Ten of marketing’s most prominent thought leaders offer their thoughts on the state of marketing and the need for transformational change. INTRODUCTION Ever since this podcast first aired in 2018 featuring the legendary marketing mastermind Phil Kotler, I’ve had the great privilege of interviewing some of the best and brightest minds in marketing. For […]
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Anastasis Karklina Gabriel is a cultural theorist and the author of the book “Cultural Intelligence for Marketers”. When Apple suddenly incurs the wrath of the public for a cultural gaffe, it’s clear times have changed. The offense was committed earlier this year when Apple released a 10-minute video titled “Out of Office”, the latest […]
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Jenni Romaniuk is a lead researcher at the world-famous Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the author of “Better Brand Health” Why do people make the buying choices they do? That simple question has preoccupied marketing researchers for more than half a century now. They’ve sought to understand what goes on in people’s minds as they make purchase […]
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Robert Rose is one of the early pioneers and evangelists of content marketing and the author of “Content Marketing Strategy”. When you stop to consider the numbers, it must be very hard these days for any content creator or producer not to be completely cowed by the odds of building a meaningful audience. Estimates vary […]
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Koen Pauwels is one of the foremost marketing scientists in the world and the author of “It’s Not the Size of the Data, It’s How you Use It”. If you can make one broad generalization about marketers it is that they probably hated math and science in high school. Even today, with the business […]
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Brent Chaters leads the Marketing Transformation practice at Accenture and is a noted expert and popular speaker on search marketing”. Any way you look at it, these are troubling times if you’re in marketing. You’ve got AI coming full speed at you, maybe about to take away your job. No one understands what you […]
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David Allison is the founder of the marketing research agency Valuegraphics and the author of “Death of Demographics”.. The legendary Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt once wrote that, “If you’re not thinking segments, you’re not thinking”. He added, “To think segments means to think beyond what’s obviously out there to see.” Levitt felt that […]
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Howard Tiersky is a leading authority on digital transformation and the author of the best-selling book “Winning Digital Customers”. There are many legacy companies today sleep walking toward their grave. They’re about to be engulfed by a fast approaching wave of momentous change which they are totally unprepared to face. It’s no longer a question […]
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Peter Fader is a leading authority on customer analytics and the author of the best-selling book “Customer Centricity”. Just about every CMO will tell you their top priority is growing topline revenue. Where they might differ is how they go about achieving that growth. There are two prevailing schools of thought. The first is that […]
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Alison Simpson is the new leader of the Canadian Marketing Association and an award-winning marketer with experience in all facets of the profession. Marketers have plenty to worry about these days. Their budgets are under closer scrutiny than ever. They are being asked to do more with less, just as the discipline grows more complex […]
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Greg Brown is responsible for digital sales experiences for BMO North America supporting the Personal, Business Banking and Wealth businesses. These days few people ever visit their local bank branch anymore. Certainly not to do their everyday banking. They prefer to do it online from the comfort of their home, or using their bank’s […]
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Ulli Appelbaum is a world-renowned expert on brand positioning and the author of “The Brand Positioning Workbook”. Whiter teeth – or fewer cavities? Longer lasting – or more reliable? Everyday low prices – or quality and selection? Tastes great – or healthier for you? Driving performance – or comfort and luxury? All are examples […]
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Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized author, speaker, futurist, and marketing consultant whose latest book is “Belonging to the Brand”. “Markets are conversations”. That was the opening line in the classic marketing book “The Cluetrain Manifesto” published in the year 2000. The authors urged marketers to give up mass messaging and speak with a […]
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Matthew Seagrim played the lead role in revamping the Scene loyalty program, now called Scene+. For thirty years the AIR MILES Reward Program has ruled the skies in Canada. Its familiar blue membership card can be found in the wallets of roughly 10 million Canadians. But in recent years AIR MILES has lost altitude. […]
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Scott Goodson is the Founder and CEO of Stawberry Frog and the co-author of the book “Activating Brand Purpose”. Practically every corporate boss these days has it on their to-do list – coming up with a business purpose beyond making money. Most of the time they feel it’s a bit too touchy-feely an assignment […]
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Jan Kestle heads up Canada’s largest marketing analytics company and is a longtime leader in the field of geodemographic segmentation. As a nation, we often describe ourselves in terms of what makes us different. English versus French. East versus West. Affluent versus poor. Urban versus rural. Elites versus working class. Progressives versus conservatives. But those […]
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Colin Shaw is one of the world’s foremost experts on customer experience and the author of “The Intuitive Customer”. You hear it practically everywhere these days – the mantra, We Put Customers First. A claim every business now believes it needs to emphatically declare. It shows up in corporate mission statements. On wall posters. In […]
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Professor Kumar is one of the world’s leading marketing scholars and the author of “Intelligent Marketing”. In 1960 the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing published a landmark article by a Pillsbury executive named Robert Keith titled “The Marketing Revolution”. In a succinct 4-pages Keith chronicled the evolution of marketing at Pillsbury from the founding […]
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Neil Bendle heads up the Marketing Accountability Standards Board and is the co-author of “Marketing Metrics”. They are two solitudes – operating in isolated siloes, regularly clashing with one another, insistent on their point of view. So why do finance and marketing act like they are on opposing teams? Why the rancour? The lack of […]
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Chad White is the Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting and the author of “Email Marketing Rules”. It remains the Rodney Dangerfield of marketing channels. Taken for granted as a low-cost tool. Often underfunded. Given minimal resources. And certainly, treated with little respect, especially relative to other, more glamorous channels, like TV advertising, or […]
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Fred Reichheld is a Bain & Company Senior Advisor and the Creator of the Net Promoter System. It’s been touted as the “one number a business needs to grow”. A number based on asking just one survey question – the so-called “Ultimate Question”: “How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or […]
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Martin Kihn is Salesforce’s SVP Strategy for Marketing Cloud and the co-author of “Customer Data Platforms”. There’s a tug of war going on in the marketing world these days between two opposing schools of thought. On one side are the creatively minded brand marketers who remain convinced that the only sure way to achieve long-lasting […]
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David Raab is the Founder of the CDP Institute, and a widely known expert and consultant on marketing technology and analytics. A single source of the truth – a 360-degree view of the customer – a “unified profile” – the “golden record”. Call it what you will, it remains a utopian vision for most organizations, […]
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Battered by the pandemic, and facing even more disruption ahead, the retail industry is in crisis. With even more stores expected to close in the coming years due to declining foot traffic and the flight to ecommerce, retailers will need to offer shoppers a more distinctive experience if they hope to survive. A new retail model is needed, argues retail futurist Doug Stephens, which will pull shoppers away from their screens and entice them to shop in person.
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Marketing technology is now essential to business success. Yet marketers continue to struggle with the complexity of their bloated marketing automation solutions, citing lack of application integration amongst their toughest challenges. The answer, according to HubSpot’s marketing technology expert Scott Brinker, is to develop more open and compatible platform ecosystems that make it easy for marketers to add on any application they want.
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David Kincaid is the Founder and Managing Partner of Level5 Strategy, a brand consultancy, and the author of “The Brand-Driven CEO”. As the world awakens from this pandemic-induced slumber after what seems an eternity, brands will be facing a very different looking marketplace. A fatigued consumer population, whose buying habits have been warped by a […]
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The year of the pandemic may have been the tipping point for the reimagining of retail. Many retailers, slow to adapt to omnichannel commerce, were pushed to the brink of insolvency. In Canada, one retailer has stood out above all others in shifting to a customer-first model, the century-old Canadian Tire. A big part of its recent success is due to its 10-million member Triangle Rewards program, launched three years ago under the stewardship of Senior VP Shawn Stewart who sees it as a vehicle for deepening the retailer’s relationship with customers.
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Under pressure to act fast during the pandemic, businesses sped up their digital transformation plans, compressing their timetables from years into months. Now they face the next phase of evolution, what digital prophet Brian Solis calls the “novel economy”. For businesses to adapt and thrive, says Solis, they must take a more profound and humanistic approach to transformation.
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Slow to awaken to market disruption and too reliant on ad spending, the global agency holding companies have seen their valuations plummet in recent years. To reverse their fortunes, they need to transform their service model. MDC is leading the way, aided by an infusion of capital from the new CEO Mark Penn, who is set to turn his collection of “partner agencies” into a “modern marketing company of choice”.
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Marketing has always been on the front lines of change. Each seismic shift has brought a new set of challenges. But now, in this new world of “infinite media”, marketing is facing its greatest challenge ever. The only response, Mathew Sweezey believes, is for marketing to pivot from harnessing media to creating experiences that help customers in the context of the moment.
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The world is awash in mediocre content, mainly because most brands struggle to find something meaningful to say. Yet in times of crisis, when people are feeling anxious and concerned, there is never a better time to speak up. The key is the ability to show empathy, Ann Handley argues. She urges brands to “do less” and “obsess” about producing higher quality content that matters.
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Most loyalty programs today do little to make people feel more loyal to the brand. They are mainly promotional tools designed to drive repeat sales by giving away margin in the form of redeemable currency or discounts. Which is why it may be time to reimagine loyalty programs, according to Bryan Pearson, transforming them into dynamic platforms that are a more integral part of the customer experience.
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Marketing as a discipline is going through an identity crisis due to the radical shift in the buying behaviour of people. The answer, for some companies, is to ditch the classical marketing function in favour of a broader mandate that makes the customer experience more of a corporate priority. But just fixing what’s wrong is not enough, according to Jay Baer. Companies must also offer customers an experience so memorable and unexpected, they’ll be keen to talk about it with everyone they know.
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Today the world is awash in content as brands engage in a dizzying dogfight for attention. Marketers may have reached a saturation point, where no matter how good the content may be, the chances of it being noticed are remote. Yet content marketing budgets keep growing which means the content glut will only get worse. The answer, according to Randy Frisch, is to map the content experience to each stage of the customer lifecycle.
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A new wave of disruptive technology is coming – yet most companies are still getting used to the idea of a digital-first world. According to Mitch Joel, decoding the future is crucial if companies hope to survive the coming storm. There is only one sensible response: to “reboot” their businesses, as fast as possible.
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Marketing’s new mandate, according to Professor Niraj Dawar, should be to find out why customers buy from their company, not the competition, and then double down on that advantage. Marketing needs to do much more than find new buyers, he argues – it has to take charge of the entire customer relationship.
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Design thinking has taken on a central role in freeing the corporate imagination. It leads to Big Ideas about innovative products, services and business models. But what’s missing is a broader view of the end-to-end customer experience. Which is why Experience Thinking, a new evolving field, fills a critical gap in the innovation process. In this interview van Gelderen explains his framework for reimagining the customer experience and his unique approach to the research and design process.
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The ad-based web is at an inflection point, in urgent need of reform. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Acuity Ads, one of the fastest growing adtech companies in the business, Seraj Bharwani recognizes the challenges facing the industry. In this wide-ranging conversation, he shares his perspective on the past and future of digital advertising, as well as his ideas for industry reform.
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The concept of relationship marketing is facing an “identity crisis” according to Jagdish Sheth, one of the world’s leading marketing academics. Scolding marketers for treating customers like “ID numbers”, he proposes a new “purpose-driven” form of relationship marketing where customers have a more transcendent, values-based connection with brands. He calls it “share of heart”. Professor Sheth explains his reasoning in this wide-ranging and thought-provoking interview.
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In 1993, AT&T launched a marketing campaign called “You Will”. In a series of memorable TV ads, it depicted future applications of technology that turned out to be eerily accurate. Each commercial showcased a different product innovation AT&T had been working on. “Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your Computer?”, one commercial asks. Another begins by wondering, “Have you ever gotten a phone call on your wrist?”. Each commercial ended with the signoff: “You will”.
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Businesses are “drowning in data but starving for insight”, as the saying goes, and that problem is about to get worse. As society becomes increasingly connected, marketers are facing a rising tide of digital interactions. Somewhere inside that massive pool of data are the answers to questions marketers haven’t even thought to ask – yet are essential to creating a better customer experience.
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Customer analytics has come a long way since banks first started building Customer Information Files in the 1990s. “CIFs”, as they were called, were the primitive forerunner to what we now call “data lakes”. Just getting access to data was the main barrier back then – closely rivalled by the suspect quality of the contact data. Today the biggest analytical challenge for banks isn’t the limitations of technology: it’s embedding data-driven decision-making into the operational DNA of the bank.
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He is universally acknowledged as the “Father of Modern Marketing”. His classic textbook “Marketing Management” is now in its 15th edition. He has been called the “most influential marketer” of all time. Wold-famous marketing academic Philip Kotler shares his perspective on the future of marketing and “why it will be markedly different”.
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