Sara Johnston

The role of research in paid media

The options are pretty much limitless when it comes to paid media, considering the always-evolving digital options, the traditional options, and the options that will be invented next week. With so many choices, it’s critical that paid media campaigns are driven by research.

Sara says:

What’s important to your audiences? What are their interests, habits, preferences, lifestyles? And what does that have to do with your message? Research and the insights you derive from what you learn let you develop smart creative that makes meaningful connections. And they help you to identify the right medium to carry it.

“Just the message delivered via just the right medium? That drives powerful results,” Sara says.

The deep, long work of creating social change

DH often uses social change marketing — a combination of behavior-change principles and marketing techniques — to help clients build healthier, safer and stronger people and places.

To create that change, you have to dig deep, Sara says: into behavioral economics and models, and into the barriers or stigmas or other issues facing your audience. In the end, the goal is to figure out where people are — why they’re behaving in certain ways — so we can connect with them in ways that mean something.

“We also have to remember that social change marketing is really about the long game,” she says. “Change won’t happen overnight, and it won’t be based on one strategy. It requires forming new social and cultural norms, and that takes years.”

Yoga and meditation for destressing

Sara practices yoga or meditates several times a week. She’s found that taking time to slow down, get out of her head and recenter is a great way to take care of herself physically, emotionally and spiritually.

“Yoga and meditation are beautiful ways to slow down, cope with stress and juggle the fast-pace of life,” she says.