Marketing

Marketing

But we in marketing also have a certain fixation on youth. Millennials (put roughly, those born between 1980 and 2000) are the prime suspect at the minute because from where we sit in London, it seems like they're reaching their prime consumption years. They value experiences over things. They want authentic connections to brands. They want to be marketed to via a social influencer instead of a traditional ad (ha! they want to be marketed to - insert laugh/cry emoji here).

"F1 sits at the intersection of sports, innovation and culture, and the fan engagement is evolving quickly with even more energy than ever," says Eddy Cue, Apple's senior VP of services. "Seeing Cadillac enter the grid in such a bold way is incredibly exciting, and a great signal of where the sport continues to head."

Website monetization strategies have shifted in recent years, moving away from single-income tactics toward diversified revenue systems that protect sites from traffic swings and platform changes. Blogs, niche websites, and small e-commerce platforms now blend ads, affiliates, and owned products to build reliable income streams without hurting reader trust. Making money online approaches work best when they scale gradually, aligning traffic growth with monetization maturity rather than rushing every option at once.

The country has just been introduced to a diversity-hostile administration, which has practically squashed any zeal toward diversity, equity, or inclusion that corporate America once seemingly held. As the NFL's leadership team explores talent considerations for next year's performance in the midst of this cultural backdrop, someone recommends Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican-born megastar whose songs are performed almost entirely in Spanish, and, surprisingly, the league acquiesces.

Every time you walk out of Costco with that perfectly golden $4.99 rotisserie chicken, you've just helped them lose money. That's right - Costco's CFO stated in 2015 that Costco loses between $30 to $40 million annually on their famous rotisserie chickens. Yet somehow, this wholesale giant continues to thrive, with net sales reaching $249.6 billion in fiscal 2024. What's going on here?

The results revealed London as number one, with 49,330 average monthly searches per 10k people. Birmingham came second with 9,150, and Manchester third with 7,080. Leeds and Bristol rounded out the top five with 6,230 and 5,840 respectively. Meanwhile, Carlisle sat at the bottom of the table with just 370. Cambridge came second to last with 420, and then Ripon with 580.

Snapchat is marching on with its hunt for new users, investing in its first global ad campaign that positions it as an app where 'Real Friends' can connect. The push, launched on International Friendship Day, follows on from a bumper second quarter for Snap in which it attracted 13 million users, well above the 2 million forecast by analysts and a figure that eased investor and advertiser jitters significantly following years of sluggish growth.

Every week there are stories of brands retendering, with agencies enthusiastically falling over one another in a race to the bottom on margins. Among the most recent cases, Hilton has set about building its own internal "centers of excellence" dedicated to specific media and marketing areas, which will be reinforced by the right niche and independent agency. One of the unintended consequences of the digital revolution has been to challenge the identity and purpose of the all-encompassing agency.

How do you create brand meaning that's algorithm-proof? By creating moments so meaningful that when the customer's need returns, the brand does too, without any algorithmic assistance. I call it appreciated generosity. In a marketing world increasingly optimized by AI, personalization engines and predictive systems, it's tempting to believe relevance can be engineered entirely through data. But the brands people default to, the ones they don't search for, compare or ask AI to recommend, are built through small, generous brand acts.

There are a variety of reasons why companies take the rebrand plunge, but one thing is certain - they feel the action is worth the risk. The consumer market is so highly competitive that brands often need to take drastic measures to stay relevant. For many companies it can take a massive overhaul to fuel a brand enough to push through the masses and stay top of mind for consumers.

The traditional customer funnel is quickly giving way to a more fragmented, dynamic and self-directed journey. Today's buyers move fluidly across platforms, channels and touchpoints-often gathering information, building trust and forming preferences long before brands realize they're in the picture. As AI, creator influence and real-time intent signals reshape how decisions are made, brands must rethink where trust is built and conversion truly happens.

Voice search doesn't change people's need to search, but what does change is our need to pay attention to our audience's requirements and adapt our strategies to account for more than just 'money keywords'. The challenge that voice search throws at us is the advent of the single default answer. It's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' but on a wide, landscape-changing scale.

Spend half an hour exploring #StrategyTwitter or #MarketingTwitter and you'll quickly discover huge swathes of talented folks arguing passionately about the correct way to market brands. On one end of the spectrum you'll find the staunch strategists quoting lines from Sharp's How Brands Grow (which is well worth a read), while on the other end you'll find people posting fairly nauseating Gary Vaynerchuk quotes in serif fonts about how the number one rule in marketing is 'love'.

Released on Feb. 3, e.l.f.'s latest Super Bowl swing sees McCarthy in full panic mode, racing to learn Spanish ahead of Bad Bunny's halftime performance. After crashing her car, she wakes up in a hospital only to learn she has one day to become fluent. With the help of a hot doctor played by Nicholas Gonzalez - and e.l.f.'s Glow Reviver Lip Oil, naturally - McCarthy transforms into "Melisa." But not before legendary telenovela villain Itatí Cantoral, cast as a jealous nurse, completely loses it over Melisa's suddenly perfect pronunciation and main character moment.