STEVE SMITH

Articles by Steve All articles by Steve

• Visible Leans On Its Site, Not Media, To Convert in Brand Insider on 07/30/2021
  

  As brands contemplate a post-cookie future, many rely on their own site dynamics and UX to render more, deeper first-party data. But as we discussed with Visible Wireless's Digital Marketing and Analytics Team Lead, Sarah Baker, this has implications for media buying and creative strategies. Typically, a DTC like Visible would optimize media towards performance. But as Baker explained at last week's Summit, Visible made a deliberate pivot away from that approach to shift more of the conversion work away from media and to its own site and more product-focused marketing.

• You Don't Have to Be... JewBelong's Judaism Rebranding Project in Brand Insider on 07/23/2021
  

  Even a crusty, jaded critic of the advertising industry like me can be a sucker for a great ad concept like JewBelong out-of-home campaigns on New York streets.

• Degree Partners Widely to Make 'Move Again With Degree' Message Un-Missable in Brand Insider on 07/16/2021
  

  Post-pandemic marketing campaigns continue to roll out messaging that allude to lockdown experiences while underscoring a positive future focus. Grounded in pandemic and post pandemic behavior research, Rexona/Unilever's Degree deodorant brand's Move Again effort is as you'd expect from the CPG giant, a massive multimedia rollout leveraging every imaginable channel. One of their new buzzwords is "un-missable," says Kath Swallow, Global Brand VP for Rexona at Unilever. But that doesn't mean relentless TV spots and billboard coverage. As she tells Brand Insider this week, it's as much about creating critical partnerships: from a famous drag celeb to video games. It even includes a Degree branded "Pit Mobile" making neighborhood stops with truly un-missable pit-related imagery.

• Mission's Mission: Making Produce A CPG in Brand Insider on 07/09/2021
  

  If Millennials have a signature food, then surely avocados would be it. But herein lies the opportunity, says Mission Produce head of marketing and communications Denise Junqueiro. Mission is a farm-to-grocery avocado brand that is both b2b and increasingly b2c. By focusing on creative product development, especially around Millennial lifestyle needs, Mission is working a different lane of produce branding and trying to de-commoditize this trendy fruit. If like me, avocado minis or even the prospect of avocado baby food sounds even zanier than avocado toast, think again, Boomer.

• Clif Wants The World To Move -- And To Move The World in Brand Insider on 07/01/2021
  

  Post-pandemic ad campaigns are trying to thread the needle - find ways of gently alluding to the past 15 months of lockdowns, grief and social unrest, while pointing towards brighter days. Clif's "Let's Move the World" messaging wraps such a light note of return-to-normal in purposeful branding as well as a an overall theme of adventure. As Senior Director, Clif Brand Portfolio, Liza Darnell explains, it is designed for open interpretation around evolving notions of adventure, movement and social impact. In many ways, "Let's Move the World" recalls the fleeting age of the big idea but executed across a wide range of video, display and marketing partnerships. The big idea meets the fragmented customer journey.

• Bob Evans Farms Riffs On A Year of Comfort Fooding in Brand Insider on 06/25/2021
  

  Even locked-down seekers of eating therapy eventually crave variety. Apparently, Bob Evans Farms is on it. The company famous for freezer aisle comfort dishes like mac and cheese sides and countless sausage varieties, recently launched a new line of riffs on classics and breakfasts. CMO Thyme Hill discusses how product development is central now to CPG marketing.

• El Pollo Loco Has One Foot In History, The Other In TikTok in Brand Insider on 06/11/2021
  

  El Pollo Loco has a 45-year legacy of serving authentic Mexican fare principally to a Southwest clientele who know the difference. So as the company looks to expand beyond not only core Hispanic loyalists but into younger demos, it finds itself balancing familiarity with novelty. At last month's MediaPost QSR Brand Insider Summit, CEO Bernard Acoca outlined the ways in which the company digitized quickly during this past Pandemic year. And in the process, this legacy brand found some unlikely digital paths to new customers - like a fast following on TikTok. Acoca was interviewed at the Summit by MediaPost's own Lisa Singer.

• A Side of Phygital: McAlister's Upgrades the QSR Experience in Brand Insider on 05/28/2021
  

  Adversity is the mother of innovation, especially if you have been a marketer in the QSR industry this past year. But as consumers flow back into eat-out mode, what online behaviors will they want to bring with them to physical dining experiences? McAlister's Deli is trying to answer that one with a new table-side ordering function in their mobile app. As we explore with Danielle Parra, Head of Marketing and Culinary, bringing tech into the on-site QSR meal ordering chain actually helps McAlister's increase and enhance personal interactions with its customers rather than circumvent the human touch.

• Peloton Manages High Intensity Growth in Brand Insider on 05/21/2021
  

  Few brands were better positioned for growth during this year of lockdowns than Peloton. The home exercise brand has reported triple digit sales gains.

• Chipotle Doubles Down On Digital, Gamers, Values in Brand Insider on 05/13/2021
  

  Chipotle was already ahead of many marketing curves that both the pandemic and social unrest accelerated in the last year. App ordering: check. Esports: check.

Comments by Steve All comments by Steve

• 'B2B Marketing Is Dead': NI Rebrands In D2C Style by Steve Smith (Brand Insider 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 

About Edit

You haven't told us anything about yourself! Surely you've got something to say. Tell us a little something.