American Prosperity, Local Market Personas and Reviving Bottom-Up Perspective

Recent declarations by marketers that their priorities are squarely focused on advancing business growth in tandem with their social responsibility provides an opportunity for the industry to restore social science and civic partnership skills that have long been dormant. Three decades ago, marketers and their agencies shared a view that individual markets were diverse localities where brands sought accommodation and relevance to gain customers.  Somewhere along the path of regional expansion and consolidation that sentiment flipped toward a belief that local markets will accommodate the brand -- or perhaps just naivety that audience targeting is immune to geographic influences.  As a new generation of marketing and media professionals has primarily managed strategy through national aggregation, tactical channel efficiencies and hyper-target audience analytics, it has disabled an ability to detect some core communication and relevance factors that contribute to consumer resistance.  Now is the time to shift equilibrium by advocating bottom-up perspective as these signals offer context for marketers and will be critical to talent and tool development, data and measurement metrics, and activation effectiveness that prioritize growth initiatives and dually harmonize efforts in support of societal prosperity.