Yes, Amazon is huge, but that doesn't mean that retailers should be spending every waking moment thinking about how to beat them at their own game. After all, the reason that Amazon became successful in the first place was by finding new strategies to disrupt established players. If retailers want to ensure their long-term success, they can't rely on repurposing Amazon's methods; instead, they have to take a step back and think about how they can truly differentiate themselves. In other words, they need to find their niche, and figure out how best to position themselves.

People have high expectations of the customer experience. To say UX and content must be attuned to our every whim is an understatement. So why do so many brands get it wrong? Well, they're not anticipating the needs of the consumer.

The Olympics aside, this post Super Bowl lull marks the 3Q of the lengthy NBA and NHL seasons and rides on the cusp of Spring training and March Madness. So, in seeking to satisfy my insatiable appetite for all things sports, I stumbled upon a great promotion that my beloved Tennessee Titans are again offering for Valentine's Day. For a nominal fee, the Titans will send lovable "T-Rac," their raccoon mascot, to personally deliver a Valentine's Day gift to anyone's favorite Titans fan. It got me thinking about the power of mascots.

It's time for marketers to pay attention to the 50+ pet owner market.

Create customer experiences with empathy.

Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are a generation and a full universe apart. Boomers are retiring in droves today, while Generation Xers are at the tops of their careers. The Boomers are watching their Millennial children start families, while Gen X is painfully paying for either college tuition or summer camp. And while the two groups are very different, they have so much in common at the same time. They both saw the rise of the internet and rely on mobile phones, they often work side by side, and neither wants to have a Millennial as their supervisor at the …

Crowd-sourcing isn't new, but the evolution of how it is deployed is helping brands turn consumers and fans into passionate brand advocates.

You've been together for over 60 years. When you first met, they were black and white and Roosevelt was president. They gave you sight, sound and motion from day one and over the years, they became more colorful, more mobile and more interactive. They seemed to get better with age. And you thought they were the best thing ever.

Little Red Riding Hood skipped down the wooded path with a basket for her grandmother and a "stranger danger" lesson for little boys and girls around the world. This infamous fable leverages the power of storytelling to reshape how children perceive their interactions with strangers.

In recent years, we marketers have tied ourselves closely to the tech industry, doing our part to fuel its rise. It seemed like a safe bet. The tech world was powerful, influential and cool. It was defining the future.