Agency

Twenty-eight years! Why did we wait so long to tie the knot? Well, it wasn’t legal until June 26, of 2015. But we could have had a non-legally binding commitment ceremony or filed to be a civil union years ago.  But another way to look at it is, why get married at all? It won’t change who we are and what we feel for each other, not really. Is it for the benefits? Sure, that’s a small part of it. Is it to declare our love for each other, and announce it to the world? Okay, that too. Part of the matter is, and this is why we’ve waited so long, and why we’re doing it at all: same sex partners have fought hard for the right to marry. It was a stunning achievement, something nearly unthinkable 28 years ago, certainly unthinkable when I was a boy growing up in the blue-collar mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire, in the 1970s.  By David Morse – New America Dimensions

Growth has become hard to come by for many industries around the globe, and uneasy political and economic environments have made it even more difficult for agencies as companies curtail their ad and marketing spending.  By David Hohman, Managing Director, Nielsen Agency Solutions

If you are running a big brand it must seem like you have a large target painted on your back. Every other brand in the category wants a share of what you already have. And stories of big brands losing out to newcomers are everywhere. But are big brands really dying?  by Nigel Hollis

The pace of change in today’s corporate world is astonishing. A quick glance at the most highly valued companies of 2017 compared to those in 1990 will make obvious how rapidly things have changed on Wall Street and board rooms across the nation. In 1990, the most highly valued companies in the U.S. included mostly petroleum, automotive and prior generation electronics whereas today, companies like Apple, Comcast, Tesla, Facebook, Google and Amazon have quickly taken prominent positions as employers, innovators and highly sought-after blue chip stocks. 

By César M Melgoza, Founder & CEO of Geoscape

Is it blasphemous to say CMOs have outlived their usefulness? Marketing looks nothing like it did 10 years ago, yet the title of CMO still lingers like that well-worn suit in the back of your closet.

US consumers are spending more time with their digital devices than ever before, and that holds true while they’re already watching something else. eMarketer estimates 177.7 million adults will regularly use a second-screen device while watching TV this year, an increase of 5.1% vs. 2016.

To most industry experts, at forums like ANA and elsewhere, the only sure thing in advertising these days seems to be changed. Forecasters keep painting a future about the profitability of digital over analog and all things; Google competes successfully with the Global giants of Advertising; and Facebook reveals the powers of the 6-second spot. Where are we these days? Enter the growing content-creation activity by agencies.

Category winners in the 17th annual Association of National Advertisers’ Multicultural Excellence Awards competition were announced.

At the start of 2017, the new administration and Congress set tax reform as one of their highest priorities. As work on that began in earnest, it became clear that the reduction in the full deductibility of advertising was once again in play.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• We shop to fill the void of our existential tedium.
• We live to shop and we shop to live.
• We shop, therefore we are.
• Shop, return, repeat.

What customers want and what businesses think they want are often two different things. Here’s what customers are looking for.  Anyone who has gotten an unsolicited and irrelevant offer related to something they’ve done online knows that creepy feeling that “someone is watching me.” This kind of reaction is the third rail of today’s drive to personalize interactions with customers.  By Julien Boudet, Brian Gregg, Jane Wong, and Gustavo Schuler

A new fiscal year is in sight and you still have no measurable Hispanic or multicultural budget. You’ve shown the C-suite the purchasing power numbers, the demographic trends, and the generational trends to no avail. Well, you’re not alone; 49% of respondents in a recent CMO Council study admitted they do not have a multicultural marketing initiative in place.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that I would come back to the idea that there is a right time to advertise to someone. Right now the marketing world seems to have decided that the right time to get a message to someone is as close to point of purchase as possible, but is that really true?  by Nigel Hollis

What are the steps that creative ad agencies can take to rekindle revenue growth?  We recall that agency fees have been under downwards pressure for quite some time due to brand globalization, client obsession with “shareholder value,” the rise of procurement, the fragmentation of media, the scrapping of AOR relationships and the stagnation of brand growth.  These factors have driven fees downwards and reduced the length of client relationships.  The agency scramble for new business has pitted agency against agency in an industry price war.  Where is this headed?  Can any agency “break out” of this deadly cycle and join the Madison Avenue Makeover Club?  Is there a way to restore ad agency revenue growth?  By Michael Farmer

Marketing in Spanish in the U.S. may not seem like an innovation from our purview in 2017, but when the first recognized full service Hispanic advertising agency in the United States opened up in 1962 it was a paradigm-shifting marketing event. It was one of the first times national brands and companies marketed their goods and services in the U.S. using a language other than English. Again, upon retrospect this doesn’t seem like a significant innovation when we look at the immigration patterns and changing demographics at the time but for the courageous few that had the foresight and business savvy at the time to look at this shifting tide and create the business case, it was an innovation that birthed a multibillion dollar industry, Hispanic Advertising.  by Mario Carrasco

The future of agencies is less about actually preparing for the future, but making changes today in the way we work and how we deliver results for our clients. Most of the advertising industry is grappling with the idea of full-service shops versus unbundled, more focused agencies; when in reality it does not matter where we sit or what the agency focus is because this isn’t going to help us overcome the key issues we’re facing.  by Keith Mackay

Recent studies from key players in the world of ad tech tell quite different stories of how video ads seem to be performing, based on completion rates, viewability rates, clickthroughs and more.

2016 may very well be remembered as the year that America’s racial divide became undone. The ubiquity of shootings of unarmed black men.  The ascent of Black Lives Matter, not to mention Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.  The candidacy of Donald J. Trump and its nativist, prejudiced rhetoric.  Pick any random evening, turn on the nightly news, and you are sure to see evidence that, especially in racial terms, the country seems to be coming apart at the seams.  By David Morse – New America Dimensions

Culture shock is another important factor that has played a role in the development of the New Latino segment. Culture shock can be defined as “a meta reaction both to strangeness and to the awkward feelings provoked by strangeness in an escalation of anxiety” (Korzenny et al., 2017).  Culture shock, as the name implies, occurs when one enters a culture different than his or her own and discovers he or she does not know how to navigate it appropriately. When Latinos come into the U. S., they begin to question their host culture as well as the culture they left behind.  By Alessandra Noli  – Florida State University / Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication

I have already written about this before, and I think this is probably one of the biggest misconceived concepts marketers have in this country. One that keeps fueling the “one size fits all” Total Market approach.  By assessing their choice for headline, even the Pew Research team show a little bias towards the chart on your right side (Share of Latinos who Speak Spanish) instead of focusing on the chart on the left (Absolute number of Latinos who speak Spanish).  By Isaac Mizrahi – Co President, Chief Operating Officer at Alma