News and Analysis
‘Tis Swag Season: Year-Round Gifting Trends from Graham Walsh
This is the season of gifting for MULO (multi-location) brands and the suppliers, agencies and tech companies that support them. These brands: Give holiday and thank you gifts to their valued clients Buy giveaways for trade shows and conferences, and consumer activations Invest in employee incentives and keepsakes for team gatherings Stock their online shelves […]
SPB Now Stands for “Serve People Better”
Everyone loves a holiday miracle story! And that may be the turnaround of SPB, which took over a wide range of struggling brands. The abbreviation stood for “Steak, Pizza, and Beer,” but Josh Kern, the CEO, is now committed to changing its meaning to “Serve People Better.” That’s what he aspires to do with the […]
GumGum’s Grimace: The Ads that Stole Christmas
Forget privacy issues. Re-targeted ads are in cahoots with the Grinch, stealing the joy of surprise from Christmas. Nobody can be blamed when opening up a gift and thinking, “Now where have I seen that before? Oh yes, ads for it were sprayed across all my social-media accounts and everywhere I went on the Web.” […]
Commentary
Pop Goes the Pop-Up Shop — For Big Brands and Mom & Pops
The Pop-up shop has long been part of the retail and restaurant landscape. They are temporary locations. Multi-location brands may take their products into small footprints or new configurations and venues and small brands may start with a limited-run concept and then expand it. 5 Pop-Up Models Some are seasonal. For example, Bryant Park in […]
The Home Depot’s Melanie Babcock on the Rise of Retail Media Networks
Melanie Babcock joined The Home Depot in 2013 as Senior Director of Social Media and rose through the ranks to become Vice President of Retail Media+ and Monetization in February of this year. RM+ is the largest home improvement retail media network. StreetFight sat down with the Ann Arbor, Mich., native to get her insights […]
Direct-From-Consumer Data (DFC): Anatomy Of A Future-Proof Brand
Third-party cookies have crumbled. The IDFA is DOA. GDPR stopped being generous. In just a few short years, marketers have seen the tables turn nearly 180° — from an age where black box data ran amok and digital fingerprints littered the web to a point where consumers emerged victorious in a quest to have their […]
Latest Posts
Breaking Boundaries: Microsoft’s App Store and the Epic vs. Google Ripple Effect
It has been an earth-shattering few weeks in the app ecosystem. First, in a groundbreaking move that has sent shockwaves through the tech industry, Microsoft has announced its plans to launch an app store within the Apple App Store – a move that holds significant implications for app developers, especially those in the gaming industry. […]
The New Grocery Store
The General Store of the 1800s eventually became the supermarket (when the Astor Market in New York and Piggly Wiggly in Tennessee opened their doors in the early 1900s. From 1915 to 1975, A&P was the largest grocery store in the U.S. (and the biggest retailer of any kind). Fast-forward to our current omnichannel and […]
Report: Retail Is Robust Again
The fickle finger of fast fashion just got longer in the U.S. market. According to findings from the Consumer Edge Insight Center fast fashion, defined as the reproduction of high-end fashion designs cheaply and selling them at retail for the masses, is even holding its own against luxury fashion. Retailers such as Shein, Temu, The Gap, Zara, Uniqlo, Topshop, […]
The MULO Dozen: December Brands in Review
As MULO (multi-location) brands prepare for the new year, they make bold moves — from new leadership to hot consumer trends we look at December brands in review. Here’s what we saw this month. Have news for 2024? Please e-mail me. Love’s names two new executives. The C-store “experience” is now officially a trend. (LEADERSHIP) 50 […]
Do You Have One of the Most Stressful Jobs?
You may think that managing marketing, business operations, or technology gives you daily headaches. But there are other more stressful jobs. This new “Top 10” report is one that MULO (multi-location) retailers would probably not want to hear about. According to new data from the U.S. Department of Labor, front-line retail management ranks high as […]
Holiday Blur: Retail Merchandise Accelerates
As of this writing, the trees, menorahs, and tinsel are still in living rooms and consumers have barely finished recycling their wrapping boxes, washing dishes from their December feasts, and returning from family visits. The ball in Times Square hasn’t dropped. And yet, retail merchandise for upcoming holidays is already on the shelves at many […]
Third-party Cookies, The Future is Here
The future is here. As the clock strikes midnight on December 31, 2023, another clock gets set into motion: the beginning of the end of third-party cookies. Google’s long-debated cookie depreciation will begin in January incrementally and support for them will be gone by the end of the year. While anyone tracking this environment has seen […]
Ethan Chernofsky of Placer.ai on the Omnichannel Experience
One word we’ve seen non-stop in the MULO (multi-location) space over the past five years is OMNICHANNEL. Smartphones, the pandemic, and Amazon all accelerated this shopping style. The consumer not only decides which brands they like and what products they need (or want) but also how they want to buy them, pick them up, and […]
Unveiling the Crystal Ball: 5 Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2024
As we say goodbye to 2023 and look forward to 2024, the digital advertising landscape is poised (yet again) for significant shifts and transformations. Here are five bold predictions that are set to reshape digital advertising in 2024. Political Ad Spend Will Soar to Unexpected Heights Creating Unanticipated CPM pain for ALL Marketers and Brands […]
10 Things We Saw in the Multi-Location Brand Space in 2023
Of course, we’ll be publishing predictions for 2024 and beyond, but here’s a brief recap of some of the major shifts (and tiptoes in new directions) in the MULO (multi-location) brand space in 2023. The pandemic is over…the virus remains…and some shopping and dining trends have forever changed. We’ll detail some of those evolutions (or […]
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