Marcela Tabares
Tabares and her talented research team are a busy bunch. She’s currently co-chairing a newly formed internal multicultural insights team, developing proprietary ad sales research that examines how to connect with women in the traditionally male-dominant automotive category, and partnered with Magid Research to explore the impact of a program’s “emotional tonality” on advertising effectiveness. On the latter she notes that “the most important driver of ad effectiveness was the level of viewer affinity to a program—love matters!”
How do you define success?
I define success as realizing my potential to impact positive change in the world around me, including my workplace, my family and community. At work, beyond materially delivering on my business goals, I feel successful if I have cultivated an encouraging and stimulating environment, where my team feels inspired to take on the ever evolving landscape through all its twists and turns!. And I know I’ve succeeded when my 6-yr old watches programs on History/H2 and thinks I’m incredibly cool and that one of his favorite days of the year is Kids Day at A+E!
How do you define diversity?
I think of diversity as the differences in individuals that inspires innovation and creativity. Whether it is differences in perspective, ideas, culture, or experience and talent, diversity brings vibrancy to the workplace and allows for more effective critical evaluation and decision-making. It allows us to be more open to change, which is a critical strength is today’s rapidly changing business environment.
What’s your biggest professional accomplishment in the past 12 months?
With the growing energy around programmatic TV, it is important for marketers not to lose focus on the value different program environments deliver for their brands. Video content generates a great range of emotional experiences that brands could benefit from and we set out to measure this effect. We partnered with Magid Research to develop a proprietary extension to their Emotional DNA study, which explored the impact of a program’s ‘emotional tonality’ on advertising effectiveness. The empirical data proved that while some environments were indeed more effective in driving viewer engagement with ads, the most important driver of ad effectiveness was the level of viewer affinity to a program – love matters!
