RECENT INSIGHTS
Did you hear about the Zoe Kravitz Super Bowl ad for Michelob Ultra? The spot uses the sounds of near-silence – whispers, tapping finger nails, carbonated fizzing – to draw viewers into the ad by their ears as much as their eyes. The auditory phenomenon Michelob was leveraging is called ASRM, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian […]
Keep calm and market on. We all know Millennials relate emotionally to technology, embrace social media, deplore debt, value principles, and desire experiences over material possessions. But it’s time to go deeper – especially if you’re in an industry that’s struggling with the handoff of a generational baton. Like ski resorts. There’s been widespread concern […]
Power boat OEMs fear Millennials, and they should. According to Boating Industry, affordability is a top 2018 concern for OEMs (and it has been for years). When it comes to Millennials, concerns about cost of boat ownership are justified. Millennials remember the meltdown of 2008 and are skeptical of chronically costly activities involving debt and […]
Marketers wake up to the pain of misspent resources A really disturbing recent study of 1000+ EU marketers reported that, on average, they waste 26% of their annual budget on “the wrong channels or strategies.” In other words, more than a quarter of their budget is gone and unrecoverable. In four years time, an entire […]
Academic brands: Stuck in Sloganville Academic brand messages usually take one of a few approaches. One is a recitation of institutional values – “Courage. Honor. Confidence. Conviction. Integrity.” Sometimes they’re accompanied by a motto that’s marinated in Latin. Snore. The other method is to concoct a single slogan, either rooted in research, or cooked up by an […]
Note to marketers who have been investing in Facebook: Fasten your safety belts.
It’s as if Facebook listened to a focus group of marketers complaining about ad targeting: “It’s getting brutal….social makes it harder, not easier….my dollars are already stretched too thin….how can I be sure I’m reaching the right people….and how do I know I’m spending in the right places?” And then, Facebook looked deeply into its […]
When Google says something is the next big thing, we tend to listen. And Progressive Web Apps (or PWAs) are, in a word, it. If you missed this news and were absent the day they had the PWA meeting at work, here’s what you should know. The nutshell version. PWAs can be summed up as […]
Taglines: Still tagging along You might think that the transparency created by digital communications between consumers and brands would make advertisers stop cranking out empty taglines. After all, if “advertising” is a conversation that unfolds gradually, why start it out (or punctuate it) with a chest-thumping, self-congratulatory catchphrase? Yet the tagline lives on. Caution: Handle […]
Headlines still lead the way. You’re revamping your website. Or posting on social media. Or maybe you’re writing a blog or creating an email subject line. It doesn’t matter what the medium is, the message is what matters. And it all comes down to the headline, which is how consumers determine if your content is […]