Dave Thomas Shares Insights from the ThomasArts 21st Century Communications Model

Written by: Jennifer Johnson and Susen Sawatzki

Freed from the constraints of large traditional agency definitions and expections, Thomas' "21st-Century Communications model" is finally given life at Thomas Arts' Farmington, Utah headquarters, and throughout its offices in "The O.C.," Orange County, Calif. as well as Minneapolis, Minn.  It's the framework becoming increasingly sticky with clients whos combined 2007 capitalized billings topped $75 million.  21st Century Communications (21CC) seeks to solve the question of how to make more impact, to more people, and to more diverse people who live in an increasingly complex environment with more media choices than ever.  Hair-tearing?  Any marketer contemplates the challenge, but few have gone to Thomasian efforts to postulate and resolve.  

"What we're finding," Dave begins, "is that brands can personalize their relevancy by reaching people on their terms."

In today's market, "their terms" is code for permission-based marketing.  It is an analogy that ThomasArts takes beyond the Internet or social media, relying, instead, on the concept to drive all communications representing a specific brand.

"The key is relevance-asking, then assessing, and then continually re-assessing if your messaging and what you are asking them to do benefits them," he says.  "If there is something in it for them - they'll do it, but it has to be relevant to them, and that's where segmentation comes in."

Where to start?  First, figuring out what is relevant.  "If you ask people about things that are relevant to their lives, you have a much better chance of giving them something relevant," is Dave's no-brainer starting point.  ThomasArts' 113-member, three-city crew takes this from tepid to boiling point with solid advertising basics - bringing demographic, psychographic, geographic and generational components to the evaluation table.  Research starts with a hypothesis or hypotheses, then studied against secondary research and ongoing database, then response-driven primary research.

"It takes lots of data input to build the right clusters," he says.  "Then, once you get an idea of how those clusters will break out, depending on what you're trying to sell, you can present brand with targeted messages to those customers.  "Depending on the project, we will test-launch something in Boise, Sioux Falls, Grand Rapids, Scranton or Mobile.  Then we test our hypotheses and evaluate if ready to expand regionally or do some tweaking."

The tweaks are not just alterations to messaging, but, hard as it may be for an ad pro to hear, shifts of the much more important kind: to the product or service offering itself.  "This is about much more than the message.  Our process helps organizations determine what their offering becomes to the public.  Our process helps our clients fine-tune exactly what they're offering, how much they're charging and on what terms, etc.  All of this understanding allows them to fine-tune to get a higher conversion rate."

The research all happens in-house at Thomasarts.  Dave uses the word "proprietary" in describing the 12CC.  "We think we're onto something unique," and he adds the descriptor, "Response Branding" - targeting by segment, then inviting a dialogue with the consumer, all the while asking for participation via methods like online collateral.  "We ask for a measured participation response," he notes.  The result? "Clients are able to build business without having to spend literally millions of dollars."

These days in marketing, agencies sound like Jan Brady: "Branding, Branding, BRANDING."  But the world according to ThomasArts goes way beyond.

"You can't rely on branding alone, you have to go way beyond that."  He elaborates, "It's very difficult to brand today - it just takes too much money and too much time and there are just too many messages.  You can spend a lot of money on TV spots.  But to be able to create a memorable imprint and have that statistically 'show' on aided or unaided recall costs too much money, requires too much effort and takes too much time."

Yet, ironically, ThomasArts seeks more brand penetration to more customers and to more different types of customers.  How is this brand-stretching accomplished?

"A traditional television campaign used to be limited-same creative trying to reach multiple audiences.  That campaign is simply not going to reach multiple audiences with the same degree of relevance.  In fact, trying to be everything to everyone limits its impact to even one audience."

The 21CC solution: "instead of creating just one TV commercial, we will develop eight."  Before one can accuse Dave of brand-dilution, he adds, "All are consistent with the brand, but relevant to the segment.  What is relevant to a 60-year-old man in Provo is different than a 32-year-old mother in Grand Rapids."

At the end of the day, Dave Thomas is not sure that his idea is altogether breakthrough, just outrageously successful.  "If we're doing something different, it is in the way that we apply the thinking to all communications in a campaign."

What began as an idea for organizing an agency and a methodology for changing the way clients saw results is today a methodology gaining traction with ThomasArts' clients, the majority of whom,he says, rely o 21CC for all of their communications development.  The methodology is powerful.  And the ThomasArts team collectively executes with vision and integrity.  Dave has confidence in his team, "There are a lot of people at this agency that are a lot smarter than me, and I'm very happy about that," he says.