Despite the prevalence of new advertising and promotional channels and significant investments in data and technology, marketers are still struggling to generate and to prove sales results in an increasingly omnichannel world. —Eric Solomon, Senior Vice President, Nielsen Omnichannel marketing is heralded as the future of retail, but remains mired with obstacles. In a recent…

As we discussed last week, ROI is not a silver bullet metric in marketing effectiveness: it requires lots of judgment calls on incremental revenues and costs, focuses on short-term over long-term and on efficiency over effectiveness. In the words of prof Tim Ambler: ROI is dead, now bury it. So how do we come up…

It’s that time of year again: in 2021, I find some comfort in watching Tom Brady win another Super Bowl, and in watching the ads, this time without marketing friends around me, and wonder about their ROI. But what is ROI? It’s the extra profit your action makes, divided by the investment. Say you spend…

When managers ask me about guiding their metrics journey, I first ensure they start with the vision for their organization. What is the company aiming to achieve and what should we measure to track that progress? Once you have understood and translated this strategic vision to your team, you can and should explicitly link it…

Advertising effectiveness continues to be misunderstood, with the latest Freakonomics podcasts popularizing the low and uncertain individual-level effects of TV Advertising and Digital Advertising. As I blogged 7 years ago, this question is relevant to the academic, but not to the brand manager, CMO, CFO or CEO. What matters is not whether we can prove…

by Eric Weiss and Koen Pauwels, based on the paper by Peters, Chen, Kaplan and Ognibeni in Journal of Interactive Marketing Rising social media ad spend has topped $40 billion in the US in 2020, and keeping a pulse is both important and challenging for companies. The structure of social media diverges from that of…

Smart Marketing is a unique book by Dan White, co-creator of BRANDZ, Link, CrossMedia and other successful marketing measurement approaches at Kantar. In a very short time, Dan manages to not only convey most of the good marketing wisdom out there, but also do it in a very visual and easy-to-read style. I especially liked…

By Eric Weiss and Koen Pauwels Wars always have casualties, but may not always have a winner. This also goes for business wars, particularly when successive price cuts have companies selling below cost. In the US, this regularly happens in industries stuck with fixed costs and faced with declining demand, such as airlines right now.…

By Eric Weiss and Koen Pauwels The playful circus that is social media poses challenges for brands aiming to navigate it to grow and engage their audiences. Marketing managers weigh the costs of open conversations on their public posts versus censoring or taking other action against negative comments. We address these concerns in our publication…

Growing your brand is a key objective of marketing managers, as strong brands make your company more money, faster and with less risk. They also help you attract the best employees, give you the best deals with channel partners and get the attention of financial investors. But how should you go about growing your brand?…