#marketing-strategy

#marketing-strategy

Nike has been on a downward trajectory; its share price tanked under the previous CEO, John Donahoe, who was ousted last September in favour of Elliott Hill, a 32-year veteran at the company who was brought out of retirement to lead it back to growth. At the heart of its problems was Donahoe's hyper-focus on growing direct-to-consumer sales. Before Nike, he was a leader in the tech space (eBay, PayPal and ServiceNow) and came in with a vision to have more shoppers buy directly from Nike.com.

For basketball fans, a new year means one thing: March Madness is right around the corner. This jam-packed month has historically been a goldmine for brand marketers. The three full weeks of the tournament, not including the lead up, is an opportunity to capitalize on a pool of highly engaged consumers - whether they are the lucky fans watching in-person, tuning in at restaurants and bars, or catching the highlights from their phones or couch.

Apple has spearheaded the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023, building a complex array of advertising, teasers, playlists, and other content across its many platforms for Rihanna (2023), Usher (2024), and Kendrick Lamar (2025). Since the start of this $50-million-per-year sponsorship deal, Apple has treated the halftime show like it might be one of its products, with all the marketing and advertising bells and whistles it has at its disposal for things like the iPhone and Apple Watch.

To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Media Summit and Experiential Marketing | Nov 8, 2022 Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard (US), explores how the world of marketing is embracing more sensory and experiential approaches. And looks at what all marketers can learn from this broader approach.

One of the first points is uncomfortable but practical: sometimes the fastest way into a new lane is a short, intentional stint working for free. Ranft frames it as an access trade when the door is locked, not a lifestyle, and he's blunt about using discretion so you don't get exploited. The emphasis is on choosing situations where the learning is real, the stakes are real, and the experience creates proof you can show later.

Marketing organizations are racing to adopt AI while simultaneously trying to contain it. About 76.6% of marketers now have AI policies in place, up from 55.3% just a year earlier, per the Association of National Advertisers' January 2026 survey (registration required). Investment is also surging. Nearly 89% plan to increase AI spending, and two-thirds would maintain that investment even during an economic downturn.

If you look it from an ROI point of view, the cost of paid social has gone up so substantially over the past few years while the effectiveness is down trending,

The brand sits right at the warm, gooey center of everyone's subconscious. That's how Hershey's bars can sell on American store shelves for 125 years, in the same boring candy bar wrapper - dull gray letters on a field of brown - without much emphasis on paid media at all. So when Hershey's takes the rare step of overhauling its brand marketing creative and communications platform, it is news. And this Wednesday marks the beginning of Hershey's first major brand marketing campaign since 2018,

The role of social media as an insights engine - instructing you on what audiences like, dislike, and are willing to buy - is unparalleled. This information can be crucial in guiding creative projects. It's impossible for a single creative director, no matter how great, to be able to understand the zillions of online communities and subcultures. Social media has helped culture become less homogeneous and that's a good thing. So let's use it to listen to those many diverse cohorts.

High-performing marketing teams connect firm strategy, market demands, client insights and performance data. They help leaders answer hard questions like: Which industries should we double down on? Which services are scaling and which are not? Where is demand coming from, and where are we misaligned? This means marketing leaders need to turn data into clear direction, and teams must see how their work supports the firm's overall growth, not just individual campaigns.

For years, marketing to the "general market" was a reliable path to growth. Broad reach, consistent messaging, and scale-driven efficiency helped brands build awareness and momentum.

Marketers spend billions trying to persuade consumers that a product is right for them. But our research shows that sometimes the most effective way to market something is to say that it isn't for them. In other words, effective marketing can mean discouraging the wrong customers rather than convincing everyone to buy. We call this "dissuasive framing." Instead of saying a product is perfect for everyone, a company is up front about who it might not be for.

Last year was exhausting for many people for many reasons. It's not just job and family stress, or changes in our industry. But as the book title says, it's everything, everywhere, all at once. It felt like I was constantly cartwheeling from one thing to another, from the news to the stock market, the impact of tariffs and so much more. There's always one more thing to deal with.

A few years ago, the art of the brand collab most often involved bringing together two brands that already had overlapping design styles, fanbases, or product categories. Recall partnerships like Nike and Apple's successful 2016 Series 2 Watch launch, for example; or Dolce & Gabbana's elevated designs for Smeg in 2019; or even Lego's 2020 collection with Ikea. All of these pairings make some measure of intuitive sense. But over the past couple of years, something has clearly changed.

On the consumer side, one of the things we talk about from a Gemini perspective is the fact that it is easily integrated into our Google Suite, which we think is our biggest differentiator. We always lean into the ability to supercharge productivity as well as creativity, and being able to do that 10-fold if you compare it to the competitors in the marketplace, because we have an integrated stack.

Schaefer's book makes the case that people increasingly delegate their thinking and decision-making to AI. He illustrates this point with a simple yet powerful analogy: If you're in the diaper business, babies are the end users, but they are not the decision-makers. Decision-makers are the caregivers responsible for the end users. Therefore, diaper companies know to market to the caregiver responsible for the baby, not the baby.

"Now where we're moving is actually a blend of creativity, because now it's a creator economy of authenticity that's coming out," she said on an Inc. panel for National Entrepreneurship Month (watch the session below). "Being able to tell stories like we did previously in the broadcast generation of ads, and then layering in the ability to actually measure that with data."

It's getting harder for publishers to get traffic from organic search. For some publishers, that means they have to spend more money to get people to come to their sites, through paid audience acquisition tactics - like ads to promote their content - and traffic arbitrage. Publishers didn't mince words when they described the pain of declining search referral traffic at the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe last month. Less traffic means fewereyeballs to serve ads to - an existential threat to some publishers' businesses.

Brand loyalty is often less influenced by emotional connection than by pragmatic considerations like convenience and situational need, according to new GWI research conducted on behalf of Razorfish. While nearly two-thirds (65%) of marketers believe repeat purchases are rooted in love for a brand, less than a quarter of consumer respondents cited brand love as a key motivator for repeat purchases or usage across categories including grocery, airlines, credit cards, streaming platforms and hotels.

It's no wonder personalization programs so often fall short of expectations - they're focused on stats, not mindset. Consider this: even within the same demographic group, nearly 90% of people disagree with one another. Demographics tell us who a customer is, but behavior reveals why they act the way they do - and that's what drives trust and loyalty. Here's a slightly controversial take: I don't believe in personas. They work for storytelling and empathy building, but for personalization, they're too limiting.

Pinterest has shared some new tips for marketers looking to tap into the 2026 Back-to-School period, in order to ensure that you have your plans in place ahead of the shopping season. Yes, we're talking post-holidays, Back-to-School, which still feels like a long way off. But as Pinterest notes: "On Pinterest, back-to-school planning starts as early as October. Here, people build lists, save inspiration and make shoppable plans. In fact,

The narrative goes like this: If you want to connect with your customers, you need to tell stories that capture hearts, not just wallets. But here is the truth. Storytelling is not the right investment for every brand. Done well, it can be powerful. Done without the right context, it can become a costly detour. Story takes time, patience and consistency.

Nostalgia is running rampant in marketing, with myriad brands resurrecting old ads, taglines and mascots to build emotional resonance. What happens when an organization wants to do the opposite of nostalgia bait: make consumers forget its most-recognized slogan in favor of something fresher and more relevant? The National Pork Board was recently faced with such a challenge, and its journey to repositioning pig protein carries larger lessons for how legacy brands are adapting to the digital age.

Zero search occurs when people find information or make decisions without performing a conventional search. Instead, they ask AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini to synthesize and explain what they want to know. These tools no longer provide a list of links. They deliver synthesized, conversational responses that blend data, opinions and relevance. In doing so, they're becoming the new entry point to brand awareness.

Culture is how people connect. And as brands work to be seen as relevant, to build relationships with their communities, and to ride the visibility wave of trending topics, engaging in culture feels like a natural way to get in front of consumers. The problem? Not every brand gets it right. Even though participating in, and especially shaping culture, can be powerful when done well, the way brands show up doesn't always deliver the impact they intend.