Hasta La Creative!

Driven largely by business buyers’ preferences to buy more products and services online — as well as improved e-commerce technologies — b-to-b e-commerce sales in the U.S. will grow from $780 billion this year to an estimated $1.1 trillion by 2020, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

The report, “U.S. B2B E-Commerce Forecast: 2015 To 2020,” projects that e-commerce will account for 12.1% of all b-to-b sales in the U.S. in the next five years, up from 9.3% this year.

“There are two types of b-to-b buyers: You have empowered end users who buy their own travel, printer toner for their home office, etc. and charge it back to the company, then you have professional buyers — procurement buyers — who are buying in mass,” said Andy Hoar, principal analyst at Forrester and author of the report.

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Swipe, swipe, Bud Light.

Tinder, the red-hot dating app from media powerhouse IAC, ran its maiden paid ads on Thursday. App users surfing for, um, interlocutors — they swipe right or left, the increasingly popular mobile navigation scheme that Tinder helped explode — will now possibly encouter a mobile video spot for Bud Light’s “Whatever USA” campaign. The two companies are testing various video lengths for the ads.

Anheuser-Busch Inbev is entering the second year of a big digital push for the brand’s splashy marketing stunt. Last summer, it orchestrated a surprise takeover of a town to be christened Whatever, USA, letting consumers compete on social media to win an invitation to a boozy party there. (The winner, Crested Butte, Colo, was not altogether pleased.) Tinder users (of drinking age) can, once they hit the Bud Light spots, move to a landing page and enter to win admission to the brand’s destination this summer.

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Last month, Canadian agency john st. launched a campaign entitled “Kids Read Mean Tweets,” which riffed on the popular “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” segment Jimmy Kimmel Live for the Canadian Safe School Network. Well, offering up takes on the segment appears to be a trend in PSAs out of Canada, as Leo Burnett Toronto has created the similarly-minded “The Homeless Read Mean Tweets” for Raising the Roof Canada.

Whereas “Kids Read Mean Tweets” started relatively mild and light-hearted and became progressively more brutal as the spot went on, demonstrating the emotional toll of cyberbullying, Leo Burnett’s effort, while also increasing in intensity throughout the spot, is rough right from the get-go. After viewers are informed that what follows are real mean tweets, read by people living with homelessness, a young couple reads, “I hate the homeless. I don’t feel sorry for you. If you want change, then let me throw it as hard as I can at your dirty face.” It’s hard to imagine anyone saying something so despicable in person, but once again Twitter proves a cesspool for anonymous bullying. The horrific tweets keep coming as viewers see the emotional toll they take on those reading them, which gets more and more heartbreaking over the course of the ad’s duration, becoming increasingly hard to watch (as it should be).

While the framework for the ad is hardly original, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t quite emotionally affecting, humanizing an issue that many ignore (and which doesn’t have the same in-vogue status as the issue of cyberbullying). There’s also a campaign website with further videos, exploring the reactions of those involved as well as their personal histories.

Millennials travel differently than previous generations — both for leisure and for business — and hotels have been slow to adapt their offerings in ways that appeal to millennials. Teresa Lee, an analyst — and self-described millennial — at hospitality researcher HVS took at swipe at the industry in a 2014 report by asking this simple question about the industry’s attempts to modernize: “Is this 2009?”

It’s no surprise.Hotels are trying to appeal to the under-35 set, but they’re going at it in the wrong way. While brands like Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt have begun embracing technology, modernization isn’t solely about technology. It’s not just about allowing guests to check in via phones, equipping staff with tablets, or inventing robot butlers. It’s not even about having a great ad campaign.

It’s about rethinking the experiences. Millennials aren’t simply a “technology” generation that salivates over technology for its own sake. When millennials talk about Airbnb, do they talk about the booking process? No, they talk about the unique accommodations. When they talk about Uber, do they talk about the app experience? No, they talk about how great it is to not have to physically call or wave down a cab. Both brands rely on technology, sure, but technology is not the story. Technology is simply the enabler of new experiences.

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