Each Friday, our program hosts an industry pro with insight into career opportunities, marketplace trends and new ideas. In order to teach us essential real-world lessons and to increase our comfort with professional interaction, this guest lecturer engages with us for two full hours of afternoon class time. On January 21, 2011, our speaker series featured Ms. Carrie Stojack, a Managing Partner at Hall and Partners, a market research firm located in Los Angeles.

Ms. Stojack’s presentation, our first look into the world of market research, explored the ins and outs of the industry in which she’s risen to the top through her work at several companies. She explained how market researchers and creative marketers work together to help clients design a promotional initiative — and how the work of market research firms, which use qualitative and quantitative methods to gauge the potential efficacy of a given campaign, grants them a sort of veto power when it comes to approving ads. To give us a basic idea of marketing, Ms. Stojack presented a planning cycle concept composed of four elements: whether a company understands its target market; who represents the competition in that market; where an opportunity for targeting exists; and how a company can take advantage of such an opportunity.

In addition, Ms. Stojack taught us that companies need to be aware of their consumers and need to engage with them. Because consumer communication changes fast and utilizes different ways to make decisions — which Ms. Stojack illustrated with the example of her daughter choosing between backpacks using a cell phone and Facebook friends — companies need to rely on new methods to get close to customers. Participating in new-age communication, such as sharing information and giving opinions to consumers, is absolutely necessary, and companies needs to be open to what consumers want and need. At the same time, market researchers have also changed their means of measuring advertising over time.

Ms. Stojack is also a newly-minted member of NewMR, a professional association for market researchers that hosts an annual online conference to help shape the future of the field. She’s also an accomplished runner who has participated in Long Beach’s half marathon. Continue reading for her social media profile.

You can find Ms. Stojack on LinkedIn, you can visit her NewMR page, and you can find more on her company in the directory of research firms provided by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.