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We nearly always think that a downward spiral is a negative, a downturn, and a disaster. Not always. I disagree and make an exception when it comes to marketing and developing a ‘go to market’ digital cross-media or integrated strategy, selecting the media, and determining when to use that media to support your strategy.

I often explain to clients and students that a useful image to visualise when discussing the development of an integrated marketing program is a...

Picture credit: Jack Morton

Mobile World Congress (MWC) can be a strange and inhospitable environment for the uninitiated, with its cavernous aircraft hangers, huge crowds, and endless aisles of things to see. It’s also a huge challenge for the companies that attend: everyone is competing for attention, and there’s only so much of it to go around. 

For brands, the secret of success is to resist the temptation to just talk about their products, and to instead seize the opportunity to...

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It used to be the domain of the IT manager, but new research suggests that two thirds of marketing managers are now making the call on purchasing new marketing software.

The study, by digital transformation business Squiz, seems to show that both marketing manager and IT manager agree that the shift in decision making has needed to happen with only 45% saying that they believed that such a purchase decision lay with the IT manager.

When it comes to where marketers are investing, the...

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Forget the EU – the big harmonious union we all need to be thinking about is marketing and compliance.

Historically, the two have mixed a bit like oil and water, but in today’s digital world, there is an even greater need for pulling together. In financial services, especially with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) monitoring companies and their electronic communications more closely than ever, the two are set to be even more closely linked. Perhaps with this in mind,...

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Business leaders need to do much more to get the most out of their brand with marketers frustrated at their bosses’ failure to maximise their brand efforts, according to a new report from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Releasing its Brand Experience report at the CIM Brand Summit this week the report showed that two-thirds (67%) of marketers believe that senior leaders fail to gain the maximum value from their brand by failing to embed brand values throughout their...

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Marketers are focusing too much on content distribution and management rather than better content creation technology, according to a new survey.

In a study of marketing creatives by interactive video technology company Rapt Media respondents were asked about the challenges, priorities and technology investments that they faced when it comes to the evolving content marketing ecosystem. It also looked at whether measurement of the content they produce was a priority for them.

The results...

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Not so long ago, Gartner predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs have ever done. Whilst vice president Jennifer Beck, made it clear that this does not mean the CMO will take over the CIO’s role, it does mean that those in control of marketing will become more data driven and will inevitably grow more technically minded. With this in mind, CEOs will come to support the CMO’s ability to utilise new technologies to generate faster ROI for marketing spend.

It is clear that digital...

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If you think about it, lasagne is not only a perfect food – well, maybe pizza is better – but also a perfect analogy to assist you in developing a near perfect marketing plan.

Consider the following. When developing your marketing plan, you need to first envision the scope, the universe, the market that supports your goals and objectives. Budget, cost outlay, and market spend must also be serious considerations. Marketing demographics, personas, diversification,...

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In many ways, influencer marketing is already a well-established practice; 84% of marketers planned to include influencer marketing in their strategy this year. Yet when I speak to brands, it is clear that they are spending millions on influencer marketing without the tools to make educated decisions and run effective campaigns.

Until recently, choosing an influencer for a campaign required spending...

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Marketers must be able to not only speak marketing talk but also be able to explain and quantify the contribution of the marketing department in the boardroom if they are to gain a higher profile within businesses.

A new study published this week by Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud says marketers must be able to speak the board’s language – translating marketing concepts into a business outcomes-focused conversation if they are to bolster the number of marketing...

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When a crisis breaks, brands need to react quickly to assess the extent of the damage.  How quickly is it spreading? Who is talking about it? How far has it spread? Sometimes news hasn't spread very far yet, and the impact can be contained. But sometimes, news spreads far and fast, especially on social media networks such as Twitter. A recent example of this happened to car manufacturer Volkswagen.

On September 18, the EPA announced that Volkswagen...

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Ad blocking is a catch-22 situation that must be resolved, according to a recent event on the subject held by the ISBA. According to a study by IAB and YouGov 15% of adults in the UK online are currently using ad blocking software but more than half (56%) don’t realise that means a subsequent loss of revenue to the website concerned. This of course leads to the risk that such sites can no longer produce content that such users enjoy freely.

Globally 7% of the world’s 3.3...

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Over the past 25 years, multiple economic and related bubbles have negatively impacted the United States and the world. These bubbles include the very famous dot.com bubble, the not-so-famous technology bubble, and the very financially damaging housing bubble and real estate bubble.

Whether you believe in the concept of bubbles or not, I believe that the marketing sector is on the verge of a bubble that is truly about to pop.

Let’s be real; not all media and not all trends last....

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Online ad fraud is one of the biggest challenges the digital marketing industry faces at the moment, with fake traffic costing advertisers $6.3 billion this year alone. The challenge of course is identifying it and then prioritising efforts to deal with it.

A new classification ranking of the different types of online ad fraud may therefore help. The taxonomy has been published by the UK’s Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) and identifies 16 different malicious...

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In the week that Instagram announced the rollout of ad functionality on its platform across the globe by the end of this month, agile marketing software provider Kenshoo has revealed what it says is best practice about what works on the platform in terms of advertising.

The company has analysed 25 active campaigns managed through its technology on Instagram to provide campaign measurements and learnings that it believes will help advertisers better target campaigns on the platform.

The performance...

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Instore Wi-Fi, tablets and other in-store technology was supposed to revolutionise the customer experience and in many cases it has done just that. But a new report suggests that for some the promise is not being delivered with sales staff still failing to answer customer queries instore meaning a poor experience that leaves the customer dissatisfied.

The report, from communications and network provider Vodat, suggests that many retailers aren’t making the most of the...

Picture credit: consumerm1nkey/YouTube

Do you remember the Smash Martians (above), Yellow Pages’ JR Hartley and the PG Tips chimps? Such characters have become cult icons of the pre-Internet advertising days and could teach today’s internet marketers a thing or two, according to a new report from Acxiom.

The ads were amongst those most remembered by UK consumers in a poll of 2,000 people. The Smash Martians ad – for instant mashed potato no less – was remembered by 69.4% of those surveyed and was...

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Tesco announced recently that it had been running a trial at its new concept store on Villiers Street in central London, in which digital discount coupons were pushed to the smartphones of 40,000 shoppers who had ether passed by the store six times during a two-week period or walked in and out of nearby Embankment station. Customers could redeem their coupons by scanning them at one of the store’s self-service checkouts. Tesco described the trial as an attempt to use the...

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There is a cartoon from Tom Fishburne of Marketoonist where a young child says to her father at bedtime: “Daddy, instead of a story, can you read me some branded content?” Even though the cartoon was penned in 2013, the message still resonates. Anyone reading this will know content marketing can be a jewel in a campaign’s crown, but if it’s too obviously ‘branded...

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Consumers believe their time is worth £7 a minute to advertisers, according to a new study of mobile advertising. The study, which revealed attitudes to mobile ads in France, Germany, UK and US, suggested that mobile consumers said that engaging with one minute of advertising on mobile devices was equivalent to £6.80 per consumer for advertisers. The value exchange figure was the result of a poll of 4,000 consumers across the four countries, conducted by Opinium...