Marketing

To better understand current trends in the appointment and turnover of marketing officers, Russell Reynolds Associates tracked and analyzed 214 notable, publicly-disclosed marketing leadership moves in the first half of 2019.

Most CMOs are familiar with the “language of the C-suite.” Tasked with more responsibility for the entire company, CMOs and marketers have learned that words that are appropriate to use with their peers and other marketers — clicks, views, opens, downloads — don’t work in the C-suite. That’s where being able to effectively communicate using words and phrases such as “profit and loss” (P&L), “return on investment” (ROI), and other finance-related lingo is the cost of entry.

Fueling the blur of combat is a radical shift in brand growth models. Within the span of most executives’ careers, advances in technology have reshaped how consumers engage with brands. In the US and UK, more than 60% of consumers now discover products online, and 85% of millennials trust reviews from a faceless stranger more than traditional advertising.

The retail experience of the future is personalized, but what actually resonates with consumers? How can retailers deliver personalized experiences at scale? In this episode, research experts Joe Beier and Rachel Bonsignore from research firm GfK share insights from their latest study.

The first step to winning a person’s heart and mind is being relevant, engaging, and eager to capture her attention. It’s the same drill for advertising. Above all, advertising creative is the most important factor for influencing behavior and driving sales.

‘How will the end of Game of Thrones impact HBO’s subscriber base?’ was a question frequently heard over the last few months as the show wrapped up its final season. It isn’t an unusual question. Channels often face a wave of cancellations when a big show ends – or even after a season finale.  by Anjali Puri – Global Director, Qualitative Offer and Expertise / Kantar

The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) announced the creation of a new division dedicated to ensuring that the industry’s measurement systems are aligned to the business and measurement agenda of marketers.

Hickies promises to make the burden of untied laces a thing of the past. Winc delivers bottles of wine personally customized for a particular palate. Quip sends a quarterly replacement head for an electric toothbrush.  These are just a few of the hundreds of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that have emerged in recent years, with a business model based on bypassing traditional retail outlets and reaching consumers primarily through digital sales and marketing channels, including e-commerce and social media.

Fragile global economy shows mild fractures. Concerns have risen around the health of the global economy since we published the mid-year update to our global advertising forecasts at the beginning of June.

My colleague Daren Poole pointed me to a study by the Financial Times (FT) and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) designed to understand why the balance of marketing spend has shifted from brand-building to performance campaigns. It suggests that poor knowledge of how brands create value over the short and long-term may be at fault.  by Nigel Hollis

Marketers can reap big payoffs by tapping social media influencers, of course. But using them isn’t cheap. Brands can expect to pay influencers $1,000 per 100,000 followers on Instagram and upwards of $200,000 for a celebrity who has more than 100 million followers. Plus, the field is noisy and cluttered: Social media platforms like Instagram are teeming with both bigger and lesser-known celebrities paid by brands to promote products.  That’s why an increasing number of marketers are turning to nano influencers, or nanos for short.

The foundational strategic thinking behind media planning is simple: What percentage of a target audience does a brand need to reach and how many times does it need to reach that percentage in order to accomplish its business objectives? Unfortunately, this basic thinking has been lost in the dense fog of programmatic innovation, hidden behind the very tools designed to bring this thinking to life.

Earn your ethics in advertising certificate – register now! On Oct. 10, the AAF will present a FREE 90-minute webinar that will provide insight into the importance of creating ethical advertising in a competitive business environment. From consumer privacy rights and creating cultural value systems to affirmative disclosures and the regulations behind truth and transparency, this course covers a variety of information geared to educate participants on how to best conduct business justly. #FreeAdEthicsDay webinar will be presented at three different times: 12:30 p.m. ET, 3 p.m. ET and 6:30 p.m. ET.

In an era of media overload and ad-blocking, brands are increasingly enlisting celebrities to do their messaging legwork for them via social media. And they’re not just asking celebs to be spokespeople. They’re looking for ambassadors that can reach audiences in ways that are authentic to their own personal brands, rather than those that are affiliated with the products and services they’re paid to represent.

It’s time we speak frankly about a very personal matter: your privacy on the internet.  By Jordan Mitchell – Senior Vice President, Membership and Operations / IAB Tech Lab

Get smart on the ways the Internet of Things is affecting the industry today, and explore ways the technology may influence marketing in the future.

According to the official U.S. Census Bureau’s projections, next year, 2020, will be the year when the majority of our country’s population of 17-years-olds and under will come from a minority background, most of them from a Latino, African-American or Asian-American ethnicity.  By Isaac Mizrahi – Co-President of ALMA

The U.S. Multicultural Media Forecast 2019 is a new study conducted by PQ Media on behalf of ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) that identifies a clear opportunity for more marketers to engage multicultural consumers to drive business growth. The following provides ten interesting insights from the study.  By Bill Duggan

Driven by gains in education and greater access to financial resources, the estimated buying power of US Hispanics is poised for growth. But Hispanic consumers and their shopping habits are often misunderstood or overlooked by marketers.  US Hispanics are digitally driven shoppers. We forecast that 68.6% of US Hispanics ages 14 and older will make at least one digital purchase in 2019—just slightly lower than the figure for the total population, 71.5%.

Chief marketing officers have arguably the toughest job in the C-suite. They need to stay abreast of consumer trends and evolving expectations, advances in technology, and the latest innovations — all while being the voice of the customer to ensure experience is the organization’s top priority.  It can be hard to keep up.