After getting major backlash, Samsung is apologizing for its recent ad for its Galaxy fitness watch that featured a woman of color going for a run at 2 a.m. She is smiling, running through street after street, continuing to smile at the occasional strangers she comes across. She is seemingly oblivious to the fact that…
Pre-pandemic, Cannes was where the top minds of the industry gathered. It was a place to meet talent, get smart, mingle with clients, court prospects and test your creative chops. If you were lucky enough to go, you went. It was never a question. But the world has changed, and so has marketing. Of course,…
May is Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Month and should be a time to celebrate the rich history, influence and contributions of the AAPI community. Yet we’re still seeing a growing number of anti-Asian hate crimes at a national level, which is impacting the overall mental health of the community. According to the Center for…
When it comes to high-profile sporting events, there are several that come to mind for marketing and brand professionals: the Super Bowl, Formula 1, the Olympics and the World Cup, to name a few. All of these events share the same goal: Make an impact to attract the attention span of new audiences, specifically younger…
The mobile gaming industry has exploded over the past few years. According to the 2021 Global Games Market Report, the global gaming market is now worth more than $98 billion. It is projected to go beyond a whopping $272 billion in the next decade. Mobile gaming is now more financially lucrative and diverse in audience…
The metaverse is a seemingly endless playground of possibilities for advertisers. Luxury brands creating NFTs to connect one-of-a-kind assets with products to build loyalty. Brands translating virtual experiences into real-world commerce. Musicians putting on concerts for many hundreds of thousands more than would be possible in a real-world venue. When we think of the metaverse,…
AAPI. APA. NHPI. Have we lost the thread on who these acronyms represent? The breadth of the Asian experience is as diverse as its geography. But as terminology evolved, monolithic groupings–like “Asian American”–became popular shortcuts to refer to people who represent the majority of the world’s population. Shortcuts are antithetical to the work of creating…
When our head recruiter speaks to a promising candidate, she asks about qualifications and what they seek in a team culture. If things are going well, she’ll ask this: “So, do you have a side hustle?” No, it’s not a trick question, but part of our recruitment and retention strategy. Today, one in three working…
Once news of a leaked Supreme Court brief overturning Roe v. Wade came out at the beginning of the week, brand reactions have been swift, and even surprising. Axios reported companies including Citi, Apple, Yelp and Amazon said they would pay for employees to travel to access abortion care when they need to. Announcements like…
Humans have a built-in flaw: They have difficulty imagining their “future selves.” A recent study from the University of California highlighted that, when participants were asked to imagine their future self, MRI scans showed the exact same synapses fire as when those same participants were asked to envisage German politician Angela Merkel. Because they are…
“You people are all successful,” a former white manager once said to me. “Getting promoted faster than white men and making more money than all of us. We don’t need to be focused on how we can help our Asian colleagues here. They have more than enough help.” To this day, those comments my former…
As most Americans are attempting to put the pandemic behind them (depending on state mandates) and looking ahead to brighter times, this is not the case for everyone. The past few years have seen a surge of violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, largely due to the anti-Asian rhetoric and language associated…
Marketers are obsessed with the metaverse. Companies and brands are spending millions of dollars now to stake out territory, test protocols, create NFTs and gain expertise in blockchain and cryptocurrency. But consumers don’t really care that much about the metaverse. At least not yet. To many baby boomers, “metaverse” is just a buzzword that has…
Earlier this year, serious conversations continued to swirl around the fate of many American colleges and universities. It’s no secret that Gen Z is shaping the future of higher ed. Schools have seen significant drops in enrollment and retention since the pandemic turned colleges into “Zoom Universities.” Though many have returned to in-person or hybrid…
In an industry that increasingly worships the constant hustle, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the rat race–much to the detriment of our mental and physical health. The pressure to seem happy and successful on social media is no longer exclusive to picture-perfect influencers with wavy blonde hair and bronze-tanned skin. These…
Growing up, I wasn’t one of the cool Abercrombie & Fitch kids. It wasn’t a brand that reflected me, spoke to me or included kids who looked like me. Abercrombie & Fitch was selling a dream, a fantasy that celebrated and centered around thin, white, confident, cool, all-American kids. The brand prided itself on building…
No one connects with an influencer’s audience better than that influencer. For students of old-school marketing and advertising, it might seem odd to include someone who gained 20,000 TikTok followers by posting cat videos as part of a marketing campaign. But no one else reaches those 20,000 followers in that way, and about that topic,…
For two straight years, we watched ecommerce sales boom as a result of rapidly changing consumer buying habits. And as a result, the 2021 Q4 shopping season saw several brands and platforms testing live shopping to further enhance the online shopping experience. In 2019, live shopping generated approximately $60 billion in total global sales, with…
For as long as people have browsed the Internet, advances in ad tech have made it easier for advertisers to reach their intended audience with ads. But that unfettered growth in targeting and data collection ultimately led to this point in time where privacy advocates and governments are clawing that capability back. Facebook’s recent less-than-stellar…
In January 2022, I had a miscarriage at 10 weeks along. The farther removed I get from that horrific month, the more I’ve opened up to others. The more people have told me they’ve been through it too. In the first few days after getting the news, my social media feeds were still filled with…
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