AGENCIES

Experience it

What seemed impossible in February is now a reality: The great hippie freak fest, Bonnaroo, is happening this fall, less than a year from the first Covid-19 vaccination.

Not only is Bonnaroo happening—it’s sold out. 

Physical—and potentially crowded—experiences are plotting their return. Marketers want in on the action too, but they’re facing the murky difficulties of gathering people in the flesh in the waning days of a pandemic.

Let’s be clear: Experiential marketing is one of those terms that can mean anything. 

In the land of marketing, small pop-ups, sample handouts at a baseball game, an intimate gathering of influencers, and full-blown conferences all fit the bill. And many solely exist so dorky reporters will cover them they can earn positive media attention.

Marketing Brew spoke with six experiential agency execs about what the return of branded events might look like this year.

• Are virtual events here to stay? And can brands even afford to do both?
• What’s the added cost of all these safety measures?
• Are brands ready for large-scale events?

This week, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) announced its plans to return to an in-person event in January 2022. By then, music festivals like Bonnaroo, California’s Outside Lands, Las Vegas’s Life is Beautiful, and New York’s Comic-Con will have already taken place, albeit mostly outdoors.

“They're the guinea pigs...I don’t envy them,” Patrick Jong, head of experiential at Giant Spoon, told Marketing Brew. — RB

Read more about what experiential marketers had to say about the return of live activations here.

CMOS

Marketing Ain't Easy

The revolving door of the marketing C-suite has been greased. 

In 2020, chief marketing officers (on average) stayed put for a little more than three years—the shortest amount of time since 2009, according to corporate headhunting group Spencer Stuart.

The company recently released its annual survey on CMO tenure, which tracked the C-suite movement of the 100 most advertised brands in the country. It found: 

• Average CMO tenure dropped to 40 months in 2020, down from 41 in 2019.
• Median tenure fell to 25.5 months, the lowest ever recorded, from 30 months in 2019.
• The average CEO tenure is about six and a half years, for comparison.

“The market has spoken and there is a shelf life at some point,” Greg Welch, who leads Spencer Stuart’s North American marketing, sales, and communication teams, told Marketing Brew. But that doesn’t mean it’s enough time to have an impact. “Three plus years is not enough. When we're talking about moving brand metrics and transitioning into a direct-to-consumer world, it takes time first to build traction.”

If you’ve followed the headlines, this data isn’t surprising. Some notable moves from the past month include:

• Burger King’s Fernando Machado taking a gig at Activision Blizzard.
• Dollar Shave Club’s Kristin Harrer joining Vans.
• KFC’s Andrea Zahumensky leaving after—you guessed it—3+ years. 

+1: The research also found that almost half (47%) of the CMOs in the study are women. But only 13% of CMOs come from diverse backgrounds. — RB

SPONSORED BY IMPACT

Here Lies Advertising

We really hate to be downers, but there’s no way around this one: the power of advertising is on the decline. You might even say advertising is dead. Impact just did, in their helpful ebook, Advertising is dead. 

With a widespread cookie block, walled gardens around consumer data, and plummeting consumer trust, it’s frozen popsicle-hard out there for a digital advertiser. 

That’s why you need Impact’s Advertising is dead ebook. It’s basically a how-to guide for thawing that popsicle—i.e., achieving success in a challenging digital ad economy. 

It explains…

• Where digital advertising went wrong 
• What the future looks like (we got the scoop—it’s in partnerships) 
• How to get started with those partnerships 

Loss is hard, even when the deceased is an advertising market, but Impact did you the favor of charting a path to the digital ad afterlife. Download the Advertising is dead ebook here. 

PLATFORMS

The Duopoly Says Moola to La Luna

Here’s a part of the marketing industry “Emily in Paris” didn’t touch on: The digital ad duopoly’s crazy Q1 2021 earnings reports this week. (Maybe because Emily isn’t psychic...anyway.) 

• Facebook’s Q1 ad revenue grew 46% year over year (YoY), in part due to higher ad prices.
• Google also revealed a major surge in ad rev. Parent company Alphabet said its revenue rose 34% YoY, with Google's ad sales increasing by 32% over the same period.
• YouTube, owned by Google, followed the trend, with ad revenue soaring almost 50% YoY.

TL;DR: Despite 2020’s Big Tech antitrust hearing, Facebook and Google’s ad revenue went during the first quarter of 2021, courtesy of the booming digital ad market.

The of it all: Massive ad rev gains while other platforms (think: TV and print publications) struggle would typically raise more trustbuster eyebrows...if not for one specific fruit. 

• Apple’s new in-app privacy policies could shrink future FB growth, making it harder for the company to target iPhone users with personalized ads. 
• YouTube’s next ad rev report could, in theory, get hit too.

+1: Apple boasted double-digit sales growth in three of its main product lines, suddenly making it Facebook’s top market regulator. — PB

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Roku officially axed YouTube TV from its channel store after a distribution disagreement.
• TikTok found a new CEO and COO in Shouzi Chew and Vanessa Pappas, respectively.
• WPP withheld shares of company stock worth $279,090 from founder Martin Sorrell due to his alleged “leaks” to journalists (it wasn’t us, we swear).
• Amazon released earnings this week, showing that its ad business jumped 73% YoY to almost $7 billion in Q1.
• Instagram just added the option to turn off audio or video during IG Live broadcasts, in case you want them to feel more like Zoom meetings. 

SPONSORED BY STACKADAPT

Not a fan of generic brands? We prescribe the StackAdapt Programmatic Playbook for Pharma Marketers. It offers strategic targeting solutions, measurement options, and best practice recommendations to reach your customers at every stage of the funnel. Side effects include remaining compliant with ad and brand safety regulations. Get your copy today.

METRICS & MEDIA

Stat: Gen Z searches on Pinterest are up 96% YoY, per Pinterest. 

Quote: “Brand preference is very real, and it’s very prevalent. I think it’s important to really highlight that these feelings are strong and they’re real, and we in public health need to make some time to actually listen to them as opposed to brushing them off.”—Dartmouth public health scientist Lindsey Leininger to Slate about how Pfizer became the “status vaccine.”

Read: If you’ve ever been told to “make it go viral,” this profile of Hill House Home founder and CEO Nell Diamond explains how the brand did exactly that with its famous Nap Dress.

FRENCH PRESS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren't those.

Sosh meeds: Is your social team looking for an analytics tool refresh? Look no further than this list of 2021’s best tools. 

SEO: If you’re a Google Chrome extensions queen, check out the 13 best Chrome extensions for digital marketing and SEO . 

Instagram: Need a link tree for your brand’s Instagram, but feel like it’s way too late to ask how to do that? We gotchu—just follow these five easy steps.  

Super stream: Reach households with an estimated 148 million streamers when you advertise on Roku. It’s one of the smartest ways to engage cord cutters. TV starts here.*

FROM THE CREW

Conferences: Marketers marketing a marketing conference to marketers. Say that three times fast! From now until next Thursday, Marketing Brew readers have the exclusive opportunity to win complimentary access to Advertising Week Europe. Here's the lowdown:

• If you refer three or more marketers to subscribe to Marketing Brew via your personal referral link, we gift you four days of virtual programming.
• There's no time like the present! The giveaway starts now and ends Thursday 5/6 at 5pm ET.

Get started here. Hint: Your company Slack channel is calling our name.

Terms & Conditions apply.

Gifts: For the grad who lives by the “Fail hard, fail fast, fail often” approach and always has an idea up their sleeve, check out Sidekick’s Graduation Gift Guide, inspired by Whitney Wolfe Herd, here.

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• A disability advocate shared his perspective on Degree’s “Inclusive” deodorant
• Roku called out Google over YouTube TV dispute
• We rolled out Chapter Two of our guide to getting a marketing internship