INSIGHTS

Dig deeper with timely and topical information that keeps you ahead of the digital curve.

Validate, learn and discover with fresh digital perspectives from successful marketing leaders.

Martin Kihn

A Brief, Incredible History of Marketing Data Matching

Now if that's not an enticing blog title calculated to maximize customer engagement ... well, then it isn't. But it's an important topic, friends. As you'll remember, not long ago we…

Read Post

Jay Wilson

The Customer Experience Expectation Gap

Last Monday afternoon, as I rode to JFK Airport en route to a conference, I realized that I’d left my travel credit card on my dresser.  My gut instinct was to…

Read Post

Augie Ray

The Best Innovation In Social Media Is A Return To Basics

Innovation has become a way of life in marketing, particularly in social media, as marketers jump from one strategy (fan accumulation) to another (SoLoMo) to another (six-second videos) to another…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

The Way of the Patient Marketer: From Promotional to Experience Marketing

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how automation can go wrong when put in the hands of the impatient marketer. Last week, I wrote about the unintended consequences…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

What’s Cool in Marketing Technology in 2016?

One of the most fun aspects of being an analyst is the opportunity to look to the future and peer around corners in an effort to bring clients ideas about…

Read Post

Julie Hopkins

My Multichannel Campaign Management MQ Hat Trick: Learnings from My Third One on the Books

A little over two weeks ago, our team published the Multichannel Campaign Management Magic Quadrant, turning our eyes once again to the providers of technology designed to coordinate and orchestrate…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

Adobe Livefyre Deal Underscores High Demand for Content Across All Marketing Disciplines

Adobe announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Livefyre. Known for tools to collect, manage and publish user generated content, Livefyre has to date been used primarily by…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Customer Journeys Are Discovered, Not Created

Customer journey maps have become a key asset in every marketer’s arsenal, but I’m here to tell you that, from a customer experience perspective, most of these maps are directions…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

What Is "Identity," Anyway?

We've been hearing a lot about identity lately. Cross-device identity, recognition, mapping and matching. Cross-platform, personified, hashed and deduplicated. There are obvious benefits to knowing who we're talking to in…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Mobile First: Beware of Clichés Disguised as Truth

A cliché is a phrase or idea that, while often founded in truth and good intention, mutates over time into something more insidious. Clichés are what happens when simple becomes…

Read Post

Jay Wilson

Generation Emoji

My third grader hosted a sleepover party the other night.  She and her friends pulled out all the stops, playing with American Girl Dolls, weaving bracelets, playing Minecraft. And of course,…

Read Post

Augie Ray

The Broken Customer Experience of Media and Publishing

Publishers have traditionally focused on the quality of their content rather than their customer experience, but trends in technology and consumer behavior are changing that. Two recent occurrences made me…

Read Post

Anna Maria Virzi

What Is Customer Experience? Getting Beyond the Hype

What constitutes "customer experience" if it's subject to different interpretations like a Rorschach inkblot test? Or as a colleague pointed out: "If customer experience is everything, it risks being nothing." My…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

What’s in a Content Marketing Stack? [WCM, DAM, CMP, etc]

Today, Skyword, heretofore known as a Content Marketing player focused on bringing together the writing talent and workflow tools to scale content marketing programs, launched a Digital Asset Management solution…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Is Product the New Marketing?

Marketing a product that customers don’t particular want or like can be a real slog. It’s an unpleasant experience. But when the inverse is true, marketing becomes a pleasure. In fact,…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

Smart Machines and Marketing: What's Next?

In addition to being a quasi-mystical gladiatorial wonder of early '60s cinema, Quo Vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning: "Where are you going?" And as though bumping into St. Peter…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Big Data Short

Consider the possibility of a big data bubble.  "The Big Short", a film based on a book by Michael Lewis, shows how the housing  bubble formed and how a handful…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Blinded by Big Data, Marketers Sometimes Forget to Simply Ask

It’s hardly news that marketers have become a bit obsessed with data. And, truthfully, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Generally speaking, data has raised the collective maturity of this…

Read Post

Augie Ray

What Loyalty Means to Customer Experience

Actions speak louder than words, but actions are easy to misinterpret, and marketers who misunderstand the actions of customers can damage their brands' business and marketing results. Today, many marketers are…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

10 (More) Myths Martech Vendors Want You To Believe

Imagine you're listening to this: "You're way behind the curve. You can buy a fully integrated digital marketing suite. Our tools will meet all your needs. We can serve as your marketing data warehouse…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Marketers, Stop Looking to Agencies to Fix Long Term Problems with Short Term Solutions

Tomorrow, my colleague, Jay Wilson and I will host a free webinar on our recently published Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies. As you might imagine, we talk to…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

Has Digital Marketing Finally Become Just Marketing?

“If you are building out a discrete Digital Marketing Center of Excellence (CoE), you’re too late,” I said a few months ago and stirred up some controversy among a group…

Read Post

Jay Wilson

Independents Day: Agility Makes Smaller Agencies Appealing

Last week, after a grueling (albeit incredibly fun) evaluation process, we published our latest Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies.  While the research focuses on 21 of the largest…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Don't Let Process Overtake Purpose in Marketing

I once worked for a brilliant and creative CMO—we’ll call him Frank—who outlawed process within his marketing organization. He associated any application of process with its worst mutated forms. To him,…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Is marketing passion bringing you too close for comfort?

You've put blood, sweat and tears into it, dedicated countless hours to planning and analysis, and passionately persuaded others to get on board. It's your marketing program. Maybe it's the next…

Read Post

Augie Ray

In Customer Experience, Intent Speaks Louder Than Content

There is nothing quite like traveling to make clear the difference between customer experience content and intent--content is the things we say and intent is the reasons for what we…

Read Post

Jay Wilson

Is Social Commerce Ready to Bloom?

Here in Connecticut, the first official day of spring was met by a fizzled-out nor’easter that left two inches of pristine white snow coating trees and rooftops.  Winter’s last gasp…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Notes from the Summit: A Conversation with Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes

I had a chance to sit down with Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes at the company’s annual digital marketing summit event in Las Vegas this week, in the midst of her…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Attitude or aptitude? What are the trade secrets of a digital commerce marketer?

Every marketer has the potential (and responsibility) to be a digital commerce marketer. Research says so.  Just take a look at Gartner’s 2015-2016 CMO Spend Survey and the surge in…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

SXSW Innovation and Inspiration, No Badge Required

SXSW Interactive just ended and Music is ramping up for us Austinites. Spring marks a time that our town is overrun and our calendars are overbooked – but I can’t…

Read Post

Andrew Frank

Marketers Ponder the Digitalization of Emotion

Machine Learning is ablaze just now, and marketers are noticing that many of the companies and applications at the leading edge are aimed squarely at the heart of their trade. Google’s…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

What Is Marketing Data Onboarding, Anyway?

San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel survived the earthquake of 1906, Tony Bennett singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in the Venetian Room, a starring role as a hotel in…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

CMOs Finally Get Some Respect

The CMO hasn’t always been a power player in the c-suite. In fact, for a very long time, the CMO was the designated short timer, often the most vulnerable among…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

Customer Journey Analytics: A Manifesto

It's time for a new kind of analytics. It's time for a fourth dimension. Time to recognize the reality of cause and effect, of unpredictable decisions and uncertainty and motion…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

3 Ways Emoji Are Changing Social Marketing

Marketers are still wrestling with the value of a social media “like” and whether it’s worth more or less than a “share”. Now we need to wrap our minds around…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Do You Really Know Your Customer?

On some level, most every company thinks of themselves as customer centered. But are they really? Cynical as this may sound, customer centricity is often a low-grade form of self-deception, where…

Read Post

Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

Why Today’s Great CMOs will be the CEOs of 2020

It’s not enough to be a terrific marketer to be considered among the best CMOs today. In all sectors, marketing’s influence over business results is increasing – while running the…

Read Post

Augie Ray

No Excuse For Poor Corporate Reputation And Customer Experience

The Harris Poll released its latest Reputation Quotient® Report, and while it contains the expected data about the importance and business benefits of good reputation, I was struck by the diversity…

Read Post

Anna Maria Virzi

The Pain and Gain of Uniting Multichannel Marketing and Advertising

"Advertising can no longer be isolated from multichannel marketing activities. Bringing them together is technically challenging, but the results are well worth the efforts," explains my colleague Andrew Frank in…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

In Marketing, Digital Distinctions are Falling Away

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember watching a "color TV," back when we actually made this distinction. Today the modifier is about as necessary as a vestigial…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

Your Vendor Has "90% Accuracy"? Think Again.

Have I Got an Algorithm for You There is an "accuracy" epidemic afoot, a swelling chorus of vendors in ad tech, mar tech, mad tech and everything in between claiming that…

Read Post

Augie Ray

Content Isn't King--Customer Experience Is

Content is not king. It is important--vital, in fact--but it is not king. A new study from TrackMaven demonstrates that while brands continue to pursue greater content production strategies, they…

Read Post

Augie Ray

Gartner Looks Ahead to Digital Marketing in 2016

Digital marketing continues to evolve rapidly, so at the beginning of each year, Gartner’s analysts dedicated to Marketing Leaders produce primer reports. These documents summarize the current state of key…

Read Post

Chris Ross

Fun Money - Innovation Without Expectation

One of the big insights from the Gartner 2015 CMO Spend Survey (Watch the webinar overview here) was that senior management expectations for marketing to innovate increased more than any…

Read Post

Jake Sorofman

Five Things Sailboat Racing Taught Me About Marketing

I grew up messing about in boats, a scruffy wharf rat of a kid in soaking, salt-stained deck shoes with barnacle-scarred elbows and knees and an abiding affection for the…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Super Bowl or Super Bad? What Happened to Big Ad Moments During the Big Game?

Last night millions of viewers sat captivated, less by the disappointing rivalry between the Broncos and the Panthers, and more by the Super Bowl ads that ranged from bold to…

Read Post

Jennifer Polk

Influencer Marketing: Trading on Trust

"It takes two to do the trust tango--the one who risks (the trustor) and the one who is trustworthy (the trustee); each must play their role.” ~ Charles H. Green, The…

Read Post

Andrew Frank

The Super Bowl of Ad Measurement

Everybody’s blogging about Super Bowl 50 and advertising, for good reason: it provides an annual measure of the movement of the tectonic plates of media as the massive continent of…

Read Post

Jay Wilson

IBM iX, The Whole Egg, and the Agency of Tomorrow

In just the past week, IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX) announced three acquisitions of smaller agencies – Aperto and exc.io in Europe, along with Columbus, OH based Resource/Ammirati. It’s easy to…

Read Post

Martin Kihn

Is Advertising Dead? (Super Bowl Edition)

The Big Game is advertising's biggest night - a combination Raspberry Festival and Oscarcast. So it seems almost ungrateful to ask if in fact it's become a kind of parade…

Read Post