Being connected to customer needs and desires should be a key aspect of shaping your B2B brand. But the engine of growth needs to include creativity, something many B2B executives don't spend much time on. Others like Google stake their reputation on creativity. They walk the talk: All engineers are allotted up to 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, seeds of which began as personal endeavors.

According to MIT Media Lab, a hotbed of creativity, the secret sauce for business creativity is developing an environment where different people from different areas and disciplines of an enterprise, work together to share ideas to innovate.

Dr.
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One of the key tenants of strategy is choice. As we recover from this ugly recession, management in virtually every B2B company, large, medium and small faces BIG choices, like how they should position their company for future marketing success. Make no mistake, the consequences of these choices are BIG. They will have a much larger impact than next quarter's sales results.

What will guide decision making for such big choices? Relying on input from the sales force? Good, but not good enough all by itself for getting a true understanding of the market and audience information needed. Secondary Research? Probably some good information can be gleaned, but the information may be too general and, perhaps, not timely. Research done through publications is limiting and often lacks actionable information and insight.

Management needs solid, timely empirical information to guide informed decision making based on the reality of today's
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When a B2B marketer is asked about measuring brand equity, they usually have a pretty good idea about what folks are trying to glean or understand. But, if you dig a little and start asking what makes up this thing we call "brand equity" you might start to get a few puzzled looks. Dig even deeper and ask how they are leveraging what they know about their B2B brand equity that will have meaningful strategic impact on their marketing decisions in 2010 and you might see a little color drain from their face.

Is your company stuck in the old paradigm of brand equity measurement that offers little more than awareness and perception? Are you ready (and is your management) to develop a deeper more meaningful understanding about brand equity measurement that can be used for more effective 2010 planning?

Research that extends beyond knowledge, but through the use of advanced analytics, modeling and simulation, provides valuable real-time insights on how to build better
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But what if B-to-B marketers were offered a brand equity assessment tool that not only provided specific insight into the components that make up brand equity...that not only provided advanced analytics and modeling that showed defined areas of strength and weakness...but also provided strategic insight to guide specific actions that would improve net and overall B-to-B brand equity? Wouldn't that be pretty compelling?

Guess what? There is a quantitative research offering today that not only assesses B-to-B brand equity but provides decision-focused analysis to help companies enhance their brand. Jointly developed by a leading B-to-B marketing firm and a leading international marketing research firms. You'll be hearing more about it in the future. If you can't stand it and need to find out more now, email me curt@godfrey.com and I'll fill you in.

• 93% said a company should have a presence in social media
• 85% stated that a company should not only be present, but also interact with its customers via social media
• 56% said they feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment
• 43% stated companies should use social networks to solve customers' problems
• 41% said companies should use social media to solicit feedback
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• The exploration of new and emerging companies that could have an impact on your market or industry. If the barriers-to-entry are relatively low, it could have major implications on how you go to market, your product offering, product lifecycles and many other BIG decisions you need to make. 
  

• The strength of bargaining power that your customers have in the marketplace along with companies with whom you deal with that are essential to providing
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