Business

A corporate reorganization doesn’t have to create chaos. But many do when there is no clear plan for communicating with employees and other stakeholders early, often, and over an extended period.  By Rose Beauchamp, Stephen Heidari-Robinson, and Suzanne Heywood

Why is it that some brands can endure years of bad press without losing substantial sales? Similarly, how do some brands transform into industry leaders, often seemingly overnight? In many cases, it’s the result of careful management of brand equity and corporate reputation.

In a political bombshell still reverberating through Washington, Donald Trump, confounding the predictions of most of the pundits and pollsters, won a solid electoral victory. For the first time in eight years, the Republicans control the Presidency and the House and Senate. This means that it is likely that the political gridlock of the last three Congresses will be broken.

Facebook has been slammed with a potential class-action lawsuit accusing it of violating federal civil rights laws by publishing housing and job ads that discriminate against minorities.

The world and the marketplace have long moved beyond evaluating companies based solely on the quality of their products or the services they provide. Equally important to protecting and growing reputation are the relationships a company has with its environment, communities, employees, etc.  By Wendy Salomon, VP, Reputation Management & Public Affairs

In local communities, the civically engaged – the people who vote, volunteer and connect with those around them – play a key role in community life. Thus, how and to what degree they stay informed about their communities carries added weight.  By Michael Barthel, Jesse Holcomb, Jessica Mahone and Amy Mitchell

I was in the U.K. for the last seven days, and I can report that Christmas is already in full swing there. Stores are decked out with Christmas trees, the television is full of Christmas advertising, and I even had my first minced pie. That’s what you get in a country where they do not celebrate Thanksgiving, and thus there is nothing between autumn and the first days of Christmas.

“Middleman.” Perhaps because of the streamlining obsession borne of technology (not to mention the outdated gender reference), the very word seems to come preloaded with not-so-positive connotations these days.  That certainly seems to be the case sometimes in programmatic television, where a plethora of aggregators, platforms and data providers has sprung up amid the birthing of the new practices and systems needed to leverage new media, data and technology capabilities.

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

• Pepe Beker, an Argentine adman (and avid marathoner) who’s had an outstanding professional career in México working for various multinational agencies and now runs his own wildly successful shop in CDMX told me once that, in his opinion, the countries that boast the best advertising are those in which ad professionals ride public transportation.
• It’s a soundbite, of course.
• A very insightful one, lemme tell you.
• Methinks it carries a gigantic truth that can be applied to most lines of business.

An exclusive study for Entrepreneur Magazine’s November issue, Ipsos and Entrepreneur examined how Americans self-identify as entrepreneurs. More than one in five Americans (22%) strongly identify with the term. Men (29%) are almost twice as likely as women (16%) to consider themselves entrepreneurial.

According to August 2016 polling by Strata, nearly 60% of ad agency professionals said they were fearful about the inventory quality available when engaging in programmatic buys. And it’s an anxiety that has grown along with programmatic buying itself: In May 2015, only 48.0% were concerned about this.  Transparency of inventory was yet another top fear, and it too had grown since May 2015. A little more than half (or 52.7%) of those polled said this was problematic.

In 2016, the workforce is undergoing a seismic change as 3.6 million Baby Boomers are set to retire, one-fourth of Millennial workers will take on management roles and Generation Z (those born between 1994 and 2010) has started to enter the workforce

Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads.  Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers.  That’s basically what Facebook is doing nowadays.  by Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. / ProPublica

As part of its wide-ranging, multiplatform political and electoral coverage, Univision News presents a special digital report that provides a comprehensive overview of Hispanics in public office across the United States over the last two decades: “Latinos en Power.”

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

• Last Tuesday, my friend, benefactor, mentor, partner in crime, founder & editor of this prestigious publication, Eugenio “Gene” Bryan, plus yours truly attended a great show at Downtown Miami’s Knight Concert Hall, headlined by Cuban living legend Omara Portuondo, she of Buena Vista Social Club fame, who at 85 years of age still has the uncanny ability to bewitch audiences with her soulful voice.
• The fact that she’s accompanied by a band of world-class musicians doesn’t hurt either.
• It just so happens that simultaneously across the street at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, there was another concert by another living legend of popular music, in this case from France, 92 year-old Charles Aznavour (aka the French Frank Sinatra).
• On top of that, at the same exact time a few blocks south of where Mrs Portuondo & Mr Aznavour were performing, none other than British diva Adele was slated to sing at the American Airlines Arena.

Marketers and media executives love to talk “programmatic.” But it’s one of the most misused words in the field. People might mean anything from automatically purchased display advertising (the correct definition) to dynamic insertion of ads on TV (not quite right).

However, the world’s cities are facing more challenging demographics, and the days of easy growth are over. In the past, city economies expanded largely because their populations were increasing due to high birthrates and mass migration from rural areas. Both of those sources of population growth are now diminishing. Global population growth is slowing because of declining fertility rates and aging. At the same time, rural-to-urban migration is running its course and plateauing in many regions. How cities adjust to the new reality is important not only for their prospects but also for those of nations that will continue to rely on thriving cities for rising prosperity.  By Jonathan Woetzel, Jaana Remes, Kevin Coles, and Mekala Krishnan

Big brands spend a lot on media. Media budgets can be tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Despite this huge investment, however, many are only just starting to realise that they need greater internal expertise to take back control.

Operating in a Silicon Valley-style work environment has been one of the key qualities that has helped TechStyle Fashion Group gain success as a disruptor brand in the fashion industry. Parent company to popular brands such as Fabletics, JustFab, and ShoeDazzle, TechStyle has successfully used technology, big data, and customer service to reimagine ecommerce and fashion alike.  By Crystal Albanese, senior manager of conferences and committees at ANA

Retailers could see record web traffic this year, according to Deloitte’s 31st annual holiday survey of consumer spending intentions and trends.