Editor's Picks for ANA Magazine

As the pandemic ebbs and consumers return to physical retail outlets, brands are looking to give consumers the best of both worlds: A better in-store experience combined with conveniences typically found only online. How do brands strike the right balance?

With most people willing to travel and venues once again filling to capacity, what’s the hold up on business-related events? The answer is, well, businesses, as they put the kibosh on travel spending and limit live programming. Meanwhile, brands are testing new concepts and creating more interactive elements for their virtual events.

As full-time employees return to the office, they’re bringing with them new demands that go well beyond asking for a “hybrid” schedule; CMOs and marketing departments will need to adapt or risk increasing turnover. In fact, people are leaving their jobs in growing numbers, with the quit rate at an all-time high.

As people return to a post-pandemic life, marketers are going to need to reevaluate their content marketing strategy if they want to stay viable and keep their audiences engaged. Producing content that brings meaning to people’s lives is shaping up to be the biggest challenge, along with devising new measurement tools.

Marketers are adapting their messaging as the U.S. starts to emerge from a tragic period. But without a single ecstatic moment to mark the pandemic’s end, brands will have to continue to recalibrate their strategies and update their ad creative on a fairly constant basis.

Recalibrating how their audiences consume information is just one of the key challenges facing marketers on the analytics front post-pandemic. The death of cookies and the rise of online privacy concerns will also spur brands and organizations to bring new strategies to bear when it comes to data management. First-party data awaits.

Consumers are much more likely to remember interactive ads, perhaps because they’re not interruptive in nature. As marketers boost their online budgets, there are several ways they can improve the performance of their interactive ads and make them a more robust aspect of their overall communications strategy.

There are deaf people who like to use sign language while others prefer using their voice. There are people hard of hearing who culturally identify as Deaf and those who do not. As brands add more assistive tools to their advertising and marketing campaigns, marketers and organizations need to keep such nuances top of mind.

Marketers and agencies are struggling with how to tackle the issues that have taken on newfound urgency in the past 18 months, ranging from spurring diversity to protecting consumer privacy to cultivating talent. The various challenges are perhaps most vividly represented by the striking number of agency reviews, consolidations, and overall account changes in the past few months.

A growing number of states are moving toward legalizing recreational use of marijuana and publishers are getting more accepting of cannabis-themed advertising. Nevertheless, achieving scale will likely be a long slog for brands that want to join the fray. For clues as to how cannabis might eventually emerge as an everyday product, marketers should take a closer look at the CBD space.

Brands for humans (B4H), or the humanization of brand persona, is starting to circulate throughout the marketing field. However companies choose to operationalize B4H, there’s a growing onus on marketers to provide clarity to the public about a corporation’s values and beliefs and how it is meaningfully acting on those convictions.

While diversity has been moving to the forefront in recent years, the reality is that the marketing industry remains mostly white, particularly within the C-suite. To stay viable, a growing number of agencies and brands are taking concrete steps to build more diverse teams and respond to a rapidly changing country demographically.

When lockdowns began in March 2020, they accelerated a change in consumer behavior that gyms and other fitness studios had seen coming at a gradual pace for years. Wearables, health tracking apps, and digital media fitness experiences moved to the forefront, and brands had to adapt digital technology like apps and livestreams quickly to meet customers in a new setting — their living rooms.

The pandemic has had a devastating effect on the country’s health, economy, and psychological well-being. It’s also contributed to a severe lack of trust in major institutions, according to Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer. As the U.S. starts to recover from the virus, people are looking to companies to fix problems the government can’t.

Brands may need to assuage any hard feelings among consumers who believe they got stiffed during last year’s holiday buying season amid a wave of deliveries. Being transparent with customers about return policies is a good place to start — and an opportunity to strengthen relationships that many marketers may be missing.

More than 300 brands are participating in the Ad Council's COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative, rolling out various advertising campaigns that urge people to get vaccinated and address those who are reluctant to get the shot.

Unlike the campaign-to-campaign mode of traditional brand advertising, content marketing requires brands to constantly refine their storytelling efforts and strategize for the long haul.

The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines will spur additional opportunities in DOOH, as consumers return in droves to shopping in brick-and-mortar stores and eating inside restaurants after being stuck in their homes because of the pandemic.

Brands ranging from P&G to PepsiCo are rolling out various initiatives to tackle issues such as climate change and environmental waste across several touchpoints, including product development, packaging, and raw material sourcing.

The demise of third-party cookies provides marketers with an opportunity to be more transparent with consumers and recalibrate their methods of measurement.