Looking for a painful experience? Try opening savings accounts with large banks. Afterward you’ll realize just why fintechs are such a competitive threat to large established brands. Our Big Bank Test We were doing a research project for one of our financial clients and decided to open savings accounts with different brands to better understand …

Gen Z is keeping me up at night. As a mother of two Gen Z kids, I sometimes find myself awake at night ruminating about my children being in a position to make wise use of their income and having the discipline and diligence to save for their future. As a marketer, I sometimes find …

Brands should think like Corn Kid. I don’t mean all brands should be jumping on the latest trends to try and make hay with whatever clip/meme/story is capturing the public’s interest (though that’s not a bad thing to do for many brands.) What I mean is that brands should embrace the inherent positivity and joy …

Many years ago, I was part of a team who had an opportunity to revolutionalize e-commerce through leveraging social influencers. But we didn’t, because we were too focused on efficiency and less interested in experience. Here’s the set up: back in the early days of digital marketing I was part of a team that created …

There are five levels of self-awareness. Zoom makes the fifth absolutely painful. But luckily, there is a solution. Researchers have defined the levels of awareness by using a mirror and seeing how babies and others react to it. The research shows there are distinct stages of awareness: that’s a mirror (Level 1); there’s a person …

The question many people are asking right now is, “what is the role of an office?” This question feels urgent and recent but reality is that the advertising community (at least) has been wondering the same thing for over 20 years, when Jay Chiat created what was then called “the virtual office.” In 2000 Chiat …

I kept coming back to that question as I re-read the Accenture Fjords Digital Trends 2021 report. In it they shared an overall theme about the need for businesses to map out new territory in the digital arena. The central idea is that the people who create digital experiences have relied too heavily on tried-and-true …

No doubt you’ve heard the quote famously attributed to the noted retail giant and marketing pioneer John Wanamaker back in the early 1900’s, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Late into the 20th Century the answer to this conundrum was barely improved. Marketers relied …

That was the advice we recently gave one of our clients who is looking to undertake a seismic re-imagining of their digital experience. An experience they’ve been improving in increments for several years, using a traditional test-and-learn approach both in lab and in the real world. An approach that got them to a point where …

The other day I was talking with a marketer in the financial services space who was sharing that they weren’t getting enough people through their online application. He described their app as like something from the 1990’s, which was causing significant drop off issues. Then, almost in the same breath, he said they wanted to …