Blog - Marketing Strategy

In this edition of our Plain Talk series, we’ll examine brand trust and corporate social responsibility and discuss how the two are interacting during the current COVID-19 global crisis. We’re exploring the ways smart brands continue to communicate and build trust with consumers from a physical distance.

As marketing professionals with years of experience, we’ve all learned to trust, to some degree, that little voice inside our heads that tells us when we may have stumbled across an idea that could be genius. Intuition. Inspiration. The gap in time and space where the magic happens. Creatives in our industry thrive on honing their intuition to drive new ideas and break new creative ground. But in today’s highly fragmented and diverse customer universe, many brands find out the hard way that real insight must guide intuition. In today’s Plain Talk article, we’ll noodle some cautionary instances where a well-written research and insight development plan could have saved brands a lot of money and heartache on controversial ads and promotions.

Influencer marketing has become a digital monster. Are you doing it? Are you doing it wrong? Should you be doing it at all? If so, how and under what circumstances? In this edition of the Plain Talk series, we’ll take some of the mystery out of influencer marketing and dispel a few myths along the way. First, let’s talk about the money.

In today’s Plain Talk newsletter, we’re talking about corporate social responsibility initiatives. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle both international and domestic matters is at the lowest point it has been in more than twenty years. Only 35 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the U.S. government’s ability to handle domestic issues. Meanwhile, trust in the government to handle international issues ranks only six points higher at a mere 41 percent.

Last month, this meme juxtaposing Tom Cruise and Wilford Brimley’s ages made the internet rounds, leaving innumerable blown minds in its wake. For those who followed up with Wikipedia, it proved true: When he filmed Cocoon in 1984, Brimley was 50 years old; Tom Cruise filmed Mission: Impossible-Fallout at 55. The age comparison between the two men has been circulating for the past few years, updating essentially with every new Mission: Impossible release, but this time it rocketed around social media faster, perhaps because Cruise is now in his mid-50s yet still pulling off his own stunts.

Lately, our society has engaged in much more discussion about the need to recognize bias in ourselves and our culture, in how we interact with and represent others. As a primary means of mass communication, advertising has a special role to play in this concern.

Economic recession has been influencing decisions whether and where to attend college in recent years. A new survey bears out that this trend continues among teenagers despite news that consumer confidence is on the rise.

Unless you’ve been in hiding, without a smartphone, you’ve heard a lot about virtual reality. For some, VR is touted as the “it” technology that will save marketing (or make it cool again). From the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to gamer and entertainment blogs, it’s been hot water-cooler talk for some time. If you’ve experienced virtual reality yourself, you have to admit, it’s pretty cool tech. But is it really the next big thing, or will it just be another arrow in the marketing quiver?