What's the most frequently asked question we've had this month from prospects and clients?
"Are you strong in global marketing?"
How has our client mix changed in the last five years?
vSA has more of its clients in several key areas of concentration than ever before: industrial, commercial/residential building systems and products, green products, aerospace, financial services, non-profit... and they are geographically more disparate than they were five years ago.
What common threads are there between the two insights above?
1-In an admittedly fragile economic recovery, we find renewed opportunity, but it is often farther away, geographically, than in years past. Remember Billy Joel's Downeaster Alexa: "Tell my wife I am trawling Atlantis and I still have my hands on the wheel."
2-More important, our clients' prospects (and vSA's prospects) demand deeper-than-ever expertise in their partners. They care much less than they once did about having immediate physical access. (See The new face of face time.) Therefore, the company that wants to market a new, green building system wants a marketing firm that knows new, green building systems and knows how to launch a new product successfully.
Our take-away:
van Schouwen Associates will continue to hone and enhance its strengths not only in the types of clients and verticals we know best, but also in global marketing. We've successfully managed both "incoming" marketing by European companies to the U.S. and "outgoing" by U.S. companies to Europe, South/Latin America, BRIC and lately, to the Middle East.
We'll anticipate working with a more and more geographically diverse client base, and always having good reading ready for those plane trips that will happen when real face time is timely.
It is, all in all, a great adventure. Business can continually broaden the mind, can it not?
Photo with thanks to NOAA Photo Library.
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