STEVE SMITH

Articles by Steve All articles by Steve

• Chef Merito Gets Baked Into the Dodgers Experience in Brand Insider Podcast on 07/26/2024
  

  Allying with sports teams and arenas is a time-tested branding tactic. But in the case of Chef Merito's relationship with the L.A. Dodgers, the alliance included much more than logo swaps. The seasoning and sauce brand is literally baked into the Dodger experience. Think ballpark Carne Asada French Fries or Tacos. The team's official seasoning can not only been seen but tasted everywhere.

• Pink Box Marketing: Confessions of a Voodoo Doughnut Zombie in Brand Insider Podcast on 07/12/2024
  

  In the world of quick service food, there are ubiquitous go-tos. There are emerging fan favorites. And then there are cults. Since its launch as a Portlandia hole in the wall filled with custard quirk, Voodoo Doughnut has been the very definition of a cult brand. Where else will you get a suggestively shaped chocolate frosted Cock and Balls dunker? A maple frosted pastry in the shape of a smoldering blunt? A cookie crumble topped Old Dirty Bastard? And of course the signature Voodoo Doll, with blood-like raspberry filling and a pretzel spike through its heart? And better, they are delicious and decadent. And to add irony to the batter- some are even vegan. I gladly cop to being one of their zombies.

• Can F1 Accelerate MoneyGram's Race for P2P Payment Market Share? in Brand Insider Podcast on 06/14/2024
  

  The 80 year old MoneyGram was doing p2p payments when we referred to such things as "wire transfers." Which begs the question, what does a legacy brand like this do to maintain its brand visibility and market share in a sea of p2p mobile solutions? Apparently, you suit up with an F1 team.

• The BECA Playbook: Mentoring Through the Glass Ceiling in Brand Insider Podcast on 06/07/2024
  

  The reported "backlash" against corporate DEI efforts notwithstanding, the diversification of the C-Suite is as inevitable as it can be achingly slow. Democracy doesn't appear magically or even organically. It takes deliberate cultivation. Modeling, mentoring, peer support are at least as important as corporate policy. And that is where the Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA) comes in. BECA not only helps companies cultivate a new more representative generation of executives, it recruits the C-suite itself to create opportunity, access and equality by sharing experience with rising Black marketers.

• Dr. Scholls Looks For a Fit With Olympian Gabby Douglas in Brand Insider Podcast on 05/23/2024
  

  At MediaPost's own recent Brand Insider Summit for CPGs the topic of celebrity partnership was high on the agenda. As brands struggle to differentiate in a very cluttered environment, any opportunity to draft off of an existing fan base helps. And of course, celebrity and sports stars were the original influencers that marketers leveraged for decades before social media made stars of everyone. In some ways the venerable footwear and foot health brand Dr. Scholls is going old school in partnering with Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas.

• Quack, Dunk, Repeat: Duck Donuts Flies Into Loyalty in Brand Insider Podcast on 05/10/2024
  

  Connoisseurship has come even to donuts in recent years. Lush flavor combinations, customizations, sheer size - have all become product differentiators as a number of regional fan favorites extend their footprints. With over 155 locations, the 17-year-old Duck Donuts was ahead of this curve in customized dunkers. But how does it expand and defend its brand in this hot category?

• Change Is the New Constant: MillerCoors Gets Ready for Anything in Brand Insider Podcast on 05/03/2024
  

  As we ramp up for next week's Brand Insider Summit: CPG in Nashville, I turned to an old friend of MediaPost's to reflect on his 15 years at MillerCoors and his path to digitizing a foundational category in traditional advertising. In talking to Brad Feinberg, VP of Media and Digital Molson Coors AmCom, however, it was clear that his much earlier experience in entertainment marketing was as formative as his time in CPG.

• Rumpl Jumps the Shark Tank, Swims Its Own Path in Brand Insider Podcast on 04/26/2024
  

  Imagine getting your shot on Shark Tank, attracting multiple offers from these celeb investors, including the prospect of lucrative licensing deals...and then walking away. The founder and CEO of puffy blanket and outdoor gear brand Rumpl, Wylie Robinson, walked away from the Shark offers to pursue his own source of funding and even an NFL licensing deal. And he learned a lot of lessons along the way.

• Satin and Supplements: OLLY and Overnight Beauty Blend Brands in Brand Insider Podcast on 04/19/2024
  

  Brand partnering has been a key theme recently at MediaPost's Insider Summits. As customer acquisition costs soar, it makes sense that companies try to draft off of one another's existing customer bases. In fact a few curious co-brand combos have been hatched at our retreats. One of them aligned the sleep, wellness and beauty brand Overnight Beauty, with the vitamin and supplements company OLLY.

• HOP-ing Into The Clutter: HOP WTR Innovates Against the Noise in Brand Insider Podcast on 04/19/2024
  

  Americans love drinking, but apparently we will do just about anything to avoid tap water. The soft beverage shelves are overwhelmed with new entrants and ideas - like non-alcoholic "hop-infused water." We explore with category pioneer HOP WTR and its VP of Marketing and Innovation Ryan Haggerty the challenge of explaining an unfamiliar brand and an unknown category in ways that break through market clutter.

Comments by Steve All comments by Steve

• 'B2B Marketing Is Dead': NI Rebrands In D2C Style by Steve Smith (Brand Insider Podcast on 09/09/2020)
  

  So true, Bart. I would love to heare about more b2b brands that are taking a b2c approach. 

• 'Mad' Magazine's Famed Cartoonist Mort Drucker Dies At 91 by Melynda Fuller (Publishers Daily on 04/09/2020)
  

  Drucker's style was our childhood entryway to American TV and film for many of us. Everyone both at MAD and at all of its imitators tried to imitate Drucker. But even as a kid I could tell the real thing from the copycats. No one tutored us more effectively in how not to take these media industries too seriously. Like Jack Davis, Wally Wood, John Severin, Drucker's pemcil and brush had an outsized power in our lives and culture. Thanks Mort.

• Obit: Pioneering Magazine Publisher Hugh Hefner, Dead At 91 by Joe Mandese (Publishers Daily on 09/28/2017)
  

  Malcolm X, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Jimmy Carter, Alex Haley (who originally interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy), Erica Jong, Germaine Greer, Bella Abzug, David Bowie - just a few of the interviews that still resonate for me decades later becasue they went deeper.and got closer to the figure's voice than anything else available. All of it sat within a package that was also irredeemably sexist and unapologetically wedded to the shallowest material pleasures of consumer culture. Somehow they were all of a frightening, contradictory, delusional, brilliant, craven, dazzling, piece that was America itself in the last half of the 20th Century.       

• GenerationVexed by Bob Garfield (Garfield at Large on 04/10/2017)
  

  This is the fake news we need more of.

• The Trump-ification Of 2016: The Super Bowl Implodes by Steve Smith (Mobile Insider on 02/08/2016)
  

  Luke. Thanks for that. Nice evolution of the argument. Although post-mass culture is more manageable than post-mass politics. Democracy still demands majorities to move forward. Mutli-party systems worldwide have long had to rely on coalition-building among varied three and four parties. One argument goes that the American two party system is already now based on coalitions of unlike-minded segments, and have been since the late 60s and the original Nixon Southern Strategy. Reagan's coalition of the blue collars, evangelixals and country club has always been an uncomfortable marriage. We are now seeing the seams show.  

• The Trump-ification Of 2016: The Super Bowl Implodes by Steve Smith (Mobile Insider on 02/08/2016)
  

  Thanks Jon, Peter and both Georges for your comments. But take heart. I may sound depresssed, and this may all seem very depressing. But I think there is a real hunger for creative thinking in both commercial and political fields. History shows (American Renaissance, Civil War, Progressive Era, Great Depression, Modernism, post-WWII pop and high art in America) that it takes a loss of faith in old institutions to make us receptive to new ideas.  

• Remembering A Legend We Lost In 2015: Joe Franklin by Adam Buckman (TVBlog on 12/15/2015)
  

  The WOR TV show was integral to my own passion for pop culture and respect for the troupers who hoofed, crooned, astonished and touched us from the stage. Joe had a humbling envy/respect of performers. His hospitality to performers of all stripes was an object lesson for budding media critics like myself that the people we wrote about were putting themselves out there in ways we never would. 

• A Mass Medium Without Mass Media: Live TV Losing Default Status by Steve Smith (Data and Targeting Insider on 07/27/2015)
  

  Hi all. I agree with your reticence over trusting self-reported data, which is why I mentioned that caveat. The research is a tracking study of 1200 US TV viewers with broadband access, so there is a skew built into the sample. But what I found most interesting in this research was the attitudinal implications - the ways in which users admitted to watching TV with different levels of engagement and attention according to situation and source. This part of the research I find very recognizable in my and my household's own behavior has to do wil how and why we choose different sources. OTT video is chosen much more deliberately I think and is my default source for content I am ready to pay attention to. On the other hand, most live TV is on because I have made a choice not to pay close attention while I peruse books or a second screen. 

• Verizon's 'No Cord Required' Mobile Video Service Launching Soon? by Steve Smith (MoBlog on 07/26/2015)
  

  @JS Oops. Missing work. The phrase should read "an OTT video market that will not lack players." Corrected. 

• A Modest Proposal: Truly 'Native' Mobile Advertising by Steve Smith (MoBlog on 07/16/2015)
  

  DanielYes some vendors tried on their own to do this, which is why I am suggesting it needs to be done at the OS level or as a common standard within the infrastructure. Single players trying to make it happen won't 

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