News and Analysis
What’s Next for Tommy Bahama? A Study in Growth Through Diversification
The lines between retail and dining have been steadily blurring over the years as more brands build memorable experiences, enabling consumers to eat where they shop and play where they eat. A natural growth progression for many multi-location brands is to play in the hospitality space, and that’s exactly what Tommy Bahama is doing this […]
Flip Launches MagicOS, a Self-Serve E-Commerce Operating System for Brands
Transparency among social media influencers can be hard to come by. While 80% of consumers say they have purchased products in direct response to social media content, #sponcon scandals are taking their toll and leading to a decline in trust of digital influencers. Could a new e-commerce operating system for brands put the influencer industry […]
Barometer, Katz Partnership Brings Contextual Targeting to Podcasting
Podcasting is huge right now, with 53% of Americans saying they’ve listened to a podcast in just the past month. You know what else is huge right now? Artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after it debuted. It should come as no surprise, then, that Barometer […]
Commentary
Qualifying and Quantifying 2020’s E-commerce Surge
Spending hasn’t declined — it’s just shifted. One of the themes we’re seeing is that the standouts of 2020 are those who have shifted with it. We’re talking here about a broad definition of e-commerce — not just ordering things online, but any digital or mobile purchase.
For example, in local commerce, these digital fulfillment models include mobile order-ahead functions in QSR and coffee. They also include curbside pickup for physical goods. And in an even broader sense (and looking forward), they will include touchless or cashier-less retail in a post-Covid era of physical retail.
The Most Important Local Search Updates of 2020
This has been the most active year in the history of local search when it comes to the introduction of new features. Google recently announced that it had made nearly 250 updates to Google Maps since the start of the pandemic, and just about every other local publisher, including Yelp, Bing, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and even Apple Maps, has been busy.
As we near the end of this unusual year, I thought it would be useful to take stock of these changes and note the ones that are the most significant.
Will 2020 Be the Year to End Black Friday?
Black Friday this year will probably look a lot like it would’ve been in about a decade; we’ve just accelerated the online shift. 2020 will be the year that Black Friday and Cyber Monday stop being shopping ‘days.’ They’ll be turned completely upside down for years to come as retailers embrace a holiday shopping season of deals, strategized and targeted based on insights from online data.
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Brandify Launches Covid-19 Updates Page
We are not the only ones helping businesses with online communication at this critical time, and businesses themselves need to know the latest so they can craft flexible and responsive strategies. With that in mind, we’ve decided to publish our tracking sheet on changes to local business marketing channels as a new webpage called “COVID-19 Local Search Updates,” live on our website today. We will keep it up to date, and we hope you’ll find it useful.
E-Commerce Booms While Hospitality, Restaurants Suffer Amid Covid-19 Concerns
Early trends in consumer coronavirus behavior indicate that the already fast-growing e-commerce sector may see an added boost over the next few months as people avoid in-door shopping to practice social distancing during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Media and marketing services firm ENGINE is conducting 1,000-person online surveys of representative samples of US consumers every few days to gauge changes in consumer sentiment and behavior as the quickly accelerating outbreak develops. The firm found that while 31% of consumers said they were increasing their online shopping in surveys conducted March 13-15 and 16-17, 42% said the same March 20-22, a 35% increase.
Brands Struggle to Keep Up When Promotions Explode in Popularity
When the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich was released last summer, the effect on sales was almost immediate. Customers filled Popeyes locations and waited in long lines to get a taste of the buzzy new sandwich. A Twitter feud between Popeyes and Chick-fil-A caused those lines to grow even longer, and the viral frenzy ended up draining the supply of “little chickens” to the point where a nationwide shortage ensued.
For GSD&M, the agency that handles Popeyes’ social media, the rollout was initially seen as a huge success. From a logistical perspective, though, it quickly turned into a nightmare as Popeyes struggled to keep up with demand.
Womply, FundRocket Launch SMB Stimulus Program
While Congress continues to deliberate on a stimulus package that will provide as much as $400 billion in aid and loans for small businesses, tech companies that serve SMBs are stepping in to offer their own assistance packages. Among them is reputation management, CRM, and email software firm Womply, which has launched an SMB stimulus program in collaboration with its capital partner, FundRocket.
Location Leaders Step Up to the Plate
During the Covid-19 outbreak, we’re seeing tech companies step up to the plate in a mixture of altruistic and opportunistic moves. That’s everything from Comcast removing data caps to Amazon removing its paywall for streaming kids shows. But what about local specifically? Again, that’s where businesses are getting hit most.
We’ve seen moves in the local space over the past week from Facebook, Yelp, and Foursquare. Though there are several others, we’ll drill down on this representative sample. We’ll also give a shoutout to Google for its work to free up human and compute resources for local listings updates, covered Monday by Damian Rollison.
Beyond the Data Label: The Next Phase of Data Assessment
This past summer, the IAB Tech Lab launched a much-needed transparency initiative in the form of its Data Transparency Standard, establishing baseline statistics on the objective attributes of a given data segment, such as refresh cadence, ID types, and segmentation criteria. The Data Label should be a big relief to data buyers, including agencies and advertisers, that are trying to wrap their heads around audiences, but it’s still only the starting point when it comes to assessing digital audiences.
For as much as the Data Label injects transparency into audience construction, it only addresses objective attributes, and not the qualitative aspects of the data segment. To get the most value out of their data investments, advertisers and agencies need to go further and develop their own standards for evaluating data, especially when it comes to quality.
Loyalty in the Time of “Near Me” Searches, Omnichannel, and Covid-19
In addition to the opportunities and challenges that come with an omni-channel commercial ecosystem, 2020 brings to businesses the challenge of mobile search, which leads people on the go to search for “X near me” and pick the closest possible option. The new year also brought, as hardly anyone would’ve predicted months ago, an impending recession as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I caught up with Nicole Amsler, vice president of marketing at loyalty tech firm Formation.ai, to garner her insights on loyalty strategy this year.
4 Mobile and Location Trends for Brands to Keep an Eye On
Believe it or not, this is the smartphone’s third decade. When it comes to mobile apps and location-based marketing, so much has changed since the advent of the iPhone in 2007.
While it’s hard to predict what will become of mobile and location-based media in the next 10 years, it’s fair to prognosticate what we can expect for the rest of this year and beyond. Here are four mobile and location trends brand marketers need to watch.
Google Disables Reviews and Q&A, Yelp Announces New Features Amid Outbreak
Important announcements were posted Friday by Google and Yelp as part of the effort to contend with coronavirus and its impact on businesses.
Google has published a new help page titled “Limited Google My Business functionality due to COVID-19.” Before diving into the details in the announcement, I’ll mention the most important headline. Due to a rapid reorganization of priorities, Google has determined that at this time, they will disable the ability to leave new reviews, reply to reviews, and post new Question and Answer content.
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