Advertising and the perils of too much testing
The virtues of testing are obvious, but is testing overrated? At the Association of National Advertisers annual meeting last week, Allstate SVP of marketing, Lisa Cochrane, explained to the audience...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 brands making great use of Tumblr
The benefits of Tumblr Unlike more traditional blogging platforms, Tumblr’s social focus means that short form content tends to gain the most interactions. This means you can get creative with photos,...
View ArticleFacebook weaves tangled web with secret marketer tools
The reason? As reported by Adweek’s Tim Peterson, “Facebook has been internally allowing a select number of marketers to see their fans’ other affinities, such as their favorite brands, bands or TV...
View ArticleFive things brands can learn from Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace
For the brands associated with Armstrong, his fall from grace is a sponsor’s worst nightmare, but it does provide lessons for other brands engaged in sponsorship. Here are five of the most important:...
View ArticleInstagram warms to the web with Facebook-inspired profiles
Yesterday, it moved to do just that by announcing web profiles. As the Instagram blog explains, web profiles display “a selection of your recently shared photographs just above your profile photo and...
View ArticleMark Cuban: Facebook’s “search for revenue has severely devalued every...
While some believe that this is little more than an unfounded conspiracy theory, Facebook is facing a growing chorus of criticism from the people and companies it needs on its side. Count Mark Cuban as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pinterest cozies up to brands, launches Pinterest for Business
The official rules of engagement changed yesterday, however, as Pinterest officially launched Pinterest for Business. Pinterest product manager Cat Lee announced the move on the company blog,...
View ArticleAdvertisers shouldn’t fear the Fiscal Cliff
The Fiscal Cliff refers to hefty new taxes and big spending cuts that will go into effect in the world’s largest economy, the United States, if politicians in Washington can’t agree on how to get the...
View ArticleAre brands overestimating the value of social data?
Listening and making sense of the conversation, however, isn’t easy. The amount of data generated daily on social networks is staggering, creating substantial noise, the most vocal members of the...
View ArticleSmall businesses are not impressed by Twitter: survey
But what about small businesses? They too have been adopting and investing in their presences on social networks, but they have markedly different views about where the potential is. According to a...
View ArticleAs investors pour $200m more into Pinterest, is a business model in the offing?
Pinterest’s appeal to investors isn’t difficult to explain: the company’s audience is a potentially lucrative one, and there’s evidence that the audience is already a productive one for brands. BYOB:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Learn from the best: five must have newsroom features
We recently embarked on a benchmark report to find out just how much care the world’s 100 best known brands (as identified by Millward Brown’s 2012 Brandz Top 100) put into the places they host their...
View ArticleCoca-Cola: the ‘s’ in social media doesn’t stand for ‘sales’
According to Eric Schmidt, Coca-Cola’s senior manager of marketing strategy and insights: “We didn’t see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales.” Ouch....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three modestly-priced ways brands can become publishers
Aggregate, curate and showcase with Storystream Storystream is an easy to use platform for content marketing and storytelling. It can be used to aggregate content automatically (from hashtags or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five lessons in corporate brand building from the big boys
Why are the multinationals changing? We all know that back in 1931, P&G ad man Neil McElroy sent around his now famous memo explaining why P&G should have a brand team for each product, paving...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The value of Vine to the disinterested
Vine is the shallow end of a bigger movement There are three big changes (call them macrotrends if you like) that Vine and other services are driving. Good online experiences contain fewer words and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four great examples of brands using Instagram to break free of the browser
It is easy to get distracted by the wealth of Instagram challenges and competitions, but with it becoming an increasingly crowded place, brands are learning how to make themselves more distinct by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five tips for brands acting like publishers
1. Real time is the best time In these times of media saturation and information overload, brands must be ready to react in minutes or seconds, not hours or days to breaking news and the social web and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
If you measure social success by ‘likes’, you’re going to get click farms
Mostly, it seems to go: Brand engages social media agency (although no self-respecting social media I know would do this) which promises to craft a social media campaign that will rocket the brand’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four examples of brands rocking Instagram video
A year ago, Instagram had 12m users around the world and the company used video embedded from other platforms around the web when it was called for on the internal blog. Fast forward 12 short months...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to not be a condescending corporate Facebook brand page
The page highlights some of the more groan-worthy (or as they would probably say, desperate, obvious or ridiculous) brand attempts to encourage consumer engagement. As brands scramble to keep...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Harper Collins: from publisher to creative content business
Looking at brands that have fallen short when designing for the younger demographic, it’s clear Harper Collins is in a position to advise companies targeting children and parents. Harper Collins’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why brands and digital media owners must collaborate on creative
The ads effectively complimented the content viewers were there to absorb, and in doing so matched the affinity viewers may have had with both The Returned and Channel 4. It was a classy, enduring...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How small businesses can make the most of Pinterest
As of September 2013, the three year-old social media site Pinterest has more than 70m global users, making it one of the fastest growing websites in history. And according to several studies,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
With little effort, Amazon becomes the most shared retailer on Pinterest
Amazon UK doesn’t really bother with Pinterest, though in the UK version of this study it came second behind ASOS, which does make an effort. Here’s Amazon UK’s Pinterest board, tumbleweed just out of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wikipedia and SEO: what every digital marketer needs to know
While everyone has heard of, and probably uses, Wikipedia, what fewer understand is the impact it has on search results. Wikipedia ranks highly in responses to many search queries due to the high...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking back at brand management in 2013
1. The power of the story Last year, our hearts were warmed by John Lewis’s sentimental Snowman TV ad. The love story helped the giant retailer becomes one of the most talked-about advertisers in 2013....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why your brand should use social listening right now
So why don’t all brands listen? Social media is noisy. A few years ago you might have got away with setting up a free alert for Twitter mentions, but now you have to invest in technology that not only...
View ArticleTop US buzz brands of 2013
Amazon achieved its strongest Christmas yet in 2013. On Cyber Monday alone, more than 36.8m items were ordered worldwide, up from last year’s 26.5m items. This means that 426 items were purchased every...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Good digital video ads aren’t just TV spots on different devices
Create video content for digital audiences Consumers are increasingly watching online videos across multiple devices, so it’s vital that marketers start understanding how this experience differs from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What do we get out of brands interacting with each other on Twitter?
Congrats @Playstation. From, #Xbox. pic.twitter.com/XnQIzXIHQ9 — Xbox (@Xbox) November 15, 2013 What the hell is this? A next generation console manufacturer pausing briefly to congratulate its next...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Western brands selling to a China that’s increasingly open
The future is Alibaba? Alibaba is set to IPO at a valuation of around $150bn. It’s clearly making waves. Part of its strategy is helping US brands sell to China by offering ‘Alipay’ and shipping....
View ArticleClik here to view.
US digital marketing statistics we’ve enjoyed this week
BrandZ Top 100 The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2014 saw a 12% increase in total brand value to $2.9tn. The combined value of the top 100 has doubled in the last eight years. All...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How brands are using anonymous apps
One app, Cloaq, plays so strongly on its anonymity feature that it refuses to name the people working on it, and doesn’t require an email address or phone number to use it. All these apps are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Tumblr accounts to inspire your own social media strategy
For each of these examples, click through from the picture to view the Tumblr. Harper Collins Harper Collins is a great example of a company mining its assets to best effect on social media. Here, its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Start Me Up! TreSensa: branded HTML5 games for mobile
In one sentence, what is your product/service? TreSensa is a native marketing platform for mobile that leverages branded “tap and play” HTML5 games (no app store download required) to connect brands...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four influential brands and why they’re so effective
If you want to learn more about how to create an impactful brand that tells your company’s story in the right way, get your ticket for our Festival of Marketing in November and come check out the Brand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Six ways brands can ensure startup pilot success
Brands engaging in pilots with these startups have a lot to gain if they structure and execute them correctly. Here are six tips for doing just that… Be willing to bet on unknowns Will a pilot partner...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Knowing what you’re not: defining your design principles
GoCardless At #canvasconf last week, I listened to Tom Petty, Head of UX and Design at GoCardless. Tom detailed how the team at GoCardless went about creating a new product and defining design...
View ArticleDoctor Who: The making of a global brand [Stats]
Understanding Doctor Who’s origins to enter new markets Julia spoke about the programmes origins, which were somewhat unusual for 1960’s Britain. A female producer in Verity Lambert, sci-fi characters...
View ArticleClik here to view.
11+ enlightening APAC digital marketing stats from November 2015
Email still the best channel to promote products Promotional content in email is most likely to correlate with purchasing habits, with 64% of Asian respondents having purchased something after...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Econsultancy’s top 10 guest posts of 2015
1. Top of the pile is Andrew Broadbent, director of search at 17 Agency, with his discussion of brand activation and its role in driving consumer engagement and awareness. Brand activation is the act...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Facebook ‘context collapse’: how decline in personal sharing might affect...
According to The Information, by the middle of 2015, users’ sharing of original, personal information had dropped 21% year-over-year, and has declined by 16% so far this year. Facebook says “the...
View ArticleThe growing politicization of brands in a polarized world
Target, for instance, chose to weigh in on a 2016 North Carolina law that required individuals in government buildings to use the restroom that corresponds to the gender specified on their birth...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five marketing fallacies that only the blinkered believe
I should point out that few of these are fallacies in the more strict academic definition. For a few of those (such as false equivalence and false cause), you should check out this little article by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four reasons you may need to rebrand your business
Then again, if executed correctly, rebranding can result in far superior benefits. Here’s a run-down of some of the biggest advantages, along with a few examples of companies that have successfully...
View ArticleLuxury brands must focus on digital experiences to fight the discount trend
According to research firm Edited, more than a quarter of luxury items were discounted by 26% to 50%. For comparison, items sold by premium and mass-market brands saw discount volumes of 24% and 20%,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How brands have used satire in advertising
The stunt also proved how satire in marketing can be a dangerous strategy (albeit a danger that BrewDog courts). That being said, when it does hit the spot – satire, parody, or irony can be a great way...
View ArticleClik here to view.
China is a “massively untapped market” for US media sellers
Take, for instance, Facebook. Despite the efforts of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has learned to speak Mandarin and even reportedly asked Chinese President Xi for baby name suggestions, the world’s...
View ArticleHow the world is feeling about Covid-19 right now and what it means for brands
Walnut Unlimited’s ‘Understanding the Nation’ research tracker has captured public opinion since the pandemic began and shown that uncertainty is still the most prevalent emotion amongst those...
View Article