Here’s what you need to know this week:
- The seven skills marketers need
GLOBAL: The best marketers possess a number of “soft skills” that enable them to get the best work out of their creative agency partners and deliver business results, according to a new best practice essay on WARC.
- Updating brand archetypes for today's consumers
SYDNEY: The traditional gender roles presented in advertising are no longer fit for purpose in a modern world, but advertisers are struggling to catch up.
“Women are switching off,” said Sarah May, a former senior strategic planner at 303MullenLowe. “Nine out of 10 women find ‘marketing to women’ efforts to be downright cringy – 66% of women have actively switched off TV, films, ads if they negatively stereotyped.
- How L'Oréal is thinking about voice
CANNES: Marketers in the beauty sector may need to rethink some of the fundamentals of their craft, right down to how they name products, if they are to succeed in the voice ecosystem, Antoine Borde, L'Oréal’s global e-commerce acceleration director, has suggested.
As a starting point: L'Oréal has sponsored “My Beauty Chat”, an audio offering for Amazon Echo developed by Hearst, the media company.
- The future of strategy and planning does not lie in traditional communications agencies
Strategy is a lot bigger than advertising, or even communications, argues Zeus Jones’ Adrian Ho. Strategic skills are fundamental to almost every aspect of business and should be allowed to stand on their own. This essay originally appeared in WARC’s Future of Strategy 2018 report.
“Strategic skills are essential to finding the answers to the all the newest, biggest problems facing the industry. And when you do it right, clients don’t just see the value of strategy; they realize that their whole business depends on it”, Ho writes.
- US brewing is undergoing big changes
This week saw two developments that hint at changes in both the interests and the marketing of beer. Diageo’s Guinness opened a brewery in Maryland, which will offer fans a locus to come and experience the brands hands-on – the advantage to the brand is that consumers meet the brewers and feel a greater connection to the brand. The move reflects a reality of brands needing to bring consumers an experiential connection to the product.
Meanwhile, the US’ third largest brewer, Constellation Brewing, has taken a $4 billion stake in Canopy Growth, a Canadian supplier of medicinal cannabis. “Over the past year, we’ve come to better understand the cannabis market, the tremendous growth opportunity it presents, and Canopy’s market-leading capabilities in this space,” said Rob Sands, CEO of Constellation Brands.
From WARC Data:
Mobile is now the preferred device for internet access in Asia Pacific
Sourced from WARC
