Marketing

In our 2020 Media Trends & Predictions, one of the 12 trends we have identified is that influencer marketing needs to grow up. It’s currently going through its challenging teen phase. Fake followers, unconvincing endorsements, lack of transparency about whether it’s an #ad or a #gifted product, are all cause for concern. But rather than slamming the door shut on the mess, we need to gently coax it into understanding the opportunities.  by Jane Ostler Global Head of Media, Insights – Kantar

Have you felt that everyone around you is getting angrier and that the news is getting worse? Caroline McCarthy says you can blame the advertising industry. Learn more about how advertising is fueling the battle for our attention and feeding the current dysfunction in media.

Marketers often talk about a brand being a set of memories and associations in people’s minds. But I suspect most of us exaggerate the strength of those associations. Most of the time people’s brand associations are dormant, waiting to be triggered by something relevant, at which point they combine to generate a sense of for what the brand stands.  by Nigel Hollis

Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tzu once said “When you know both yourself as well as your competition, you are never in danger. To know yourself and not others gives you half a chance of winning.” I think you’d be hard pressed to find a marketer or insights professional in the consumer packaged goods/retail industry who disagrees with the basic premise of this statement. That’s primarily because a foundational goal of most research is to understand the strength of our business position in a competitive context. And to assess our businesses against others, we calculate the strength of our brand affinity, measure our retail sales, and qualify our potential innovations via concept testing with normative benchmarks that predict performance in a competitive environment.

In this post, I suggested that all sorts of occurrences could trigger people’s impression of a brand. However, some occurrences have far more influence than others. Interaction with a brand, checking it our prior to purchase or using it once chosen will confirm or deny initial impressions.  by Nigel Hollis

New words stick when they come from below, and respond to a real need.
 

What would the industry do if it heard almost a fourth of Nielsen’s panel were bots: frauds, robotic fictions, not real people?

The Culture Marketing Council: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing (CMC) announced its 2019 Hispanic Market Guide, the most comprehensive resource on the U.S. Hispanic market, is now available to download.

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U.S. multicultural media revenues generated from advertising and marketing aimed at Hispanic, African and Asian Americans are projected to grow at an accelerated 6.3% to $28.72 billion in 2020, representing the fastest growth of this burgeoning market in eight years, according to new research from PQ Media. Key growth drivers are expected to be incremental shifts of ad and marketing dollars to multicultural media by savvy brands, as well as record media spending related to the U.S. presidential election and the Summer Olympics in Japan, according to PQ Media’s U.S. Multicultural Media Forecast 2019.

With Christmas less than a week away, retailers are getting ready to close the books on a solid holiday season. Several factors at play could affect the final results.

Throughout the last 30 years, teen girls have grown up watching adults play high school students in films and on TV. But the tide is turning, and teen girls are seeing a more authentic depiction of themselves on their screens. Indeed, the rise of teen artists like Billie Eilish and Hunter Schafer is challenging traditional norms of what it means to be a teen girl in America. Along those same lines, teen activists such as Greta Thunberg and Emma González are leading social change and inspiring this younger generation to make a difference in the world as activists.

Technology will continue to redefine the media landscape in 2020, creating opportunities and challenges for marketers. As ad spend on social and tech platforms continues to grow; technology innovations will also enable a renaissance in real-world engagement. According to Kantar’s global 2020 Media Trends & Predictions report marketers and media owners will be challenged to develop the skills, engagement models and measurement capabilities to meaningfully engage consumers in the crowded media landscape.

Hispanic ad dollars are only 6% of the total U.S. ad spend, yet Hispanics comprise over 19% of the total population. This represents a significant discrepancy and a missed opportunity for brands and marketers.  by Karla Fernandez Parker

As America marches steadily toward a majority-minority population, culture and authenticity will play larger roles in how products and services are developed and marketed. Authenticity influences culture, but data suggests that it is not a key driver of brand choice.  by Mario Carrasco – Think Now

A long time ago and far, far away (but admittedly not in a different galaxy) I saw a print ad. It showed a car and compared its performance to other makes. I still remember that print ad. It was visually boring, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the memory of it is one of the reasons I now drive a Subaru nearly 20 years later.  by Nigel Hollis

For marketers eager to reach generation Alpha, the story is instructive. Born — and yet-to-be born — between 2010 and 2025, Alphas are conditioned to an always-on society and the ongoing screenification of culture. Dubbed Alphas by Australian social scientist Mark McCrindle, this is the first generation entirely born in the 21st century — “alpha” is the first letter of the Greek alphabet — and Alphas probably knew their way around an iPad before they learned how to walk. Mostly the progeny of tech-savvy millennials, they live in a digital second skin and take for granted a connected world in which they have 24-7 access to a constant flow of information. Equally important — even though they’re barely old enough to cross the street unaccompanied — they have an adult-sized influence on their household’s purchasing behavior.

For a long time, demographic information (such as age, gender and location) was the only way companies could segment their customer base. Today that is no longer the case. The wealth of consumer data now available means brands can layer attitudinal and behavioral insights on top of demographic data to paint a far richer, more nuanced picture of real people.

2020 ends the ‘General market era’ glorified by Madison Ave. where my career started, and Minority-Majority is officially an oxymoron. The states driving our economy are already majority-Multicultural, Gen Z will be in 2020, Millennials by 2025, Gen X before 2030, the U.S. by 2040. Over half of all USA HHs today are Multicultural or mixed races, over half of Hispanics under age 29, over half of Blacks grew up as digital natives, and Asians are the most affluent and educated of any racial group with $110K average HH income. The Census will only reinforce the urgency of revisioning these high value super-consumers who will account for $4.2T buying power next year and all future growth, while Non-Hispanic-Whites decline at an accelerated rate as deaths exceed births, putting brands that don’t do proper Multicultural marketing at risk.  By Liz Castells-Heard, CEO & Chief Strategy Officer, INFUSION

US Ad Market remains strong, but rest of the world slows down.