Amazon is again altering the retail landscape with brick-and-mortar stores that offer quicker checkouts and deeper data collection. The company that upended the brick-and-mortar retail world with an ethereal “shop from anywhere” business model is building Amazon Go stores next to the retailers that survive on “shop from somewhere” consumers. Amazon Go is part of…
In a piece written for Harper’s Magazine, Tom Robbins, my literary personal Jesus, tells a story about one of the musicians that plays on Big Mama Thornton’s recording of “Hound Dog.” This, as he relates it, was the musician heard barking at the end of the song. When asked about this seemingly inspired moment, the…
The lack of transparency in the world of online media–which has led some to describe today’s content landscape as the “Wild Wild West”–has long been an elephant in the room. But for brand marketers, 2018 is the year that it becomes the focal point of conversation. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I had the…
In our world of liquid expectations, how can marketers continually evolve strategy to keep pace? Ever since Mad Men days, the chief marketing officer has been in charge of the brand and has been the person who knows the customer best–that hasn’t changed. What has changed is that instead of marketing to the customer, the…
The best advice someone gave me as a newly minted executive creative director was this: Find your heroes in the industry. So I went hunting for the best among us. I wanted to find those who I could look up to for their work, of course. But I also really wanted role models who were…
In less than four months, the European Union data regulator will begin enforcing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to strengthen the security and protection of EU residents’ personal data. Companies that don’t comply with the GDPR not only risk losing their customers’ trust, but they could also face fines of EUR20 million or…
The advertising industry is notoriously fickle. Cast your mind back to the 1950s when large companies with larger budgets would broadcast messages to consumers, telling them what they needed. From Brillo Pads to Oldsmobiles, the same content was thrust upon a notably non-targeted audience. We’ve come a long way since then. Advertisers have been anticipating…
At some point during the 1970s, my father, Terry Clarke, walked into the pristine conference room of a conservative manufacturing company in New England. The company had long supplied the federal government with precision devices, for which they made a fortune in top-secret contracts. On this particular spring day, my father and his partners were…
Innovation is a powerful force for business success, but big companies can sometimes be too slow to adapt. Corporate red tape, endless rounds of approvals and a general fear of failure foster cultures reluctant to give up on established ideas and solutions, even when they no longer serve the enterprise and its needs. Illustration: Alex…
A coup d’etat is taking place across the television industry. It used to be that cable providers were the reigning powers of television, declaring what consumers would watch and when. Not home in time? Sorry, you missed this week’s episode of Seinfeld. But no longer. The last year has marked a distinct shift in power…
In 1929, the slaying of seven gangsters in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre delivered a wake-up call to Chicagoans and the American public about the destructive effects of Chicago’s notorious gangs. The aftermath of the violence began a new era of enforcement designed to clean up the gangs and ultimately marked the beginning of the…
An interviewer surprised me not long ago with the question: “How does ‘brand love’ compare to personal relationships between individuals?” The term ‘brand love’ is not one that I’ve used a lot but I understood the question and for sure there are some obvious similarities. Keith Reinhard Among other things, your close friends know everything…
Amazon’s 2018 Super Bowl spot featured virtual assistant Alexa experiencing a very human problem of having to call in sick to work. While a humorous concept, it’s a fictional scenario based on a very real, growing trend: Virtual assistants now have names, genders and personalities to make them more relatable and to encourage consumer interaction….
What a difference a big product move and a few months can make. Snapchat late last year revamped its mobile app to include an algorithm that is designed to show users the most popular content from their friends. The move was seen by many marketplace observers as a way to shake off Instagram, which had…
“I don’t know what agency or consultancy to go to anymore.” A client of ours bemoaned this to me not too long ago. As a director of a major international brand, his comment revealed the confusion he and many business leaders are increasingly feeling these days. In 2017, we saw plenty of alarming headlines about…
eMarketer projects that U.S. programmatic ad spending will reach $32.56 billion by the end of 2017. By 2019, more than four in five U.S. digital display ad dollars, or $45.72 billion, will flow via automated means–accounting for 83.6 percent of U.S. digital display ad dollars. Despite those numbers, programmatic advertising has been under attack for…
What a difference a year makes. In 2017, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was an anxious affair, taking place under the darkening cloud of Brexit, creeping nationalism and economic volatility. Optimism was in short supply as world leaders, both corporate and civic, pondered their place in an era of eroding trust. Perhaps they’ve…
Austin Russell, founder of Luminar Tech, and Michael Fleming, CEO of Torc, took the stage late in the day at the Autos2050 conference I attended in Washington, D.C., last week. Austin is a 22-year-old wunderkind whose company is building the future of transportation with LiDAR–a detection system that works on the principals of radar, but…
“I’m only watching for the ads.” We’re used to hearing this on Super Bowl Sunday, that annual bright spot for an industry in the throes of transformation. But during the rest of the year, consumers swat ads away like mosquitoes–skipping them on TV, blocking them on the web, dreading them on mobile. Imagine a friend…
If things hadn’t been following the same tired, now decade-old script, my face would’ve matched the 30 seconds of air during the second quarter of Super Bowl LII–blank. Just how many of the more than 100 million in the U.S. watching the game had a mobile device either in hand or within four feet? My…
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