Too many marketers fall into the trap of over analyzing and overcomplicating their efforts to engage customers. They talk at their prospects and not to them. We help our clients remember that the market is a place where buyers and sellers come together and connect to make a valuable exchange.

In physical intersections like stores and with employees, in digital intersections online and in the media, and in virtual intersections through the tangled web of social media, brands and people connect and form relationships. We believe in it so much that we have developed customized training in relationship management for our people and have trained many of our clients as well.

People don’t make demographic decisions, media buyers do. Knowing that 32% of my product is consumed by women 25-54 tells me very little about why they have clustered around my brand. Human behavior is closely linked to our desire to craft a life in a manner that is consistent with our desired sense of self. This sense manifests itself in a right-brained visceral and emotional “blink” and is supported by our left-brain with reasons, facts, comparisons and mental notes.

At the behavioral level and at the brand, or marketing intersection, great marketers supply authentic experiences that feed customer aspirations and are supported with the rational tools necessary to complete the transaction and cement the relationship. Understanding the mindset of your most lucrative source of business is a critical key to success.

Over many years we have identified the prevailing “tribal” 10-12 macro mindsets that drive the majority of consumer behavior and hundreds of specific tributaries that represent the mindset thumbprint of specific brands.

A sampling of some of the consumer mindsets we have uncovered and modeled:

We have a bias towards leadership as people and in managing and supporting the brands, people and causes we serve. We work well with clients interested in building dynamic organizations that have soul and make a difference. There are hundreds of agencies out there ready to be the caretaker of your budget and go to market trying not to mess things up. We wake up trying to help people lead and become the best at what they do.

We believe that brand experiences have a far greater impact than brand messaging. By framing our efforts in an experiential lens we remind ourselves that we should be crafting, and proactively designing the customers interaction with the brand. We help our clients design and craft as many of the critical experiences their customers will encounter and we track how effectively we are matching performance in the field to strategic design.

A full and thoughtful brand strategy incorporates visioning with practical business drivers to create a dynamic mechanism for honing in on the strategies that amplify a winning advantage. We work with clients along a continuum to help them achieve results.

While Alexander Calder is an inspiration for the mobile that is our logo, there is another reason we choose the image. In the marketplace positions are never static and brands that manage to keep their balance and maintain cohesion while adjusting to the forces that buffet them by deftly adjusting tactics, protecting their internal cultures, and maintaining strategic focus are consistent winners.

To unlock the behavioral drivers at the heart of consumer mindset, we have developed a variety of qualitative approaches, including the Brand Intersection Group PARS system. The PARS system allows us to tap into core identity markers in an indirect manner that shuts off natural respondent tendencies to “think” about the appropriate answer.

Brand Intersection Group PARS System

1. Projection – Current external perceptions and mental models
2. Aspiration – Personal goals and desired sense of self
3. Rejection – Rejected models and qualities
4. Sensibility – Attitudinal biases and operating principles

The result of the PARS System is qualitative findings that also enable Brand Intersection group to map the prevailing mindset characteristics of the most lucrative long-term source of business. These characteristics make up the core of custom models that will be overlaid against syndicated quantitative tools to produce a more dimensional and actionable segmentation profile.