March Madness at Eighty – The Enduring Spring Tradition
As March Madness sets in, it’s worth a pause to recognize the NCAA for the enduring marketing savvy they displayed eighty years ago when they first created the college basketball final series. Yes, originated in 1939, March Madness is celebrating its eightieth birthday! While not drawing the audience of the much younger Super Bowl, the final weeks of the college basketball season is a phenomenon that is clearly a focus of attention...
The Story of the Lost Brand
Is brand linkage in advertising an outmoded concept? There’s a current body of thought that thinks so. According to this theory, brand linkage is one of those old-fashioned ‘System 2’, rational metrics that has no place in ad evaluation; advertising should resonate emotionally in System 1, and if successful, the brand will reap enormous benefits.
Old, Familiar and Effective!
It’s been interesting to see an emerging trend in which a number of major advertisers have started re-using old TV commercials. For some time now, the conventional wisdom has said that the only way to attract the attention of today’s consumer is with the fresh, new and different. So what’s going on here?
How Advertisers Can Benefit From Bringing Holiday Cheer
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…and, for many, it’s a welcome relief from the negative political advertising and constant doom and gloom on the news. More channels are placing greater focus on holiday content and brands are also releasing their holiday-themed ads. Some global brands have created such a buzz around their holiday ads that they often show up on social feeds across the world. What is John Lewis going to...
Business Decision-Making and the System 1 Brain
What many B2B brands seem to forget is that people who work in business are humans,too. And while business decisions are supposedly made based on purely rational considerations, that’s far from the truth. This fundamental misunderstanding underlying much B2B advertising leads to tens of millions of squandered advertising spending every year, across both traditional media and digital channels…
The Business Case for Gender Equality in Advertising
Women make or influence 85% of consumer purchases (source: Bloomberg), yet 40% of women do not identify at all with the women they see in advertising (source: ANA/The Female Quotient). Over half (55%) of adults believe women are portrayed negatively in the media (source: TiVo Research), and 90% of parents say they are concerned that there are no role models for girls (source: ABX).