The Retail Industry Spent $1.8 Billion On Advertising In January And February

According to MediaRadar’s latest analysis, the retail industry spent $1.8 billion on advertising during January and February 2021, a 24 percent decline from the same period last year.

Between 2017 and 2020, ad spend decreased an average of 34 percent each year, a post-holiday phenomenon that marketers have come to expect. MediaRadar forecasts Q1 2021 retail ad spend will reach $2.73 billion, which represents a 33 percent dip in ad spend between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021.

With rising vaccine availability and declining COVID-19 rates in some parts of the world, the economy is slowly opening back up. This has prompted big-box stores like Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s to increase their spend month-over-month. In February, their spend comprised 70 percent of general retail and department store ad spend, reports MediaRadar.

The increased spend aligns with encouraging consumer sentiment about the future of in-person shopping. An Ad Age-Harris Poll found that 62 percent of consumers plan to shop in stores this spring at least once a week.

Retail and department stores overall are still recovering from the pandemic, as spend is down 26 percent year-over-ear (YoY), which marks the same level of recovery observed in Q4 of 2020.

Building on their positive momentum from the end of 2020, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) invested $500 million in ads in January and February. That’s a 33 percent decline YoY, but a marked improvement from 2020 when their spend was down as much as 65 percent, according to MediaRadar.

McDonald’s and Subway ran spots during the GRAMMY Awards show, while Jimmy John’s and Chipotle bought ad space in Super Bowl LVI.

Marketers are eager to recoup lost sales. The CMO Council’s latest survey revealed that 65 percent of global marketers plan to increase their ad spend. The BIA Advisory Services predicts that local retail advertising will grow YoY by 5.3 percent this year. Lastly, The National Retail Foundation expects retail sales to grow between 6.5 percent and 8.2 percent in 2021 to more than $4.33 trillion, the highest projected YoY growth in 17 years.

Entertainment Brands Ran The Most Ads During The 2021 GRAMMY Awards

A new MediaRadar analysis found that during this year’s GRAMMY Awards show, entertainment brands accounted for most ads (20 percent), followed by technology brands (14 percent) and automotive brands (13 percent).

That’s in comparison to the 2020 GRAMMY Awards, when technology brands led the way at 23 percent of ads, followed by pharmaceutical brands (15 percent) and entertainment brands (15 percent).

The rise in entertainment ads mirrors the boost that streaming services have seen lately with more people staying in. It’s also worth noting that ads from tech companies declined by nine percent year-over-year.

Overall, 87 advertisers ran 103 ads during the 2021 awards show, with top marketers including Remy Martin, Facebook, Geico, McDonald’s and Atlice Mobile. Together these brands comprised 15 percent of the commercial space, according to MediaRadar’s findings.

Leaders in the entertainment category include Facebook, which ran two 60-second spots, and LinkedIn and Dreamworks. HBO Max ran four commercials, partnering with Olay and Café Bustelo to promote their new show In The Heights. Other streamers that ran commercials include Paramount+, as well as Disney+ which highlighted the forthcoming release of its Cruella live-action adaptation.

Together, Google, Apple and Amazon accounted for 33 percent of all tech advertising during the GRAMMY Awards. The auto industry saw appearances from brands like Ford, Lexus, Lincoln, Mazda and Toyota. Lincoln was the most prominent of the group, running five spots ranging from 25-60 seconds each.

Disney+ Ad Spend Jumps 158 Percent YoY From January To February

According to MediaRadar’s latest analysis, Disney+ ad spend surged 158 percent year-over-year (YoY) from January to February.

With vaccine rollouts and more parts of the world opening up, Disney has shifted ad spend slightly. The company moved 13 percent of its digital spend to national television, which now represents 96 percent of its ad spend from January to February.

From December 2019 to February 2020, Disney+ spent an average of $6.2 million per month on national television and digital formats.

As MediaRadar notes, the creative for Disney’s digital ads included a banner inviting viewers to start their free trial until May 2020, but thereafter changed the call-to-action to “Sign up now.”

“There was some concern that the original Verizon subscribers who received Disney+ as a free sign-on would have low renewal rates. That may yet come to pass for some minority of subscribers, but the big picture is that Disney+ is performing much stronger than the company, or analysts, had ever predicted,” said Todd Krizelman, chief executive of MediaRadar.

Earlier this month, Disney+ surpassed 100 million global subscribers—a milestone that took Netflix a decade to achieve. Richard Broughton, an analyst at Ampere Analysis, told The Guardian that taking into account Disney’s ESPN+ and Hulu subscribers—12.1 million and 39.4 million, respectively—Disney is expected to overtake Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as the world’s largest video streaming provider by 2024 or 2025.  

In October 2020, Disney announced plans to accelerate its direct-to-consumer strategy by centralizing its media business into a single organization that would oversee content distribution, ad sales and Disney+.

The company’s fiscal first-quarter 2021 results show that DTC revenues increased 73 percent to $3.5 billion, and that paid subscribers for Disney+ jumped from 26.5 million in December 2019 to 95 million in January 2021.

Why CMOs Are Struggling To Maximize Customer Lifetime Value

Developing customer lifetime value (LTV) enables brand leaders to create more effective marketing mixes and respond to shifting budgets, yet only 17 percent of chief marketing officers track their LTV well, according to the CMO Council’s latest report, ‘Humanizing + Analyzing Relationships to Drive Revenue, Retention and Returns,” conducted in partnership with Deloitte.

Based on responses from 150 CMOs, the findings highlight LTV blindspots and how marketers can redefine and track LTV to reflect the new digital realities.

For 44 percent of CMOs, the top reason they analyze LTV is strategic organizational focus on customer retention and value creation. LTV, also a key performance indicator of a brand’s ability to deliver great customer experiences, helps marketers justify spending on targeted campaigns.

More importantly, LTV is a reflection of a brand’s ability to create loyal customers, which drives profit. Data from a 2020 Deloitte report shows that 87 percent of consumers are loyal to their favorite brand for three or more years, with 61 percent making at least three purchases from the brand in the previous six months.

The advantage of LTV investment for a brand, however, goes beyond the marketing team. The CMO Council found that 53 percent of chief executive officers and 49 percent of heads of sales utilize LTV to inform strategic decisions.

Nevertheless, CMOs struggle with tracking LTV– 82 percent track LTV only moderately well or worse, and more than one out of four don’t track LTV well at all.

The revenue of a customer over the course of a lifetime should be three times the cost to acquire that customer. While this cost of acquisition (CAC) to LTV ratio is a good starting point for understanding LTV, 43 percent of leaders rated their ratio as average at best. Another 25 percent rated it as below average or very poor.

Sixty-six percent of marketers cited revenue per user as a core component for measuring LTV, followed by 45 percent for transaction per user and 26 percent for sessions per users. 

For LTV to be effective, however, leaders must take into account a variety of factors, starting with customer segmentation to ensure they’re not wasting resources chasing the wrong customers. The reality is 84 percent of respondents agree they’re not effectively segmenting and targeting customer sets with the most potential for long-term value.

Rather than rely on traditional demographics, marketers are better off developing psychographics of their customers and track online and offline buying behavior. This approach may not benefit, say, a food and beverage company like PepsiCo, which targets customer “cohorts,” or people with a shared concern such as their health, but even in these cases segmenting is key.

“Our aspiration is to track the lifetime value at the consumer cohort level. We think a lot about penetration and the frequency of purchase of our products over a given time period—the dynamics of lifetime values,” says Ram Krishnan, global chief commercial officer at PepsiCo.

Another reason LTV suffers is a lack of clear ownership. When asked who owns this area of strategic growth, answers varied greatly: CMO (32 percent), chief revenue officer (16 percent), head of sales (14 percent), chief executive officer (nine percent) and line-of-business leader (eight percent). As the report notes, the correct answer needs to be making all of these leaders accountable for LTV.

“Building relationships is a marathon, and it takes forward-thinking leadership to look at LTV. Many companies are focused on the here and now, and this year they’re in triage mode. You have to remember that the average CEO tenure is five years. That’s why a lot of companies fall short with LTV,” says Brett Townsend, head of North America insights for Electrolux.

The top challenge for cultivating lasting relationships boil down to data, without which marketers can’t segment and target customers with the highest potential for net profit. Respondents’ primary areas of concern include aggregating data for a robust view of the customer (55 percent), shifting from assumptions to predictive knowledge of consumers’ needs (47 percent) and identifying the moments to provide delight and differentiation (44 percent).

The data-driven insights that CMOs seek most are: level of satisfaction (44 percent), LTV (41 percent), incident of churn and defection (37 percent), customer purchase history (35 percent) and brand loyalty (33 percent).

The good news is marketers know what steps they must take to convert customers—humanize connections, align the organization to fully deliver on the brand promise and offer products that meet well-defined needs.

LTV-boosting initiatives that CMOs currently find most effective include enhancing communication of product value proposition (47 percent), doing more sophisticated targeting (42 percent) and leveraging relevant marketing content (42 percent).

To maximize LTV, marketers must change their mindset from acquisition to retention, as well as pay close attention to channels where customers leave signals about their needs, such as email (73 percent), social media channels (54 percent) and web forms (54 percent). Consumers may provide the greatest amount of signals over email, but the most effective signals occur through service and support interactions.

Consumer Spend On Digital Audio Subscription Services Surged 40 Percent In 2020

Worldwide, consumers spent $2.012 trillion on media content and technology in 2020, a 6.1 percent increase from 2019 driven by COVID-19 lockdowns, according to a new report from PQ Media, “Global Consumer Spending on Media Forecast 2020-24.”

In 2020, total consumer spending on media content rose six percent to $777.39 billion, while total spend on media technology grew 6.1 percent to $1.235 trillion. The surge marks the fastest expansion in both global and US consumer media and technology spending in five years, fueled by increased spending on streaming audio and video subscriptions, as well as digital and console video game software and hardware.

PQ Media estimates that consumer spend on digital media increased 10.4 percent in 2020 to $1.432 trillion. Of the 28 digital media categories, the fastest growing was digital audio subscription services, ballooning 40 percent to $30.98 billion globally—an increase largely driven by the popularity of podcasts. Spotify added 74 million new subscribers in 2020 following its acquisition of ‘The Ringer’ and exclusive rights to ‘The Joe Rogan Experience.’ Plus, Amazon and Audible added over 100,000 new and original podcast channels and shows with celebrities.

Over-the-top (OTT) video services, including streaming video subscriptions and SVOD programming, was the second-fastest growing digital media category, surging 30 percent. With consumers stuck at home for longer periods, Netflix added 26 million global subscribers in the first half of 2020 compared to just 12 million in the first half of 2019. Disney+ gained nearly 75 million subscribers by the end of the year.

Digital media content devices generated $440.5 billion, making it the largest of the nine major digital and traditional media platform categories. Digital content subscription services grew nearly 21 percent.

Consumer spend on traditional film and home video plunged 46 percent to $43.05 billion. PQ Media predicts it will never again reach the level it did in 2019–$85 billion.

Movie ticket sales will soon see an uptick only due to the staggered premieres of films that were forced to stop production during the pandemic. Some studios including Disney and Warner Media were wise to pivot, launching several hit blockbusters via OTT video services. Disney+ debuted Mulan and Soul while Warner Media released Wonder Woman ’84 on HBO Max in addition to theaters.

Even before the launch of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in Q4, digital video game software and hardware spending on multiplayer online games, in-game microtransactions and traditional console-based gaming all jumped.

Among the 14 traditional media and tech categories, cable TV subscriptions remained the largest at $220.6 billion, followed by print books and directories, which was the fastest growing in the category—up by nearly eight percent.

US consumers spent the most on media, a total of $472.16 billion, followed by China, Japan and India.

Walmart Announces New Display Self-Serve Platform

Walmart announced a new display self-serve platform launching later this year that will enable advertisers to activate and manage display campaigns with automation capabilities powered by ad-tech company Thunder.

Walmart acquired Thunder’s IP and technology, which will offer creative versioning, testing and optimization to help advertisers increase their return on ad spend (ROAS).

“While we expect our largest suppliers to adopt automation technology fastest, we are building this new platform to scale for Marketplace sellers and suppliers of all sizes,” the company said in a press release.

The news follows the retailer’s media business rebrand, from Walmart Media Group to Walmart Connect, with an expanded vision comprising three strategic areas.

First, Walmart is growing offerings across its digital properties—Walmart.com, pickup and delivery and the Walmart app—which saw nearly double the amount of revenue and more than double the number of advertisers last fiscal year.

The company is also launching new omnichannel capabilities that enable advertisers to reach its millions of in-store shoppers each week. These include media activations on in-store TV walls and self check-out screens with nearly 170,000 digital screens across more than 4,500 stores. Walmart’s stores and digital properties see 150 million weekly visitors.

Lastly, Walmart has partnered with The Trade Desk to launch a demand-side platform for suppliers and their media ad agencies to drive performance outside of Walmart’s proprietary sites using first-party shopper data.  

Walmart’s first major attempt at competing with Amazon, Google and Facebook came in 2019 when it held an event to pitch its ad business to hundreds of companies including Unilever, NBC Universal and Mattel. Since then, it has launched various in-house ad solutions like its Advertising Partners program, Sponsored Product Interface and Performance Reporting Dashboards.

To keep up with shifting consumer behaviors during the pandemic, in September Walmart unveiled a new modern store design focused on digitally-enabled shopping experiences. The retailer’s new exterior and interior signage reflects the Walmart app icon, and its stores now include self-checkout kiosks and contactless payment options.

COVID-19’s Impact On Travel Ad Spending

US air travel in Q4 was down more than 60 percent compared with the previous year, while overseas air travel was down nearly 90 percent through November compared with 2019 according to the International Air Transport Association.

The ongoing fallout of COVID-19, including travel bans and quarantines, has caused the airline business to bleed money and marketers to scale back ad spend. When the crisis hit, the travel industry reduced its ad spending by nearly 50 percent during the first two weeks of March from a year prior, according to MediaRadar. By mid-April, spend was down 93 percent year-over-year.

A resurgence in spending occurred in the summer months when travel’s TV ad spend gradually increased. For example, in July, iSpot.tv data cited by Skift showed that the US travel industry spent $33.9 million on TV ads, more than double compared with the $15.4 million spent in June. Despite the slight increase, travel TV ad spend was still down 77.8 percent from the year prior.

In October, eMarketer revised its travel ad forecast to show that US travel digital ad spend would drop by 41 percent YoY to just $3.24 billion, making travel account for just 2.4 percent of digital ad spending. The $3.74 billion the researcher forecasted for travel ad spending in 2021 barely exceeds the industry’s spend in 2017, which was $3.64 billion.

Though the US Travel Association doesn’t expect travel spending to return to pre-pandemic strength until 2024, travel companies are now planning for the possibility that consumer demand will rebound amid the vaccine rollout.

According to Tripadvisor’s latest research, 77 percent of travelers worldwide say they will be more likely to travel internationally if they receive the vaccine, rising to 86 percent for travel domestically. In the US, those figures are 69 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

Twenty-six percent of respondents globally say that they would only travel to destinations that required visitors to be vaccinated before travel.

Vaccine or not, the data indicate the travel industry could see a sign of hope as 47 percent of travelers globally say they’re planning to travel internationally in 2021, including 45 percent of US travelers.

The road to recovery will be arduous as officials urge consumers to avoid travel and airlines’ debt mounts. Delta reported a $12.4 billion loss for all of 2020, the largest annual loss of the history of the airline. But as people start planning summer vacations, Delta’s chief executive Ed Bastian said the company expects bookings “to start opening up again.”

Bastian expects international travel will take another 12 to 18 months to fully recover, and  business travel to be only 25 percent to 50 percent of what it used to be by the second half of 2021.

Southwest Airlines Co. CEO Gary Kelly anticipates domestic business could be in the range of down 50 percent to 60 percent by the end of this year, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Transparency will be critical for rebuilding consumer trust. For companies, means continuously updating travelers with their latest health and safety measures in line with pandemic protocols, as well as encouraging them via special deals to travel locally.

“Transparency is the currency of character right now. We talk so much about consumer confidence, but really when you get right down to it it’s about trust and if we earn and maintain the trust of the consumer we’ll have their confidence when it comes time to travel, Brad Dean, chief executive of Discover Puerto Rico told Skift.

Emarketer: The Pandemic Accelerated Ecommerce Sales By Nearly Two Years

The pandemic accelerated ecommerce sales by nearly two years, according to eMarketer. At the height of 2020, the researcher anticipated total ecommerce sales would reach $674.88 billion. By the end of the year, it added $100 billion to the figure, making it $794.50 billion.

That finding is part of a more comprehensive roundup of how the pandemic changed eMarketer’s 2020 sales forecasts for various industries in retail and ecommerce between February and November.

Consumer electronic ecommerce sales in particular were strong as people worked, learned and socialized from home. Emarketer initially expected sales here to be $150.10 billion, but has since revised that to $179.35 billion.

Another positive shift compared to pre-pandemic estimates happened in furniture and home furnishing ecommerce sales, which eMarketer anticipated would reach $76.80 billion, but now forecasts it to be $92.32 billion.

Health, personal care and beauty ecommerce sales also grew significantly. The researcher’s previous forecast was $58.70 billion, but now it sees it reaching $73.52 billion.

Emarketer expected food and beverage online sales to be $32.20 billion, but as shoppers flocked to digital grocery shopping, it raised its forecast by 41.3 percent to $45.47 billion.

Click-and-collect sales also surged in popularity, causing the researcher to revise its forecast in sales this year from $50.66 billion to $58.52 billion.

Negative shifts were observed for sales in brick-and-mortar retail, auto retail, digital travel and apparel retail. The most dramatic downward adjustment that eMarketer made was for in-person retail sales. First anticipated to reach $4.946 trillion, it’s now down to $4.711 trillion—a $234.50 billion loss.

Digital travel sales were initially expected to reach $215.74, but now sit at $115.27 billion. Apparel retail was in line to reach $483.40 billion in sales, but eMarketer says it will be $394.89 billion.

LEWIS: Ecommerce, Engagement And Entertainment Helped Top Global Brands Succeed In A Turbulent Year

A successful digital marketing strategy proved itself to be a valuable requisite for resiliency during disruption. Yet many brands struggled to harness some of the core tenets of digital marketing this year. That’s according to LEWIS’ annual Global Marketing Engagement Index, an analysis of the world’s 300 largest public companies from Forbes Global 2000 list.

The report reveals that ecommerce, entertainment and engagement were the winning trio for successful brands worldwide this year. As consumer behavior fluctuated, marketers who embraced empathy, value perception and data stayed ahead of the game.

Overall, the average LEWIS Marketing Engagement Tracker (MET) score—developed  between November 9 and November 25—for the Forbes top 300 has stayed consistent with the 2019 average (56 percent vs. 54 percent).

However, the firm observed significant shifts within digital marketing metrics. For one, website reporting metrics remained the lowest scored topic on average, with all industries scoring lower than previous years in terms of optimum tag management and engagement tracking—both essential for addressing changing consumer behaviors.

While video consumption surged 60 percent globally during the pandemic, many companies are still not fully utilizing video content on their webpages. In fact, the average Forbes 300 company scored 30 percent in this area, reports LEWIS.

“Visual storytelling remains an untapped opportunity. Some brands do this really well, Nike for example. However, there is so much more we can do as marketers. It’s not just about putting out a video, it’s about the story you tell. Situational fluency is the key to success. You must know what’s going on in the world, how your brand connects to that and show versus tell,” Noah Dye, senior vice president of client engagement, LEWIS US, tells AList.

More people flocked to online shopping than ever before, yet 76 percent of companies weren’t running search engine marketing ads when LEWIS’ research was conducted.

Social media usage also soared, giving brands an opportunity not only to communicate brand values through influencers, but to also share statements from their leaders about important issues such as COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite this, LEWIS found that two in three Forbes top 300 chief executive officers had no active social presence. Including CEOs lacking public facing accounts, 78 percent of the Forbes 300 CEOs were missing from social media conversations.

“The pandemic has driven us all online. If executives don’t see this, brands could fall behind. CEOs set the tone for an organization. They must listen to both internal and external audiences. If they are missing from social, or not truly engaged, they risk missing important conversations about their brand,” Dye says.

The importance of a visible CEO shouldn’t be undermined, as LEWIS found companies using CEO thought leadership platforms to provide quotes for the media performed better overall. 

The organizations analyzed used data to inform their fluid marketing strategies, as US data usage jumped 38 percent in March alone compared to the previous year. Additionally, consumer facing industries scored highest on user experience, with financial services companies earning 15 percent higher than the average Forbes 300 company.

For nearly all industries, website security scored high (82 percent) across the board, with the exception of the entertainment industry, where website security scored 23 percent less than the average Fortune 300 company. Still, one in three companies had site issues that could lead to a hack if not fixed.

“Always remember that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Brands must listen. Respond quickly. Be human. Customers will make their preferences known, but if you’re not listening, you’ll be left behind.”

Media Assurance & Transparency Still A Global Issue With Rizwan Merchant

On this 239th episode of “Marketing Today,” I speak with Rizwan Merchant, CEO at Media Merchant. Merchant is the first guest from Pakistan and brings over a decade of experience in the Pakistani Media Industry. Today, we talk about the 2016 ANA Transparency Report and how these issues are still present today, four years on.

We start our conversation with the exploding media industry in Pakistan, which has gone from less than $100M in advertising expenses to over $550M in just ten years. With that massive growth has come a plethora of problems, not only in Pakistan but also for marketers worldwide. Merchant has seen “exactly what goes on behind the doors.” Merchant then takes us through the ANA Transparency Report that came out in 2016, which identified a myriad of problems and fraudulent practices among the agencies that bridge the gap between the media houses and advertisers. The advertisers have forgotten that “agencies are there in the business to make money as well,” so their intentions may have nothing to do with the benefit of their client. Advertisers are still losing boatloads of money because of their inability to structure contracts for themselves. Merchant says, “the easiest way to plug that financial outlet is to start paying the media directly instead of going through the agencies.”

Merchant suggested that the best way to battle this problem is for clients “to upgrade their knowledge when it comes to the media supply chain.” Another problem now is that “many agencies have started to own the media that they are pushing to advertisers.” It seems if there is money to be made, agencies will find a way. The onus is on marketers to be smarter and more vigilant.

Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”:

  • Rizwan currently lives in Pakistan, part of Southeast Asia, and is a growing market with a booming media industry. 1:45
  • The Pakistani media industry has grown from less than $100M in advertising expenses to $550M in the last ten years. 2:30
  • An accountant by education, Rizwan joined Mediacom on the finance side when he returned to Pakistan in 2004. 3:35
  • In 2015, Rizwan started his media audit agency, Media Merchant. 5:10
  • The ANA Transparency Report identified problems with the rebates received by the agencies based on advertiser money. 6:00
  • Principal transactions came up in the ANA Transparency report, showing that agencies were buying inventory through holding companies. 6:50
  • Agencies were found to be selling free inventory they received from the media houses to their marketing clients. 7:15
  • Advertisers were found to be trusting agencies blindly, a failure on the part of the advertisers. 7:47
  • Rizwan identified multiple problems that didn’t come out in the ANA report. 8:15
  • Media Buying Houses came into existence by providing the agencies with multiple suggestions that acted as a financial bomb. 9:20
  • The agencies exploited the lack of connection between the advertising clients and the media outlets. 11:50
  • While there are specific rules and regulations in different countries, this is still a problem all over the world. 12:24
  • With media outlets being drained of their finances, their ability to create content is greatly affected. 14:30
  • The relationship between the media and advertising industries the opposite of what it should be right now. 16:00
  • As a result of the ANA report, guidelines were created to guide the creation of the contracts. 17:34
  • The main problems are found in the governance of the agencies within the creation of the contracts. 19:24
  • The creation and execution of one’s own media plan make it hard to do their own homework. 23:28
  • Marketers and financing departments should act as the custodians in the creation of contracts. 24:05
  • The best thing that marketers can do is stay up to date on policies and control the abundance of fraud amongst agencies. 26:20
  • Agencies are in this to make money, and because of that, Rizwan does not blame them for the problem. 29:41
  • The Big 4 financial institutions do not know the media industry and therefore are less effective when it comes to auditing services. 32:10
  • A desire to challenge himself has shaped Rizwan as a person as he has taken on many different positions throughout his life. 34:20
  • Patience is a virtue that Rizwan wishes he had learned earlier in his life. 36:16
  • Fragmentation in the Pakistani social-economic classes inspired Rizwan to start a soccer league for over 10,000 kids to earn money and skills. 38:15
  • Digital marketers have the opportunity to connect directly with consumers in a way that has never existed before. 40:26
  • A lack of knowledge threatens marketers as agencies are the ones that provide them with information. 41:50

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Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.