We know executives are busy. That’s not news. But, we didn’t know how and where decision-makers are receiving information. How is it influencing their decisions, and how do they feel about it?

If you are a brand looking to communicate with these people, these are the questions that you need answered. These are insights that are necessary to be humanly relevant in an age of constant information.

That’s why gyro partnered with Forbes Insights to interview 543 top executives. We wanted to understand decision-makers better.

Along the way a clear picture developed. It was a picture that we did not expect.

Contrary to the negative perceptions about being “always on,” this new reality is having a positive effect on people’s work and personal lives.

Ninety-eight percent of executives send work-related e-mails outside of the typical “9-to-5 work week.” Despite this, they said that they feel in control and able to enjoy their personal time.

Only 15 percent said that they struggle to separate work from valuable personal/family time; and 84 percent feel empowered and well prepared to make business decisions.

People no longer feel rushed to make business decisions, instead valuing the freedom and flexibility that this “@Work State of Mind” allows.

We also found that people’s private lives are playing a much bigger role in business decisions. The study shows that more than three-quarters (77 percent) cite personal values as very or critically important to their decision-making.

gyro’s pursuit, as a B2C and B2B global ideas shop, is to understand this @Work State of Mind better than anyone else in the world, so that we can best ignite emotions.

These findings show how today’s independently minded and highly connected executive looks, thinks and feels. See the full study at www.gyro.com/atwork.

We hope this deeper understanding of the @Work State of Mind will inspire you.

What a time to be alive!

Christoph Becker is ceo+cco of gyro, the global ideas shop.

After the financial turmoil of the last few years, we learned that Americans yearned to feel in control of their lives again. Lack of trust in institutions and a sense of insecurity about their futures fed this desire. This insight was the seed of our “You’re In Charge” creative platform.

Americans are optimistic by nature, and despite all of the economic turmoil of recent years, 72 percent of Americans are still optimistic about their futures and 68 percent are optimistic about their financial futures, according to our MOOD (Measuring Optimism, Outlook and Direction) of America survey. Whitman Insight Strategies polled 803 adults late last year to uncover these findings, which also revealed that 66 percent of Americans feel in control of their lives.

While others in the category seemed to be drawn to using fear in their advertising, we felt the time was right, given these empowering and inspirational insights, to try a new, more optimistic approach.

On launch day, our new campaign promoted everyone to chief executive officer of his or her own life. Someone we call the “Chief Life Officer.” It recognizes the fact that our lives are in many ways like businesses. We’re in charge of making big decisions, managing finances and keeping employee morale positive. We are chief  401(k) officers, chief turkey-carving officers, chief tuition officers, and chief I really need a vacation officers. Whoever you are, the main message we wanted to get across is that you’re the boss of your life, and Lincoln Financial is here to help you “Take Charge.”

Our Chief Life Officer campaign, created with gyro New York,  is bringing a very different message to consumers because it inspires them by showing them that they are in charge and that they have the tools necessary to build secure financial futures.

Optimists are realists. They take charge of things they can control; they don’t worry about the things they can’t. The Chief Life Officer (You’re In Charge) campaign we created with gyro New York celebrates the richness of life and drives people to take action.

Jamie DePeau, corporate chief marketing officer at Lincoln Financial Group in Radnor, Penn.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

If we exclude certain extremist movements that are taking advantage of this situation, who, then, are the last emotionalguides of our society? Who or what can create want, satisfy pleasure and decree the keys to the success of individuals and their degree of fulfilment? Who, if not brands and artistes (who have themselves become brands!)?

This statement is an acknowledgment of fact and certainly not a value judgment. It emphasises the role of brands in our society, looking beyond their ability to satisfy needs, which is clear. Each brand has its own universe, which will contribute to fulfilling the consumer’s expectations and existential needs.

The product itself adds to the brand universe, giving it physical form. In the choices made by consumers, the emotional value of the brand takes precedence over the functional value of the product.

And where is the CMO in all that? He will play a new role as a creator of emotions, producing his work through all possible channels of distribution. He will stage the brand through events, shows, films, games and ideological debate. All these productions will pursue the same aim, seeking to attract, group, move and convince consumers.

In making his choices, the producer CMO will seek to expand the brand audience across every channel used. Audience ratings thereby become the new barometer of success. The higher they are, the greater the increase in sales. The power of the audience ratings will influence the quality of product referencing in distribution and could even reverse the balance of power between brands and retail. In this new world, point of sales becomes a theatre that needs the productions created by the CMO in order to bring people in. The world is changing fast. Make way for the show and the audience ratings!

Ladies and gentlemen, waste no time in telling your CEOs that you have become a creator of emotions. They think you’re still a CMO!

by Didier Stora
General Manager – gyro Paris

Cross posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

It’s a culture of relevance.

It’s an idea.

And it is so ingrained in the DNA of APPL that only a deliberate deviation from that idea can screw it up.

It was clear in the mid-1970s that individual computing machines were the future. Everybody knew it, but only Apple did something about it. What Jobs and Steve Wozniak did more than 30 years ago had never been contemplated before and is too seldom considered now: They made technology humanly relevant.

Mike Tittel is the executive creative director of our Cincinnati office. He loves to say, “Everything I’ve ever wanted to do with a computer, I can do with a Mac.”

Want is an important word.

While other technology companies focused on spreadsheets and processing speeds, while IBM and Burroughs built systems for tasks people had to do, Apple made very personal devices to help people do what they wanted to do.

And to achieve what they wanted to achieve.

Those of us who work in marketing and other communications disciplines today almost take this innovation for granted. We know why the Macintosh, the iPhone, the iPad and even the iPod make sense. They have become an essential part of our business and personal lives. If you told someone to go without something for a day—be it a car, food, housing or iPhone—it’s almost certain that person would give up everything else before the beloved smartphone.

It’s hard to imagine life without these technologies, and it’s equally hard to imagine the man who brought them to us is gone.

Many eulogies will be written for Steve Jobs as the cofounder and (some say) savior of Apple. What he accomplished in product development in his too-short life, of course, cannot be denied. But more important is his impact beyond the walls of his Cupertino empire.

He changed the way the world thinks about tools and technology. Some would say he changed the world.

by Adryanna Sutherland
President, gyro Cincinnati

Follow Adryanna on Twitter @Adry99.

Cross-posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Keeping your customers means keeping them engaged: having them present, involving them, rewarding them, letting them feel how important they are to your brand.

In many ways, it’s not unlike the romantic idea keeping your spouse or partner happy and more and more in love with you. But face it, personal relationships really don’t work that way. We follow our heart, and there is not always logic or reason behind the choices we make.

In purchasing decisions,consumers want logic. They want rational justifications for the choices they make. With this inclination toward logic, logic, logic we need an incentive to get the heart involved.

Gimmicks might work (more or less) to get your brand into the consumers’ minds when they’re regularly in the purchase funnel. That can move them along the path to consideration and purchase.

But that’s just not enough in the over stimulated world we are living in. To be relevant amid the torrent of information and noise your customer is subjected to every day we need to get to the heart.

Consumers have choices. And they choose brands not only because of the image or the prestige the brand might represent or simply because they can afford it. In the long term, it’s because of the lasting relationship they have with the brand.

They feel it.

That is loyalty, and the way you earn it is by rewarding your customer simply because he or she is your customer.

by Ana Garcia-Hierro
General Manager, gyro Madrid

Cross posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

I’m still not used to finding myself in the middle of the day looking at pictures of someone’s grandma… someone I don’t know. I don’t understand why I have 764 friends of whom I know 46 and I absolutely can’t understand why I hate enemies I’ve never met.

Maybe it’s me, but I’m disconcerted by people who welcome me every monday morning posting “Today will be a wonderful day. It’s monday!!” Mondays are not wonderful. Are they trying to reaffirm themselves? Why are they trying to make me think they really feel all that optimistic? Moreover, are they so optimistic outside facebook? Do they say this things with their real voice, do they tell anyone – live?

Neither do I get the exhibitionism of showing things we don’t do ourselves. Is it that the division between “people that do” and “people that show” will become ever stronger? Was there a time when we did things for ourselves and not for showing?

And that’s it… I don’t know yet if I like or I dislike. While I think about it I make sure no one is trying to chat with me, I find out one of my friends ate pizza, it seems it’s raining in London, someone thinks love is complicated and fortunately Victor has 14 new friends. Maybe I should suggest him some of my own.

By
Carolina Comas
Executive Creative Director
gyro Madrid

His words reminded me of a recent email I received as a result of signing-up for My Starbucks Idea. An email that informed me that the Pumpkin Spice Latte was again available in-store (in the ‘third place’). Nothing special in that you would say, a straight selling message? It was of course exactly that but the ‘magic touch’ in the email was that the Pumpkin Spice Latte was not being promoted or available ‘over the counter’ on the menu. The promise was that those in the know could ask for it and with a nudge and a wink the barristers would create it for you.

A ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ kinda product, only available to those in the brand’s inner circle. As I said once before, it’s the little things …….

By
Richard Mabbott
SVP, Strategic Planning
gyro London

Somewhat final – but since Darwin, pretty conclusive.  And yet I find it somewhat ironic that the industry tasked with bringing about change is so bad at changing itself. But all this is about to change and the path of enlightenment will be revealed. We’ve dedicated over six months of our lives to answer the burning question that most of us have, but probably wouldn’t admit to – what is the agency model of the future?

To answer it we’ve undertaken extensive research, interviewing scores of brand-side senior marketers delving into exactly what they want. And everyone will be relieved to know that it will form the basis of a book – out in later this year

You may have seen a taster of the research in this week’s issue of Marketing Week . Industry developments are always a hot topic with marketers, but we didn’t realise how hot until we started receiving calls prompted by our research! We’ve still got a few interviews left to do – so please feel free to give us a bell if you are brand side and want your opinion counted.

There are some key areas that are of particular interest. Remuneration, unsurprisingly, in particular has caused debate. The overwhelming majority of people surveyed felt that agencies should be accountable for the commercial success of their work through models such as payment by results. But this throws up the question of how to measure the success of a campaign. More than half of people (55 per cent) disagreed that agency fees should be based purely on time and output, but will results-based payment work for every client?

Another hot bed of discussion is the digital arena. Some 80 per cent of respondents felt that digital agencies are too fragmented and specialised. They are looking for an agency that can offer them a fully integrated offering that includes elements such as design and build, eCRM, search, data, display and social media. Standalone marketing campaigns are no longer effective. Effective marketing is an ongoing conversation with consumers, which means every consumer touch point needs to build on the last form a coherent dialogue.

These are of course, just a snap shot of our findings to date  – what is clear though is that agencies are changing. It is certain the agency of the future will not look like the traditional set up.

By
Richard Perry
Chief Operations Officer
gyro

But is this about to change? The Indian Government has developed a tablet type computer which it wants to manufacture and make available to students across the country.

It seems that this might be the project to finally succeed.  Firstly, it has the support of the Government which makes it a serious proposition from the get-go and importantly opens many doors to implementing a robust manufacturing process to get the product to market.

The other major reason that this has a stronger chance than its predecessors is that it is in tablet form, not PC or even laptop which have come before.  Tablet technology offers a completely new way of engaging in technology easily fulfills the needs of the Indian market as it stands today.  In this way, it’s not just financially viable on a large scale but practically as well.  Just as the iPad is a step-change in media consumption in addition to that which is already so inherent in our lives, so this gadget will be step-change in widespread digital engagement in India.

For the Indian market to fulfill the potential that it offers, the population needs to be technologically mobilised and this initiative could be the solution to this.  At the moment it is just a plan but a plan that I for one feel has a good chance of coming to fruition and that can only be a good thing for all of us.

By
Carol O’Mara
gyro London

Ash cloud returned, blew over, returned, blew over …
Greece went bust
Greece was rescued
The UK voted
The UK was thrown into political turmoil
The Eagles sent the Owls down

Oh, and one other thing – The World Cup bandwagon got well and truly rolling!

Back in London this week and I feel I can’t move for brands getting in on the act of hyping both the event and England’s chances (2nd round exit to Germany?).

For some brands the link to World Cup 2010 is clear. Adidas? Check. Carlsberg? Yes I can see their relevance to the competition too and the “teamtalk” execution is certainly rousing if it fails to quite get the hairs on the back of my neck standing as high on a second viewing. But Kit Kat and Mars though? C’mon! Give me a break …. (sorry!)

Anyway, the brand that has executed a World Cup idea most beautifully has to be Louis Vuitton. It’s here and it’s cool. It has Zidane, Pele and Maradona in it so how could it not be? Even if their link to the beautiful game is tenuous at best.

http://www.louisvuittonjourneys.com/legends

By
Richard Mabbott
Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning
GyroHSR