Trends and Technology

A new report from McKinsey & Co. reveals some sharp differences when it comes to how CEOs and CMOs understand the role marketing plays and how it contributes to the company's overall goals and objectives. There are several steps CMOs can take to bridge the divide, facilitated by strengthening communication and sharing a customer-centric vision for the company.

Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" in 2023 made it clear that music moves markets. So, it's little wonder why major brands such as Citi, Coors Light, and Taco Bell plan to strike up the band this year with significant investments in music marketing.

To combat online hate and make sure their information doesn't end up next to vituperative content, marketers must remain vigilant.

The vast majority of the advertising industry agrees that a state-led approach to data privacy legislation does not work. But what might privacy look like in an ideal future, and is AI the answer?

The cry for federal data privacy legislation has reached a fever pitch, as navigating state laws becomes increasingly confusing and costly. In response, advertising industry groups are working together to advocate for a single federal law.

Sports programming is a solid marketing vehicle for reaching wide swaths of consumers, of course, but how can brands tap the devotion of so-called "forever fans," who are more likely than other fans to emotionally connect to sponsors?

Consumer data privacy in the U.S. is complicated because the country lacks a national data privacy law. But individual state laws that form a patchwork of complexity and sometimes-conflicting regulations are leaving brands — and individuals — confused about their rights.

Before brand marketers jump into a new sponsorship, it's crucial that they ask themselves how their involvement will add value to their entire organization, says Jeffrey Quezada of Citi.

Saying that they face a seemingly endless threat of a recession along with financial pressures from upper management, client-side marketers continue to ask for extended payment terms, putting the squeeze on creative services firms. But agencies are pushing back, as the 4A's insist on in a recent report that agencies only accept 30-day payment terms.

Despite stubbornly high inflation, pet owners haven't slowed down their purchasing. In 2022, American pet owners spent $136.8 billion on their pets, an approximate 10.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to Forbes. What's more, 68 percent of consumers spent more on pet products in February 2023 compared to January 2022, even as they cut back on other items.

When catering to gen Alphas, marketers need to think outside the screen, and create engaging, immersive experiences that blend the digital and physical worlds.

With increasing competition for mind and wallet share, the big sports leagues continue to roll out new marketing vehicles to keep fans engaged, broaden their reach, and develop new ad revenue streams.

Media usage may be moving toward a tipping point in which consumer consumption rates for both traditional media and digital channels reach saturation. Marketers will have to alter their engagement strategies to capture more elusive consumers.

Armed with enormous spending power, Americans aged 50 and over are living longer, more active lives. But, for the most part, marketers choose to ignore rapidly changing demographics and devote the bulk of their budgets to courting the coveted 18 to 49 crowd. A new platform targeting consumer-facing brands wants to change that.

Is the agency review process broken? According to a recent study, the typical price tag for agency reviews is on the rise, both for the agencies and the brands they serve. Agency reviews are also getting to be a bigger drain on time. When an incumbent agency participates, the selection process takes 2.5 months, while choosing a new agency takes 3.2 months. Both sides of the table are getting increasingly frustrated, but there are ways to remedy the situation.

More than 70 percent of consumers said it is more important to trust the brands they buy from or use today than in the past, according to a recent survey released by Edelman. Companies will need to revisit their strategies for building trust with their customers or face dwindling returns or, even worse, irrelevancy.

Companies can no longer approach customer experience (CX) as one person's or department's job, according to Neil Dowling, CMO and global alliances lead at the global experience company Rightpoint. If companies are siloed, true measurement is narrow and makes enhancing the customer experience a bigger challenge.

Intellectual property and copyright concerns are among the thornier issues that marketers and agencies are grappling with as generative artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a force in the ad business. Procurement can play a key role asking vendors about their technology capabilities and how those technologies or models were trained. At the same time, marketers should be encouraged that some generative AI vendors are providing assurances that their products are free of copyright concerns.

Martech utilization rates keep plummeting, according to a recent survey. One reason marketers don't use more of their technology is because marketers and/or their agency partners fail to take charge of the applications within their organizations. Problems with customer data, a complex ecosystem, and rigid governance also contribute to underutilization.

While the cost savings and marketing efficiencies chatbots offer are real, they come with potentially severe and growing risks, ranging from copyright infringement to misinformation. Whether marketers deploy generative AI chatbots for advertising campaigns or to improve workflow in-house, they need to understand the legal and ethical sand traps and proceed with a plan.