Understand Market Behavior / videos
Insights to help marketers understand the general market landscape and to look at macro-level influences. Businesses need to understand how they could be impacted, and learn how to prepare for it.
Editor's Pick
Digital Revolution
Bob Garfield, author of The Chaos Scenario, describes how the symbiosis of mass media and mass marketing is decoupling. A glut of advertisers, the ability to bypass ads, and the fragmentation of audiences are collapsing marketing structures. Digital is destroying the foundation but it will also provide the solution.
Editor's Pick
Publishers & Advertisers
Maureen McGuire, CMO of Bloomberg L.P., points out that the media landscape is changing. Align the goals of a publisher with the goals of the advertisers whose ads it carries. Understand how consumers want their information, both news information and advertising information.
Editor's Pick
Think Fast
Caryn Carmer, , SVP and Consumer Practice Director at MSL Group Agency, advocates influencer marketing, engagement marketing, and real-time marketing. Use advance scenario planning to try to predict and prepare for possible reactions and responses.
Low Growth Environments Lead to Increased Spending
Miles Nadal, Founder, Chairman & CEO of MDC Partners and Board Member of the Future of Advertising Project with Wharton, says that in a low-growth environment, marketers are challenged to drive financial performance. In this economy, marketers are spending at a significantly faster rate in an attempt to gain market share.
Editor's Pick
Partner with Regulators
Joseph Cowan, Partner and Senior Search Strategist at MEC Global, explains the problem with risk-taking in health marketing. Marketing needs to engage the FDA more closely in beta testing of new marketing platforms. The FDA and the industry need to engage as partners, not antagonists.
Editor's Pick
Trends: Convergence
Chuck Sullivan, SVP Global Online Services Worldwide for Hilton, predicts that global convergence of branding messages across regions will become necessary. Channel convergence will accelerate because of the exponential growth in technology. Differentiating brands will become more important as cost-cutting abates.
Editor's Pick
Consumers are Editors
Brian France, CEO and Chairman at NASCAR, believes that marketers need to organize an approach around the fact that consumers have become the editors and directors of their own content.
Hyper-Locality
Julie Dexter Berg, EVP/CMO of Supervalu, describes the challenges of branding in a broad middle market with niche markets one one side and large retailers like Wal-Mart on the other. Supervalu competes as a hyper-local business, which necessitates deep knowledge about the needs of local customers.
Focus on Measurement
Dennis Cary, CMO/SVP of Bally Total Fitness, believes the changing face of marketing is fueled by the changing media landscape and the economic downturn. Marketers used to be credited with success when when a brand achieved growth; now the focus is on measurement and accountability.
Editor's Pick
Core Values
Richard Gerstein, SVP Strategy and Marketing for HP Personal Systems, explains that as the technical differences between the high-end and low-end products in a category shrink, marketing becomes more important. Identifying value beyond the core capabilities of the product is necessary. Work with retail partners to communicate these values to consumers.
Editor's Pick
Customer Experience
Kevin George, SVP and Global CMO of Beam Global Spirits and Wine, describes the changing face of marketing as focused on the customer experience. Understanding the customer experience helps a marketer choose appropriate touch-points. Don't let technology drive the strategy; let the strategy determine the technology.
Editor's Pick
Print to Digital
Michael Arndt, Senior Editor of Bloomberg Business Week, describes the changing face of marketing for BusinessWeek, which ten years ago was primarily a print publication with a separate website. Now the two are combined as a single editorial product with additional functions available for digital such as video. Advertisers do not drive editorial decisions for either platform.