Brands

Predictions of a looming recession doesn't seem likely to hinder holiday shopping this year. In fact, despite what some call “unprecedented uncertainty,” analysts say holiday shopping will increase by 5% compared to last year. This is the time for brick-and-mortar retailers to capitalize on their physical locations and pull in extra profits as behemoths like Amazon continue to infringe on market share. According to Avionos research, 58% of consumers are most likely to buy big-ticket items like furniture or electronics…

Brands Are Implementing Yext's Revolutionary New Search Product to Turn Their Websites into Powerful Search Experiences Yext, Inc., the Search Experience Cloud company, announced its early work with brands across industries that are implementing its revolutionary new search product, Yext Answers. "Search engines have gotten far more intelligent over the last twenty years, but search on business websites doesn't work nearly as well," said Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext. "With Answers, we're giving brands the…

Consumers say they want companies to be much more transparent about the way they use personal and location data. But how can brands put this into practice? Consumers are sharing more data with brands than ever before, every time they tap ‘OK’ or tick the box marked ‘Agree’, they’re handing over data about themselves, their social lives, their media usage, their shopping habits, and even their precise location. But at the back of their minds, they still harbor concerns about it – mainly because it’s not clear how much data…

The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is take a freezing cold shower. People say to me, "John, why would you do that to yourself? Why would you disrupt yourself like that and get out of that warm, comfy bed?" Well, research has shown that a cold shower can help you fight depression, burn fat, and more importantly, train our brains to tolerate discomfort and embrace disruption. Actually, the research had me at “burns fat.” I'm in the cold shower telling myself, "I'm burning fat.." I’m actually thinking of giving…

If your Marketing department is not including accessibility in your Digital Marketing strategy, start now. Digital accessibility may be the single most effective way to reach more customers, create a more engaging customer experience, and inspire deeper brand loyalty. We are in the midst of the first mainstream web accessibility movement. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of website accessibility lawsuits has jumped from 4,436 to a projected 11,184. The surge of lawsuits have asserted that the Americans With Disabilities…

Study of More Than 34,000 Consumers Across 18 Countries Highlights How a Hybrid Workforce Is Key to Meeting Customer Expectations in an ‘Always-On’ Era of Service and in Continuing to Honor Consumers’ Need for the Human Factor Two-thirds of consumers recently surveyed said they are more likely to switch to brands that provide the best experience or service – underscoring the importance of providing exceptional service and the ultimate cost to those companies that fail – customer defection. “The customer experience…

WeAre8, the platform that enables brands to invest directly in their real consumers and build individual relationships at scale, announced the launch of its Content Marketplace, a cost-effective model for brands to access a constant funnel of authentic and high-quality user-generated content created by real fans. Through the Content Marketplace, brands can submit a brief to millions of targeted consumers and purchase individual pieces of unique content, or log in at any time to see a growing arsenal of branded content…

The OM Platform Pioneers a New Type of Conversation Between Brands, Marketers, Publishers, Advertisers and their Customers You never have to leave your messaging app with OpenMessage Works across WhatsApp, WeChat, Apple Business Chat, and Google RCS Appoints New CCO to lead enterprise sales and business development OpenMessage, the world's only mobile messaging engagement platform driven by conversational commerce, announced new customer wins, expanded company partnerships and the appointment of its first Chief Commercial…

Annual Playbook Examines the Impact of Amazon Advertising on Vendors and Sellers Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven performance marketing agency, released its second annual Amazon Ads Playbook. This year’s report, titled “The Amazon Advertising Flywheel Strategy Guide,” explains Amazon advertising’s effect and impact on vendors and sellers, while examining the main components that comprise the flywheel, including owned, paid, and earned media. “By bringing together teams to support merchandising,…

DojoMojo Redefines the Partnership Marketing Landscape by Enabling over 8,000 Brands to Buy and Sell Media Directly in It’s Leading Marketplace DojoMojo, the leader in partnership marketing, debuts a revolutionary new feature – Media Market – that is redefining the experience of buying and selling media for brands. While Facebook and Google have come to dominate the landscape of digital marketing – a landscape where brands’ partnership strategies have historically relied on warm introductions or cold calls – DojoMojo is…

The Influencer Marketing company Buzzoole has released the results of its new research on the use of #ad on Instagram during 2018. Despite having been under scrutiny for issues such as Influencer fraud and a continued lack of transparency, the number of posts created shows a double digit growth of 42% YoY. The analysis was conducted tracking the most common ‘transparency hashtags’ – #ad, #sponsored and #sp – across the globe,  using a combination of social listening tools and previous research conducted during the first…

Research Shows There’s No ‘Third Time Lucky’ for Brands Failing at Customer Experience New research launched from Thunderhead reveals that two in five consumers (39%) would consider switching to another retailer after two bad experiences with a brand. The study surveyed 4,000 consumers in the US and UK to uncover what consumers today expect of brand experiences in banking, auto, insurance, telco, energy and retail. Thunderhead, the leader in customer engagement and journey orchestration, also found that two in five…

Award-Winning Executive Will Oversee All Creative Work from the Chicago Village; Joins a Commanding North American Creative Team Alongside Icaro Doria at Arnold and Harry Bernstein at Havas New York Dedicated to building meaningful American brands with cultural relevance, Havas Chicago has hired creative powerhouse John Norman as chief creative officer to help advance its mission. A celebrated industry veteran who has worked with trendsetting brands such as Walmart, Nike, Coca-Cola and Gatorade, Norman…

New Platform Modernizes Gift Card Industry, Driving Revenue for Retailers and Consumer Flexibility Bitmo, a mobile gifting and payment platform that is transforming the $160 billion gift card industry, announced that it has raised over $3 million in new seed round capital. “Research shows that consumers spend $160 billion on gift cards a year, yet one-third of those who receive gift cards don’t use them” Bitmo is a mobile platform that allows consumers to gift easily and securely right from their mobile wallet. Unlike…

SOCi Reputation Insights Helps Multi-Location Brands Better Monitor Online Review Content for Quick Response and Proactive Localized Social Management SOCi, the leader in social media and reputation management for multi-location brands, announced the launch of SOCi Reputation Insights. Comprised of sentiment and competitive monitoring, SOCi Reputation Insights is designed to help multi-location marketers identify and manage emerging sentiment and competitive trends from online reviews and analyze shifts in online…

Deal Allows Brands to Transform Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service with Dynamic Customer Interactions That Seamlessly Integrate Bots and Live Agents Conversocial, the leading digital customer experience platform, is acquiring Assist, pioneers in messaging automation, to offer scalable, conversational customer experiences that strike the right balance between adaptive automation and human support. Assist’s focus on smart, next-generation automation and chatbots coupled with Conversocial’s unified approach to new…

Snap36, the market leader for rich and interactive 360-degree/3D product experiences, and 1WorldSync, the leading provider of product content solutions, announced a strategic partnership that will provide companies of any size and industry the added advantage of authentic, high-quality, digital-ready product images. In the increasingly competitive e-commerce world, engaging customers and optimizing conversion rates online is critical for growth. 1WorldSync and Snap36 understand the importance of high-quality and brand…

Companies at Launch Include Disney’s Media Networks, Turner, Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, CBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks, VIZIO and Inscape America’s top media and technology companies, in collaboration with US smart TV company VIZIO, announced the formation of a consortium dedicated to the development and deployment of a new, open standard for addressable advertising on connected TVs. The effort will open up a direct dynamic ad- management pathway between content owners and TV devices.…

TONIK+ Rolls out First of Its Kind AI Technology to Fortune 100 Entertainment Companies and Global Consumer Brands Jamie Elden has been named President of TONIK+, the AI-driven creative platform that connects brands with consumers through powerful storytelling and optimizes performance in real time. "TONIK+ video intelligence and remixing ability is the most comprehensive solution I've seen yet," says Ben Royce, Head of Performance Data Science, Global Agency at Google. Wavemaker Partners led by Founder & Managing…

97% of Consumers Feel They Can Still Trust an Influencer Openly Partnered with a Brand A new global report compiled by Rakuten Marketing reveals YouTube’s monopoly on the ‘influencer’ is over. Instagram is named the platform most commonly used to view influencer content (65%), beating the video streaming platform by 3%. The survey also revealed that the power of influencer marketing is far from slowing down. In the UK, 81% of consumers report that they have now made a purchase by following a link shared by an…