B2C

Saying that they face a seemingly endless threat of a recession along with financial pressures from upper management, client-side marketers continue to ask for extended payment terms, putting the squeeze on creative services firms. But agencies are pushing back, as the 4A's insist on in a recent report that agencies only accept 30-day payment terms.

Despite stubbornly high inflation, pet owners haven't slowed down their purchasing. In 2022, American pet owners spent $136.8 billion on their pets, an approximate 10.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to Forbes. What's more, 68 percent of consumers spent more on pet products in February 2023 compared to January 2022, even as they cut back on other items.

When catering to gen Alphas, marketers need to think outside the screen, and create engaging, immersive experiences that blend the digital and physical worlds.

With increasing competition for mind and wallet share, the big sports leagues continue to roll out new marketing vehicles to keep fans engaged, broaden their reach, and develop new ad revenue streams.

Media usage may be moving toward a tipping point in which consumer consumption rates for both traditional media and digital channels reach saturation. Marketers will have to alter their engagement strategies to capture more elusive consumers.

Armed with enormous spending power, Americans aged 50 and over are living longer, more active lives. But, for the most part, marketers choose to ignore rapidly changing demographics and devote the bulk of their budgets to courting the coveted 18 to 49 crowd. A new platform targeting consumer-facing brands wants to change that.

Is the agency review process broken? According to a recent study, the typical price tag for agency reviews is on the rise, both for the agencies and the brands they serve. Agency reviews are also getting to be a bigger drain on time. When an incumbent agency participates, the selection process takes 2.5 months, while choosing a new agency takes 3.2 months. Both sides of the table are getting increasingly frustrated, but there are ways to remedy the situation.

More than 70 percent of consumers said it is more important to trust the brands they buy from or use today than in the past, according to a recent survey released by Edelman. Companies will need to revisit their strategies for building trust with their customers or face dwindling returns or, even worse, irrelevancy.

Companies can no longer approach customer experience (CX) as one person's or department's job, according to Neil Dowling, CMO and global alliances lead at the global experience company Rightpoint. If companies are siloed, true measurement is narrow and makes enhancing the customer experience a bigger challenge.

Intellectual property and copyright concerns are among the thornier issues that marketers and agencies are grappling with as generative artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a force in the ad business. Procurement can play a key role asking vendors about their technology capabilities and how those technologies or models were trained. At the same time, marketers should be encouraged that some generative AI vendors are providing assurances that their products are free of copyright concerns.

Martech utilization rates keep plummeting, according to a recent survey. One reason marketers don't use more of their technology is because marketers and/or their agency partners fail to take charge of the applications within their organizations. Problems with customer data, a complex ecosystem, and rigid governance also contribute to underutilization.

While the cost savings and marketing efficiencies chatbots offer are real, they come with potentially severe and growing risks, ranging from copyright infringement to misinformation. Whether marketers deploy generative AI chatbots for advertising campaigns or to improve workflow in-house, they need to understand the legal and ethical sand traps and proceed with a plan.

By ignoring people with disabilities, brands are not only potentially alienating a large swath of the population, they're also leaving money on the table. New research conducted by Morning Consult found that 84 percent of respondents had a more favorable impression of companies that are inclusive of people with disabilities in their marketing and advertising and 80 percent wanted to do more business with such companies.

The promise of AI is tempered by growing concerns regarding the risks the technology presents, leading the Biden administration to pressure the seven leading AI companies to commit to new standards for safety, security, and trust as they aggressively compete to dominate the space. Brands and agencies are diving in.

Marketers continue to be overwhelmed by the amount of data they collect. A big part of the problem is that companies tend to acquire technology without thinking about the specific marketing goals and objectives for which the resulting data will be used. To tame the tech stack, CMOs and their teams need to do a better job of planning and figure out what the end game for the data is well before executing.

Most people will be watching their wallets during the 2023 holidays, with more than half of consumers (53 percent) saying inflation will have a moderate or significant impact on their spending. To ensure that they are buying wisely, consumers are demanding more from brands and retailers. They want flexible return policies, discounts, loyalty programs, and the capability to buy online and pick up in-store.

Two-thirds of companies viewed retail media as a sales driver, but only 12 percent used it to build their brand, according to a new survey. Only 31 percent said it was a valuable marketing tool right now. The lack of consistent and industrywide measurement on the effectiveness of retail media investments is one reason brands remain cool to the market.

Marketing to Hispanic consumers requires that brands heavily research the distinctive factors that matter most to them. Influencers can help brands connect with the various communities, as well as cultural elements like music and humor, but it's important to consult market experts to ensure the campaign is effective.

The idea that brand work is difficult to measure or quantify doesn't hold up, according to Charlotte Blank, U.S. CMO at Jaguar Land Rover North America. She stresses that marketers need to cultivate KPIs for brand health metrics in the upper funnel, which are just as important as the conversion-oriented metrics that drive performance marketing discussions.

While the backlash to brands aligning their messaging and merchandise with Pride Month has quelled, marketers continue to weigh the risks of taking a stand on hot-button issues. It seems an increasingly difficult needle to thread for marketers, who must grapple with a polarized society and the spread of misinformation on social media. Before they take a stand, brands need to take the temperature of both the mainstream and potential opposition and be prepared to stick to their messaging.