Marketing

Recently the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) released a report that updated research from 2011 on the status of agency remuneration by marketers. Soon there were many articles written about the fact that procurement is now in many instances the lead negotiator with agencies, with marketers playing a secondary role.  Apparently this is bad — really bad. Qualifications like “marketers take back seat” and “pencil and paperclip buyers control agency remuneration” were some of the kinder descriptions.

Amid the squeeze on drug companies due to patent expirations on blockbuster drugs, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced in April an asset-swapping/joint venture deal, which includes Novartis picking up GSK’s cancer drugs and the two companies forming a joint venture on their respective nonprescription drug consumer units. The venture, GSK Consumer Healthcare, will combine the businesses of Novartis brands including Excedrin and Prevacid with GSK brands including Nicorette, TUMS and Aquafresh. Cheryl Policastro, director of shopper marketing and insights at Novartis Consumer Health, spoke with eMarketer’s Christine Bittar about selling over-the-counter medications and some of the differences between marketing prescription and nonprescription drugs.

The American public is slowly but steadily regaining confidence in corporate America with people now viewing corporate America more positively than they did before the start of the economic decline in 2008, according to the 2014 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient™ (RQ™) study.

I know this will come off as somewhat arrogant, but marketing is far more important now than it ever has been in the past.

I think its official – Hispanic Millennials are on the top of most of Hispanic marketer’s minds these days. As I’ve discussed in past articles, all the buzz and excitement around Hispanic Millennials has led to a lot of research that has only started to scratch the surface into this complex and largely misunderstood segment of the Hispanic market. This is why my agency, Sensis together with our partners at ThinkNow Research have decided to undertake an ambitious research initiative called The Hispanic Millennial Project.  By Jose Villa – Sensis

AHAA will honor McDonald’s for its legacy of anticipating these critical demographic shifts, pioneering the total market approach, and putting the ethnic consumer at the heart of its company-wide strategies.

Multicultural is ‘the’ growth epicenter fueling the nation’s economy. In Q1 2014 again, the changing face of those newly employed and their incremental impact in the overall U.S. economy was clearly driven by Multicultural segments, largely by Hispanics. A solid Total Market strategy that puts the newly employed in the center may be translated into real topline growth.  By Santiago Solutions Group

Over the last 18 months, I have been fortunate to work with quite a few CMOs and integrated marketing leaders from many well-known brands. Their businesses are very different from each other, as are their product portfolios and their distribution and marketing approaches.  All these senior marketers are very aware that their consumers and indeed their own world has changed and continues to change at breakneck speed. I believe there is no need to explain this fact to them anymore; they live it every day.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

The aisles of our local Giant grocery store are alive with the synthesized sounds of cash registers noting savings. This is an unintended consequence of the chain’s generally impressive and advanced use of in-store mobile service and marketing.

The need to appeal to this growing shopper base is clear, but understanding the influences of Hispanic shoppers and cuisine is far more complex. However, retailers who learn these shoppers’ preferences—particularly in the fresh foods space—will benefit as the group’s spending power continues to climb.  

A lot can happen in the marketing world in six years. MediaCom USA CEO Sasha Savic posed three questions to client Dell’s Jennifer Statham, executive director of global marketing technology and agency strategy, about how the role of marketing will evolve by 2020.

Chris Brandt, CMO at Taco Bell, is calling the quick-service restaurant’s (QSR’s) new breakfast items “innovation with a twist on the familiar.” That’s his plan in marketing too, by using Instagram and soon rolling out a mobile ordering app.

Teens’ brand preferences are as fragmented as their media habits. With cool new brands popping up overnight thanks to crowd funding and venture capital and the rebirth of the small business, there’s always something new to discover.

Though you may already use primary and secondary media research to guide your marketing strategy, you may be missing out on key information if you’re not measuring marketing effectiveness too.

The IAB and the MRC are both leading the charge for viewability in display advertising, but the only way this initiative will take hold and work is if media-buying agencies get on board.

A consortium of six companies announced today a cross-industry study to drive thought leadership in marketing to Hispanics. The consortium members include IRI, Latinum Network, Univision, Telemundo Media, UM, and Rentrak. The consortium will enable marketers to maximize the multi-platform impact of advertising to Hispanics by developing best practices around strategy and performance measurement. The consortium’s mandate is to help marketers, advertisers and retailers develop effective marketing strategies to best serve Hispanic consumers.

Every time I look around, we’re growing.  Latinos, that is, along with entities to which Latinos belong.  Two recent examples struck me as indicative.  By Carlos E. Cortés / Univision Consumer Insights

GO Veggie!, formerly Galaxy Nutritional Foods, has named Whitney Velasco-Aznar to its newly created role of Vice President of Marketing.

Millennials are known as a digitally savvy group, but does that mean that they view traditional ads as less effective? According to polling by Adroit Digital, many millennials don’t. When the January 2014 study asked US millennial smartphone users about the effectiveness of digital vs. traditional advertising, 36% said that digital ads were more effective; however, the percentage of those who said they were equally effective was close behind, cited by 28% of 18- to 33-year-olds.

The National Grocers Association (NGA) and the Center for Multicultural Science (CMS) recently conducted the first study to estimate how much the Hispanic shopper spends in the independent retail grocery channel.   The study found that Hispanics spend an estimated $22.8 billion in retail grocery stores (or 17% of the total estimated annual sales of the independent retail grocery channel).