One Mad Hit Juice Box. V’Nilla Cookies & Milk. Whip’d Strawberry. Carnival Crunch. Twirly Pop. Could these be new ice cream flavors from Ben & Jerry’s? Or Kellogg cereals? Nope. They are flavors of E-Juice, also known as smoke juice or E-liquid, a nicotine-based liquid used in electronic cigarettes and personal vaporizers.
The youngest crop of teenagers - known as Generation Z and born between 1996 and 2010 - represents perhaps one of the most complex and misunderstood customers in advertising history. A highly mobile, social media-fluent, and socially conscious generation of multitaskers, they are expected to account for 40% of all consumers by 2020 with the potential to wield billions in buying power, making them a larger and more diverse cohort than Baby Boomers or Millennials.
Summer was on sale again in May at Southwest Airlines, whose smiling pilots and flight attendants offered one-way fares as low as $49 as part of its annual, multi-platform "Transfarency" marketing campaign. For decades, Southwest Airlines led the nation’s domestic carriers as one of the most aggressive advertisers, with a $218MM advertising budget in 2015. Its front-facing public relations and brand strategy projected an image of the nation’s most consumer-friendly airline with a family-style employee culture. The investment paid off with good press and high returns.
Until it didn’t.
You can be forgiven for not knowing where exactly the U.S. stands on foreign trade on the day-to-day, with talk of everything from trade wars to truces. Yet the shifting economic climate poses a significant challenge to industries trying to market themselves at home and abroad - along with the creative agencies who support them.
If advertisers understood the importance of social media before, the protest marches and unprecedented string of teacher strikes provide even more confirmation of digital media’s critical role — when used well — in engaging an audience and shaping public discourse from the grassroots up. K-12 education is a particularly tricky industry for advertisers. It’s one of the two largest industries in the US - comparable with healthcare - accounting for 7.2% of the nations GDP and the largest employer in every state, but spends only a fraction on advertising compared to other industries, according to Forbes.
What does it take to be a woman at the helm of advertising? What role does gender play in the leadership and growth of creative agencies? I recently set out to answer these questions along with Katy Osborn, doc filmmaker and co-founder of Amelia Street Studio, in our first ever Facebook Live.
It seems hard to believe that most advertisers once flocked to TV and newspaper. Advancements in technology offer unparalleled possibilities for targeting and engaging audiences, irrevocably altering the media landscape and consumer behavior. The digital marketing revolution affects everything from how content is created to audience expectations, and experiential advertising stands at the forefront. Consumers, who see more than 5,000 advertisements in a single day, are looking to connect less directly with products and more directly with one another through meaningful brand experiences.
Here are some of the top trends we anticipate having the most impact on advertising in 2018:
Working together is more powerful than working alone, and that particularly holds true for women who work behind the scenes in critical yet often unrecognized roles in advertising, music, film, live performance, and broadcast media.
That’s just one reason why our team here at Curmudgeon Group recently launched Scope, a wide-ranging conversation focusing on the most visionary and emerging female producers of today. As a women-owned creative agency, we are in the unique position of being able to cultivate a community of veteran producers, creative leaders, and industry newcomers to alter and diversify the landscape, along with shifting attitudes and expectations.
Stanky Bean anyone? Maybe a touch of Turdly? That’s what you get when you ask artificial intelligence to get creative. Research scientist and neural network expert Janelle Shane put AI to the test by training a neural network to create new paint colors.
With technological advances and more platforms and wearable devices than ever before, the power of immersive and interactive video has officially infiltrated the world of experiential advertising. The revolutionary format can demonstrate products from clothes to cars at every angle, communicate a brand’s mission, supplement traditional advertising, and provide a unique blend of information and entertainment. It also gives marketers feedback on content by recording views and what customers have chosen to see.