It’s tempting for marketers to assume we intuitively know what consumers want. After all, we’re consumers too. But listening to the focus group of one inside our heads can lead us astray. Trying to extrapolate our personal experience to how an audience will respond is risky. …

Everything my younger daughter needed to know about advertising, she learned by buying Sea Monkeys with her allowance a few years ago. …

Brand engagement is treated as the holy grail for marketers. Marketers sometimes operate as if consumers are just waiting around to have a relationship with their brand. This cartoon was partly inspired by a story Jimmy Fallon shared in an NPR interview: “I bought a pack of gum, and the…

Even as brands continue to chase Millennials, marketers are starting to shift their attention to the next generation — Generation Z. Born after 1995, this is a group that grew up in our social, mobile, and digitally-connected world. There’s a lot of soul searching on how brands can can resonate…

Last week was the annual pilgrimage to SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Increasingly, SXSW is attracting big brands as a marketing venue to influencers (this year, even McDonalds has a presence) and as part of the search of the next new thing. Famously the launchpad for Twitter in 2007 and…

Hackathons have gone mainstream. Originally the domain of scrappy tech start ups, hackathons are now hosted by large corporations and governments. This week’s cartoon was partly inspired by a very funny video from Vooza on the dark side of hackathons. A hackathon started as an event where teams of developers…

Everything I needed to know about marketing, I learned from Mark Addicks, who retired as CMO of General Mills in January. …