When it comes to brand marketing, take it personal. Or at least get down to some serious one-to-one.

What, for example, are the physical, emotional, aspirational and transactional connections between product and purchaser?

McKinney, a Durham, N.C.-based agency known as an industry innovator in connection planning, gets prospective customers at eye level for some savvy reads on every aspect of potential conductivity between brand and user. The agency uses its connection planning concept to shape brand strategies, listening with an educated ear first, then going about delivering messages through media that say, I heard you.

“Connection planning is all about attacking the client’s marketing objective from a different place.”

“Our approach is to identify the client’s best prospects and analyze these consumers’ entire experience with the brand, from pre-purchase to the moment they buy, and after the purchase.”

From there, a multitude of marketing opportunities present themselves.

“Creative means marketing to what consumers find most relevant about a product or service,” Holroyd explains. “Connection planning gets to what the brand promises the user. The creative keeps that promise.”

Case in point: Travelocity’s “The Roaming Gnome,” a creation approaching icon status.

By the time this Web-based travel planner came to McKinney, Travelocity had gone from leading its Internet niche to trailing newcomers in the field. McKinney put them back in the race.

Their research looked at the whole travel experience and who Travelocity’s best prospects were.