Here we cut the world of B2B marketing into digestible nuggets of inspiration, highlighting courageous individuals and ideas approximately two times a month. Want to contribute content to our blog?
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Revlon's Lovely "Love is On" Campaign
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December 9, 2015
Admittedly, I'm a biased blogger.  I love big ideas.  And I am more than happy to celebrate big ideas even if my agency had no hand in creating them. Think of it as a form of largesse.  Or jealousy.  Either way, Revlon's "Love is On" campaign meets all of my criteria for a big idea: 1) It's emotional.  What's more emotional...

CMO Insights: Drilling into Content Marketing
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November 29, 2015
Hu-Friedy is a mouthful of a brand name which may or may not have been on the mind of Hugo Friedman when he founded his dental instrument company back in 1908. More than a century later, Hu-Friedy is a global leader in its category and yet, quite remarkably still completes 80% of the manufacturing process by hand.  According to their website, "they meticulously...

Happy Employees = Happy Customers
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November 23, 2015
Sometimes a single blog post can't span the breadth of what I've learned from a particular CMO.  This is definitely the case with Steven Handmaker, CMO at Assurance, winner of The CMO Club Leadership Award who also joined me for the opening panel at Incite's Content Marketing Summit.  While the interview below focuses on his approach to leadership, it doesn't cover what...

CMO Insights: How to Score with Content Marketing
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November 22, 2015
Content marketing is one of those things that is easy to talk about yet extremely hard to get right.  It's not enough to have a clear strategy although that is essential. It's not enough to tell compelling stories across a wide range of platforms.  Even with paid media driving views and influencers adding their audiences, there is no guarantee that your...

Gearing up for Gen Z: The #Selfie Generation?
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November 12, 2015
Just when you'd thought you'd wrapped your marketing minds around millennials, along comes Gen Z to really mess with your head.  Born between 1996 and 2013, the oldest part of this group is just now entering college, wreaking havoc with their multi-tasking mobile mindset and no doubt, creating huge challenges for the marketers trying to engage with them. One such...

Getting B2B Content Marketing on the Payroll
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November 10, 2015
I'm on the phone the other day with my friend John Hall of Influence & Co and casually ask, "Do you know any Chicago-based wizards of content marketing that would be good panelists?" [My inquiry was anything but casual in that I'm emceeing the first day of Incite's Content Marketing Summit and I'm a stickler for getting sharp and articulate panelists thus...

Making Brands (and Ads) Personal with Adictik
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November 4, 2015
The personalization of branded content has gotten, well, a little bit more personal. In an age where consumers are increasingly buying products to construct an identity or find public validation, Adictik (a Barcelona-based startup), is hoping to make money off of the unwavering phenomenon some call “brand loyalty”. Shady? Maybe. Innovative? Definitely. Let’s be real, if just for a moment....

CMO Insights: Focusing on a Superior Customer Experience
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November 2, 2015
Todd Merry is the CMO of Delaware North, a gigantic company that you many not have heard of but have probably interacted with. How is that possible?  Well, first here are a couple of key facts--Delaware North is privately held yet has revenues of more than $2.6 billion and has 55,000 employees worldwide.  Those employees work around the globe at venues like the...

Trends-Based Marketing and the Short Video Loop
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October 28, 2015
Content marketing has come to define, albeit to a certain extent, the kind of work we do in our industry. In fact, the term "content marketing" actually contains social media marketing within it, since social media is just one iteration of the content brands and businesses use to engage a target audience. As we have learned and continue to put...