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.

As the New Year approaches, the excitement for the coming year fills the air as we race to the finish line of 2019. But, in the advertising world, this anticipation can feel more like a race to the starting line as marketers hustle to glean as many insights as possible from the closing year in order to prepare for the one up ahead. Of all the marketing insights unearthed in 2019, there were a few we found particularly compelling.

What is your target audience up to? Quite a bit, in fact. The prospective consumers you’re hoping to reach are doing all sorts of things at any given moment. Some are entirely disconnected from their various devices, while others are checking their mobile phones as tablets stream media content of some sort a foot or so from where they’re seated. Your audience may have a common interest in what you’re selling, but their online engagement is far from uniform.

Take a look around. The next time you’re at a red light, count the number of earbud-wearing drivers you see. The next time the dog needs a walk, try to spot the elusive media-less runner. What type of content are busy parents consuming while they make dinner? What is everyone listening to these days? What’s the latest trend? More and more, the answer is: streaming radio stations, music, and podcasts.

How much can any one person do entirely on their own? The question is, of course, rhetorical. Even the most competent human being presently moving about modern society is dependent on countless tradesmen, industry professionals, and laborers of all sorts to keep our civilization intact (well, mostly intact). Unsurprisingly, this logic also extends upwards. No single business can operate independently of thousands of others which jointly maintain the economy and serve the marketplace in their own ways.

There’s so much of it - video footage, that is. The art/act of filming dates back well over a century… nearly a century-and-a-half, in fact. And during its early decades, the opportunity for an individual to create footage of their own was limited by the expense and relative unwieldiness of the available technology. Jump cut ahead a few generations and you’ll observe that the advent of smartphone technology has created an entire population of individuals capable of capturing life images via quality photographs and videos.

As anyone with more than three hours of corporate experience has perhaps observed and noted, it is true that all major companies presently doing business have to exist in two ways: 1. In the public-facing way their customers know and expect; and 2. In a behind-the-scenes way that allows them to maintain a competitive edge. Now, wherever these two can overlap, they almost invariably do. But often these aspects of a company’s identity run necessarily and inevitably parallel to one another.