Marketing

Even though most of retailers’ current growth is coming from digital channels, shoppers continue to visit stores – and will for many years to come.  Their demand for a more relevant store shopping experience, however, has retailers asking “How can we rejuvenate the in-store experience?” in order to return stores to their rightful place in the retail ecosystem.

Creative that speaks to the bilingual, bicultural Latino in both Spanish and English may not be the best use of a brand’s time and money.  By  Adam R Jacobson

Digital marketers better like change, because it’s coming. According to an April 2014 study by Altimeter Group, digital transformation is now a significant movement. The research found that definitions of “digital transformation” varied greatly among industry professionals, and in the end defined it as “the realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.”

The voice of Mom is powerful. It’s something that brands are desperate to attract and at the same time, it’s one thing that brands fear the most. The motivated voice of one mom can mobilize a movement against a brand, having real impact right where it hurts – online and at the shelf.

This summer Coca Cola replaced its logo with 250 popular names, and America suddenly became really thirsty.  No product improvement. No big grand prize. Just a touch of personalization, and people couldn’t dig through the convenience store cooler fast enough.

Following last year’s “Bleachable Moments” social TV effort success with ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” Clorox Bleach went at it again with extensions on Twitter, allowing fans to vote. Molly Steinkrauss, associate director of marketing communications at The Clorox Company, spoke with eMarketer’s Danielle Drolet about the effectiveness of social TV for consumer packaged goods brands.

Every year, an enormous amount of ink is spilt to greater or lesser effect on advertising: how to make it more effective, how to tie it more clearly to brand and sales lift outcomes, and so on. Much less is devoted to trade spending. And yet trade spending represents more than twice as much of the average consumer packaged goods (CPG) company’s expenditures—19 percent of revenue compared with advertising’s 7.5 percent—and sits second only to cost of goods sold as an expense item in the ledger (advertising is fourth).

The proliferation of digital media via mobile phones, tablets, and apps has understandably affected various consumer groups differently. For any brand or organization with a story to tell, this means new opportunities and new obstacles to reach particular audiences. To keep up with the growth of digital, today’s content needs to be catered to audiences in a much more conscious and holistic way than it has been before.

The customer lifecycle is almost as hot a buzzword as “big data” — but what exactly is a customer lifecycle?  Is it really a circular journey?  Is it linear?

Chief marketers who report directly to CEOs are likely to earn more than their peers, says the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in a new “CMO Compensation Report” study. Additionally, good peer relationships provide an advantage as the most highly paid CMOs have forged close partnerships with chief financial officers and chief information officers.

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) say they are working more collaboratively than in the past to take advantage of digital opportunities, but they remain at odds on a number of issues involving how to drive integrated digital marketing solutions for their customers, according to a new study by Accenture.

As the U.S. GDP inched up 2% annually since 2010 to $15.5T in 2013, the 10 most influential Total Market (TM) states yielded the brunt of the economic expansion. These 10 TM states generated nearly 60% of the country’s net GDP growth. Fueled by a population base that is 60% Multicultural, TX & CA account for a third of the total U.S. GDP growth. NY, FL, & GA are next in line to become majority Multicultural by 2025. On average, Multicultural segments are growing 22 times faster than non-Multicultural in the top 10 TM states.

Now that over 50% of the general population is regularly using tablets and smartphones, the shift from desktop to mobile is taking center stage. While we continue to gain a clearer picture of the impact of mobile tools on shopping behavior, we also strive to understand the complex interactions that take place within the multichannel, multi-device path to purchase.

More than 40% of US marketing professionals said they increased spending on data-driven marketing in the first quarter of this year, compared with 38.4% who said the same in Q4 2013.

In its newest paper, Raising Fusionistas 2.0, Alma researchers answer the question — are Fusionistas passing on their love for both the Hispanic and American cultures and their values to a new generation of Hispanic children?

“That was fantastic. Let’s do it again — but bigger!” says the marketer in an after-action review or post-buy meeting. I cringe when I hear those words, since those are two decisions made right there. Apparently we are going to do “it” again, and doing “it” bigger will beat the results from the previous time we did “it.”

Finding ways to grow sales has never been tougher. Despite obstacles like robust competition, a fragmented media environment and growing piles of data, a handful of companies are still finding growth opportunities within their existing customer bases. In fact, by identifying a category’s ‘Super Consumers’ – those consumers that spend a lot and engage a lot, companies are tailoring their marketing and sales efforts to boost incremental sales—even when category sales are flat.

In 1993, Vernor Vinge, a retired professor of mathematics, computer scientist and award-winning science fiction author, argued that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence would mark the point at which “the human era will be ended.” This idea, associated in popular thinking with the futurist Ray Kurzweil of 2005’s The Singularity is Near, posits a moment when computing advances to the point that computers become self-directing, direct their activities to making themselves ever more intelligent, and surpass human comprehension or understanding.

Teradata Corp. and Forbes Insights released a new research study for CMOs and other senior marketing decision makers worldwide titled, “Breaking Down Marketing Silos: The Key to Consistently Achieving Customer Satisfaction and Improving Your Bottom Line.”

CoreBrand released its second annual report on the most and least respected corporate brands – Brand Respect: The Most and Least Respected Corporate Brands.