IAB, Bain Unveil 'Roadmap' For Building Brands Online: Report Addresses Industry's Dysfunctions

MediaPost Publications, November 12, 2009 — Last year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Bain & Co. released the findings of a shocking study showing the commoditizing effects the burgeoning marketplace of online display advertising, and new secondary sales channels such as ad networks and exchanges were having on the value of online advertising inventory. Today, they will begin to fight back. In a meeting with nearly 100 top industry executives, including many of the largest brand marketers, the IAB and Bain will release the findings of a new report they believe will provide a "roadmap" to rebuilding the industry's perceptions about the brand-building value of online advertising.

Four Strategies for Beleaguered Banks†

Financial-Services CMOs Need to Make Their Cases With Courageous Marketing Plans

Advertising Age, January 9, 2009 — There's an old British saying that where there's muck, there's brass. Right now the muck is the financial-services industry, and the brass is the massive opportunity in this $10 billion category for groundbreaking branding and marketing — one that rivals the defining of the dot-com era. Financial services, once one of America's most admired and valuable industries, has lost its luster and international standing, creating a multibillion-dollar brand vacuum.

The Difference Between Building a Business and Building a Brand†

Don't Confuse the Latter With Celebrity Index

Advertising Age, January 5, 2009 — Are you building a business? Or are you building a brand? Silly questions, you might be thinking. Naturally, you are trying to do both.

But that might be a mistake.

What's good for the business is not necessarily good for the brand. And vice versa.

Retail as Habitat

The retail environment is a hothouse for national brands

Hub, December 15, 2008 — We now stand at the crossroads of perhaps one of the greatest economic declines in recent American history. It is fitting to reassess one of the more volatile questions faced today in the retail landscape: do store brands pose a significant threat to traditional brands in new ways, and if so, are brands destined to accelerate their decline, disappear in their current form, or evolve with new strategies?

Yes — this is a controversial discussion, but it is even more important now because of changes in the underlying market foundation and because of strategic implications for manufacturers in their approach to being seen by shoppers at retail.

How to Market During a Downturn†

CMO Roundtable: Execs on Maintaining Budgets, Changing Marketing Mixes and the Challenges of 2009

Advertising Age, October 27, 2008 — Just days before the Dow suffered its largest single-day point drop ever Sept. 29, Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom sat down with three top CMOs to talk about marketing in a recession. On hand were Ranjana Clark, senior exec VP-CMO of Wachovia Corp.; Tom O'Toole, CMO and chief information officer of Global Hyatt Corp.; and Mark Chmiel, exec VP-chief marketing and innovation officer at Denny's Corp.