Marketing

Despite a mandate to drive growth, chief marketers are still stuck in a decade-long rut that has yet to see them fully optimize the lifetime value of existing customers. In 2008, when asked if brands were fully realizing the revenue potential of customers, 76 percent said no. Ten years later, 77 percent of respondents to the same question in a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council audit still say no, and 10 percent say they are not even sure.

A while back I wrote about the need to break out of the comfort zone in order to create brand growth. The scary thing is that data can be one of the things that helps create the comfort zone. Our data becomes the lens through which we see the world and the real opportunities lie outside our view.  by Nigel Hollis

The apparel market hasn’t reached crisis mode, but shopping behavior has changed in ways that are affecting clothing retailers. Yoga pants are now just pants, fewer consumers have separate work and leisure wardrobes, and younger shoppers are supposedly less materialistic (or maybe just poor), embracing experiences instead of goods.

Digital has a growing share of total media investment for global brands, and rightfully so. Mobile usage in the U.S., for example, has skyrocketed to more than three hours per day, according to last year’s Mary Meeker report. Additionally, some industry onlookers claim that brands are now spending more than half of their media spend in the digital space.

The proliferation of both video platforms and video content has consumers frustrated and unnecessarily struggling to find what they want. And with user experience at the forefront, content providers, media distributors, and tech companies are being forced to improve the discovery, personalization, and “stickiness” of their content.

There is a wide range of skills and salaries represented in the marketing industry, and a marketer’s career path can take many forms. This makes staffing a marketing team with the right players and laying the right stepping stones for your own career a challenge. To make the right decisions, it is essential to stay on top of industry trends.

ANA client-side membership is overwhelmingly female, white, and heterosexual — but nonetheless is more gender and ethnically diverse than CMOs at ANA member companies.

Marketers seek more customer data, but many struggle to make sense of what the numbers are telling them.

Data is still core to being a successful marketer, but there’s a more tangible consumer resistance rooted in privacy as a result of the recent Facebook issues. So where does that net out for marketers?

A recent study by the IAB UK is simply titled ‘Digital Ad Effectiveness’ and the analysis, which references work conducted by Kantar Millward Brown among others, finds that digital is indeed effective. So how come TV, radio and other studies find digital to have a weaker influence? Is it simply a matter of biased research?  by Nigel Hollis

We’ve now reached the crux of the matter when it comes to the ad biz.

You can say that Cinco de Mayo is a “crown import,” and we pretty much owe it to Corona (Crown) — a Mexican beer. It might have been the effect of too much beer, or maybe just too much marketing. Blame it on the guac, the fajitas, the uplifting sounds of mariachi bands, the colorful Mexican flags, the margaritas, the beer … and more beer. And don’t forget the lime — another clever marketing stunt that demonstrates, once again, that advertising really works! Other beer brands have followed suit, but this “historic event” has turned so proprietary for Corona that nobody else comes close. Corona has even gone as far as to write “Cinco” with the very distinctive Corona font!  By Luis Miguel Messianu, Creative Chairman-CEO Alma, Miami

GroupM released a new report, “State of Digital,” offering intelligence on consumer media consumption and advertising investment trends worldwide. Among a series of publications by GroupM prognosticating media marketplace futures the world over, the new report focuses on the impact of technology and digital capabilities on consumers and advertisers.

Total media ad spending worldwide will rise 7.4% to $628.63 billion in 2018, according to eMarketer’s latest report, “Global Ad Spending: The eMarketer Forecast for 2018.”

Fifty-nine percent of marketers’ digital advertising budgets are currently allocated to digital video, a consistent climb in share since 2016, according to the “Digital Content NewFronts: 2018 Video Ad Spend Study”. Furthering the trend, more than 50 percent of buyers plan to increase digital and mobile video spending in the next 12 months, with the additional spend primarily coming from expanding budgets.

Millennials’ behavior is among the most scrutinized, but don’t be too quick to stereotype this generation.

TBWA’s cultural insight studio, Backslash, released a report identifying a new modern era of American activism, coined Pan Activism. In a nationwide research study, conducted with strategic brand research consultancy Hall & Partners, it was found that 85 percent of Americans took some form of activism in the past year, such as conversing with those who have differing beliefs or donating to a local business or national tragedy. The findings indicate that modern activism is no longer defined by fringe groups with singular big battles but it is more mass and characterized by small, everyday actions.

Despite a long and relatively steadily improving economy, consumers remain so focused on value that pricing remains retailers’ most pressing business worry.

Here, Duncan Southgate, Global Brand Director, Media, explains why marketers should always look beyond simple, generic rankings when deciding which media channels to use.

For Millennials and most modern consumers, television has been a key part of our daily lives — whether it’s looking forward to relaxing and watching a show after a long day at work or cheering on a favorite sports team during the playoffs. However, the rise of technology has changed the way people consume visual content, making it tough for television to compete with the digital world. Could television really be dying a long, slow death? Here are four reasons why digital media is causing the death of television and why marketers should ditch television for digital media.