Roughly a year ago, direct marketing agency Unit 7 embarked on an experiment. Dubbed the "B-Roll Initiative," it looked to investigate what a Type II diabetic felt like. Rather than run a bunch of focus groups or send out some questionnaires, many of its staff of attempted to walk in the shoes of a diabetic. For 14 weeks, the vowed to get in the mindset but watching their weight and diet to get in the mindset of the people who struggle with such diabetes daily. In the end, the agency members ended up learning quite a bit not only about their clients, but themselves. Nielsen Business Media's Kenneth Hein caught up with Unit 7 CEO Loreen Babcock to find out what lasting effect the program had on the company and her clients. This is what she said:


Nielsen Business Media: A year later what was the biggest impact of the program in terms of
the business?  
Loreen Babcock: Well, I'd say we've had several 'big impacts.'. First, we deepened our collaborative culture, mainly because our talent broadened their collaborative circles, and the engagement was on such a personal level.

Second, we accelerated our transformation to an empathic environment. This is important because our promise to our clients' is that we will create trusted relationships with their consumers--relationships that will increase consideration, acquisition, retention and, crucial in today's market, advocacy. We view empathy as an early building block of trust, so our organizational "empathy competence" is essential for us to deliver on this promise.

Finally, we have made trust the centerpiece of everything we do, and it has played a pivatol role in our new business wins since completing this initiative.

On a granular level, many of our participants in B-Roll have sustained behavior changes adopted during the initiative, fueled by a high level of empathic awareness of what it means to have Type II diabetes. When I feel too tired to jump on the treadmill, all need to do is remind myself that I don't ever want to suffer from this disease, and I'm on it!  Another example is one of our participants who tried to quit smoking as part of her commitment to behavior change, and was unsuccessful during the B-Roll initiative. However, she made another effort and is currently smoke-free.

NBM: What was the biggest lesson you applied to your business?
LB: Let me put it this way. We have adopted the B-Roll model as a formal method of insight.

NBM: Did you get the account or any business from the experiment?
LB: Yes. We have won several pieces of business as a direct result of B Roll, and how it furthered our work on restoring trust between our clients and their consumers.

NBM: Did you conduct any other such initiatives?
LB: As a matter of fact, we are about to embark upon our second [experiment which we've now labeled] Identification Research Initiatives.  

NBM: Do people often ask about the initiative?
LB: B-Roll allowed Unit 7 to explore the creation of a 'real world' community.  This was leveraged to better understand and design virtual, social media communities. It also embedded social media into the fabric of our collaborative culture versus just a skill-set.
 
One hundred percent of all talent candidates and prospective clients mention B Roll to us, consistently in the context of a refreshing demonstration of our ability to be innovative and authentic. So, B-Roll has made us more attractive to top talent and prospective clients.