Agency

As the back-to-school shopping season heats up, a new report from Morning Consult finds a majority of parents plan on spending at least $200 on their child’s back-to-school shopping.

Millennials have been the focus of advertisers, retailers and media for over a decade, but as influential as this group has been, meeting millennials’ expectations has proven difficult.  

One of the most significant ad industry events of 2018 to date has been Martin Sorrell’s departure from WPP. That has opened up discussions about what it means for the future of big holding companies and agency models going forward. Not only is there a trend towards “unbundling” agencies from behemoth holding companies, but “the agency model of the future” is a topic of constant speculation. With declining revenues, shrinking margins, and unprecedented competition, it seems a given that the agency holding company model is no longer tenable as-is, and the traditional agency model may not be either.  By Mark Duval / Duval Partnership

AdsWizz announced that Univision Communications Inc. (UCI) has partnered with AdsWizz AudioMax platform to power programmatic ad buying for Uforia, its radio and music streaming app for Latinos.

I was going to write about the Facebook/Google duopoly, but I got sidetracked by this question: If Google and Facebook are a duopoly, what is the market they are controlling?  by Gord Hotchkiss

In marketing, it’s important to keep pace with demographic change. Even better to stay ahead. Right now, for instance, significant changes in the U.S. cultural landscape have made multicultural marketing imperative.  By Mario X. Carrasco is Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research

In a previous post I mentioned that there were some disturbing trends lurking in WARC’s analysis of campaign trends from this year’s Cannes Lions. To my mind those trends say a lot about the sorry state of marketing practice today.  by Nigel Hollis

You’d think that by the time you make it to the “C-suite” — which, for me, happened just a few weeks ago — that you’d have everything figured out.  Not necessarily. No matter how much one has grown in her or his career, there is always so much more to learn.  At the recent She Runs It Annual Multicultural Alliance Bootcamp, where I had the honor of joining a panel called “Journey to the C-Suite,” learn is exactly what I did.  By Helen Lin

Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization. Top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms.  By Oliver Bossert, Alena Kretzberg, and Jürgen Laartz

Augmented reality (AR) adds visual overlays on the physical world and is usually viewed through a smartphone. Virtual reality (VR) depicts a self-contained, navigable 3D world and is usually experienced through a specialized motion-detecting headset, says Barry Levine on July 24. Just as marketers have learned when a project should employ a website and when it should utilize an app, so they are beginning to understand when to choose AR or VR.

Determining audience “identity” has become a major priority over the past year for U.S. marketers, many of whom plan to increase their investment in finding and developing identity solutions.

Rising internet penetration, denser urban locations, faster paced lifestyles and challenging working hours are adding more and more layers of complexity to consumers’ lives. According to the World Health Organization, “workplace stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century,” and multiple agencies have tracked the steady rise of anxiety related illnesses around the world. Consumers are feeling more stretched than ever before, and are increasingly striving for convenient solutions which help to simplify their busy lives.

New American Community Survey questions revised in 2016 show a stunning increase in reported mobile broadband usage – strong evidence that previous questions were not adequately capturing how U.S. households access the Internet.

Johnson’s has radically transformed its 124-year-old brand to meet the needs and preferences of modern parents.

Televisión Dominicana announced that two of the Dominican Republic’s most beloved comedians, Raymond Pozo and Miguel Cespedes, will be joining the network on its float at the 2018 Dominican Day Parade in Manhattan on Sunday, August 12, 2018.

In 2018, it’s a given that agencies must be able to connect their creative excellence to data and technology. Picking up where that post left off, I want to cover the top three things that will hurt your agency’s prospects for new business now. My list includes the top concerns and challenges we see coming up repeatedly for agencies.  By Mark Duval / Duval Partnership
 

It sometimes seems as if we’re living in a post-trust age, when nothing and no one is beyond question or reproach. Granted, there are plenty of people and organizations that have been guilty of abusing our trust, and the damage can be serious.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is more than just a job-eliminating technology. It also has the potential to change how people approach creative work.

The major trade associations representing the advertising industry — are jointly writing to express opposition to the addition of the new census question that asks, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

Personalized communication with every customer is the future of marketing. McKinsey partners Julien Boudet and Kai Vollhardt say it’s easier than many marketers think, if you begin with the data you have.  By Julien Boudet and Kai Vollhardt