How to achieve ‘consumer-first martech’ – and how the marketing clouds don’t quite stack up

If you’re going to invest in marketing technology, then it needs to have the customer experience at its heart. While this may seem a self-evident statement, new research from the CMO Club argues more can be done in aligning a consumer-first approach to marketing technology.

The study, which polled 69 chief marketing officers and was put together alongside Selligent Marketing Cloud, noted that both sides of the brand-consumer relationship was frustrated. Two in three marketers...

3 December 2018 | Advertising Technology

Brands getting to grips with Snapchat – but what more needs to be done?

Picture credit: "Snapchat", by "Adam Przezdziek", used under CC BY SA / Modified from original

Businesses are increasingly paying attention to Snapchat and its benefits with brands posting on the social network on average two times a week, according to a new research study.

The figures come from software as a service firm Snaplytics, who specialises in ‘Snapchat marketing insights’ – the clue was in the name, really – who surveyed 500...

20 February 2017 | Branding

Take a look at how McDonald’s, Guinness and Coca-Cola have kept their brands fresh over 100 years

For any historic, established big brand, they can’t rest on their laurels if they want to stay at the top. Whether it’s through a catchy marketing slogan, or a change to the company logo, the sands of time are constantly shifting.

Take three of the world’s biggest brands; McDonald’s, Guinness and Coca-Cola.

It’s fair to say that the ubiquitous soft drinks manufacturer has suffered slightly over the past year or so, where before it was at the very...

11 July 2014 | Campaigns

Apple, Cadbury and McDonald’s top charts for best storytelling brands

Apple has retained its position as the UK’s top storytelling brand, according to research published by AESOP in association with One Poll.

Cadbury and McDonald’s were second and third respectively, with IKEA moving up six places to fourth and crisp manufacturer Walkers rounding off the top five.

There’s no place in the top 100 for Google – interesting given the daily stories which are told in the Google Doodles – yet YouTube makes the top 10, the...

10 July 2014 | Campaigns

How to ensure the pounds follow the eyeballs when it comes to mobile advertising

In today’s world, there’s nothing that businesses are worried about more than their bottom line, and the impact that advertising has on this figure is no exception. Increasingly brands that use advertising are under more and more pressure to translate advertising spend into cold, hard sales.

Building brand awareness is all well and good, after all, but does it help to demonstrate ROI? With this in mind, there’s no doubt that the question on many brand’s lips...

9 July 2014 | Advertising

Adbrain hires Tim Abraham to improve data platform offering

Adbrain has appointed Xaxis EMEA director of data and audience Tim Abraham to take the reins of the multi-channel ad firm’s data solutions.

It’s further proof – if any were needed – about the power of data at marketers’ fingertips as campaigns become more integrated. Abraham joins Adbrain having previously progressed through the AOL machine as head of Advertising.com’s analytical services division.

Adbrain CEO and co-founder Gareth Davies...

8 July 2014 | Advertising

NewsCred and Outbrain buddy up for content marketing partnership

Brands, listen up: NewsCred and Outbrain have formed a strategic partnership which enables organisations to more effectively source content and then maximise its social reach.

The deal enables marketers to utilise NewsCred’s more than 4500 content providers in its Publisher Network, with NewsCred customers able to share content out through Outbrain Amplify, a platform which allows marketers to promote stories at scale.

“By integrating Outbrain directly into our...

3 July 2014 | Advertising

Bulmers goes cross-screen for pioneering UK advertising campaign

Cider brand Bulmers has unleashed its latest creative campaign with Microsoft which enables users to watch an advert piece by piece through whichever platform they are on.

The campaign, created by Starcom MediaVest, Adam & Eve DDB and We Are Social, uses technology from Microsoft called Creative Sequencing. This means that Bulmers adverts can appear on a variety of devices and platforms, from Windows 8 to MSN, Skype and Xbox 360.

This is achieved through the logging of a...

1 July 2014 | Advertising

Facebookrs study may help their experience, but it also breaches their ethics

In case you missed it over the weekend, Facebook has admitted to conducting a psychological experiment of 689,000 of its users to assess how they reacted to manipulating their news feeds.

The study, in partnership with Cornell University and the University of Columbia, attempted to assess if “exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviours.”

The experiment, which took place in 2012, has understandably caused distress and outrage, chiefly...

30 June 2014

As Google+ turns three, is it time to wave the white flag?

June 28 2014 marks three years since Google+ was launched. It represents an interesting tipping point in the history of the social network, for whom mass adoption has often been difficult to come by.

Despite having only a quarter of the userbase of Facebook, 359 million active users compared to 1.28 billion is still a hefty number. But there’s another issue at stake.

At Google I/O earlier this week, during the two and a half hour keynote conference there was mention of...

27 June 2014 | Search Marketing