I have been lucky enough to be involved in both great advertising and some great vandalism. They are a lot more alike than you might think. Like the pumpkin-smashing and late-night egg-throwing barrages we perpetrated in 1960s Rhode Island, great advertising is shocking, to the point and still there the next day. The best advertising…
Mobile ad fraud rates are skyrocketing, and that’s not terribly surprising. After all, scammers follow the money, and the money is going to mobile. Of course the shady underbelly of the digital world is going to try to cash in on that. The good news: Although the mobile space is a unique one in many…
When was the last time you woke up saying, “I’d love to chat with my insurance company?” That probably hasn’t happened. Messaging with a business is not the same as messaging with a friend. You’re not reaching out to your cable provider to send them the latest meme or tell them about that funny thing…
Mobile variety is in short supply for marketers. With the duopoly maintaining near-total dominance, alternative ad-tech players struggle to break through. This means media buying is often limited to Google or Facebook. The most viable contender thus far has been Amazon, a potential third titan in the making. But another challenge is emerging that may…
When it comes to workflow, most creative agencies function in a simple linear structure. Large-scale writing projects are divvied up between team members. A single employee is in charge of a single project end-to-end, with others usually giving only skin-deep or advisory feedback. Sure, it works. But the whole purpose of a creative agency is…
Until recently, brand strategy centered on appealing to the lizard brain in us all, influencing our behavior to drive sales with well-known levers of manipulation: vanity, fear, pride, greed, the desire for love, safety, control and power. But brands and the consumers they court have evolved. It turns out both parties want more from this…
Global weight loss management company Weight Watchers announced this week they renamed to WW, leaving many people confused by the rebrand. The stem of such confusion occurred when the chief executive was unable to explain what the letters WW stood for. They do not stand for Weight Watchers or “Wellness that works,” a phrase the…
Over the last 20 years, the relationship between the buyer and seller in the advertising market has fundamentally changed as the market digitized and became automated in 2009 with the start of the programmatic wave. Having started my career as an energy trader and witnessed the transition from floor-based outcry trading to sophisticated data-driven approach,…
The cannabis industry has come a long way from cheap plastic bag in terms of packaging. The materials that surround today’s infused products offer more than just storage. They provide brands an opportunity to convey aesthetics, information and peace of mind to consumers. Packaging for cannabis-infused products requires a little more thought and a lot…
“Alexa, play two o’clock nightmares.” Out of context, this seems a bit off. But when you learn that “two o’clock nightmares” is the name of a soothing playlist assembled by a man paralyzed by a spinal injury and plagued by chronic anxiety that is often at its worst in the middle of the night, you…
Selecting a celebrity partner is a high risk, high reward decision. With the wrong celebrity partner, a brand can tarnish its image and alienate consumers. But if chosen wisely, the celebrity can elevate the brand’s image, increase appeal with target customers and potentially change the trajectory of that brand. Brands tend to approach these decisions…
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. As explained by the World Economic Forum (WEF), it’s a time defined by technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3-D printing and quantum computing. While these innovations are improving our daily lives, they’ve also increased consumer expectations for personalized brand experiences, causing massive disruption…
If you’ve read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, the “singularity” describes a theoretical moment in the collapse of a giant star, somewhere between the event horizon and spaghettification where matter becomes infinitely dense. According to futurists like Ray Kurzweil, the technological singularity will be realized the moment artificial intelligence evolves so quickly and…
With the rise in complexity of digital media, the words “native advertising” have become watered down. Originally the name for content that feels harmonious and original to its environment that respects a user’s time and attention, it is now a catch-all phrase for anything that resides in the feed and doesn’t live on social platforms…
“What is the next big idea?” That’s the question marketers and agencies get asked all the time. While many people suffer from big idea burnout, there’s a never-ending source of big ideas right under our noses. Walt Disney put it best when he said, “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.” And…
Why do the most lucrative industries quickly become the most saturated? Because that’s where people are making money. In no time, that lucrative industry becomes an over-populated any man’s zone where only the exceptional survive. Fortunately, in the words of Henry Ford, most (if not all) of that saturation is full of business-owning wannabe’s who…
Inefficiency sucks. Every client knows this. And there’s nothing more cumbersome than having to deal with seven or eight or nine different agencies to manage your digital, traditional, above-the-line, below-the-line, social, outdoor, TV and product advertising. But that’s the nature of an industry evolving faster in its media than in its makeup. As connectivity and…
It seems like every week a new whitepaper announces a revolutionary blockchain technology that will eliminate fraud and the 50 percent ad-tech tax, ushering in a new age of transparency, performance and profit. At its core, distributed ledger technology (DLT) really does have the power to transform an industry and unlock massive value for advertisers…
Some brands are still wary of incorporating AI into their customer engagement strategy. They would argue that they’re technology skeptics–I would argue that they’re technology ignorant. If you haven’t already started implementing AI into your customer engagement touchpoints, you’re losing on all fronts. From cohesive brand messaging to higher employee satisfaction, AI is the tool…
As waves of legacy retailers close their doors, countless other retailers and brands are reevaluating their digital strategies in the wake of Amazon’s rise. The reality is that Amazon’s highly sophisticated, dynamic Marketplace has already defined the trajectory of ecommerce, and digital marketing is next on its list. In a recent earnings report, the online…
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.
