PODCAST
Dan Wright
Spark, a New Zealand-based telecom company in the midst of a rebrand, created a truly inspiring app that sits at the nexus of purpose and next-gen technology. Kupu uses AI-powered machine learning to understand objects in photos and translate them into te reo, the language of the indigenous Māori people, in real time. Our guest, Dan Wright of Colenso BBDO, shared the inspiration behind the Kupu app, explained the tech behind it, and discussed the importance of this app, not just for the Māori people, but for all New Zealanders.
“Kupu by Spark” is an ANA ECHO Award-winner in four categories: Technology and Communications, Best Use of Mobile, Best Campaign for CSR/Social Good, and Best Use of Emerging Technologies. The ANA Awards program celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands. You can find more information on the ECHO Awards, and on the ANA Awards program in general.
Corinne Feight
Kristen Bell
People who are deaf or hard of hearing lack the innate ability to know what's going on around them because much of that situational awareness is driven by the ability to hear. Corinne Feight and Kristen Bell of Area 23 set out to find a way to help this community through technology and began a fateful journey that culminated in the creation of “See Sound.” See Sound by Wavio uses AI-powered machine learning to listen for common household sounds, such as glass breaking or a baby crying. Once detected, the technology sends a tailored smartphone notification to the user. Corinne and Kristen discussed the inspiration for the project, explained how AI was “trained” to recognize and differentiate sounds, and described the meeting that took See Sound from idea to reality.
See Sound is the ANA Multicultural Excellence Award Grand Prize Winner in the People with Disabilities category. The ANA Awards program celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands. For more information visit ANA Awards.
Estrella Jalisco, an beer under the Anheuser-Busch family of brands, noticed that the autocomplete function when typing "Mexicans are" in the Facebook search bar revealed very negative results that did not reflect the truth about Mexican culture. The brand embarked on a mission to change the negative stereotypes through “Share for Good,” a next-generation content marketing campaign, partnering with Mexican artists, filmmakers, designers, and creators to unleash a tidal wave of positive, inspiring content about Mexican people and culture.
“Share for Good” is the Grand Prize recipient of the ANA Multicultural Award for Excellence in Hispanic advertising. This is the inaugural episode in partnership with the ANA Awards program, which celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands. For more information visit ANA Awards.
Russ Perry
For the majority of the U.S. workforce, the past three months have been a complete paradigm shift in what’s considered “business as usual.” Millions of us are, for the first time in our careers, working entirely remotely, and brands across the country are scrambling to establish a “new normal.” But what if your entire workforce was remote to begin with? Marketing Futures spoke with Russ Perry, the founder of Design Pickle, a member of Inc.’s 500 fastest growing companies in 2019, about what it’s like to manage a staff of more than 400, of which only a small handful live and work in the company’s headquarter city of Scottsdale, Arizona. Russ discussed what the first few weeks of the COVID-19 crisis were like for Design Pickle, and shared advice for leaders looking to maintain creativity and camaraderie from afar.
Tara Deveaux
Shawn Shahani
In an age where consumer attention spans are at an all-time low, something curious is happening: under the right circumstances, consumers are spending hours - even days - immersed in lush fictional worlds such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and The Avengers. However, world building isn't just for blockbuster entertainment franchises. When executed well, brands can create immersive worlds of their own, significantly driving brand loyalty in the process. We spoke with Tara Deveaux and Shawn Shahani of Wild Card about a new study on world building and consumer behavior. They shared what marketers could learn from Hollywood producers, and gave tips on creating a world of engagement around your brand.
Ted McConnell
“Innovation occurs when what’s needed meets what’s possible.”
Ted McConnell, SVP of Business Development at Lucid, is no stranger to innovation. Throughout his illustrious career, Ted found himself time and again pushing the envelope on behalf of global brands, including shepherding the creation and implementation of Hawkeye, P&G’s in-house programmatic buying operation, 10 years ago. Ted shared his thoughts on what brands need to do to enable innovation to thrive within their organizations, discussed the challenges of balancing consumer data privacy and effective advertising, and explained how playing with music synthesizers helped him understand data and technology.
Richard Plansky
Benedict Hamilton
Influencer marketing is one of the hottest trends in the industry right now. Brands are teaming up with celebrities, artists, athletes, and more to reach consumers in a way that feels genuine and native to the social platforms they spend all their time on. But all too often, brands jump into these relationships without the proper vetting, which can lead to disaster.
At the 2019 ANA influencer conference, we spoke with Richard Plansky and Benedict Hamilton of Kroll, a corporate investigation company, about brand safety in influencer marketing. Richard and Ben discussed the right way for brands to approach influencer vetting, shared some influencer horror stories, and shed light on one of the biggest misconceptions brands have about “micro-influencers.”
Chris Aarons
It’s 2020, and still one of the most popular topics among marketers is digital transformation. According to a study by Deloitte, 87% of companies think digital will disrupt their industry, but only 44% feel they’re prepared for such a disruption. That’s why today, we’re talking with Chris Aarons, one of the co-authors of the Digital Helix: Transforming Your Organization's DNA to Thrive in the Digital Age. Chris shared why tech alone isn’t going to cut it, and talked about the importance of intellectual curiosity, and constantly looking for new learnings and strategies on your path to digital transformation.
Dr. Joseph Riggio
It’s a new year, full of possibilities, which makes it the perfect time to welcome Dr. Joseph Riggio to the Marketing Futures Podcast. Dr. Riggio is an expert in cognitive and neuroscience, and an executive trainer and consultant for 30 years. He breaks down “carrot” vs. “stick” motivation, and why “FOMO” (fear of missing out) might be every marketer’s favorite buzzword, but is a terrible way to base your long-term strategy. Instead, Dr. Riggio recommends “Possibility-Based Marketing,” which leverages joyful emotions and consumer aspirations to influence purchase decisions. Finally, he shares why the “Hero’s Journey” – the narrative structure of myths dating back centuries—is the key to driving meaningful, lasting brand loyalty.
David Lee
Ryan Reis
It’s one thing to be agile and innovative when your business is a 10-person startup, “growth hacking” its way to success. It’s another thing entirely when your business has more than 17,000 employees, and a family of more than 20 brands, many of which are household names. David Lee and Ryan Reis of MillerCoors gave the Marketing Futures Podcast a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make bold ideas work in a multi-billion-dollar company, and discussed why some ideas that seem like “no-brainers” from the outside look at lot different from within.
Lisa Hurwitz
The fourth installment in the Future of Brand Activation miniseries features the first Chief Innovation Officer to grace the Marketing Futures Podcast: Lisa Hurwitz, CMO and CIO of Grassroots Cannabis. Lisa welcomed us inside the Grassroots “Herbmobile” to share what it’s like growing a brand for the long-term in the midst of the “gold rush” market of legal cannabis. She discussed the challenges of reeducating consumers about cannabis after decades of stigmatization, and what a typical day looks like for the head of marketing and innovation in an emerging market.
Joel Walker
We all get by with a little help from our friends. Today, we're talking with Joel Walker, Group Creative Director at BlueChip Marketing, as our miniseries on the Future of Brand Activation rolls on. Joel and his team have worked with brands ranging from challengers fighting for market share, to category leaders looking to evolve with the times, helping to infuse their marketing with the innovation necessary to drive growth.
Learn what Joel looks for when hiring new team members, and which trend he thinks is about to change the game.
Lisa McKnight
For decades, Barbie has been one of the most iconic toy brands on the planet. However, recently the doll that played an integral role in the childhood of millions began to struggle to keep pace with the changes in society, and relevance (and sales) suffered as a result.
Enter: Lisa McKnight, a 20-year veteran at Mattel, who stepped up to bring the Barbie brand into a new era, creating new revenue streams in the process. Lisa shared her journey that led her to become the Global Head of the Barbie brand, and discussed the key insights that led to the transformation of an icon.
Alvaro Luque
The Marketing Futures Podcast is proud to present a special miniseries on The Future of Brand Activation, recorded on-site at the 2019 Brand Activation Marketing Conference in Orlando, FL. The miniseries showcases brands that are driving growth using key elements of Brand Activation, including influencer marketing, retail activation, commerce marketing, and more.
In 2014, Alvaro Luque was hand-picked to become the first president and CEO of Avocados from Mexico, a not-for-profit organization charged with coordinating the marketing activities for all major Mexican avocado farmers. Just six months later, the brand introduced itself to the world on the largest possible stage for advertising: the Super Bowl. In each of the five years since, Avocados from Mexico has taken either the No. 1 or No. 2 spot on Merkle’s “Digital Bowl Report,” which evaluates Super Bowl advertisers’ digital marketing efforts. Luque shared his philosophy behind the brand’s bold debut strategy, and discussed the omnichannel activations that amplified the brand’s Super Bowl efforts beyond the TV screen.
Ned Duggan
Innovation takes many forms -- using cutting-edge technology to engage customers, forging unconventional partnerships to bring your brand into new spaces, and taking a bold stand on something you believe in, to name a few. We were lucky enough to speak with the head of marketing for Bacardi, a brand doing all of the above and more.
Ned Duggan, Global SVP of Marketing at Bacardi, talked company culture, the importance of music to Bacardi's brand, and why the company is vowing to eliminate the use of 1 billion single-use plastic straws by 2020.
Jessica Peltz
Charlie Chappell
Michael Trapani
Netta Jenkins
Matt Sweeney
Individuals born in 2010 and beyond belong to “Generation Alpha.” This group will grow up with an unprecedented amount of exposure to technology, in a world of virtual assistants, mixed realities, and AI-enhanced human capabilities. ANA’s own Mike Berberich spoke with Laura Macdonald, Head of Consumer, North America at Hotwire Global, about their new report on this group of future consumers. Laura discussed the challenges and opportunities marketers will face when attempting to engage and build relationships with this new generation, and shared case studies of brands who were already making inroads with both children and their millennial parents.
It's never too early to prepare for the future—are you ready for Generation Alpha?
IPG Media Lab works with some of the world’s largest brands to drive innovation in media, marketing, and business models. As the dedicated innovation initiative of the UM family of agencies, they’ve worked with companies of all sizes, across numerous verticals. Chad Stoller and Adam Simon of IPG Media Lab discussed the types of conversations they have with marketers around innovation, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at how IPG Media stays innovative, and asked whether one can truly measure innovation success.
> See all episodesSEO was a lot simpler in a less-crowded marketplace; you could optimize by keyword for your product, industry, or customer demographics and watch your traffic grow. In 2021, however, not only is the online space left with little metaphorical keyword elbow room, but search engines have gotten smarter to keep up with consumer demand. People search more conversationally due to voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, and AI-powered chatbots learn more as they’re being searched, which also contributes to a natural semantic search style. If marketers want to make sure their SEO efforts are being noticed, there are several ways to do this, all of which embrace this more casual way of searching consumers are employing – “long-tail keywords,” those with fewer search results but a higher conversion rate; “keyword clusters,” which group product identifiers that can single out your brand; “natural language processing (or NLP)” which rely on qualifiers like “what” and “where” to make a search less-robotic, and the overall conversational style that voice search and chatbots have made more prominent as of late.
> See all issuesPODCAST
The ANA Marketing Futures Podcast Series is a crossroads for marketers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and academia to discuss and debate the future of marketing, and business in general. Hosted by Michael Berberich, Senior Director of Marketing Futures, the Podcast Series looks to demystify emerging trends, share different perspectives on critical economic issues, and help marketers and business owners focus on what matters most: growing their brands.
EPISODES
March 2021
Chad Stoller
Adam Simon
IPG Media Lab works with some of the world’s largest brands to drive innovation in media, marketing, and business models. As the dedicated innovation initiative of the UM family of agencies, they’ve worked with companies of all sizes, across numerous verticals. Chad Stoller and Adam Simon of IPG Media Lab discussed the types of conversations they have with marketers around innovation, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at how IPG Media stays innovative, and asked whether one can truly measure innovation success.
January 2021
Bob Ivins
Jo Kinsella
In 2020, as the world was on lockdown, consumers reignited an old relationship – with their TV, that is. Today, we’re joined by Bob Ivins and Jo Kinsella of TVSquared to discuss the rebirth of television, and what it means to advertisers. Bob and Jo explained why Direct-to-Consumer brands are turning to TV in droves and gave their opinions on when we might finally see fully-addressable TV ads.
December 2020
Twain Liu
What if I told you that every computer system on the planet had roots that stretched all the way back to 350 BC? Aristotle, a Greek philosopher who laid the foundation for much of modern Western thought, developed the concept of binary logic – that everything is either A or not-A, or to put it in more familiar terms, 1s and 0s. And while this system has served us well through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the development of AI and Machine Learning has exposed a dangerous flaw in binary logic – collecting data in this black and white, yes or no fashion has perpetuated bias in AI systems.
Our guest today is Twain Liu, an inventor, engineer, and the former UBS board observer for more than 20 major tech investments. Twain discussed why binary logic is insufficient when trying to replicate the human thought process in machines and explained how da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and R2D2 from Star Wars, both played a pivotal role in her journey to developing a more human AI.
November 2020
Sree Nagarajan
Josh Raper
Jack Klues
Marketers are constantly struggling to take the oceans of data at their disposal and figure out what to do with it. Adding to the challenge are data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, which threaten to turn brands’ first-party data from an asset to a liability. To provide our listeners with some clarity on the subject, we spoke with Affinity Answers, a marketing data science company that focuses on identifying and activating the right data for brands.
Sree, Josh, and Jack of Affinity Answers discussed the difference Deterministic vs. probabilistic, offered tips for working with data scientists, and stressed why marketers should pivot their data focus from “knowing” to “understanding.”
October 2020
Antonio Maiorino
Alberto Mario Pirovano
Artificial Intelligence touches just about every facet of our modern lives, and its effect on marketing cannot be overstated. So, when you want to learn about what’s now, new, and next in AI, who do you turn to other than the folks that are building it? Today we’re joined by Antonio Maiorino and Alberto Mario Pirovano of Helixa, to talk about the evolving world of marketing automation, from next-gen chatbots to natural language processing. The two shared a peek behind the curtain on new developments in the company and discussed what other innovations could come from cracking the code of processing natural language.
October 2020
Terrence Clark
From its inception, the Marketing Futures Podcast has always championed diversity and inclusion, recognizing their vital role in innovation, and creating a better tomorrow in general. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with someone who’s helping brands live their ideals. Our guest for this episode is Terrence Clark, President and CEO at The New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council. Terrence certifies businesses owned by ethnic minorities, works to put them in the position to take advantage of market opportunities, and connects those companies with a network of major corporate members looking to diversify their supply chain. Learn how the NYNJMSDC accelerates the development of ethnic minority-owned companies, and how brands can play a role in diversifying the industry.
September 2020
Dan Wright
Spark, a New Zealand-based telecom company in the midst of a rebrand, created a truly inspiring app that sits at the nexus of purpose and next-gen technology. Kupu uses AI-powered machine learning to understand objects in photos and translate them into te reo, the language of the indigenous Māori people, in real time. Our guest, Dan Wright of Colenso BBDO, shared the inspiration behind the Kupu app, explained the tech behind it, and discussed the importance of this app, not just for the Māori people, but for all New Zealanders.
“Kupu by Spark” is an ANA ECHO Award-winner in four categories: Technology and Communications, Best Use of Mobile, Best Campaign for CSR/Social Good, and Best Use of Emerging Technologies. The ANA Awards program celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands. You can find more information on the ECHO Awards, and on the ANA Awards program in general.
September 2020
Corinne Feight
Kristen Bell
People who are deaf or hard of hearing lack the innate ability to know what's going on around them because much of that situational awareness is driven by the ability to hear. Corinne Feight and Kristen Bell of Area 23 set out to find a way to help this community through technology and began a fateful journey that culminated in the creation of “See Sound.” See Sound by Wavio uses AI-powered machine learning to listen for common household sounds, such as glass breaking or a baby crying. Once detected, the technology sends a tailored smartphone notification to the user. Corinne and Kristen discussed the inspiration for the project, explained how AI was “trained” to recognize and differentiate sounds, and described the meeting that took See Sound from idea to reality.
See Sound is the ANA Multicultural Excellence Award Grand Prize Winner in the People with Disabilities category. The ANA Awards program celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands.For more information visit ANA Awards.
August 2020
Estrella Jalisco, an beer under the Anheuser-Busch family of brands, noticed that the autocomplete function when typing "Mexicans are" in the Facebook search bar revealed very negative results that did not reflect the truth about Mexican culture. The brand embarked on a mission to change the negative stereotypes through “Share for Good,” a next-generation content marketing campaign, partnering with Mexican artists, filmmakers, designers, and creators to unleash a tidal wave of positive, inspiring content about Mexican people and culture.
“Share for Good” is the Grand Prize recipient of the ANA Multicultural Award for Excellence in Hispanic advertising. This is the inaugural episode in partnership with the ANA Awards program, which celebrates great marketing and innovative thinking from the industry’s leading brands. For more information visit ANA Awards.
About ANA Marketing Futures
Knowing that marketers are increasingly challenged in their efforts to keep up with the latest trends and technologies, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) tasked itself with creating a program designed to help marketers anticipate—and prepare for—the future of marketing.
ANA Marketing Futures is what emerged. With a focus on innovative topics and emerging trends, ANA Marketing Futures provides resources that will influence and inform via member cases, research studies, and insight from industry innovators. Check back often to learn about emerging trends and become inspired to take steps toward the growth of your business.
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