Marketing

Lehman Brothers, Tyco, Enron, Worldcom, step aside!  Media agencies and their owners belong in the same lineup as Bernie Madoff, Dick Fuld, Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Ebbers!  By Michael Farmer

Recent Valassis research indicates a continued desire to save, with 90 percent of U.S. shoppers reporting they use coupons, obtaining them from a variety of online and offline sources.

Currently, there are about 8.4 billion connected devices worldwide, up 31 percent from 2016 according to Gartner’s estimates. The consumer segment is the largest user base of these devices with 5.2 billion units being utilized in 2017. These devices represent 63 percent of the overall number of present applications. We can only expect these numbers to continue growing exponentially. These astonishing statistics show a radical shift in how consumers are receiving and transmitting data about themselves. However, with this technological advancement comes numerous privacy issues.

Are you thinking of promoting in Spanish but feel daunted by the complexities?  irect-to-consumer promotions in Spanish present challenges to the U.S. marketer — scarcity of quality Spanish copywriters (as opposed to translators), misconceptions about Spanish “dialects,” misinformation about the market, conflicting evidence about assimilation and preferred language, and so on.  By Daniel A. González

Go-to-market is a business-critical, highly complex and carefully sequenced process for global brands today. With companies spending some $1.5 trillion annually to promote their products, effectively managing the marketing supply chain ecosystem has become essential to brand performance and market success.

Reaching consumers is a constant challenge for marketers and advertisers competing in an increasingly noisy marketplace. However, consumer reaction to digital marketing suggests that some efforts may be doing more harm than good.

Last week saw an interesting piece by Mindshare’s Global CEO Nick Emery published in Campaign and widely circulated on social media.  It generated much praise from beyond GroupM and WPP.  Andrew Stephens from the independent agency Goodstuff along with your humble correspondent were amongst many tweeting their appreciation of an insightful look at the many challenges facing media agencies and the need for new operating models.  Here are two key thoughts behind Nick’s piece.

In a recent interview with Advertiser Perceptions, an organization that provides data-driven intelligence to marketers, I was asked, “Will the full-service agency model survive?”  As part of their survey, I was shown the results of how advertisers had thus far answered the question.  It was pretty close between those that said yes (42%) and those that said no (32%).  Twenty-six percent were not sure.

A couple of weeks ago Mark Rabkin, VP, Core Ads at Facebook, posted ‘New Medium, New Rules: video in the mobile age’. It is a good summary of the challenges facing advertisers when it comes to engaging people in the mobile age and supports what Kantar Millward Brown has been saying for years: mobile is not a tiny TV.  by Nigel Hollis

Most people know that a can of Pepsi or Coke sitting on a kitchen table in a movie or TV show is product placement, an oh-so-subtle advertisement without words or action. The item is there to be noticed, even unconsciously, which may lead to a purchase or trip to the refrigerator. Until recent years, these indirect advertisements have been fairly simple. The practice dates back to the 1930’s.

In 2012 a leading retailer began looking for a new chief marketing officer. The job description made the opening sound exciting: The new CMO would play a big, important role, leading the company’s efforts to boost revenues and profits. It seemed like the kind of opportunity any would-be CMO might desire.  By Kimberly A. Whitler and Neil Morgan

Advertisers are wrong about fraud: It’s a problem that can’t be completely solved. We are not going to eradicate it, the same way we are not going to wipe out robbery or eliminate illness. A more realistic — and effective — approach is to manage fraud, both by taking measures to prevent it, and by working to detect it once it occurs so that we can mitigate its most detrimental effects.

Marketing leaders and agencies are finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with growing demands to localize and adapt their creative strategies. Facing a widening range of digital and physical channels that each require rapid adaptation in order to remain relevant to individual geographic, cultural and customer audiences, too many organizations are failing to take the necessary steps to improve their capacity and agility, according to a new study by the CMO Council.

America is in the midst of seismic changes. Unprecedented demographic shifts.  Rising educational attainment. Migration of young talent to urban centers. A technology revolution reshaping our economy and empowering consumers in ways previously unimaginable. What does this mean for the face of tomorrow’s consumer market? Are we witnessing the emergence of a new mass market?

Well, not entirely free. Let me explain. Recently, I had lunch with a procurement manager from a technology company that we’re pitching, and she gave me some insights from the other side on what it feels like to work with an agency.  

Millions of Americans gathered to celebrate LGBTQ Pride last month, which also marked two years since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality.  That historic June 2015 ruling legalized the new definition of family.  In today’s media landscape, brands need to follow suit.  If they want to be successful, companies can no longer ignore the LGBTQ community in their advertising.

About a million immigrants receive U.S. green cards each year, but fewer than half are new arrivals from other countries. The majority already live in the United States on temporary visas, according to recently released U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that show that the two groups have different profiles.

There was, for once, big news at the annual advertising festival in Cannes, France, but it had nothing to do with who won the grand prizes.  Er, um, pardonnez-moi, grand prix.  Ratherm the 2017 event — formally, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — will be remembered for a startling announcement midway through by Arthur Sadoun, the new Chairman and CEO of the giant Publicis Groupe agency company, that he was bidding adieu for the next year to Cannes Lions, along with other awards shows and events such as CES and South by Southwest.

Every cloud has a silver lining. And when it comes to the current status of the retail industry, which ranges from “bleak to promising,” that silver lining consists of Hispanic millennials. In fact, regardless of the state of retail at large, Hispanic millennials – especially Latinas – are the new now of retail, and their impact on your bottom line may be more than you realize.  By Alberto Navas

After reading the award-winning essays for the Admap Prize 2017 (inspired by Kantar, I should note) my eye was caught by the title Pre-Suasion toward the end of the same issue. Pre-Suasion turns out to be the title of a new book by Professor Robert Cialdini and the review suggests that the central theme fits well with the need to make a lasting impression.  by Nigel Hollis