Business

The scene: 100,000 years ago in Africa. Ancient humans, looking to organize for protection and survival, build off of a common framework — the first language. This allowed them to find each other, to hunt and gather, and to seek shelter from the elements as a community.  By Philip Kinzler

Lately, US lawmakers have been a little obsessed with big tech firms.

Challenging cross-industry pivots into accountability and collaboration are crucial for future success

Is it true that the majority of the growth in the U.S. Hispanic market is coming from markets that are below the top 10 Hispanic DMAs? “Generally speaking, yes,” reveals Fernando E. Férnandez, Partner and Chief Client Officer at New York-based multicultural advertising agency d’expósito & Partners. But, are media buyers and marketers responding? In this Hispanic Radio Podcast, we look at the locales where your company could thrive.

As the back-to-school shopping season heats up, a new report from Morning Consult finds a majority of parents plan on spending at least $200 on their child’s back-to-school shopping.

I was going to write about the Facebook/Google duopoly, but I got sidetracked by this question: If Google and Facebook are a duopoly, what is the market they are controlling?  by Gord Hotchkiss

You’d think that by the time you make it to the “C-suite” — which, for me, happened just a few weeks ago — that you’d have everything figured out.  Not necessarily. No matter how much one has grown in her or his career, there is always so much more to learn.  At the recent She Runs It Annual Multicultural Alliance Bootcamp, where I had the honor of joining a panel called “Journey to the C-Suite,” learn is exactly what I did.  By Helen Lin

Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization. Top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms.  By Oliver Bossert, Alena Kretzberg, and Jürgen Laartz

Augmented reality (AR) adds visual overlays on the physical world and is usually viewed through a smartphone. Virtual reality (VR) depicts a self-contained, navigable 3D world and is usually experienced through a specialized motion-detecting headset, says Barry Levine on July 24. Just as marketers have learned when a project should employ a website and when it should utilize an app, so they are beginning to understand when to choose AR or VR.

New American Community Survey questions revised in 2016 show a stunning increase in reported mobile broadband usage – strong evidence that previous questions were not adequately capturing how U.S. households access the Internet.

In 2018, it’s a given that agencies must be able to connect their creative excellence to data and technology. Picking up where that post left off, I want to cover the top three things that will hurt your agency’s prospects for new business now. My list includes the top concerns and challenges we see coming up repeatedly for agencies.  By Mark Duval / Duval Partnership
 

The major trade associations representing the advertising industry — are jointly writing to express opposition to the addition of the new census question that asks, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

Personalized communication with every customer is the future of marketing. McKinsey partners Julien Boudet and Kai Vollhardt say it’s easier than many marketers think, if you begin with the data you have.  By Julien Boudet and Kai Vollhardt

There’s no doubt that the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) landscape has grown evermore complicated. For example, fast-paced lifestyles are inspiring shoppers to make fewer trips than they did in the past. According to Nielsen Homescan data, there have been 1.02 fewer trips per shopper on an annual basis than a year ago, and that means retailers and manufacturers have fewer chances to capture consumers’ attention as they stroll the aisles.

In a surprise announcement, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises revealed that the search is on for its new President of Telemundo Networks.

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen isn’t kidding around when it comes to the high cost of programming, telling analysts Friday that its dispute with Spanish-language broadcaster is “probably permanent.”  Courtesy of Broadcasting & Cable

The magnitude and pace of change in the US market have undermined traditional growth models for many consumer-packaged-goods companies, especially larger ones. Companies need to combine greater agility with new types of scale advantage to compete more effectively.

Buying media from an unwired network was similar to a game of pin the tail on the donkey.  It was labor-intensive (local invoices for days), hitting your target was never guaranteed and all parties were left with a dizzying feeling.  Thanks to upgrades in technology — think machine learning — those days are gone.

Executives increasingly are recognizing zero-based budgeting (ZBB)1 for its ability to extract cost savings and transform a company’s culture related to its spending approach. This process then reallocates funds to higher-value priorities that focus the organization—from top to bottom. One element that sets ZBB apart from other cost-reduction measures is that it enables the organization to make active, well-considered choices about spending rather than merely revise the ongoing trajectory of prior spending.

The truth of the matter is that amidst the extreme change (with a splash of chaos) that our industry is currently experiencing, it’s our job to change the story that, in my opinion, seems to have gotten away from us.  Only if WE change the story, can WE change the outcome.  So what’s the story I’m hearing out in the marketplace?  It depends who you ask, but for some it’s “Spanish-language media is dying.”  For others, it’s “Total Market is killing our industry,” or “no one can seem to get the in-culture formula right.”  To me, it’s all just negative bullshit.  No one is immune to the shift the media and marketing industry is experiencing for more reasons than I can count on two hands (that’s ten fingers, folks).  By David Chitel / NGL Collective