Michael Bolchalk is President and CEO, Michael Bolchalk Marketing, Advertising & Public Relations. His company has won over 350 creative advertising awards.

Scintillating text. Fabulous graphic design. Precisely chosen media channels. A well-defined budget. Important elements in the successful marketing of a product or service, certainly, but there's an often overlooked component that can make a difference. It's the ability to stay on top of constantly changing consumer tastes and tendencies - a talent that's at best a combination of continually updated research, past experience, and old fashioned intuition.

Changing Dynamics
Just over the past few years the marketing profession has faced an enormous challenge in retooling that particular key to marketing success. Consider, for example, how the ongoing threat of terrorism has shifted consumer focus from career to family. Imagine how the lightning fast expansion of Internet accessibility and e-trade has impacted consumers' information- gathering and shopping habits.

On top of those, there's been the emergence of new global markets and the competitiveness of their products to our own; the dramatic shift in the USA from manufacturing to service; the highly publicized greed of corporate giants and the public's subsequent new distaste for acquisition.

New Approaches
Each of those factors should by now be influencing marketers to look again at how they nurture existing customers and attempt to attract new ones. The climate is clearly one that should dissuade a simple reliance on employing only those tools that have worked well in the past. Rather, it calls for the gathering and astute application of reliable market research both primary and secondary - qualitative and quantitative.

Today it's vital to work with market research professionals who are armed with up to the minute knowledge of national and global consumer trends AND analyses of your own local and regional populations. Being aware of how a trend is impacting a local market can spell the difference between being able to capture attention or completely missing it. In other words, what works in SoHo just might not in Tucson.

Local Applications
So, how does this relate to southern Arizona, and the broader markets that local marketers are most likely to serve? Consumer trend gurus have been advising that consumers are eschewing messages aimed at accumulating goods and responding to those focused on working to live rather than living to work.

At Michael Bolchalk Marketing, we interpret that to mean that advertising wrapped around family-centered values would be well received. As a result, we often incorporate a focus on family into our approach to highlighting company brands and their related products. Our social marketing messages became more sensitive to the importance of parental influence.

Move over, trend setters' predicted that the nation would become newly obsessed with obesity and its related health concerns. Sensitivity to consumption of alcohol related products remain high. These concerns influence recommendations we make regarding what will reflect well on our clients as they hosted food and beverage related open houses and other public events.

Stay in Tune
The shift in marketing trends is a fluid one that demands constant attention. You'll be able to stay ahead of the competition and better focus all the other marketing elements if you make it a priority to first develop a good working relationship with a reliable market research firm. Their professionals will help you help you more precisely gauge current customers' attitudes and opinions that impact your business.