Marketing

Reading an article in The Atlantic made me realize that one of the biggest barriers to successful brand-building is probably our own inherent bias to short-term outcomes. If so, what might we be able to do to offset that bias?  by Nigel Hollis

According to the latest study by ID Comms in partnership with the 4A’s released last week, U.S. advertisers are failing to get the most value from media pitches because of flawed processes and lack of communication. The study reminds me of a blog post that Toby Jenner (COO of Mediacom) released in September where he stated, “Want a better relationship? Run a better pitch process.” And as an agency search consultant for almost two decades at AAR Partners, I couldn’t agree more.  By Lisa Colantuono,  AAR Partners

Chapter Three:  African Americans: When once asked to define jazz, Louis Armstrong replied: “Man, if you don’t know, don’t mess with it.” The same could be said about race. For earlier generations, race, like religion or politics, was not seen as fair game for polite dinner conversation. At least not among whites. Things have always been different for African Americans, who at least in the company of each other, have always tended to talk freely about race and racism. Blacks have had their group identity forged in the fires of slavery and Jim Crow, a couple of words whites are not sure it’s even okay to mention. Race has been an integral part of the daily lives of most African Americans and its derivative, racism, is experienced in myriad forms: unemployment, incarceration, crime, getting turned down for loans, and missed taxicabs. For blacks, race has always been a subject that demands to be addressed.  By David Morse / New America Dimensions

Recent press reports have suggested that the $130 billion-plus media industry can simply pivot from Nielsen’s currency grade measurement with ease and take comfort in using alternative data sets to operate business as usual.  These suggestions are misguided and, at the worst, could be harmful to the stability of the industry and, at the very least, could if taken seriously diminish some important opportunities.

As people conduct ever more of their lives as consumers and social animals online, they leave telling and durable traces of their behaviors, values, and inclinations behind them in digital repositories. Marketers have not been slow to recognize the opportunities presented by this information or to capitalize on them.

iProspect released their fourth annual whitepaper, 2019 Future Focus: Searching for Trust, built to help marketers navigate and master the notions of truth and authenticity in the hyper-sensitive global media landscape today. The report predicts that those businesses grounded in credibility, relevance and reliability across all their marketing channels will see trust at the very foundation for their success in the digital economy.  

In a survey of 412 US client-side marketers conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 78% of respondents claimed to use an in-house agency, up from 58% in 2013. (An “in-house agency” is defined as a department, group, or person who has responsibilities that are typically performed by an external advertising or other communications agency.)

The new report finds that fast food, candy, sugary drinks, and unhealthy snacks represented 86 percent of food ad spending on Black-targeted TV programming, where Black consumers comprise the majority of viewers, and 82 percent of ad spending on Spanish-language TV, in 2017. According to researchers, food companies spent almost $11 billion in total TV advertising in 2017, including $1.1 billion on advertising in Black-targeted and Spanish-language TV programming.

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are on a rapid ascent, disrupting traditional retail. These digitally native brands are experts at cutting out costs and efficiently acquiring customers. They are also succeeding as “brands” in a very traditional sense—by identifying the unmet needs of modern consumers.

Chapter Two:  Hispanic Americans – There have been Hispanics living in the present-day United States since the Spanish started roaming around Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth. But it was the 1980 Census that led some white Americans to wonder whether the country was “browning.” The Census made headlines when it proclaimed that there were 14.6 million Hispanics living in the U.S., an increase of over 50 percent from 1970. By 1990, the number, largely driven by immigration, had increased to 22.4 million. Headlines were made again, big time, when the 2000 Census showed that there were 35.3 million, meaning that Hispanics had surpassed African Americans as the largest minority in the country. In 2018, that number was more than 60 million, over 18 percent of the U.S. population. The number of Hispanics in the U.S. is expected to grow to 106 million by 2050, at which time Hispanics will make up nearly 30 percent of the population.  By David Morse / New America Dimensions

Advertisers across industries share a common challenge: how to know which marketing activities are actually driving profit and which are wasting spend.  One way to answer these questions is a measurement approach called marketing mix modeling. Marketing mix modeling calculates the total effect that every marketing channel and its key dimensions, such as product and geography, have on sales and other performance metrics, while controlling for exogenous factors such as weather and seasonality that impact business performance.

No longer a futurist’s daydream, artificial intelligence (AI) is attracting significant investment and growing quickly. According to a December 2018 estimate from tech research firm Tractica, the direct and indirect application of AI software generated $5.4 billion in worldwide revenues in 2017, and is forecast to produce a whopping $105.8 billion by 2025.

In this video, Keith Reinhard, Chairman Emeritus, DDB, states, “We over-appreciate data and under-appreciate data”, and he is right. We tend to over-appreciate the data which tells us what people do, and under-appreciate the data that tells us why they do it.  by Nigel Hollis

In 1979, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter launched his Five Forces framework with a powerful statement: “The essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition, yet it is easy to view competition too narrowly and too pessimistically.”

Consumers today have infinite options when it comes to premium content, which presents a unique challenge for brands and advertisers: attention is finite, and it’s far too easy for consumers to tune out a brand’s message if it isn’t relevant to them or their interests.

To really understand the attitudinal power of brands we need to look beyond the absolute scores and instead examine relative strengths and weaknesses. If more people say good things about a brand than claim to use it then that difference represents an opportunity to grow, provided that association has a positive relationship with business outcomes.  by Nigel Hollis

If marketers understand the need for a balanced approach to understanding performance, why do they still focus on short-term sales as the primary indicator of campaign success?

In its definitive CMO tenure report, Winmo finds that female CMOs, which make up about 42 percent of tenures across industries, rotate up and out of roles five months sooner than their male counterparts (37.5 months vs. 43 months).

Brand choice is driven by primarily by emotion and feeling. People don’t make brand choices based on logical, persuasive marketing arguments (as many in our industry still like to believe), rather the more you feel for a brand, the more likely you are to buy it. But is this equally true for all product categories?  by Nigel Hollis

Choice has always been coveted among consumers. When it comes to the media universe, the abundance in devices, services and content has never been more prevalent, which in turn is opening up a complex web of consumption behaviors. With all of this technology at consumers’ literal fingertips, which of these platforms are they focused on?