How are things for marketing agencies? Not as great as last year, according to Ad Age’s Agency Report 2024 (subscription required). In 2023, total revenue for the 30 biggest agency companies in the world rose 5.6%. The forecast for this year? It’s between 2% and 3%. The Too Big Five…
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How To Build a Winning Content Plan for Social Media [Template]
Social media offers a volatile space for marketing. The rules of engagement vary across platforms, as do the audiences and opportunities for brands. The platforms’ popularity ebbs and flows while new challengers emerge, hoping to disrupt the scene and steal the spotlight. Once seemingly stable and reliable, shared media outlets…
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Groundbreaking Autism Travel Series Rockets Myrtle Beach Tourism
Stuart Butler is a trained rocket scientist turned content marketing rock star. Though the career as a rocket scientist didn’t stick, he applied what he learned to a 20-plus-year career in marketing. Now, as chief marketing officer of Visit Myrtle Beach, Stuart wants to disrupt not only the destination marketing…
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Why Brand-Building Matters, Even When You Can’t Measure It
A long time ago (so long ago that Nickelback still had hits), my marketing leader would ask me what value my brand-building programs added to the business. My answer to him was always the same: “Good things.” Halfway through 2024, brands are desperate to make every piece of content catch…
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Did Cannes Lions Awards Just Say Content Beats Advertising?
We didn’t get to the south of France this week, but we’ve been talking about Cannes Lions. At the International Festival of Creativity, the most interesting thing happened. The early big prize winners weren’t great ads as much as they were classic content marketing. In his most recent book and…
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7 Authentic Ways Your Brand Can Take a Stand on Social Issues
Brands’ words and actions — including yours — matter. As politics, health care, and other cultural topics become more polarized, being authentic about your values and causes can build audience loyalty. Over half of young U.S. adults (ages 18 to 29) want businesses to take a public stand on current…
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How To Market Your Marketing To Marketers [New Research]
A mentor of mine used to drill the following into my head: “You are not your target market.” He meant that it doesn’t matter if you think the headline is great, the ad design is impressive, or the copy is sublime. It only matters what the customer thinks. As he…
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Is It OK for Platforms To Train Their AI With Your Content?
When is your content, our content? In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) has a pizza delivered to his history class taught by Mr. Hand (Ray Walston), who isn’t pleased. “Mr. Spicoli, you’re on dangerous ground here. You’re causing a major disturbance on my time.”…
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How To Use Technology To Unlock Content and Marketing Potential
Two brains are better than one. Embracing the machine brain of technology as a partner with the human brains of content marketers lets you do things for your audience and brand that you could only imagine or considered too resource-intensive just a few years ago. These examples of what’s possible…
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What Every B2B Brand Should Know About Influencer Marketing (Pricing Included)
Time for a quiz. Do people trust: Non-governmental organizations (NGO)? Government? Media? If you answered no, no, and no, you would be right. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, less than 60% of the global population trusts NGOs (59%), government (51%), or media (50%), putting them at…