Marketing

By now, it’s become obvious that native advertising will continue on a strong growth trajectory over the coming years.

Ola Källenius is a self-confessed “car guy” who still harkens back to being “that kid with the dream of driving that Mercedes star.” The Swedish-born Källenius joined the then Daimler-Benz AG in a management associate program in 1993, was named executive director of McLaren Automotive in 2003, and became a member of the Divisional Board of Mercedes-Benz Cars, responsible for marketing and sales, in 2013.

Fractional Attribution is the new science of figuring out which part of the media mix drove what kind of effect on the sale of any advertised product.

Consumers won’t accept anything besides a good customer experience from start to finish, and marketers continue to cater to such demands. In a January 2015 study by Econsultancy in association with Adobe, client-side marketers worldwide ranked the customer experience as the single most exciting opportunity in 2015, at 22%.

While the digital age has encouraged more consumers to shop and browse products on the web, physical stores are still primary destinations for shoppers, according to PwC’s annual consumer survey, Total Retail: Retailers and the Age of Disruption.

Depending on who you’re talking to at the time, it could be that you’ve heard February 14th is a great time of year to make that special someone understand just how much they mean to you… or that it’s an overly merchandized cog in an insidious corporate machine bent on monetizing as many days of the year as possible.

Everybody is talking about native advertising as the future, but it’s a meaningless term that spans two totally different concepts. How about we define it properly? 

Data can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.  The fact is, most marketers were trained in marketing, which is more akin to psychology than it is to economics or mathematics.  That was the case until the last few years.  Now marketers are being tasked to be psychologists as well as mathematicians, technologists, statisticians and more.  Pretty much the only job we don’t have to do is technical development — but just you wait, because that can’t be far behind.

While reading the recent Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science’s report “Shopping Takes Only Seconds…In-Store and Online,” I was again reminded of how many marketing executives have an unrealistic and overly brand-centric view of how important their brands are in people’s everyday lives.

Americans often have their preferences. But just how often do Americans reach for “name-brand” products over the store brand options available? That depends on exactly what they’re reaching for.

African-Americans have a diverse approach to receiving content and information—they fully engage and connect through various mainstream and niche media outlets and platforms, and they consume more content than other groups on all fronts.

Last Friday’s HispanicAd News Alert publicized the results of a study that Ipsos conducted on behalf of CarMax, where the headline read, “Today’s Mid-Life Crisis Car Almost as Likely to be an SUV or a Sedan as a Sports Car – Make it Black …or Silver, or Blue, or Red!”  The study examined the types of cars adults would purchase during a mid-life crisis, where they found that people are almost as likely to purchase an SUV or a sedan as the proverbial mid-life crisis vehicle, the sports car.  While that may seem a bit surprising to many, the results actually reflect a mindshift happening in today’s society.  By Louis Maldonado /  Managing Director at expósito & Partner

In the olden days, marketing consisted of 4 Ps (Place, Price, Promotion and, of course, Product). This approach made perfect sense, as each P defined a critical part of what ultimately made a product sell. And that really has not changed much in today’s world.

Brands, be warned, you’re not ready for the next era of young media consumers. I can tell you from dispatches from the front lines. Over the last few weeks, we have been introducing the findings of a report we will formally launch in the coming weeks around the media habits and preferences of 13-24 year olds called the Acumen report.

Jägermeister announced the launch of the brand’s first campaign ever developed to reach Hispanics. “Sin Igual,” which translates to “Like No Other,” is a unique campaign that parallels the shared passion, uniqueness and cultural roots that both the liquor and Latinos proudly share.

Until recently, marketers could be forgiven for looking back wistfully at this golden age as new forces reshaped their world into something completely different. These new trends include a massive proliferation of television and online channels, the transformation of the home PC into a retail channel, the unrelenting rise of mobile social media and gaming, and—with all these trends—a constant battle for the consumer’s attention.

According to the 2014 Brand Footprint, that’s what it takes to be recognized as one of the top 50 global consumer goods brands. It’s an impressive number, and a marvel of manufacturing and logistics.

Marketing automation is still new enough and complex enough that even vendors of automation systems face challenges running their own marketing operations on their own platforms.

More and more, brands are realizing that the U.S. Hispanic audience is large, growing, tech savvy, and particularly receptive to online marketing. This presents a huge opportunity for many brands to drive growth. One question we hear often from brands ready to venture into the Hispanic digital market: Where do we start?

In this two-part series, we explore three critical assessments brands can perform to determine where opportunity lies for growth with a Hispanic audience.

In this two-part series, we explore three critical assessments brands can perform to determine where opportunity lies for growth with a Hispanic audience. Part 1, covering Competitive Analysis, can be found here. Read on for Part 2, covering brand-owned Website Audit and Social Channel Evaluations.