TracyLocke is coming up on its 100th anniversary in 2013, but our story is more about the clients that we’ve served over the years. When you think about the iconic work we’ve done for brands like Frito Lay, 7-Eleven, and Tabasco, we’ve played a pivotal role building their brands and their businesses. Our best work has always been based on true insights into how people behave. It hasn’t just been about building big-brand awareness.

“Occasions-based” communications was also central to our early work. We’ve built on that with clients ranging from Starbucks to PepsiCo to HP. There has always been an understanding of how to be relevant. Integration and collaboration are core competencies for us. As we became part of the Omnicom world, we began collaborating with other Omnicom agencies to build ideas and express them through a number of media.

Today, we call our positioning “brand-to-retail, retail-to-brand” engagement marketing. We arrived at that positioning because our client stakeholder has always straddled both marketing and sales departments. So, quite naturally, we developed an understanding of what it takes to please both entities.

We understood that the biggest tension, especially as retail became more powerful, was the manufacturer not wanting to lose brand equity at the point-of-purchase. The retailer didn’t really care about brand equity (outside of their own), at least at the point-of-purchase. It was really all about satisfying the retailer requirements.

Because we’ve been so close to the sales side and the retailer for so many years, we had enough understanding about the dynamics and connectivity needed to satisfy the retailer. At the same time, we need to serve the needs of the brand.

The idea is to create a big enough platform so that retailers get excited and marketers believe their brand needs were satisfied — all while driving volume. As a company, we focus on: build brand, drive volume; drive volume, build brand. That is what ultimately led us to “brand-to-retail, retail-to-brand.” We integrate, collaborate and align with a maniacal focus on how to engage the shopper.

We produce breakthrough creative but we make it relevant at the places it matters most. This can be online, at the store shelf or anytime or anyplace people decide what they’re going to buy. That’s when our creative is making the difference and moving people. Creating engagement in ways that are meaningful and that moves people along the path-to-purchase is our “special sauce.”

Gatorade, which PepsiCo has re-launched as G, is a great example. PepsiCo has taken an established brand and reframed how people think about it without necessarily changing the formula. The advertising, which is great, has created awareness. But, for TracyLocke, it’s more about who’s actually buying the product and why.

You have to give people a reason to believe. You have to answer the question, why Gatorade — or why G — at this moment in time? Right now. Who actually buys the product? Why? Sure, in a convenience store, it’s sometimes the kid. But more often it’s the mom who is making the purchase decision.

We helped PepsiCo understand how a mom of athletic kids is a nuanced personality. Different insights go into really understanding her, speaking her language and influencing her choices. The brand has to create a relationship that wasn’t there before.

It’s a journey of understanding — from the time that she’s thinking about her kids’ activities, to what takes her to the store and how to get her into a shopping mode where she’s thinking about buying Gatorade.

We’ve found that a lot of research is very consumer focused but doesn’t get at the core questions of shopper. Consumers and shoppers may be the same person but they’re not the same frames of mind or levels of receptiveness. So, when shopper decisions are made, how are they made, and how are they different for one category versus another? What are the things that are having an impact on shopper decisions? At what moment does that matter most?

We take a disciplined, strategic approach to this. We have strategic people craft the research and ask the right questions. But they really dig deep into finding core insights that drive the best creative product. This may seem simplistic, but shopper-driven insights can be profoundly different than consumer-driven insights.

The single biggest challenge facing brands right now is the power struggle with retailers. Brands have to make sure they are not losing their brand equity or being hidden at that all-important moment when purchase decisions are made. There is more competition from private labels, and retailers have so many of their own objectives that are not aligned with those of the brands.

On top of that, brands are going through major shifts and changes between marketing and sales. They’re building new layers of people to bridge those two areas. These integrated marketing folks on the client side are working with agencies like ours to build commercial programs. Agencies that understand that dynamic and can really take hold of it in a strategic way are few and far between. But those are the agencies that are going to win and be the trusted advisors. We put ourselves in that category.

You can take the approach of just bringing in new agencies, boutique agencies, specialists, or young people who are living it. But what happens is you lose the fundamentals. You lose the ability to bridge these worlds. It’s still about many different kinds of media; it’s not just about one new thing. Integration, collaboration and alignment are critical in this context, too.

One of the wonderful things about TracyLocke is that the place is always buzzing. There is an “always be learning” sensibility here. There’s a sense that we can always improve. So we do. We are constantly re-assessing and tweaking what we have to do to continue our evolution and transformation as a company. Now more than ever we need to stay ahead of our clients. They look to us to apply next-generation tools and thinking.

We are very open to new people who are bringing a new competency or a new way of looking at things. We don’t have delineations or divisions between functions, levels, job titles, and between creative — account — strategy. There is a strong sense of camaraderie, teamwork and pulling together for something.

As we’re going through the digital and mobile transformation, we’re finding that it is not about an individual, a team or an acquisition. Digital understanding has to permeate every single person’s function, level and job. If you’re active on Facebook, you need to think about its commercial value for our clients. We need to be transforming from the inside out.

We’re building on all the values that go behind creating a truly open agency. We need to be able to scale and have a deep bench strength of talent. That is something TracyLocke is best-in-class at. It is not about an A team and B team.

This is our time. We have never been more fortunate than we are now. We’ve never had more opportunities. Brands have never been more important than they are now. The ability to start to create connections is way more work. But it can also be way more fun depending on how you cut it.

This is a fantastic time to be in the business for us because our most fundamental values and competencies align remarkably well with the needs of our clients and their shoppers. We enjoy having a big impact on how people perceive and purchase brands.