Adweek September 3, 2018

JEFF BROOKS, CMO, CASPER Adweek: Many of the direct-to-consumer brands start with one unique item and then end up adding much more to their offering. How do you do that while staying true to the brand? We started with one universally comfortable mattress, but we knew there was more to achieving a great night’s sleep than the mattress alone. So we view it as intuitive to expand into adjacent categories that enable or promote better sleep. … We constantly challenge ourselves to raise the bar on all things sleep, and the pipeline has some very exciting initiatives underway. … Everything we invent and make must address a real consumer need, be core to our vision of becoming the world’s first end-to-end sleep company and deliver on the brand’s origins of…

If you really stop to think about it, the relationship between brands and consumers is changing at mind-boggling speed and with myriad complexities. At every turn consumers are adopting technology, software, platforms and even philosophies that inexorably transcend the traditional relationship between seller and buyer. A senior marketing exec in the technology sector who I interviewed last week succinctly summed up this dynamic shift when I asked him what brand marketers—at their own peril—are underestimating about modern consumers. Without missing a beat, his answer was: “Brands still think they are in control. They aren’t. Consumers are in control. Until we really put the consumer first, with the help of responsibly rendered and applied data science, we are throwing time, effort and money out the window.” Kind of a mic-drop moment…

It has been more than three months since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations came into law, and as similar legislation is being drafted in California and Vermont, many companies from agencies to tech giants like Google are trying to avoid the pain points experienced by European parties. In particular, the industry seeks to learn from the tensions caused by recent policy changes by Google—all of which were ushered in to gain GDPR compliance, but resulted in widespread, unpleasant circumstances. GDPR, which targets Silicon Valley behemoths like Google and Facebook, has partially backfired, according to industry observers who argue that the data protection authorities’ rules lack clarity. “In retrospect, these complications are not surprising, given the rush by all participants in the final months to understand and apply GDPR…

For generations, the prevailing view in advertising held that a world outside the major metro hubs of New York, Chicago and later Los Angeles didn’t exist—or at least didn’t matter. But as the industry settles firmly into its digital age, a new generation is flocking to smaller cities like Austin, Texas, Omaha, Neb., and Knoxville, Tenn., offering greater opportunities for career advancement, work-life balance and a lower cost of living. With shrinking advertising budgets and clients questioning whether agencies in large cities can speak to the average American, agencies in smaller cities can often work for less while offering valuable perspective on consumers. “I was previously a New Yorker who felt like New York was the center of the universe,” said Leeann Leahy, CEO of Portland, Maine-based The VIA Agency.…

JUSTIN PEREZ hybrid designer, PMG (Fort Worth and Austin, Texas) Why I left Los Angeles: “After working for two years, I was seeking more value for the time that I was investing in the company that I chose to work at and more value for the large amount of money I was spending living there.” MARIAN SPURRIER director, talent and development, GYK Antler (Manchester, N.H.) Why I left New York: “Work-life balance. I see it being a little more integrated in New Hampshire. It’s completely encouraged to put your feet up on the deck and enjoy the beautiful weather and the quiet of the outdoors that we have right at our offices.” NIGEL CARR chief strategy officer, The Tombras Group (Knoxville, Tenn.) Why I joined The Tombras Group: “The pendulum…

The Limited. Wet Seal. Payless ShoeSource. BCBG Max Azria. Claire’s. Nine West. Toys R Us. Brookstone. The list reads like a directory of a mid-aughts shopping center. But in actuality, they’re just a few of the latest casualties of the so-called “retailpocalypse.” The term might feel hyperbolic, but with new stores frequently announcing closures or bankruptcy filings, the state of the retail industry (particularly the brick-and-mortar brands that once felt like staples) often seems, well, apocalyptic. But according to a June 2018 study of 1,500 people by international management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the pivot to ecommerce may not be as intense as consumers might assume, particularly in the apparel sector. The study reports that traditional brick-and-mortar stores account for 80 percent of clothing and shoe purchases. This number not…