More than 25% of Internet users will block ads this year. The talk of the Cannes Lions Festival this past week was “ad blocking.” Propelled to a fervor by the coinciding eMarketer Report, it was revealed that more than 25% of U.S. Internet users will block ads this year via multiple devices. This is a…
Category Archive for: Trends
See. Think. Do. Care. Last week I attended The Art Of Marketing and watched Avinash Kaushik – friend, fellow tech geek and Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist – own the stage, as he drove home his key message about how marketers and brands are trying to drive consumers the way THEY want, and not the way…
Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends. Stop holding your breath, as Mary Meeker is back with one of the most eagerly anticipated reports of 2016. Silicon Valley literally starts breathing again, when this always weighty (213 pages this year), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) cornucopia of facts is released. In our always on, always connected…
Connectography = connectivity + geography. Global strategist Parag Khanna begins his buoyant and hopeful Ted Talk with, “I want you to reimagine how life is organized on earth.” In his new book Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, he makes the case that, “the arc of global history is undeniably bending towards integration.” Khanna…
Want to share a ride? Ok. We all know how convenient it is to engage the little Uber app on our phones and have our personal ride show up wherever we are, whenever we want, on demand. But the ride-sharing wars have now escalated to a whole new level, as global automotive players are hopping…
Chatbots – friendly or frightening? This week we’re looking at Chatbots or Bots (for those who like to fling around in-the-know jargon). As we reviewed in last week’s Mashup, chatbots are artificially intelligent algorithms that are designed to interact with humans in a human-like way – answering questions, performing tasks… I’ve recently been exploring a…
Don’t forget that Marketing is Human2Human. I say this whenever I deliver a keynote: “We have to remember that no matter what type of marketing or engagement we are endeavouring to undertake, we need to be mindful of the fact that we are humans talking to humans.” As humans, we feel. We have reactions to…
Now Trending – Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight. I was just in Halifax delivering our Print in a Digital World Trend Report to a very engaged audience of Canada Post partners, agencies and marketers. One of the questions I’m continually asked after delivering our report is… How do I make sense of the shifting world, amass…
Brilliant Brands Appeal to Emotion not Logic. Our psychology is a potent and powerful thing, and you need to be part savvy marketer and part studied anthropologist to tap into it. Every day, we feel hundreds of different emotions – each nuanced to the physical and social situations we find ourselves in – and we…
Facebook changes the publishing game – Instantly. Our ever-evolving friend Facebook initially launched the first trials of their new Instant Articles ten months ago, with a proposal to have publishers post articles straight into the Facebook App (instead of initially doing so on their own websites). Why would a publisher want to explore this option?…