For those of you that haven’t seen the widely popular Adult Swim series Rick and Morty, this story is going to seem a little strange.

For fans of the show, McDonald’s recently announced decision to bring back its long dead Szechuan dipping sauce is a victory in keeping with the oddball nature of cartoon.

Rick and Morty follows the dimension-hopping, sci-fi adventures of the titular teenage Morty and his grandfather Rick, a man so smart that he is able to travel through the infinite realities of...

It is ironic that the point of B2B enterprise – offering scalable solutions to provide value – is the very thing that creates distance in their relationships with customers. Audience segmentation, analytics, business systems, workflows… all are set up to be efficient. And all that task-based activity makes it easy to focus on the business’ ‘belly button’ rather than on an actual client.

Many enterprises today find themselves entrenched in existing processes, relying on...

There are many different ways to get your company, your products, services and technologies spotlighted and featured in the top publications and web sites that cover your industry. You can buy your way in through newsletter and supplement sponsorships, you can purchase advertising and advertorials.

Another powerful way is through what is often labeled “earned media” – coverage that your information has earned because of its value.

This includes coverage generated by big news – large...

More money than ever is being allocated to digital marketing budgets, as companies and brands try to launch social media campaigns, publish videos and create content.

But according to research by digital agency Greenlight, only 36% of digital marketers are confident that they are targeting the right audience with their campaigns.

The agency surveyed over 200 digital marketers from across the UK and found that 23% were not tracking their campaign spend at all.

“It is clear that many in the industry are...

New research by Brightcove shows that a majority of European retailers are increasingly turning to broadcast-style content offerings as the battle for consumer attention intensifies.

The company conducted the research by interviewing 200 retail decision makers and 2,000 consumers across the UK, France and Germany.

81% of the decision makers surveyed were beginning to consider their future as a media company, and 85% already trying to find ways to target consumers in their homes.

61% already offer (while 33%...

Content! Consumers demand it, but it takes so long and costs so much. But what if you had an employee who could create 2,000 articles per second? One who didn’t make typos? Or who didn’t even need bathroom breaks – or a salary?

Content created by an artificial intelligence (AI or neural networks to be specific) may seem like a dream come true to every manager who’s had writers miss deadlines (and even the mark) entirely. Make a few keystrokes, enter some key phrases, and voila: A...

Disruption is set to displace four of the top ten organisations across every industry. But how does disruption occur?

How are challenger brands harnessing it to their advantage? And is it possible to spot a disruptor before they start wreaking havoc in your industry?

While the word disruption may be fast approaching cliché, the sentiment behind it is very real. As is the challenge of responding to young brands...

You can’t go very far within the world of marketing and brands without hearing the latest buzzword – personalisation. Everything is about personalisation, and with advances in technology and the use of data, marketing is becoming increasingly personalised and social. Many brands are already making the most of this shift by creating innovative and engaging campaigns which allow consumers to interact with the content.

However, as last week’s National Lottery campaign for the World Athletics...

I have a confession: I'm a marketer, but I haven’t always been a fan of marketing. I’d go so far as to say I once liked marketers slightly more than used-car salesmen. Slightly.

Marketers, like many a used car salesman, have the perception of being tone-deaf and “always on.” My perception was no different, and it seems the same was true for Jay Acunzo, a marketer who went so far as to name his blog Sorry for Marketing.

It wasn’t...

In addition to mastering an ever-evolving landscape of social media and digital marketing tools, today’s marketers are required to have a much more in-depth understanding of existing and emerging technology than their predecessors. The rise in experiential marketing has posed a challenge in that brands are now looking to their marketing and advertising executives to integrate never-before-seen technology into in-person marketing experiences.

This strategy comes as a response to consumers, the Millennial generation in particular,...