Last month, Facebook launched a massive campaign to restore public confidence in the wake of its privacy crisis. Called “Here Together,” the campaign stretches across TV networks and cinemas throughout the 50 largest markets in the U.S. In an age of shorter attention spans and commercials, Facebook is betting its reputation on 60-second spots. Ads…
Every business has the potential to create high-value superfan customers, but few take the time to employ the smart tactics necessary to do so. A superfan is a consumer who over-indexes in his or her affinity for a brand, team, entertainer or property, thereby increasing the chance he or she will advocate on its behalf….
Since 2013 when Edward Snowden released documents about the NSA’s internal workings, the world has started to question the way their data is collected and used against them. Since then, findings by Pew Research Center show that 93 percent of adults believe it is important they can control who can get information about them, 90…
Facebook’s ongoing collision with any remaining societal expectations of privacy has lit the world on fire with heated debate. As noted by The New York Times columnist Kevin Roose in his recent column, “Facebook is complicated. That shouldn’t stop lawmakers.,” without a clear understanding of Facebook’s business model or the technical framework underpinning it, Congress…
I recently moderated a panel discussion of creative directors from several ad agencies at an industry conference when a difficult but important questions arose: How old is too old for the ad game? No one on the panel came up with a credible answer, but it certainly got everyone thinking about an issue that our…
Like lots of people in the world, I’ve spent some quality family time roaming my neighborhood trying to capture little cartoon monsters on my cell phone. For many of us, Pok?mon Go was our first experience of augmented reality. It was lots of fun. In fact, a lot of the money behind AR/VR comes from…
The newfound transparency in the once-illicit cannabis business creates instant appeal as well as consumer security. It’s a good time to be marketing this space. However, while the industry flourishes, mainstream business is scrambling to understand new laws, new vocabulary and new ways of thinking. Though the concept of marketing for a brand new industry…
As a global agency CEO for the last 15 years and former chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the evolving client-agency paradigm is always top of mind for me. There’s been extensive talk in the news recently about how brands are redefining their agency relationships. From P&G announcing that they are building one…
For virtually every kind of communication, there’s exclusive language. In mobile messaging, emojis convey emotions. For composers, sheet music indicates the measures and melodies. Even baseball has its own system, with a sequence of unique signs shared between coaches and players. For marketers in the C-suite, the common communication is the shorthand of strategy briefs,…
Without wishing to sound like the director’s cut of a Demi Moore movie, let’s start with full disclosure: I’m involved in an awards show. The Epica Awards, to be exact, which as far as I know is still the only international competition judged not by creative folk from agencies, but by journalists who write about…
On June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, leading to the creation of America’s Interstate Highway System. Finished 35 years later, one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the United States use the interstate system. As would be expected, the most direct effect of the interstate was on other…
Customer data is rapidly becoming the dominant currency of the modern marketplace. Recent IAB research credits first-party data as the driver for “all significant functions of the enterprise, including product development, customer value analysis and pricing.” It’s impossible to achieve the critical goals the market now demands–empathy, fluid conversation across touch points, personalization–without nimble, proficient…
Giveaways are dime a dozen across social media. Effective, legal, responsible and on-brand competitions, however–not so much. Cluttering up your newsfeed, thanks to shares and tagging, and popping up as adverts and organically from the pages you like, they range from products you’re actually likely to buy to that old chestnut, the “Win an RV”…
The Google Assistant might finally jump ahead of Amazon’s Alexa in the race for user-friendly (if not potentially creepy) artificial intelligence. .@Google’s new AI assistant sounds exactly like human https://t.co/VPhJAreDaE pic.twitter.com/C7YrJfFIiw — Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) May 11, 2018 At its annual developer conference this week in California, Google announced the latest update to Assistant, including…
We all know that spokespeople and endorsers can be erratic. Wild antics can generate negative PR and damage brands. What if you could eliminate the threat of a spokesperson going rogue while still tapping into the massive influencer audiences? Although swapping the Kardashians for virtual influencers might sound like a dream come true, the reality…
Esports is either the best kept secret or the most poorly marketed piece of common knowledge for brands. Do a quick search, watch a few documentaries, and you’ll realize that the esports industry is primed for investment regardless of the connection (or lack thereof) to a brand. Massive audiences, hyper-passionate fans and influencers capable of…
Three years ago, our management team was debating how we should enter the television space. At the time, the majority of our revenue was in digital and programmatic. We were trying to answer the questions, “How does a demand-side platform add value for TV buyers?” and “Where would programmatic and TV intersect?” Should we aggregate…
The 11th annual NewFronts wrapped up late last week in New York City, and we learned that video is now everywhere, which should excite marketers regardless of their industry. Video is more than an exciting medium; it amplifies the intended emotion in a brand’s story at a level that banner or text ads simply can’t…
Luxury is characterized by striving to capture the best of us, whether that is expressed through the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the places we stay or the cars we drive. While the goal is to achieve and deliver on the best of the best, the definition of luxury is always changing, shaped…
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been compared to Y2K, the millennium software bug that caused unnecessary panic about computers crashing–not to mention planes falling out of the sky–before midnight struck on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000. But it’s not much like Y2K at all; conversely, it deserves all the buzz it’s…
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