fresh: Employee Spotlight

Jennifer Hirt-Marchand

Vice president and director of research * Marcus Thomas LLC * Age 36

By JOHN BOOTH

6:00 am, November 21, 2005

OK, so Jennifer Hirt-Marchand can’t exactly do the Jedi mind trick and make you buy into an advertising message created by Marcus Thomas.

Still, you wouldn’t want to underestimate her insight into the consumer mentality: The credentials of the ad agency’s vice president and director of research include an Ohio State University bachelor’s degree in psychology and hands-on lab work in the school’s neuropsychology department.

“It seems at the surface level that it (psychology) is very different (from advertising and marketing), but it’s not,” Ms. Hirt-Marchand said. It’s all about understanding people and why they do what they do.

A native of Bath, Ms. Hirt-Marchand lives in Hiram with her husband, Dr. Gregory A. Marchand.

After graduating from Ohio State in 1992, Ms. Hirt-Marchand spent two years working in the university’s hospitals and doing academic research while also taking classes in business and marketing research.

The parallels she saw between the two worlds altered her career path, and she soon found herself at Ira Thomas Associates in Youngstown, the one and only staff member of the agency’s research department, which was brand-new. She found it both intimidating and exciting.

“When you’re forced out of your comfort zone, that’s when you grow the most,” she said. “If it doesn’t kill you, you’re going to learn a heck of a lot.”

Agency managing partner Jim Nash said Ms. Hirt-Marchand’s work put the firm well ahead of the curve in trying to understand the emotions that lie behind consumer decisions.

“She said, ‘I think there are ways to quantify that emotional underpinning, and … I think there are ways we can bring these findings to our (clients),’” Mr. Nash said. “More than anything, we really liked her entrepreneurial drive, and not being comfortable with the status quo.”

Three years ago, Ira Thomas joined forces with Marcus Advertising.

There are now a half-dozen members of the research department, and Ms. Hirt-Marchand says she has gone out of her way to assemble a well-rounded staff. One employee has a background in anthropology, another in business administration, still another in marketing management. Different experiences and different insights are key to innovation, she stresses.

It isn’t always easy convincing a client — or, for that matter, advertising folks — that it’s worth the effort, for instance, to hold one-on-one consumer interviews that can last up to two hours, or that it’s important to measure someone’s heart rate while they view product images.

“When I started in the business 10 years ago, the whole physiological response and psychology of marketing research was not a trend,” she said. “The majority of account executives had never had an internal research department” at their disposal, she said.

That situation is changing, she noted.

“If you really want to get into the head of a consumer … you really have to go deeper than the traditional approaches.”

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