and helping on a grocery client, that I began to understand the importance of that one word. I remember thinking at the time that the word is one with no real dimensions. I was wrong.

The dictionary describes fresh as recently made or obtained; not canned, frozen, or otherwise preserved. 

While I think that's (obviously) true, I also think that fresh has been given new meaning in recent years. The popularity of natural and organic have really changed the the meaning of that word. Here's why:

While at the grocery store, I purchased the freshest mozzarella. Ever. Stark white, wet, salty. I also purchased organic salsa.

My not canned, not frozen, not otherwise preserved mozzarella made and obtained recently was obviously fresh. I walked into the store with the intent to purchase fresh mozzarella and did just that.

But I realize while standing there looking at all the salsa options on the shelves, I have come to think, in recent years, that organic, even in a jar, is more fresh than the same product in a jar without the word organic attached. 

So now not fresh grocery items, those that are canned, frozen and otherwise preserved, can be fresher than their counterparts (as in the case of salsa). That means that fresh grocery items can also be fresher than their counterparts. A fresher fresh if you will. There's freshly grown strawberries and then there are fresher freshly grown strawberries that are organic. 

While organic can't own fresh, it can own fresher. The idea of pesticides and chemicals on anything takes away from our old notions of fresh. 

I wonder if other consumers think the same and how that effects the marketing of grocery and the highly competitive fresh wars that pepper the category.