Marketing

The vast amount of product information available to consumers through online search renders most advertising obsolete as a tool for conveying product information. Advertising remains useful to firms only as a tool for persuading consumers to purchase advertised products. In the mid-twentieth century, courts applying the antitrust laws held that such persuasive advertising is anticompetitive and harmful to consumers, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was unable to pursue an antitrust campaign against persuasive advertising for fear of depriving consumers of advertising’s information value. Now that the information function of most advertising is obsolete, the FTC should renew its campaign against persuasive advertising by treating all advertising beyond the minimum required to ensure that product information is available to online searchers as monopolization in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act.

As marketing technology, or martech, becomes more sophisticated, companies are finding they can accelerate and optimize everything from basic commercial functions like e-commerce conversion to more complex ones, such as managing multi-dimensional customer relationships across multiple channels. In this interview, Scott Brinker, VP, Platform Ecosystems, at HubSpot, and Jason Heller, a McKinsey partner leading our Digital Marketing Operations and Technology service line, share their insights on the evolving world of martech with McKinsey’s Barr Seitz.

Marketers are invested in accurately identifying their target audiences, but they often miss the mark.

The average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is 44 months, and the number of first-time CMOs jumped 31% in the past year, according to a recent study by executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

A while back, I wrote a post about the spurious dichotomy between the short and long-term effects of marketing. In it I argued that the separation between the two time frames was a spurious one, but how do you predict whether your marketing will have a positive effect in the longer-term?  by Nigel Hollis

54% of U.S. teens say they spend too much time on their cellphones, and two-thirds of parents express concern over their teen’s screen time. But parents face their own challenges of device-related distraction.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharma marketing used to be simple: Run a TV spot on news or late-night talk shows and wait for consumers to contact their doctors.

Growing faster than the general population and maintaining income and education rates higher than any other racial or ethnic group, Asian Americans continue to make gains as tech-enabled influencers with unlimited potential. Asian Americans have the added advantage of maintaining ties with brands based in their native countries that are global leaders in smartphone manufacturing, social media and online commerce.

Everyone knows that to get noticed in today’s frenetic media environment you have to pick a side and argue your case as vehemently as possible. That strategy might spawn a negative reaction, but then they say there is no such thing as bad publicity. But what if making hyperbolic assertions is undermining the effective practice of marketing?  by Nigel Hollis

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

Personalization is teetering on the edge of the buzzword precipice. But companies that can figure out what it really means and how to take advantage of it are already outstripping their competition.

I recently went to the grocery store with my 7-year-old daughter for our weekly grocery shopping. I am trying to get her to become more autonomous and independent, so we had two shopping lists—a smaller one for her and the longer one for me. In terms of selection, I granted her the liberty to choose whatever product/brand she likes as long as she stuck to the list.  By Smruti Kulkarni Shanbhag, Nielsen Design Solutions – Europe Lead

When The Hershey Company brand Reese’s Pieces was featured in the 1982 hit film E.T., sending sales soaring, the use of product placement in movies and TV shifted into high gear. Who could forget the association of Aston Martin with James Bond, or Nike with Forrest Gump?

In his latest blog post, Byron Sharp has some pretty strong words to say about brand tracking. As usual, there is lots in his post that is true and important to say, but not that much that is as new or challenging as the headline suggests.  by Josh Samuel

Millennials have been the focus of advertisers, retailers and media for over a decade, but as influential as this group has been, meeting millennials’ expectations has proven difficult.  

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

In a previous post I mentioned that there were some disturbing trends lurking in WARC’s analysis of campaign trends from this year’s Cannes Lions. To my mind those trends say a lot about the sorry state of marketing practice today.  by Nigel Hollis

Determining audience “identity” has become a major priority over the past year for U.S. marketers, many of whom plan to increase their investment in finding and developing identity solutions.

Rising internet penetration, denser urban locations, faster paced lifestyles and challenging working hours are adding more and more layers of complexity to consumers’ lives. According to the World Health Organization, “workplace stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century,” and multiple agencies have tracked the steady rise of anxiety related illnesses around the world. Consumers are feeling more stretched than ever before, and are increasingly striving for convenient solutions which help to simplify their busy lives.

Johnson’s has radically transformed its 124-year-old brand to meet the needs and preferences of modern parents.