eMarketing Association

On August 23rd, 2019, Kevin Lee, of Didit and the eMarketing Association, interviewed David Levin, VP, Customer Experience & Digital Innovation, Bob's Discount Furniture. A range of topics was discussed, including: 1. How brands can differentiate themselves in the "age of Amazon." 2. The sales training requirements for complex purchases. 3. How retailers can replicate positive store experiences online. 4. Whether Bob's Discount Furniture...

Social media influencers have been grabbing a bigger piece of the digital ad pie. In 2019, about $8 billion was paid to influencers to promote consumer products; this figure is expected to jump to $15 billion by 2022. Because there's big money on the table here, ineffective self-regulation on the part of the industry, a lack of formal certification, plus...

Sometimes lightning strikes for a brand -- and that downward heavenly spark struck this past week in the wake of "SharpieGate" -- the multi-day worldwide mediafest generated when POTUS modified an official weather map to indicate that Hurricane Dorian would impact Alabama. Suddenly Sharpies became top-of-mind as the Twitterverse spewed forth a succession of hilarious neo tropes relating to this...

You may not think that the experiences of interviewees (internship, part time, full time or contract), is of concern to the marketing team. Well, it is because in this age of social media a negative experience with a brand, not only by a customer, but interviewee can have a lasting negative brand impact. Wired reports the disturbing results of a...

Halo Group (a Didit Company) has an article where they explain why ### three pound or hash tags are used at the end of a press release. That article ranks #1 in google for a variety of searches including just the ### as well as permutations that include related press release questions. I'm not as much a fan of press...

I've been tempted myself to use a survey to communicate as opposed to collect valuable information about prospects or clients, and while it is possible, generally consumers see it as a transparent and in-authentic way of marketing. For example, today I got the following email from Circle (the home network protection gateway to control content and use by device): Already the...

NYC had a bomb scare caused by someone who has provided Amazon Prime Day an unexpected and brand unsafe product placement. Clearly, some brand-unsafe advertising just happens. Guess you take your product placements whenever and wherever you can get them since you can't control them. Just think of all the product placement visibility the AK-47 has gotten.... Hmmm.

Remember "portals?" Back in the 1990s, becoming a "portal" was what web-based media companies did to resist losing users to 3rd-party sites whose advertising revenues were not under their own control. So you had sites such as Yahoo loading up on all kinds of (sometimes) useful features such as email, chat, forums, internal search, etc., so that -- ideally...

Sometimes a pizza says a lot. Politicians seem drawn to pizza, and for Pete Buttigieg, there's an alliteration to be had... So, when I got a Facebook ad for a "Pizza with Pete" (I happen to like him, a few years ago he would be considered a centrist), I clicked. Ends up the pizza in the Pizza with Pete landing...

One can easily make a case that customer service should be owned by marketing. Billions of dollars in marketing budget are deployed to get the message out there regarding the superiority of one product, service or platform over another. Great technology and features alone can't make up for a poor customer service experience. I decided this weekend to terminate my two-line...