Today's Match Up - Johnson Group

Fresh off the holiday weekend, we are talking to Joe Johnson , Founder and fearless leader of Johnson Group out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

 Julia: Joe, I’m looking to share insights and intro to agencies that are great partners for Midsize firms and brands.  Can you tell us about Johnson Group?

 Joe: Julia, we’ve been in business for 28 years and view ourselves as the Giant Slayers.  We offer the full marketing stack with services ranging from strategy and research to creative, production, media, and data analytics.  Whatever it takes to help our clients beat the giants in their category. Our location, in a great mid-sized city Chattanooga, Tennessee, provides significant advantages. Chattanooga is not only hailed as the Boulder, Colorado of the South because of its great outdoor recreation but also the Silicon Valley of the South because of its leadership and innovation in tech. This combination attracts top talent to the agency, yet we still have about half of our 85 team members working effectively from cities across the country.  So, when we recruit, it’s all about the talent that delivers breakthrough creative - not location.

Julia: These are things I never knew about Chattanooga! I love that you refer to yourselves as The Giant Slayers.  What is that all about and what’s your agency’s secret sauce to working with midsize agencies?

Joe: A couple of things make Johnson Group different and perfect for midsize clients.  First, our creative model is advantageous because we’ve moved beyond the traditional reliance on full-time agency teams, which can result in a uniform “house brand” feel. Our approach harnesses the collective power of diverse creative professionals from across the country. By combining varied skill sets and perspectives, we craft more impactful campaigns tailored to each brand's target audience. This flexibility and diversity ensure our work stands out and drives stronger engagement and results for mid-sized brands.  Especially for those who must compete with industry “Giants”.

Second, to be in the agency business you must have great ideas. Right? But the secret sauce, especially for mid-sized brands, is in delivering those great ideas to the people who are ready to buy your brand right now. To do that, we’ve developed our own set of data science and analytics tools that allow us to precisely define and hyper-target an audience.  We can then accurately forecast campaign results, continuously monitor, and optimize the campaign as its running and show incremental return on ad spend.  When you can show the C-suite that their ad dollars generated incremental ROAS, that’s a tasty secret sauce.  The investment in data science takes discipline and commitment but it pays off and we can prove it.

Julia: Can you share a case study or example of a successful campaign you have created with a Midsize client?

Joe: Yes.  And I’m going to choose a healthcare example because that category is notoriously dull.  Erlanger Health System is one of the largest public hospitals in the country.  They were losing market share in key service lines and key consumer perception measures were falling as well.  The great relationship we have with their marketing team led to creative executions you would not typically see in healthcare.  All appropriate--just unique. Like talking restroom signs for urology.  The Tin Man for ortho.  Billboards with kidney-shaped cutouts. Cancer signs hiding across the city. The creative was award-winning. But the secret sauce was in accurately delivering the creative via the patient anonymized tracking (PAT) platform we developed. We were able to precisely target by service line and report on the incremental patient acquisition and market share gained. We also tracked the rise in consumer perception. Increases in soft measures like perception also look much more believable when market share increases.

Julia: You are talking my love language when you start using patient outcomes as a KPI.  What advice would you give to Midsize companies looking to choose a partner? 

Choose a partner that treats you like you are their most important account. It doesn’t matter how big a brand you have. Your agency should believe and prove that you never have to sacrifice great work and performance.

Julia:  That’s great advice, Joe.  Thanks for illustrating how Johnson Group takes even the potentially dull and makes it shine to drive clients’ business – through creative and data analytics.  I can officially certify Johnson Group the Giant Slayers as a Midsize Match.

For those wanting to talk directly to Joe you can reach him at JJohnson@Johngroup.com or check out: