January 2020

It became so complicated so quickly. But early on, what could have been simpler than the idea of trade? You and another person find that each has something the other wants or could use, so… you make a deal, you go home, and you wonder (invariably) if you got the better end of that deal. Simple. As of today, trade, shipping, production, and macroeconomics in general have jointly amalgamated into a phenomenon of such complexity as to place it nearly on par with advanced calculus in terms of properly understanding its every facet.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, can we put a number on a video? Believe it or not, the answer is yes. As a brand, it’s easy to shy away from video advertising or dismiss it all together. The tendency is to assume that the worth and effectiveness of video lands in that giant gray area of ambiguity. But videos have received a lot of attention in research recently.

Introduction Based on what you’re looking to find, data (and information more broadly) are often entirely free. Now, this certainly isn’t true of trade secrets and the like, but otherwise there’s a lot to be gleaned from simply paying attention to current events and, where your own business is concerned, to consumer patterns. That’s what data really is when everything is taken into account – information we’re willing to acknowledge and, to the best of our ability, act upon.

Shopping used to be more of a sport than a necessity. People would look forward to leisurely walking the malls, stopping in at each store to see if there were any good deals on things that might interest them. Well, that ship has sailed! Nowadays, everybody is in a hurry, and they want to spend every moment they can in the most efficient manner. We are now a nation of instant gratification, getting what we want now, and not having to wait until we happen to be in the right area of the store we suspect might have the merchandise.