Casual dining classic Applebee’s recently enjoyed a clear and positive brand mention in the finale episode of reality TV juggernaut Vanderpump Rules, wherein the group heads to San Francisco for a glamorous evening celebrating a close friend’s business launch. The magical earned moment happened when spotlight star Ariana Madix and a subsection of the partygoing…
Much like The Emperor’s New Clothes, where the tailor exposes the vanity of his ruler, the unveiling this week of Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of King Charles III has been very … revealing. The portrait has been met with both gasps of astonishment and ridicule throughout the world, as well as the expected praise. The dramatic…
Digital marketers are moving up the funnel–we’re going in-store, the cookies are crumbling–and still, the humble place where it all started, search, is not only surviving but thriving. You might think sponsored search ad revenues of Amazon, the giant of retail media, would have slowed down by now. But nope. The market is predicting another…
News media has transformed in recent years. The way people consume content is shifting, attention spans are shrinking, and the news cycle is shorter than ever. To be included, brands need to take an integrated and creative approach. Every campaign must achieve the unexpected and share stories that span the entire paid, earned, shared and…
Two weeks ago, Bumble let its audience know a “new Bumble” was forthcoming. They stripped their Instagram of old posts, many of memes and models wearing T-shirts that read “Exhausted.” The teaser was interesting; a dating app leaning into how tired its audience is in a cheeky way. We waited to see where it went….
Times Square is no stranger to women’s bodies, but a particular advertisement recently stirred controversy, reflecting deep societal tensions surrounding motherhood and female sexuality. The ad promoted lactation cookies in a provocative campaign by cookbook author Molly Baz in partnership with breastfeeding startup Swehl. Baz, known for her culinary creativity, ventured into the partnership to…
The Summer of 1999 was a pivotal moment in the U.S. cultural zeitgeist: Latin pop music burst into the mainstream, driven by the crossover success and appeal of artists such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, to name a few. The “Latin Boom” was so powerful, that it heralded the inception of the…
Growing up, I had little to no idea what I wanted to do when I got older. What I did know from a very young age, however, was that I needed to make money to buy the things I wanted that my parents couldn’t afford. That led me to my first job in the restaurant…
We are still seeing the effects of the pandemic come to fruition, but one thing is very clear: We are all feeling more disconnected. The resulting epidemic of loneliness is well documented by health professionals, with 52% of Americans reporting that they feel lonely and 47% saying their relationships aren’t meaningful. According to US Surgeon…
In a globalized, post-colonial world, it’s not easy to define Asian creativity. Creativity made in Asia? Creativity made by Asians, anywhere in the world? Creativity that has Asian inspirations and influences? Chances are, everyone will have their own definition of what “Asian creativity” is to them. And it could very well be that none of…
The quick-service restaurant business is a sprawling, dynamic space, expected to grow to nearly $1.47 trillion by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate of 6%. It’s a highly competitive category, with more than 420 brands spending more than $3.3 billion combined in yearly advertising. In this environment, QSR brands need to innovate and offer…
If you inherited your agency or have just won the Powerball and are thinking of starting up, you can stop reading right now. This is for the bootstrappers, the freelancers, the one-man-bands, the scrappy ones. If you’re going to bootstrap your own thing, you’re going to have to learn to live with fear. The big,…
Recently, a list of the top McDonald’s loyalty point holders was analyzed on social media. The leader of the pack was an individual with 1,370,044 loyalty points–enough for 913 vanilla cones, 456 medium fries or 228 Big Macs. The top holder of McDonald’s loyalty points has 1,370,044 points, enough for 913 vanilla cones (best value,…
In 2023, $247 billion–17.6% of U.S. online sales revenue–was lost to returns, versus the 14.5% return loss for items bought in stores. Once seen as an enticing benefit to attract customers (and keep pace with Amazon), free shipping and returns quickly became the norm for ecommerce. There was a cost to keeping these free, of…
When you’re about to become a parent for the first time, even strangers will go out of their way to offer encouragement and support. Our grizzled general contractor from South Jersey would sit me down daily to discuss what Mona and I were about to experience. This outpouring of love from unexpected places should serve…
Selling creativity in large multinational companies can often be a laborious challenge. There is always pressure from the C-suite to maximize return on investment. And that’s before we even get to the age-old subjectivity challenge–everyone in the business feels entitled to an opinion when it comes to a piece of creative work, whereas they’d rarely…
Brands thrive by channeling their creative energies into what works–and away from what doesn’t. Yet many marketers and agencies focused on DEI in marketing aren’t hitting the mark when it comes to widening the aperture of the gender lens. Accordingly, they’re missing the chance to invite people to see themselves in the products and services…
One of the most-discussed topics of 2024 will be the deprecation of third-party cookies, making other sources of data even more important to businesses. The most valuable of these other data sources is zero-party data, which is proactively provided by customers–typically because that customer actually wants to hear from the brand, and often because there…
Last year, global ecommerce sales totaled nearly $6 trillion and are expected to grow 10% this year. People expect nothing but the best shopping experience every time, and expectations increase every time they experience something better. This represents a sharp departure from how commerce has traditionally been approached–as a mere transaction after all the creative…
As businesses attempt to navigate the incredibly complex, fragmented and increasingly regulated sustainability landscape, they all too often opt for a “leave no trace” approach. This is because the issue is all at once highly prioritized and also highly scrutinized, from consumers to C-suites. As a result, organizations often delegate it to the responsibility of…
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