I’ve been in the digital marketing business for while, running major marketing initiatives for Fortune 1000 clients during my tenure at some major digital agencies and now Organic.  While I have deep experience on the account management  and strategy side of the house, I am definitely not what we in the industry call a “creative.”

I’m not an educated judge of design – I can’t really tell you the difference between font types and I can’t draw anything that requires more than boxes, lines and arrows.  I can’t even tell you where the colors go on the color wheel.  But I can tell you this: I know what I like.  Now, I can’t necessarily put a data-based reason or educated rationale around why I like it.  I just know when something resonates with me.

And that makes me like most consumers out there – and there are billions of us.  When responding to an ad or marketing initiative, they go with their gut – which will tell them to check it out, or avoid it.

At Organic, we believe in the power of blending creativity and intelligence.  Nowhere is this more prevalent than in how we measure the gut feelings of consumers – and how we harness their emotional reactions to get them to respond positively to the brands we represent. The conundrum we face every day as advertising people is this: how do we harness the emotional reaction of the average consumer to really understand what it is that drives our consumers to interact with the brands that we represent.

Sometimes we get so caught up in creating breakthrough experiences for consumers that we often forget that it can be the “little things” that get them to respond to an ad or a marketing campaign.  Take an experience I had last week in our Detroit office.  A colleague of mine Tweeted about the results from an OLA test on button colors.   The results showed that certain types of button colors get consumers to respond while others don’t.  Who would have thought that button colors would make a difference in how a brand goes to market?

Another example is the UbyKotex site that we built for Kimberly-Clark.  We’re constantly observing site metrics and user behavior to see if there is any way that we can continue to improve the site.  One area in particular, where small incremental testing has made significant improvements, is the copy used in the navigation. Since the site is targeted to a young female demographic, it’s important that the language we use on the site be relevant and resonate with them.  On one area of the site, we tested the words “Confess” (control), “Take a Poll” and “Spill It.”  Seemingly small, right?  And don’t “Confess” and “Spill It” seem trendier?  Well, we found that the direct language of “Take a Poll” increased engagement by nearly 30%. See the “Take a Poll” section here: (http://ubykotex.com/get_real/confess)

As a marketer, I see this all the time – how the “little things” can make a big difference for consumers. In our industry, so many of us expend so much energy trying to create “the next big thing” or the shiny object – when we neglect the little things that can make all the difference.

Have you had an experience where the so-called “little things” made a major impact?

Julie Lee