GOOGLE’S DÉJÀ VU
In January, 2020, Google advised the marketing world that it was doing away with the third-party browser cookie by 2022. Then came the pandemic. So earlier this month, when Google (Alphabet Inc) announced it would not develop its own replacement for third-party cookie data, or [...]
HOPE AND THE PORSCHE EXPERIMENT
At the very end of 2020, a story appeared in multiple automotive news publications that seemed, at the time, to be not-so-significant automotive news. It initially caught my eye because it involved the Porsche brand, an old client of ours. But the varying headlines made [...]
MEC: END OF A CANADIAN BRAND ICON
MEC, formerly Mountain Equipment Co-op, is one of Canada’s most trusted and beloved brands. Beloved by me personally, but also by many Canadians. Over the last five years, it has consistently ranked in the top two most trusted brands in Canada [1]. So last week [...]
AUNTIE E CONFESSIONAL
I continue to visit my centenarian Auntie E, but these visits don’t really generate marketing-relevant content, so they aren’t reported here. Here’s the history of my past off-topic indulgences: Post Date Title Auntie's Age Jun 6, 2010 THE GRACIOUSNESS OF 'NO' 92 Sep [...]
A NEW DECADE OF FITNESS CLUB MARKETING
The campaign cycle for fitness clubs follows the New Year’s Resolution cycle, so right now we have new marketing from some of the biggest brands. We use TV commercials and video as examples here because they are the fastest way to communicate marketing and creative [...]
JEFF BEZOS, THE REDUX
Almost two years ago, here, we posted CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING. Ironically, it has become the most popular post in Marketing Wilderness' 10-year history. Ironic because the main point of that post was that context is accidentally or intentionally left out of so much on the [...]
ONLY IN THE BEER BUSINESS
Three fairly recent developments in the frothy beer business lead to the title of this post: The craft brand that isn’t really a beer. The no name brand that isn’t really a no name. Big Beer advertising that appears to be cannabis-infused. The craft brand [...]
CANNABIS’ INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Oct 18, 2019, will mark one-year since cannabis was made legal for recreational use in Canada. How’s the industry going? Surprisingly, given the hype leading up to Legalisation 1.0, not that great. In our opinion, that result flows from an inconvenient truth. How's it going? [...]
INTERNET TRENDS 2019
verbosity alert About a month ago, Mary Meeker, aka The Queen of the Internet, delivered the annual report that Silicon Valley loves the most: the Internet Trends report [1]. It’s also reported in the marketing media. This year’s report is a 333-page slide deck that [...]
CANADIANS—THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BULLSHITTERS?
Last week, The Economist reported some interesting research in an article titled, "Who are the biggest bullshitters?". The ‘who’ refers to nationality. I made my logical guess, then read on. Imagine my surprise to see that Canadians topped the list of the world's biggest bullshitters! [...]
THE INSCRUTABLE HUAWEI BRAND
Warning: We’re going to stray into geopolitics here. You can't talk about the Huawei brand in any depth without doing so. Branding by MarketingHuawei entered Canada selling low-end mobile devices to mobile service carriers. Starting in 2014, mid and high-end devices arrived, marketed to [...]
THE IN-HOUSE BIAS
The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) and Ipsos collaborate on a long-running survey titled, The Canadian Digital Marketing Pulse. 2018 results were released last September [1]. It’s an annual assessment of the digital marketing landscape from both an agency and marketer perspective. One component of this [...]
JUST HOW BIG IS THE CANNABIS MARKET?
Estimating this is akin to predicting anything about the current POTUS. Too many degrees of freedom, as the statisticians say. Too many moving parts, as the rest of us say. We recently looked at the cannabis market in the Canadian context (see: THE CANNABIS CRAZE). [...]
MARKETING’S FAKE NEWS
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” John Wanamaker, 1838-1922 This is a quote generally attributed to John Wanamaker, an American department store magnate, US Postmaster General, religious leader and politician, born in 1838. Yes, [...]
SWIPE LEFT ON BAD PRESS
Every once in a while, someone in the marketing world makes a public statement that seems so wrong, yet no one seems to care. Or maybe everyone else thinks it’s perfectly fine. Case in point: Bob Pease, President of America’s (Craft) Brewers Association, did an [...]
RITSON ON VAYNERCHUK
We repost from Mark Ritson’s blog more than any other [1]. That’s because he’s usually on the right side of marketing issues (in our opinion) and he’s entertaining to read. On the downside, he’s very, very long to read. Ritson takes on Gary Vaynerchuk the [...]
MARKETING, 5000 YEARS OUT
Throughout its surprisingly long history, the literary genre of science fiction has had a curious way of often coming true. Particularly prolific in the genre, at least in terms of sci-fi that Hollywood could commercialise, was Philip K Dick. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, he [...]
DESIGN FOR THE PEOPLE
This idea has been written, read and said before, but when you experience it yourself, it’s so much more powerful: Great architecture inspires people. The benefits of this inspiration are unquantifiable but real. My favourite case-in-point: the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant on the eastern [...]
THE CANNABIS CRAZE
After many months of scratching our heads on why legalising cannabis in Canada seems to be such a big deal, we decided to research the answer to that question ourselves. Here’s what we came up with. The legal Canadian beverage alcohol industry took hundreds of [...]
PORSCHE’S PASTA STRATEGY
Last November, we reported on Porsche’s first ‘alternative ownership’ initiative, Porsche Passport [1]. In summary, we believed the subscription service didn’t make sense for the Porsche brand. Seven months later, Porsche announced Porsche Drive, essentially a valet-enabled short-term rental service, in several European countries and [...]