A marketing strategy works best when it connects what a business wants to achieve with what its customers actually need. OBI Creative is a full-service marketing and advertising agency that brings together customer research, brand building, consulting, and campaign execution to help businesses address complex challenges.
Founded by Mary Ann O’Brien in 2001, the agency takes a customer-first approach that emphasizes asking the right questions, finding useful insights, and turning them into marketing decisions.
From refining brand identity to coordinating campaigns across digital and traditional channels, OBI Creative connects strategic planning with practical execution. This article explores the key elements of its approach and how its work illustrates the relationship between customer insights, marketing strategy, and campaign results.
Starting With Business Goals and the Right Questions
An effective marketing strategy begins with a clear understanding of the challenge. Businesses may need to strengthen their brand positioning, reach a new audience, improve lead generation, or align marketing activities with wider business objectives. Identifying the problem helps determine which research, creative work, and marketing channels are appropriate.
OBI Creative's business and marketing consulting services focus on understanding these challenges and finding a practical path forward. Its team works with clients on marketing strategy, organizational design, differentiation, growth consulting, and integrated marketing planning.
The agency also provides Fractional CMO services for businesses seeking senior marketing leadership without hiring a full-time chief marketing officer. Its consulting capabilities include attribution modeling, customer acquisition cost development, marketing technology assessments, and optimization.
This strategic foundation helps connect individual marketing activities with broader business priorities. Instead of treating each campaign as a separate task, businesses can consider how research, brand messaging, media, and performance measurement work together.
Using Customer Research to Shape Marketing Strategy
Customer insights help businesses understand how people perceive their brands, what influences their decisions, and where their experiences could improve. Without this understanding, marketing messages may fail to address the questions or concerns that matter to the intended audience.
OBI Creative uses its O’Brien Voice of Customer (o.VOC) and Voice of Employee (o.VOE) research approaches to study customer and employee experiences. Its research capabilities also include qualitative and quantitative research, market analysis, customer journey mapping, brand landscape reviews, and customer sentiment tracking.
These methods help uncover information that can guide brand positioning and campaign planning. Customer research can reveal where a brand's current messaging falls short, which strengths deserve more attention, and how an organization can communicate more clearly with its audience.
OBI Creative connects these findings with marketing strategy so businesses can use research to inform practical decisions. Its Ask & Deliver book by founder Mary Ann O’Brien also explores how studying a brand through its customers' perspectives can uncover weaknesses, identify strengths, and reveal opportunities for improvement.
Building a Brand Identity That Connects With Customers
A marketing strategy needs a clear brand foundation. Businesses must communicate what distinguishes them, what they offer their audiences, and why customers should pay attention. Consistent messaging and creative direction help bring that identity to life across different touchpoints.
OBI Creative's brand-building services include brand strategy, creative development and execution, personal branding, thought leadership, and earned media management. The agency works with businesses to develop or transform their identities and create stories that connect with their intended audiences.
Its work with GuideOne illustrates how research can inform brand positioning. As the insurance provider expanded beyond its traditional markets serving churches and religious organizations, it needed to communicate its value to a broader audience.
OBI Creative used customer research, competitor reviews, stakeholder interviews, online surveys, and collaborative workshops to examine GuideOne's position. The work informed a new value proposition and brand promise, “Make positive change possible.” The creative strategy also updated the brand's visual identity, including its logo and signage.
The project shows how research and creative execution can work together to help a business communicate a clearer identity as its audience and market presence evolve.
Connecting Marketing Channels Through Integrated Campaigns
Customers encounter brands through different channels, including websites, digital advertising, social media, email, broadcast media, and in-person experiences. A coordinated strategy helps businesses deliver a consistent message while choosing channels suited to their goals and audiences.
OBI Creative's multi-touch marketing and media services cover campaign planning, creative development, digital advertising, paid search, paid social, connected TV, traditional media, email and SMS marketing, and event execution.
The agency also offers website design and development, including user experience design, system integration, hosting, maintenance, and conversion tracking.
These services allow businesses to connect brand messaging with the channels used to reach and engage their audiences. The appropriate mix depends on the campaign's objectives, the intended audience, and the role each channel plays in the customer journey.
OBI Creative's work with Artemis by Nomi Health demonstrates how coordinated media can support a specific business objective. Artemis wanted to strengthen its visibility in the health benefits analytics market and generate leads during industry conferences.
This example illustrates how creative messaging, audience targeting, and coordinated media placement can work together to support campaign goals.
Measuring Marketing Performance and Improving Campaigns
Marketing performance needs to be evaluated against the objectives a campaign is designed to achieve. Depending on the goal, businesses may examine lead volume, audience engagement, conversions, customer acquisition costs, or the contribution of different channels to results.
OBI Creative offers performance marketing, attribution modeling, conversion tracking, and custom analysis and reporting. These services help businesses evaluate their marketing activities and use performance insights to guide decisions.
Its work with Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska (OSN) offers another example. The organization needed to raise awareness of its scholarship program and connect with eligible families. OBI Creative developed a lead generation campaign using connected TV, digital and traditional advertising, and email drip campaigns.
The team used attribution techniques to assess the contribution of different channels and adjusted media allocation based on performance. Meta lead generation ad formats delivered a 300% increase in leads compared with other Meta ad formats used in the campaign.
Overall, the campaign generated more than 4,000 leads in under two months, exceeding its initial goal of 2,500.
The campaign also earned Chief Marketer's Best Lead Generation Campaign of 2024 recognition. The results demonstrate how measurement can help a marketing team identify effective tactics and refine campaign execution.
Aligning Marketing Technology With Business Needs
Technology can support campaign management, customer analysis, and performance tracking, but businesses need to choose tools that serve their objectives. Gaps between marketing systems, data, and reporting can make it harder to understand the customer journey or assess campaign performance.
OBI Creative offers marketing technology consulting to help businesses evaluate their existing setup and identify opportunities for improvement. Its services include marketing technology assessments, technology optimization, vendor management, attribution and conversion consulting, and generative AI for marketing.
The agency also provides website development and digital product services, along with system integration, hosting, maintenance, and conversion tracking. These capabilities connect the technical side of marketing with the broader strategy.
Final Thoughts
An effective marketing strategy connects business objectives with customer understanding, clear brand positioning, coordinated campaigns, and meaningful performance measurement. OBI Creative brings these elements together through business and marketing consulting, customer research, brand building, multi-touch media, and performance marketing.
Its work with GuideOne, Artemis by Nomi Health, and Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska illustrates how research, creative execution, and campaign measurement can support different marketing objectives. Each project begins with a specific challenge and uses an approach suited to the organization's audience and goals.
Visit OBI Creative's website to explore its services and case studies or contact its team to discuss your marketing objectives.
