Embracing A New Vision

Building Lasting Consumer Connections 

By: Deirdre McFarland, SVP in Marketing

A few weeks ago, NCS hosted our first company meeting since the start of the pandemic. Seeing so many NCSers in person together in one place again was refreshing and invigorating. One of the most memorable moments at the event happened at the start of the meeting when our CEO, Alan Miles, asked us to do something a bit different. He challenged the team in attendance to memorize our new company vision statement – ON THE SPOT!  Ready? Say it with me…

TO ENABLE BRANDS TO EASILY USE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR INSIGHTS TO BUILD LASTING CUSTOMER CONNECTIONS.

Given how much consideration had been placed into those words and the number of iterations we had workshopped, hearing a room full of fellow NCSers speak this new mantra aloud was energizing. If an outsider was walking by that conference room at that moment, they may have thought it sounded strange to hear so many business professionals reciting these words (with enthusiasm, I might add!). But I was thrilled. 

Why do I find this moment so invigorating? Because it embodies the culmination of the hard work our leadership team did to align on the vision of the future for NCS. An integrated strategy flows when we’re all reading from the same script. This vision statement represents a new phase in NCS’s trajectory, and just by reciting it aloud, we’re beginning to connect our team's day-to-day operations to our strategic plan.  

Speaking of memorable moments, the following day at our company meeting, we had the privilege of hosting a fireside chat with a couple of our esteemed clients. This unique format allowed cross-divisional teams at NCS to glean insights directly from our customers, learning what we're excelling at and how we can further enhance our service. During one of these sessions, a key client shared, “We know we have a good partner when our problems become yours.” As a marketing leader, this statement made my ears perk up. This was something to write down and remember. In one short sentence, this client had perfectly encapsulated the essence of our new vision statement. 

In the process of crafting our vision, we took a page out of our own playbook for marketers by focusing on our brand. One of the tenets of the NCS brand is that we know how advertising works, and we have a team of data scientists who research this very topic. We take these findings and publish them for our clients and the industry. Our latest installment in this series is an update to a seminal piece of thought leadership conducted in 2017 entitled The Five Keys to Advertising Effectiveness. 

This piece of research shows which advertising elements have the most impact on incremental sales. One of the findings in 2023 is that brand factors have gained importance in the effect of advertising over the past several years. While this isn’t an advertisement, I still think it works. A vision statement is certainly a foundation for a branding strategy. That’s why this B2B marketer is confident we’ve succeeded in crafting our vision: I believe it clearly articulates the close alignment between our goals and our clients’ goals, and I can’t wait to see the outcome of how it evolves.  

When it comes to better outcomes, we believe in showing, not telling. To demonstrate, we curated a few case studies that highlight our customer’s innovation with advertising and NCS. Please check it out and see how the NCS vision works in practice.