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 but there are something like 600 million blogs in the world. There are an estimated four million podcasts. About the same number of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. More than three million photos get uploaded daily. No one knows the exact number of brand newsletters b ..read more

 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 world awash in performance data of all kinds, marketers tend to fall back on long-held marketing truisms or heuristic rules in the decisions they make. Anything to avoid number-crunching. The right split between brand building and activation? Of course, it has to be 60:40! Isn’t that what Binet and Field ..read more

 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 do – not your mother, your best friend, or most of the people outside of marketing in your company. And even worse, just about everyone thinks they can do your job. Which leads to imposter syndrome because you likely don’t have a whole lot of training yourself. Fake it until you make i ..read more

 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 segmentation was crucial because it sparked insight into how customers differ from one another. Knowing what drives the behaviour of different groups of customers leads to better marketing decisions, he believed, since business success is only poss ..read more

HT: 0;” data-mce-type=”bookmark” class=”mce_SELRES_start”> Allen Adamson is a leading authority on branding and the author of the book “Seeing the How”. At this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity NYU’s marketing superstar and provocateur Scott Galloway asked the audience at his packed session to take a red pill. “I think the era of brand is over” he bluntly declared, knowing it would rattle everyone in the crowd whose livelihoods depend on brand messaging. This is the same guy who once said, “A brand is the face of a business strategy”. Has he suddenly become an apostate? Not exactl ..read more

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 of whether market disruption will happen to their business – it’s only a question of when. There will be no safe place to hide. No sector will be spared. Many companies will be simply swept away. Some refer to it as the Fourth Industrial Revolution ..read more

Peter Faber 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 growth comes primarily from attracting as many category buyers as possible, even if most of them are occasional users who buy infrequently. The opposing side argues that the cost of going after everyone in the market is a waste of resources: it makes far more sense ..read more

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 with every passing day. Consumer attention is scarcer than ever – ad avoidance is now the norm – buying habits are unpredictable. The planning and orchestration of multi-channel campaigns has become fiendishly complicated and highly technical. And there is a short ..read more

 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 mobile app. Need to deposit a cheque? Just take a picture of it with your smartphone! Want a quick short-term loan? Presto! The money is automatically deposited in your account. Banking was not always this convenient. There was a time, not that long ago, when ban ..read more

 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 of brand positioning options in different market categories. The concept of brand positioning has been part of the marketing canon for over fifty years. Pretty much every marketing organization now uses a positioning statement as the strategic overture to any sor ..read more