We’re doing well because today’s   marketing model has shifted from an almost blind emphasis  on awareness and attitudes to a greater focus on the bottom line — actions. That was our proposition when we launched Catapult five years ago, and why we call ourselves an action-biased agency today.

Action-biased means that we’re all about building brands and supporting brand equity, but only if it also drives purchases. Certainly, the economic times are ripe for that approach, but it’s been a core proposition that has worked very
well for us right from the start.

The results so far seem to support our approach. Last year, Promo magazine named us Agency of the Year. We’ve also been ranked as one of the top 12 shopper-marketing agencies in the Hub.

Within the last nine months we’ve been awarded new business assignments including Kellogg, Gerber, Hennessy, The Avon Foundation, Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, and Capri-Sun.

The fundamental issue facing marketers today is an over-reliance on price as a means of driving action. It’s a fundamental shopper truth: People want to save money. While broadly true, it’s not a tremendously imaginative insight on which to build real brand growth. You’ve got to dig a bit deeper than that.

What’s needed are insights that lead to more brand-focused communications and higher order benefits. What other needs and wants can the brand be fulfilling against? What else can we bring to our shoppers and consumers to help drive purchases? To get there, the insights-generation piece becomes key.

We’re in the process of unveiling a new insights tool called Catapult Shopper Lab that will help us answer many of those questions. Shopper Lab is a virtual community of 3,500 shoppers and it is the largest of its kind in the world. We can ask questions about shopping barriers within certain categories, or even ask the respondents to upload pictures from their last shopping trip and comment on them. We’re building our ability to see clearly through the eyes of the shopper, in a given category, in a given retailer.

Shopper Lab is also an incredibly powerful tool that can be used to test concepts with Walmart, Target or Kroger shoppers, or even nationally. This becomes really powerful when it comes time to discuss the concepts with our clients’ retail partners. It’s helping us create better solutions for our clients both nationally and at the account level.

While shopper marketing is core to what we’re about, clients are increasingly asking us to connect the dots across the entire purchase cycle — from awareness to purchase to loyalty.

At the top of the funnel, we’re working to move a consumer’s passive awareness and interest to a shopper’s active consideration: from websites that consumers visit at home to mobile phones on-the-go to in-store kiosks or scanners in-store to CRM back in the home.

Plenty of agencies have these same communications tools in their arsenal, but so many are just too siloed to see the larger picture. Here, I just walk down the hall to talk with some of the best and brightest in shopper marketing, promotions, insights, or digital. Having all this reside in one agency truly is part of our value proposition.

Digital is a natural means of driving action with shoppers. Digital is how people communicate, search for information, and spend leisure time. When shopping, that can mean any number of different things: texting, engaging in social media, using GPS to provide aisle-specific messaging via smart phone, or just scanning a QR code.

In fact, a simple QR code was the core activation for a wonderful promotion we did last year for a leading wine and Gordon Ramsay. It was based on the simple insight that people are often unsure about wine pairings with various meals or recipes. So, we brought Gordon Ramsay in-store to help.

It worked like this: When people were looking for the right wine pairing for a meal, they could get a great suggestion by scanning a QR code at a standee of Gordon Ramsay, or on a bottle necker. Gordon became your personal sommelier right in-store. It was very engaging, got lots of display with retail partners, and helped solve a need for consumers in a fun way. Price wasn’t part of the equation.

We also see the importance of search marketing growing in the shopper space. We’re co-authoring a white paper with Google around digital shopper marketing that looks into how people are using various digital tools as they shop different channels and categories. We think we can leverage the power of search to bring even more powerful programs to our retail-focused clients.

At Catapult, we value and reward people who see an opportunity and chase it down. Our people want to make a difference by stepping forward, participating and being in the thick of it. We have a very impressive bunch of people, and while we all work hard, we’re also something of a family.

The plasma screens around our Westport office help show our latest work and welcome clients. But much of the time we tend to show photos of our people at company gatherings, meetings, and events. It’s a bit like a family photo album, and sets a nice tone.

We’re not just family friendly; we are also dog friendly. Each Catapult office allows and encourages associates to bring in their dogs. Thank goodness one of our clients markets a carpet cleaner. Sometimes that comes in handy.

With or without our dogs, everyone looks forward to our wine and cheese gathering, each Friday around 3:30. Not everyone can make it every time, as client work always comes first. But it’s a great time to chill, catch up with people before the weekend, and just catch your breath. You’d be amazed how many clients have begun scheduling meetings at Catapult on Friday afternoons! Hey, the more the merrier.

We have several full-service offices across the US, anchored by our headquarters in Westport, CT. This office remains our largest and perhaps most diverse in terms of client work. Our Los Angeles office was built on a consumer packaged-goods heritage, but is fast building a wine & spirits and consumer electronics expertise that’s phenomenal.

Our Phoenix office specializes in quick turn-around, field-activated collaborative planning for tier-two retail customers where the level of collaboration and ROI can be incredibly strong.

Our Nashville office is engaged on the front lines with our Mars Petcare business, doing truly outstanding work across a broad portfolio of pet brands. They’re quickly growing into new consumer packaged-goods and retail client businesses as well. We’ve been in Bentonville since 2005, heavily engaged in all things Walmart and Sam’s.

Internationally, we opened a shopper-marketing office in Singapore a few years ago, given the huge economic growth in the Asian Pacific region. Shopper marketing is just beginning there, and we’re thrilled to be getting in on the ground floor.

I guess the thing about this business that’s most fun is that we’re looking out the front of the windshield 99 percent of the time and glancing in the rearview mirror only now and again. We are very focused on what’s next. We couldn’t be luckier to be working at a place that truly appreciates that kind of passion for innovation.

We’re the agency that drives action. We help grow brands for tomorrow, while getting consumers and shoppers to buy today. The “today” part of that equation is what we take to the bottom line.