News and Analysis
Fan Frenzy: The Rise of Merch in MULO Restaurants
Merchandise (merch) has long been part of the music scene. You love the band…you see the live show…you buy the music, tee shirt, and hat on the way out of the venue. But now, multi-location (MULO) brands are picking up on the beat and incorporating creative and varied branded merchandise into their offerings. Whether consumers […]
Snack Brands Lean Into Nostalgia this Back-to-School Season
The dog days of summer have arrived, and all around the country, parents are preparing kids for back-to-school in just a few short weeks. For snack and specialty food brands like General Mills, Conagra, and Nestlé, it’s go time. Despite often being overlooked during the back-to-school rush, when attention is generally focused on backpacks and […]
Commentary
What Apple’s New Privacy Features Mean for Brand Marketers
With the biggest news from Apple pertaining to push notifications, email, IP addresses, and Apple Wallet, it is a critical time for marketers to reassess their strategies and get even smarter about how, when, and where they connect with customers. To state the obvious, more user-centric controls mean more opportunities for customers to shut down communications from brands who aren’t meeting their needs.
Latest Posts
Brand Identity, Privacy, and First-Party Data
Lucid is a research technology, or ResTech, firm that hooks up companies with millions of customers to gauge customer sentiment at scale. I connected with Pauline Wen, chief privacy officer at Lucid, to understand the challenges brands are facing and how they can navigate a rising bar for privacy.
What Emerging Tech is Driving Localized Brand Marketing?
Running an emerging tech-driven digital agency, Maher is on the front lines of marketing innovation for brand clients like Panera and Bolle. For both of those campaigns, there was a local component, including Panera’s in-store AR integrations and Bolle’s local activations at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
To anticipate the upcoming Street Fight Summit and Maher’s speaking role, we sat down with him for his view on the drivers and dynamics of digital marketing. Here’s our dialogue with Maher on the biggest brand marketing trends and value drivers he’s tracking.
Advantages of User-Generated Content in Online Retail
User-generated content can assist in yielding revenue for your online business. It can help you engage and retain customers as well as convince and inspire new ones. Furthermore, it’s an efficient way to interact with your audience across channels, enhance your website content, and boost your social strategy.
Marketers Weigh the Downstream Effect of Changing Privacy Regulations
Virginia became the latest state to pass digital privacy legislation when Governor Ralph Northam signed the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) earlier this month, but it won’t be the last. The piecemeal approach to privacy standards happening across the United States right now is creating a challenge for marketers who are faced with complicated, and sometimes conflicting, regulations.
AdColony: “There Is No Alternative Tracking”
Marketing tech companies are widely surfacing solutions to fill the data gaps that these privacy-oriented changes will yield. But companies differ on what approach will work best: IDs rooted in mobile devices or email log-ins, for example, or panel data that users consent to share with advertisers. Other companies and thought leaders are even more polemical, declaring that the era of targeting ads based on individual user behavior is coming to an end.
Clubhouse Has a Major Notifications Problem
Before sitting down to write this piece, I got dozens of Clubhouse notifications in just a few hours. This flood of alerts piqued my curiosity. So, I went to Twitter and searched “Clubhouse notifications,” and a long thread of tweets by annoyed Clubhouse users emerged in my results. No, I was not alone.
Digital Marketers Deploy AI to Break through the Noise
Chief among the newest strategies brands are adopting is the use of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. Brands are increasingly willing to try AI to gain a better understanding of customer behavior, so they can spend more time on creativity and delivering more relevant content, says Mary Schneeberger, director of the integrated marketing practice at Avionos.
What Gannett’s Partnership with Snap Means for Local Marketers
Despite its obvious benefits from a marketing perspective — with the ability to connect to more Gen Z consumers than Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger combined — Snapchat’s youth-focused advertising tools haven’t always been easy for small and mid-size businesses to take advantage of. A new deal with Gannett could change that.
Why TV Remains the Heartbeat of Local Connection