News and Analysis

ARound Uses AR To Bring Live Experiences to Life Street Fight

ARound Uses AR To Bring Live Events to Life

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Imagine sitting in a stadium, watching your favorite sports team compete when suddenly the whole place is transformed into an Alaskan wilderness. That actually happened during a Rams game in SoFi Stadium earlier in the fall when ARound created one of its shared experiences. The augmented reality company owned by Stagwell, combines broadcast and mobile […]

MULO + HYLOMOS = Local Search Grows Up Street Fight

MULO + HYLOMOS = Local Search Grows Up

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Street Fight coined two terms, MULO and HYLOMOS,  that will significantly impact the retail, restaurant, service, and other industries in 2025 and beyond. MULO stands for multi-location. They could be brands with thousands of storefronts worldwide, home services businesses like those managed by Neighborly, or even a small one-location company with franchise plans. HYLOMOS is […]

Perspectives from Four MULO Agency Leaders Street Fight

Spend Wisely in 2025! Perspectives from Four MULO Leaders

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MULO (multi-location) brands have more marketing investment options than ever. Conventional versus digital, national versus local, influencers versus professional content creators, OOH versus everything else—the list goes on and on. The old-school media buyer has been replaced by AI-powered analytics, which enable marketers to shift spending at the blink of an eye or the click […]

Commentary

Blueshift CEO : Marketer’s Jobs More Complex

Blueshift CEO: Every Marketer’s Job Has Become Complex

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What do major brands like StitchFix, CarParts, and Discovery+ know about digital marketing and AI that the little guys don’t? That’s a question best asked to the person responsible for developing cross-channel campaigns and customer engagement programs for some of the top brands in the country, Vijay Chittoor. As co-founder and CEO of Blueshift, a customer […]

Tinuiti Sees Some Real Bright Spots in the Digital Ad Landscape

Tinuiti Sees Real Bright Spots in the Digital Ad Landscape

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Tinuiti, the largest independent performance-marketing firm that measures across Streaming TV as well as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, has published “Q1 2023 Digital Ads Benchmark Report”. This report looks at trends across the digital ad landscape of paid search, paid social, digital marketplaces, and video and display advertising. Tinuiti has nearly $4 billion in digital […]

BOOM: Multi-location Target from 1902 to the Future

BOOM: Multi-location Target from 1902 to the Future

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We have no shortage of companies that go BUST. Just in the past few days, we covered the demise of Bed Bath & Beyond and Jenny Craig. The failure of multi-location brands cannot be attributed just to digital options, consumer trend shifts, and bad hires or financial bets. More complex factors seem to go into […]

Latest Posts

Ad Tech and Privacy

The Privacy Arms Race May Kill Ad Tech

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A dangerous digital advertising arms race is brewing as browser makers try to prevent cross-site tracking. The desire of digital ad companies to keep tracking users, despite browsers’ preventative privacy measures, is leading our industry down a hazardous path for users, browser makers, and ad tech. In an effort to protect user privacy, browsers are […]

BOOM: Courting the Racquet Sports Industry With Robyn Duda

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Tennis remains popular, badminton is having a moment says Pinterest, and paddle is, according to the Washington Post, the next big multi-location winner is racquet sports. We met with Robyn Duda, the co-founder of RacquetX, a new festival for both business and consumers that involves ALL racquet sports, to ask her about the trend. Why […]

fifty-five was founded in 2010 by former Google executives who understood and anticipated the potential of data in brands’ marketing strategies.

GenAI : Where Brand Marketers Need to Upskill for the Future

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Generative AI (GenAI) was one of the most talked about technologies in 2023. We saw it support Google searches, streamline A/B testing efforts, and even play center stage in last summer’s SAG-AFTRA strike. With the ability to automate repetitive tasks and streamline processes, GenAI is becoming an invaluable tool in marketing – and its potential […]

BOOM: Ramen Graduates From Dorm Room to MULO Brand

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Many of us know ramen as the instant noodles that served as an inexpensive and fast meal when we were students or recently-graduated professionals, with limited budget for restaurants and limited home cooking skills and equipment. Elevated ramen was introduced to the U.S. in 2004 with the opening of the Momofuku Noodle Bar. The brand […]

Unity – Walmart Partnership Redefines Gaming and Retail Collaboration

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In recent years, we’ve seen an increasing comfortability with traditional retailers and the gaming industry. Fortnite may have been the first to really make this big business – through can’t-miss concerts and exclusive in-game and IRL shoe sponsorships with Nike – but the industry has certainly grown its ability to attract high-end partnerships like Unity […]

Yelp search advertising reviews

Yelp If Ya Hear Me

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Whether you’re looking for pizza, pozole, or a plumber you can find some of the best local destinations on Yelp, a review site that crowd-sources recommendations from actual customers. For businesses, Yelp.com promises a reach of 80 million visitors per month, more than half of whom have a household income exceeding $100k. This year marks […]

Pre-gaming: MULO Brands at the Super Bowl

Pre-gaming: MULO Brands at the Super Bowl

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When Super Bowl LVIII kicks off in Las Vegas on February 11th, marketers will be on their couches and in the stands, eager to critique the advertising campaigns (and surrounding digital buzz). Just as CES is the “see and be seen” of technology brands (and the companies that use their products and services), the Super […]

AI Innovations Drive SymphonyAI’s 30% ARR Growth in Retail CPG

AI Innovations Drive SymphonyAI’s 30% ARR Growth in Retail CPG

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SymphonyAI witnessed remarkable growth and profitability in 2023,  driven by it’s  AI SaaS solutions in the retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sectors. The company, known for its predictive and generative enterprise AI applications, reported a surge of over 30% in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) within the retail CPG vertical. This significant growth was fueled […]

Life Beyond the Storefront: Breakthrough Branding

Life Beyond the Storefront: Breakthrough Branding

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What constitutes a brand these days? Some MULO (multi-location) brands are known for their shopping bags. We often see Ikea bags in use for moving or other heavy lifting. The iconic blue carry-alls are even available on Amazon. The concept of “bag as brand” has been around for a while. Grocery chain Fairway used to […]

Chatmeter Advances Multi-Location Reputation Management with Pulse AI: Signals

Chatmeter Advances Multi-Location Reputation Management with Pulse AI: Signals

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Chatmeter, a leader in reputation management and multi-location intelligence, unveiled Pulse AI: Signals, a tool that leverages AI to provide real-time, actionable insights from customer commentary. This recently released solution marks a shift in how multi-location businesses can approach reputation management, setting new standards. Real-Time Insights for Multi-Location Businesses Traditionally, multi-location brands relied on keyword-matching […]