Eight years ago, I was lucky enough to be working alongside John McCarus at Digitas, who co-founded the Digital Content NewFronts and built them into the annual ritual they are today. Back then, digital video was still an exotic investment for most clients and marketers. It was a bold move to suggest–let alone execute–the concept…
Upfront marketplaces drive price discovery, empower buyers and sellers to do long-term planning and facilitate premium content creation. Rather than resetting the marketplace at an annual event, publishers should embrace upfront strategies throughout the year. What’s wrong with annual upfronts? Annual upfronts are, by definition, out of date. Once prices are set, the annual rate…
My palms are sweaty. My knees are weak. There’s no vomit on my sweater, but there might as well be with the way my nerves are screaming for some sort of release. It’s like the battle scene from 8 Mile, except I’m in a meeting room inside a New York agency and the only thing…
We are living in the golden–perhaps platinum–age of television, with more content available than ever before. The element of consumer discovery that may happen for a CPG brand once in a lifetime happens much more frequently in the content world. Consumers are exposed to new content daily, from linear television and streaming services to short-form….
We did it to Hasselhoff, Clooney and Pharrell. We did it to street art, Spike and Coachella after parties. We’ve almost done it to McConaughey and Macaulay. We did it to storytelling, snackable and saying “What’s up?” We did it to disruption. We did it to immersive theater and the best bits of the internet….
Media companies aren’t impressing advertisers with sales excellence at the rate they used to. I’ve watched the top sales organizations fall on average 10 percent in advertiser ratings over the past five years, most notably in their understanding of clients’ businesses and with some stalwart brands declining as much as 20 percent. That spells trouble…
Conversations around mental health are nothing new, but a fast food giant weighing in? That’s rare. Enter Burger King, whose new ad campaign is by no means a slam dunk, but nonetheless offers much-needed food for thought. Burger King recently rolled out its Real Meals campaign in an effort to bring attention to mental health….
Writer and producer Kenya Barris has scored another win, launching a second spinoff from the acclaimed ABC Network sitcom Black-ish. This new spinoff, Mixed-ish, will follow Rainbow Johnson’s experience growing up in a mixed race home in the 1980s. As a regular viewer of the original series, the show often points out that Rainbow is…
When it comes to the fight around inclusion, no other industry gets held accountable more than the television and film industry. After all, media is one of the most powerful entities on earth and has the ability to inform the masses. Up until recently, there was a time where media did not have to be…
We’re living in the era of digital video. “If you’re not making online video, you’re missing out” is a widely accepted platitude across the board today. People on both sides of the digital divide agree that video is the way to go. Last year was the biggest yet for online content globally, and it’s safe…
In a way, all strategy is creative. Strategy is about taking stock of your position, understanding how you can garner more power for your company, brand or business and making a move that will bring you more power as a result. For millennia, creative strategy has been a route to increased power. Whether it was…
The landscape of sports marketing and fan engagement is undergoing a major shift. Traditionally speaking, the omniscient crown jewel of fan engagement has been defined as the jumbotron–and for good reason. Two hundred feet of bright, HD LED signage to engage 30,000-60,000 fans at once accomplishes what many marketers covet: scalable branding. However, the mighty…
A few months ago, an egg blew up on Instagram. It completely took over. Yes, it’s come to this: an egg. All those marketing budgets. All those data points and costly influencers pouting vacantly into the middle distance, and an egg beat them all. Even Kylie Jenner. What gives? Well, because, people. People, it turns…
If you’ve been around the block a few times like I have, you probably remember the old days when SEO was all about keyword density and doorway pages. At that time, search engine technology was so basic that the algorithms sometimes had trouble telling the difference between a page of keyword-stuffed gibberish and a beautifully…
The discussion about digital ad fraud in the programmatic ecosystem has traditionally centered around the impact on the advertisers. Fueled by consumer-facing brands with large digital ad budgets and enormous pressure on their agencies to comply, demand-side brand safety has been under a constant microscope for the better part of the last decade. What has…
Marketers today are arguably better equipped than previous generations, with the data, tools and technology to create richer experiences than ever before. And yet many of us face the same challenges. Ninety-one percent of consumers find ads more intrusive today than two to three years ago, and 65% of people don’t remember the ads they…
From the very first ad, we were won over at the appearance of the fan-favorite quirky, well-spoken, endearing Geico gecko. Advertising magic? Well actually, Geico’s secret sauce has more neuroscience going on than we realize. When advertisers dream up talking tigers or even a giant pile of tires to be their spokes-things, they tend to…
In late January 2016, I sat in a dark theater in Columbus, Ohio, surrounded by agency colleagues from offices across the country, staring at a large blank screen. We all knew it was happening. A buyout, most likely. But who was it? What was it? As it turned out, we learned that the who was…
Stories are a powerful force. Their alignment of narrative, values and emotion change how we see the world. And while it may seem hyperbolic, I’d argue that marketers have a responsibility to ensure our stories are a vehicle for the change we want to see in the world. Unprecedented levels of influence The number of…
Once transmitted to an antenna on a stationary wood veneer box, TV delivery has certainly changed. While local broadcast TV content remains popular for audiences and advertisers alike, the way we watch looks different. We can view news and sports in the palm of our hands in the bedroom, the coffee shop or on public…
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.
