Gracias Sugarman

Every now in then in your life you need to take some time off and travel along the mystic side of the river trail for whatever reason.  My case, a full knee replacement last week, a TV and an iPhone.  Watching TV with an elevated leg that I was icing aggressively after therapy, I came across a documentary on Starz Network about a 1970s trovador out of Detroit of Mexican decent called Rodriguez that frequented the local dive bars and belted out lyric and tunes that motivated the day that would make Bob Dylan look “more’ than twice.  By Gene Bryan / HispanicAd

How to Rebuild Trust in the Agency-Marketer Relationship

I have just reached the 100-day mark in my role leading the 4A’s, and one thing has been made exceedingly clear to me over the past few months: Before we can make true progress, we must address a critical issue. That issue is trust.  By Marla Kaplowitz – 4A’s President and CEO

Millennials on Millennials – Digital Music and Communication [REPORT]

Millennials are often the most stereotyped, yet coveted, group for marketers. The second-largest generation group in the U.S. has now “grown up,” and its consumers have disposable incomes. This provides a plethora of opportunities for advertisers and marketers who are so eager to reach them, as Millennials are highly engaged, using multiple platforms for many hours on a daily basis.

Who’s Guilty and Who’s Innocent in the Industry’s Transparency Wars?

Bill Duggan penned a piece in MediaVillage.com last week continuing the ANA’s attack on ad agencies — this time over production transparency, which is the code name for unethical and possibly illegal bid-rigging activities conducted by some agencies to secure production contracts at favorable rates.  A previous transparency issue, media transparency, was investigated by ANA in 2016, and it confirmed instances of media agencies enriching themselves at client expense through rebates, kickbacks and other “non-transparent” practices, many of them not forbidden by existing contracts.  Duggan summarized ANA’s view about these two transparency issues: “The advertising industry continues to suffer from a transparency crisis, which has broken down trust between advertisers and agencies … the ad agency community now needs to acknowledge and address these issues rather than continuing to issue denials …”  By Michael Farmer

The Growing Influence of Influencer Marketing – Brands are integrating the discipline with strategic communications

Amisha Gandhi, head of influencer marketing at the software giant SAP, wanted to inject more value into the company’s Leonardo Live event centered on digital innovation and transformation. She invited five top influencers to participate in the two-day conference, which took place earlier this summer in Frankfurt, Germany, and attracted 1,500 attendees, including C-level and senior digital executives.  By Matthew Schwartz

On-The-Go Produce Snacking: A Billion Dollar Industry and Growing

There’s no right or wrong way to snack, but there’s little doubt that Americans are growing increasingly health conscious as they reach for a bite in between meals—or in place of one. And as consumers’ hunger for healthful options rises, it’s important for retailers and manufacturers to stay on top of consumption trends in the produce aisle.

“Podcast Playbook” for Advertisers [REPORT]

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the “IAB Podcast Playbook,” the organization’s first-ever buyer’s guide for podcast advertising, which provides insights into audience demographics, listener behaviors, creative treatments, ad formats, delivery and targeting, and ad effectiveness measurement.

Brand and the Power of the Hispanic Story

Over the past four decades, the U.S. Census has documented the growth trajectory of our Hispanic population.  While the numbers alone tell a powerful story of the value of the Hispanic market to brands, to fully understand the opportunity we have to dig deeper.  The Hispanic market is uniquely relative to past immigrant groups.  Hispanics represent a unique movement due to a combination of factors including language, duality and tenacity.

And Now … Production Transparency

A year ago, the advertising industry was stirred by the ANA-commissioned report “An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry” from K2 Intelligence.  The key finding of that report was that non-transparent business practices, including cash rebates to media agencies, are pervasive in the U.S. media ad buying ecosystem.  By Bill Duggan

Dancing With The Giants: Optimizing Your Digital Presence In The Age Of Amazon

Many aspects of the digital world are dominated by a single giant: Google dominates search, Facebook dominates social, and of course, Amazon dominates e-commerce. For the vast majority of brands, walking away from the giants simply isn’t an option … so digital success means dancing with these giants more effectively.

“Nike terrorists”

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc   /  LMMiami.com

  • I was reading the news about the attacks last week in Spain* and it was brought to my attention that some European media outlets call these type of assailants “Nike terrorists”.
  • “Nike terrorist”?
  • What can that possibly mean?
  • Here’s what I found after some research online.
  • Apparently, the term was coined by operatives in the British intelligence services.
  • For various reasons, some of them surprisingly related to our marketing & advertising line of business.

Can Social Media Save Spanish-Language Television?

Video didn’t kill the radio star. In fact, radio has recently seen record numbers across some coveted demographics, reaching 92% of Millennials each week. Nor did television kill the theater star, as the success of Hamilton attests. Even so, it seems that the birth of any new technology or media will stir predictions about the impending demise of its predecessor.

Deconstructing the Digital Agenda in Consumer Products

In recent years, most consumer goods companies have exponentially grown their digital agendas, typically resulting in higher costs of time, energy and money. Yet for many, top-line growth remains elusive and profits are under pressure.

Big Media, Streaming, and Live TV – It’s Complicated

Consumer demand for streaming services has opened the door for new players. Snapchat has signed development deals in the past year with Walt Disney’s ESPN, Discovery, the NFL, A+E Networks, Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting, and Vice Media. Twitter recently signed on to stream several sports leagues, which is on par with its strategy to carve out their share of the live streaming category. Facebook will stream 20 MLB games for free this season. And YouTube TV is now streaming live TV for cord-cutters around the globe. But it’s not just social networks looking to capitalize on the popularity of streaming. Comcast now allows its X1 customers to stream Netflix seamlessly from their service.

Building a marketing organization that drives growth today

From the rise of online shopping channels to ad campaigns created for an audience of one, consumer marketing has changed more in the past ten years than it did in the previous 30. Despite that level of change and disruption, if you had put a few typical marketers from the 1980s into a time machine and sent them into the marketing departments of today, they would probably feel right at home. There might be a new IT department and a few other changes, but the job titles, structures, approach to performance management—even the vocabulary—would be remarkably familiar.  By Raphael Buck, Biljana Cvetanovski, Alex Harper, and Björn Timelin

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