The beating heart of the creative services industry is people. Human capital is the greatest asset of any creative service company. However, as an industry, we are seeing average agency turnover rates that hover around 30%. Staff costs represent the single largest expense area on an agency P&L, so staffing and team-building represent a significant…
By now, you’ve probably heard about the fractional CMO–a marketing leader contracted to work a limited number of hours a week instead of as a full-time executive. The fractional CMO is a solution to a problem, and it can be a good one. Companies get CMO-level expertise at a reduced rate, and CMOs get better…
American politicians are desperate to be fluent in the language of the internet, a desire that reflects a larger trend in politics: that politicians can’t just be leaders anymore. They have to be influencers. And they’re tapping into the creator economy to engineer virality in a way that translates to the polls. Online creators are…
The U.S. election charges full steam ahead now that both conventions are over, as “We the People” anxiously count down to Nov. 5 to determine the fate of our Union. Simultaneously, it is becoming a masterclass in marketing. While political campaigns have long utilized data-driven targeting and sophisticated marketing techniques (as seen with Cambridge Analytica’s…
I’ve never met a CMO or any high-level executive who doesn’t wrestle with a nagging fear of being “found out” or wonder if they are truly up to the task. A fear that is probably not helped by the fact that CMOs have the shortest average tenure in all C-suite at 3.5 years. The truth…
Search is undergoing a profound transformation. With the recent announcement of OpenAI’s SearchGPT moving into beta, Google looking to insert ads into AI Overviews, and Bing revamping its own AI search results to include citations, marketers are scrambling to prepare for a completely new customer journey where classic keyword speak and reporting are likely to…
Social media managers have no shortage of advice on how to do their jobs better. Everyone with an Instagram account and a pulse think they know how to run a brand social media account best. There are countless blogs, newsletters, and experts offering “tips and tricks,” questionable algorithm hacks, thoughts on trends, and other advice…
The generation we call the “Next Gen” is approaching content in a fundamentally different way from past demographics; it’s seen as a notoriously difficult group to capture for any meaningful period. But the one thing that keeps them where they are, that grabs their attention for longer than most sports broadcasts or primetime TV shows…
The global political landscape has never been noisier. As ideology often makes way for personality, general elections worldwide have ended in surprise, polarized the electorate like never before, and seen politicians use language that would previously have been unacceptable. The fire and brimstone of social media discourse has spilled into the real world, creating a…
Many marketing strategists believe increasing ad spend is the best way to raise awareness and conversion. This blanket approach to messaging attempts to find the venues with the most eyeballs and tell the most compelling stories. But if there is one lesson to be learned from the last decade, people respond far better to messaging…
As in many break rooms around the world, the film It Ends With Us has taken my team of multi-generational, diverse, and wickedly smart staffers down a rabbit hole of questions, comments and strong responses. My 16-year-old daughter’s rave review of the film eventually brought me to the TikTok storytimes and Instagram detectives sleuthing out…
Beyond Meat, once the darling of the alternative protein category, reported an 18% decline in revenue for 2023, despite heavily discounting prices in the U.S. This sobering downward revenue spiral for Beyond has continued in 2024, a stark contrast to the heyday of astronomical valuations in the plant-based meat industry just a few short years…
When I sat down to watch the prime-time broadcast of the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony with my three young children, we were excited. 9% of Team USA, like them, are of Asian Pacific heritage: 22 men and 29 women across 18 sports. And yet, not once were any of the Asian Pacific athletes featured…
Brands are feeling some whiplash these days when it comes to consumer behavior. Where just a handful of years ago consumers were throwing around cash without a care, today they’re much more nuanced and less predictable in their post-Covid, inflation-cautious, anxiety-ridden spending. Of course, brand performance, alongside consumer behavior, is constantly evolving. But one thing…
In less than 100 days, Americans will be headed to the polls to vote for either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. The last 100 days have been filled with events we couldn’t have predicted, namely President Joe Biden announcing he won’t seek reelection…
Remember MySpace? If the memory proves to be a bit hazy, don’t fret. Filmmaker Sean Wang vividly brings the user experience to life on the big screen (angst feelings and all) through his coming-of-age film, DiDi. DiDi marks Wang’s first feature-length directorial debut, first making waves at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won…
Remember MySpace? If the memory proves to be a bit hazy, don’t fret. Filmmaker Sean Wang vividly brings the user experience to life on the big screen (angst feelings and all) through his coming-of-age film, DiDi. DiDi marks Wang’s first feature-length directorial debut, first making waves at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won…
In today’s workforce, there is a divisiveness around whether AI will benefit or harm jobs. Will it improve productivity? Or will it replace human beings? What if it did both? And for the greater good? Enter Sheila Lirio Marcelo. In 2006, Marcelo founded Care.com, an online platform that helps families find care for children, senior…
It’s been a strange few days for brand safety, from the initial news of Elon Musk’s X lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media to the shock that GARM would be shutting down. What’s surprising is not the fact that it had happened–as a podcast advertising leader, I’ve seen firsthand how the org’s approach…
Every Olympic season is a chance to get obsessed with some sport you just learned about, cry over an athlete from a place you didn’t know about winning gold, and generally get worked up at a perfect Simone Biles floor routine. It wasn’t long ago (circa 2010s) when the Olympics meant catching the games at…
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
