Martin Weigel, head of planning at Wieden+Kennedy, recently delivered the keynote address at "Nurturing Great Creative: Sowing the Seeds," and Leah McTiernan, Ipsos ASI VP, found the message both resonant and memorable

Even in today's Big Data mania, marketers still understand that customer engagement is the most important element of a successful program, according to the inaugural Korn/Ferry Marketing Pulse Survey. Marketers are forced to learn and adapt to new standards and technologies.

According to data from Kantar Media, total traditional advertising expenditures in the first quarter of 2013 declined 0.1% from a year ago and finished the period at $30.2 billion.

Despite the overall slowing of net sales growth rates in 2012, food, beverage and household products companies experienced positive net sales growth of 7.0%, 5.5% and 3.2%, respectively. In the age of the digital consumer, says the report, leading CPG companies and retailers benefit from responding to the speed of the connected consumer and balancing operational quality with innovation.

According to a new Nielsen study, Boomers and Millennials exhibit vastly different behaviors and habits, from their money to their media. Despite being born 30 years apart, these two mega-generations are in demand by advertisers wishing to attract their attention and their dollars. Understanding how to reach these consumers and capture their hearts with appropriate creative is crucial, says the report.

According to the Adestra study and email subject line analysis report, looking at the keywords and phrases that fare best and worst across a number of sectors, however much time one spends developing the subject line strategy, if you're like 9/10 of marketers the answer is "not enough!" Having a strong subject line, says the report, is as important as ever, particularly as consumers rate the subject line as one of their top motivators for opening an email.

According to Accenture's Perfect Promotion Study, based on interviews with 350 senior executives at large CPG companies, 61% believe their technology investments have produced a wealth of data that can help improve their trade promotion performance, but they lack the talent needed to put the data to its most effective use and boost the return on their analytics investment. One in five executives (21%) admit that they trust their intuition more than the available data to make trade promotion-related decisions.

Jon Swallen, Chief Research Officer at Kantar Media North America, says "... a lackluster start for 2013... due in part to strong 2012 growth caused by political and Olympic ad spending... early second quarter results are mixed... marketers still cautious and conservative with ad budgets... bright spots include healthy growth for Hispanic media and Outdoor... "

According to Upstream, with YouGov and Vanson Bourne, 7 billion global mobile users are the new, coveted prime audience that companies everywhere are trying to reach.

According to the most recent Martini Media Affluent Online Shopper Index, with comScore, shopping activity across the wealthiest consumer segments remains comparably strong. The study specifically revealed that affluent consumers are both still shopping and further outpacing the shopping activity of non-affluent shoppers, whose activity diminished after the holiday season.