Marketing tech
fromInman
11 hours agoThe old marketing playbook is breaking down
Smart brands like Liquid Death prioritize actual sales results over traditional metrics in their marketing strategies.
Jack Doggett, a food and drink analyst, noted that 60% of consumers who buy sports drinks aren't athletes but want the functional ingredients those drinks provide, like electrolytes for hydration and carbohydrates for energy. 'People are using these drinks more for wellness and daily maintenance,' he stated.
Thomas Slim immersed their new EDC fountain pen in water for 24 hours, pulled it out, and it wrote immediately. They dropped both the fountain pen and rollerball versions fifteen times from one metre onto concrete, and aside from minor ink on the nib face, both kept writing without issue.
Business Insider reported on Monday that nearly 200 Eddie Bauer locations in the US and Canada are expected to close after the operating entity behind the stores failed to find a buyer during its Chapter 11 restructuring.
My grandmother's refrigerator ran for forty years. The washing machine she bought in the 1970s? Still spinning when she passed away. Meanwhile, I'm on my third coffee maker in five years, and don't get me started on the laptop that mysteriously died two weeks after the warranty expired. This isn't just bad luck or nostalgia talking. There's something fundamentally different about how products are made today versus decades ago.
My first pair of Hunter rain boots actually came from my grandmother, who has an incredibly sharp eye for great shoes (and zero patience for flimsy ones). When I was a teenager, she bought me a pair of tall Hunters in a glossy light silver. They were practical, of course, but also strangely cool-metallic enough to feel a little dramatic, subtle enough to still work with everything in my wardrobe.
"Instead of starting with a product that we didn't feel like existed in the marketplace, we started with a mission that we felt like didn't exist, particularly in the beauty space," Cohen said. "We love that young people are turning to brands for not just products, but for the issues that they care about-and also that's what holds us accountable."
Performance has always been the foundation of commerce media because it tied spend to measurable behavior. From sponsored search to sponsored products, the category scaled by delivering outcomes that could be directly attributed to transactions. Automation, AI-driven optimization and closed-loop measurement accelerated that model and made outcomes-based buying the norm. Outcomes still matter. But as AI reduces friction and increases competition, outcomes alone no longer create separation.
"We use short videos to tell sustainable stories about our brands, and then we reward consumers for engaging with it," Conny Braams, Unilever's chief digital and commercial officer, told The Drum. "And what we've seen from the pilots that we've been doing is that it, first of all, builds brand power, which is really important. But also, it really changes behavior."
Sensible businesses will be scrutinizing outgoings now more than ever. With clients looking to claw back profits eroded by spiralling inflation, marketing investment (not to mention your fees) will be up for debate, whether you like it or not. Frustratingly, validating the success of marketing investments is becoming more difficult. We're facing an attribution crisis, and many marketers are struggling to prove the value of each channel or campaign due to the numerous challenges brought about by increased privacy constraints,
While product features certainly lead consumers to purchase products, it's really how advertisers tap into a consumer's mindset, motivation and emotional state at a given moment that moves the needle. And one signal that universally drives behavior, impacting what people try, buy and how they feel is weather. From weather comes weather data, which can then power weather targeting predicting the moments when weather shifts a consumer's mindset toward purchase, delivering deeper emotional resonance that drives both immediate sales and long-term brand growth.
If you work in marketing, you might want to look away now. The brutal truth is... the vast majority of people don't care about your brand. In fact, 81% of the brands sold across Europe could disappear overnight and consumers wouldn't be concerned... They probably wouldn't even notice. Various dynamics are at play here. Firstly, abundance. With up to 30,000 new products being launched every year, we're all spoilt for choice. With so much variety on offer, very few brands feel truly indispensable.