Nothing screams summer and fun in the sun like the greatest holiday in American history — you may know it as Independence Day, the Fourth of the July, or the largest fireworks celebration of the year.

And while your 2020 celebration may not include crowded firework shows, neighborhood pool parties, and big family BBQs, people will nonetheless take this day to celebrate our great country’s independence.

How do you imitate the convenience of browsing vast aisles of inventory without a physical presence? Or the experience of seeing, feeling, and smelling various products to make a purchasing decision? Due to the coronavirus pandemic, these are questions brands have had to navigate over the past couple of months.

While it seems like Mother’s Day just passed, brands are actively preparing for a virtual Father’s Day. And with a near-record $17 billion at stake for Father’s Day weekend 2020, marketers aren’t taking any chances.

As men reexamine their role in the home, brands reassess their portrayal in advertising. Today’s fathers want to be shown as cuddly caregivers who contribute just as much to parenting duties as the mother as the household.

And many forward-thinking brands have taken note of this.

Consider a restaurant filled with happy customers, a nightclub with a line out the door, and a viral video with millions of views. What do they all have in common?

They're living examples of social proof. Human beings are tribal by nature — we take cues from those around us to guide our actions, decisions, and purchases. Hence why the restaurant, nightclub, and video gain more popularity due to the fact that they are well-liked by society.

Whether you’re a startup or a Fortune 500 company, the time to rebrand inevitably rolls around.

Rebranding is equal parts a risk and an opportunity. On the risk side, you face launching a brand that completely misfires. On the opportunity side, your brand has potential to strengthen its presence, reputation, and image in the eyes of your customers.

Overall, a rebrand conveys a declaration to your company’s overall commitment to growth.

Do you ever see an ad, commercial, or social post and think, “How did they read my mind?”

While reading people’s minds is a questionable superpower, it’s likely that the brand that produced that content engages in social listening — the practice of monitoring online channels to understand what people are saying about your brand. Through social listening, brands gain a holistic snapshot of how consumers perceive their brands.

The word “authenticity” is thrown around a lot in modern marketing, but why exactly should brands care so much about it? The answer is simple: Consumers expect it. And when you win them over, they are your best advertiser.

Furthermore, consumers can sense when brands are overextending their reach at the expense of their existing market. According to a study by Stackla, 57% of consumers think that less than half of brands create content that resonates as authentic.

For some marketers, social media algorithms are intriguing data puzzles waiting to be solved. For others, they’re the great unknown that’s holding their content down. Put simply, algorithms are at the core of the decision-making process for social media platforms.

The purpose of algorithms largely boils down to a profit-making mechanism. Personal feeds are created by advanced software that analyzes tens of thousands of data points in order to maximize the amount of time people spend on a platform. The longer a social networking service can keep you engaging with content, the more revenue they will likely earn from advertisements.

Cultivating more sales this spring — with peak occasions like Mother’s Day, graduation season, and Father’s Day — is more important than ever. Return from ad spending might be lower than usual, but your brand’s continual effort will yield more sales in the back half of the year.

With cities still on stay-at-home mandates and many businesses closed, the coronavirus will impact Mother’s Day quite a bit this year.

In the world of marketing, we often see clever videos that amass hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of hours. The question at hand is, how do you turn a standard video into a viral sensation?

But making content go viral is out of the control of any marketer, no matter how savvy they may be. Rather, it’s all in the hands of consumers. Content has to be likeable, be shareable, and catch on at the right time — which is more challenging than it seems.

But making content go viral is out of the control of any marketer, no matter how savvy they may be.

In recent years, there has been a questionable statistic floating around about the human attention span: it’s down to a mere eight seconds from 12 seconds in 2000. Articles even claim that a human has a shorter attention span than that of a goldfish. If this were really accurate, how are people able to binge watch a Netflix series or a dozen YouTube videos?

Everyone has loyalties to different brands. Chances are, some of your favorite products have come as a result of companies working together. Brand partnerships involve two brands — corporations, nonprofits, retailers, media properties, or even celebrities — collaborating in a joint venture. The premise of partnership marketing is very promising: brands can leverage each other’s audiences and combine resources to achieve a mutually beneficial goal.

The most successful brands practice sustainability throughout the year — but if there’s any one day to take action and show appreciation for our planet, it’s Earth Day. This year, April 22nd will mark the 15th anniversary of Earth Day. Since its inception in 1970 - when people demanded an end to toxic air, water, and soil pollution - Earth Day has inspired brands to commit to sustainable practices

Goods are tangible, services are intangible, but experiences are memorable. The last decade has seen a massive shift in consumer spending from possessions to experiences, from materialism to meaningfulness. As something once purely attributed to millennials, the growing importance of experiences is true across the board — irrespective of age. In this article, we’ll dive into the basics of brand experiences, why this shift is happening, and some common brand experience trends that are contributing to customer loyalty.

You scroll through your Instagram feed and see a video watermarked with a vibrating TikTok logo, accompanied by an upbeat remix of a popular song. Navigate to the TikTok app, and you’ll find a whole world of video that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the web — including YouTube. Known for its short-form video dance crazes, TikTok has captivated the world with its humorous and unrefined content. Despite what it seems, TikTok is not just limited to frivility and fun — from dance challenges to internet jokes to full-blown lip-syncing. It’s a hub for unapologetically wholesome content, which might be exactly what the world needs right now.

Should you outsource your marketing, or hire a team to do it in-house? This has been a longstanding debate for years. The solution boils down to what the right fit is for your company. In recent years, there has been an ongoing migration of marketing functions from an agency to in-house. Some companies are even experimenting with a blend of in-house and outsourcing — choosing to keep projects with quick turnarounds in-house and outsource bigger, more complex campaigns.

In the modern age of social media, what makes people laugh makes them share. As the one day a year where brands can play pranks on their consumers without furious backlash, April Fool’s Day presents a unique marketing opportunity. While scrolling through social media feeds and emails on April 1st, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish what is real and what is fake.

Digital media campaigns require marketers to be able to think quickly and execute even quicker all while being hyper aware of how to constantly develop successful content that puts them ahead of the competition and in the spotlight.

When we analyzed some of the most iconic digital campaigns, we noted many similarities: a focus on safety, rewarding loyal consumers, selfies, and taking radical steps to create word-of-mouth.

As technology evolves to take over manual tasks, it frees up the time we spend on tasks that require human imagination and understanding. However, while robots are great at optimizing old ideas, creative employees are the ones that will conceive the ideas of tomorrow. They are you’re lifeline for keeping your business a step ahead of the rest.

Sustainable marketing is more than just a buzzword — it's a fundamental shift in how consumers perceive the products and services they are purchasing. Each year, consumers demand more “responsible” brands. As a result, a new kind of marketing has emerged for brands — green marketing — that involves them being more transparent about their production habits and sustainability credentials.