Marketing

In this video, Keith Reinhard, Chairman Emeritus, DDB, states, “We over-appreciate data and under-appreciate data”, and he is right. We tend to over-appreciate the data which tells us what people do, and under-appreciate the data that tells us why they do it.  by Nigel Hollis

In 1979, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter launched his Five Forces framework with a powerful statement: “The essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition, yet it is easy to view competition too narrowly and too pessimistically.”

Consumers today have infinite options when it comes to premium content, which presents a unique challenge for brands and advertisers: attention is finite, and it’s far too easy for consumers to tune out a brand’s message if it isn’t relevant to them or their interests.

To really understand the attitudinal power of brands we need to look beyond the absolute scores and instead examine relative strengths and weaknesses. If more people say good things about a brand than claim to use it then that difference represents an opportunity to grow, provided that association has a positive relationship with business outcomes.  by Nigel Hollis

If marketers understand the need for a balanced approach to understanding performance, why do they still focus on short-term sales as the primary indicator of campaign success?

In its definitive CMO tenure report, Winmo finds that female CMOs, which make up about 42 percent of tenures across industries, rotate up and out of roles five months sooner than their male counterparts (37.5 months vs. 43 months).

Brand choice is driven by primarily by emotion and feeling. People don’t make brand choices based on logical, persuasive marketing arguments (as many in our industry still like to believe), rather the more you feel for a brand, the more likely you are to buy it. But is this equally true for all product categories?  by Nigel Hollis

Choice has always been coveted among consumers. When it comes to the media universe, the abundance in devices, services and content has never been more prevalent, which in turn is opening up a complex web of consumption behaviors. With all of this technology at consumers’ literal fingertips, which of these platforms are they focused on?

ThinkNow released its ThinkNow Snapshot: 2018 Total Market Markers + Milestones, identifying the top trends that shaped multicultural research. Milestones range from shaky consumer sentiment to the proliferation of mobile shopping and from the rise of stream-ing services to the new multicultural mainstream consumer.

As far as news coverage of emerging trends in marketing go, this one was exceptional: “New Report Cites Skyrocketing Growth of Internal Agencies,” the Ad Age headline shouted, while Adweek weighed in with, “ANA Report: In-Housing Agency Work Is Accelerating.” MediaPost followed suit with “ANA: Over Three-Quarters of Our Members Have In-House Agencies” and Campaign US ran with, “Number of In-House Agencies Rise Dramatically, ANA Study Finds.”

To grow sales, more companies are teaming up to attract each other’s customers—and persuade their existing customers to buy more—by creating a positive association with another brand. Well-known alliances include McDonald’s Happy Meals with Disney toys and Dell PCs with Intel processors.

Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will

What if there was a proven, brand-safe video ad format that’s equally effective for targeting unique consumers and regions, or blanketing the whole country with a campaign? A medium that offers loyal, engaged audiences at competitive CPMs and the power of sight, sound, motion, and narrative?  What if marketers found out that their agencies won’t even consider it for campaigns because they can’t buy it at their preferred profit margin?

A brand no longer needs, nor can embrace, all trends. It must create sub-brands specifically designed for each niche, and reach each one using algorithms. The organic food brand Mãe Terra recently bought by Unilever has been a smart move in this way.  by Anahi Lucas & Felipe Ramirez

Brands that are perceived as innovative and that also provide a great experience – meeting consumers’ needs where and when they are wanted – grew the most in value in the latest BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable US Brands ranking, announced by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown.

Today’s shopping expectations have created new selling opportunities for businesses in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry. “Consumers and businesses now expect every interaction to be shoppable–whether on the web, mobile, social, in-product or in-store,” said Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager of Adobe Digital Marketing.

There is huge pressure for marketers to spend more on digital: it is where customers are spending more time, it is what everyone else is doing and the convenience metrics look good. So, it is nice to find an example of a company doing its homework and bucking the trend.  by Nigel Hollis

In the latest episode of “Behind the Numbers,” analyst Nicole Perrin joins us in the studio to discuss consumer attitudes about advertising and why so many people are resistant to ads. Who are the ad blockers, what are they actively blocking, and what could help turn them around?

There is no doubt that the plethora of convenience metrics offered by digital media is focusing marketing attention on the here and now, often to the exception of longer-term outcomes. But there is actually no reason why digital media cannot be used for brand-building.  by Nigel Hollis

Two of advertising’s most important titans went head-to-head to debate in-housing and the future of agencies.