STEVE SMITH

Articles by Steve All articles by Steve

• Truman's: A Sustainable D2C Brand Needs a Sustainable Model in Brand Insider on 01/19/2021
  

  Alex Reed, co-founder and CMO of D2C cleaning product brand Truman's, is one of the only marketers to give an honest and nuanced answer to my cynicism about "brand love." He gets it. There really is no love lost between most of us and the spray we use to clean our counter top. Nevertheless, Truman's is trying to build a different kind of CPG relationship with consumers without ad-bombing Instagram.

• The HaHa Ratio: Anti-Trump Advertising Followed the Emoji Metric in Brand Insider on 01/08/2021
  

  Tara McGowan, founder and CEO of nonprofit ACRONYM, says Democrats regained the mantle of digital innovators in this cycle.

• Marketing All-Star: Lori Krauss in MediaPost All Stars on 01/05/2021
  

• Got Values?: GOT BAG Bakes Meaning Into the Model in Brand Insider on 12/31/2020
  

  "Values-based" branding is the sort of good intention that marketers can quickly exploit and wring of any remaining drop of authenticity. The German startup GOT BAG, founded four years ago by two surfing buddies who were dismayed by the ocean plastic blight, recycles this refuse into backpacks. Head of North America Matthias Paisdzior tells us this week, the company's connection to cleaning up the oceans runs much deeper than simple recycling.

• Pier 1 Trades Bricks for Clicks As D2C Pure Play in Brand Insider on 12/23/2020
  

  After the chain's closure, new owner REV had only weeks to turn the brick-and-mortar experience into Web pages and buy buttons.

• Publishers Clearinghouse: Respect Privacy, Break Rules, Embrace Ugly in Brand Insider on 12/14/2020
  

  No one ever accused Publishers Clearinghouse promotions of being understated. Those famously garish sweepstakes mailings were paint-factory explosions of entry forms, stamps to apply, subscription offers and giveaways. But they worked then, and they work now in their digital extensions. version. PCH VP of Digital Operations and Compliance, Sal Tripi, explains how ugly can be good when it is also relevant and entertaining.

• Reinventing Celebration: Party City Wants to Help Us 'Imagine Well' in Brand Insider on 12/04/2020
  

  How do you party in a pandemic? Julie Roehm, CMO of Party City, explains how the largest retailer of celebration supplies is rethinking its role in customer's lives.

• RentPath: A Time To Build Brand, Reduce Friction in Brand Insider on 11/30/2020
  

  Chester Bullock, Director of Technology at RentPath and a longtime email marketing maven, explains how the next normal will be about long-ball brand building. Bullock will be returning to the virtual edition of Email Insider Summit on December 7-8. Bullock previews his EIS presentation that shows one of the ways RentPath is trying to build brand by reducing customer friction in the lead-gen process.

• White Castle Leverages A Century of 'Craveability' in Brand Insider on 11/20/2020
  

  The century-old White Castle brand was ahead of the curve on QSR delivery (in the 1930s), CPG extensions and even app-based advance ordering. CMO Lynn Blashford explains how a highly centralized structure of nearly 400 company-owned outlets helped White Castle make the necessary pivots in the last year.

• Nurx Looks Beyond The TeleHealth Boom in Brand Insider on 11/13/2020
  

  The unpredictable path back to real-life interaction is especially acute for the telemedicine sector, where the hands-on doctor/patient experience goes back to the good old days when shamans made cave calls. Nurx CMO Katelyn Watson has been thinking beyond the Covid surge.

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.