Proximity is a competitive advantage

Everyone has access to basically the same information now.

Ask Chat about a category and in 30 seconds you can have the history, audience, competitors, trends, tensions and 15 possible strategic territories. So can everyone else pitching the business. We can all press the button.

Information alone is not an advantage. Never was. Your boss never really read those Nielsen reports you printed for him.

A little while ago, calling yourself a “dot connector” was a cool way to explain what you do as a marketing strategist. Use Claude for five minutes and you understand why that’s no longer a unique competitive advantage.

At MIJO, we do all this desk research too. It makes the work smarter, no doubt. But we believe proximity is an actual advantage that makes the work better.

We learned this way before AI.

Working on a whiskey brand? You could just read research about young whiskey drinkers. It gets more interesting when you go find them at bars and talk to them. Listen to their stories. See what lights them up. Let them air their grievances.

For tennis, go to the courts. Feel what they feel when the ball makes that sound you can’t quite describe.

For a phone company, talk to people about their phones. Ask them to show you their screen time.

Use the data. Use AI. Know everything you can possibly know before you walk out the door.

Then walk out the door.

Audience understanding isn’t having the most facts. It’s hearing someone say something in a way nobody in the conference room would have written. The hesitation before the answer. What people make fun of. What they actually do instead of what a LLM says they do.

Proximity gives you rich creative threads. An off-color remark becomes a headline. A frustration makes the product’s role clearer. A name drop gives you a lead on a new creative reference. A super specific detail makes someone watching the ad think, yeah, that’s me.

You still have to turn it into good work. But you’re starting with something you felt firsthand. And that will change the work.

When everybody has access to intelligence, being closer to reality becomes an edge.

That’s the idea behind street level thinking.

Get closer.