Insights

Changing demands on CMO’s

As marketing changes with digital technology and increased focus on CX, there are many views on the skills marketers need to be effective. Below is a short post from CMO.com with a perspective.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/2019/01/21/why-todays-cmo-must-break-down-barriers.html#gs.lhay27

The “hard” skills, financial and digital savvy, have been important and are growing in importance.

“Soft” skills of inclusiveness and teamwork are also highlighted given the increased interaction with all functions in the organization (due to management of the customer journey through more touch points with the company and product experience).

Biggest branding mistakes of the year

With short timelines and limited budgets, there is a push to rush past research or not fully vet marketing initiatives. With social media, these mistakes can be exponentially bad. Read this article from Inc.com and get a sense of the types of miscalculations that some good brands had this year, so you can avoid them.

https://www.inc.com/brit-morse/2018-biggest-marketing-branding-fails.html

6 Marketing Trends for 2017

As we kick off the year, it’s important to capitalize emerging trends.This article from Chief/Marketer outlines a few things to keep your eye on this year.

https://www.chiefmarketer.com/6-marketing-trends-for-2017/

Some key takeaways:
-Make sure you are thinking mobile-first in your digital marketing, even business to business
-With improvements in attribution, if you have the budget, push to measure what’s working, possibly in real time
-Add first and 3rd party audience data as a part of cross-channel media plan to get a better understanding of consumers’ interaction with your brand

What are people worried about these days?

As marketers, we need to stay on top of how people view our products and categories, but even more importantly what are the core motivations and worries that drive life choices. This interesting research from Shullman shows that health and money are weighing on the mind of most adults, while millenials are more worried about employment than anything else. How do our products solve these concerns?

What are people worried about – Shullman research

Overall time spent with media still huge, but growth is slowing

The average American consumer spends a whopping 12 hours per day consuming media. However, the growth is slowing – projecting to increase by only 8 minutes in the next 3 years vs. 1 hour in the past 4 years. Multi-tasking with mobile devices is the cause of the slowing trend. Digital is now a more significant amount of time than TV at over 5 hours per day with over half on mobile devices. Mobile and TV will still be workhorse mediums over the next 3 years.

Time spent with media slowing – emarketer

Drug Advertising Trends March 2016

Below is a nice summary of drug advertising trends. Spending is up 60% on paid media in the last 4 years, but cable TV is up more than 200% due to efficiency in hitting targeted, older audiences quickly and efficiently. The often discussed decline of TV viewership is slow and is more applicable to younger population segments.

Drug Advertising Trends March 2016

Female Shoppers No Longer Trust Celebrity Endorsements

Interesting data from SheKnows media published by Fast Company magazine. 86% of women trust real endorsements on social media over obviously paid celebrities. Social proof and video is getting increasingly important to close the sale.

Female shoppers don’t trust celebrity endorsers

Future of White Collar Work

Interesting post by Shelly Palmer about the pace of technological advancement and the impact on white collar work. In the next century, we’ll see the equivalent of 20,000 years of advancement. So, marketing and advertising executives need to be ready for the new skills required in the next 3-5 years. The job requirement of the future will be mastery of marketing strategy + creativity and vision to use the new tools that will be able do most of the executional tasks of today.

What will you do after white collar work? – SP

What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Future of Work.

This New York Times article outlines how Hollywood’s more efficient, technology driven model for doing business will be adopted by all companies in the future. A short-term, well-defined, project-based structure of experts needed for a specific job seamlessly produce high quality films and shows with the lowest possible cost. This is the future for businesses and also the current 183 model of operation. The opposite of the long-term, open-ended retainer-based model of some large agencies.

What Hollywood can teach us – NYT