Stories by Brad Howarth

In February this year, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned two television commercials. While far from being the first ads to ever be banned, they were the first found to violate new rules prohibiting the depiction of men and women in gender-stereotypical activities.

For some motorcycle owners, their bike is their life. For others, it is just the cheapest means of getting from one place to another. For group head of ecommerce at MotorCycle Holdings, Elliot Schoemaker, the diversity of motivations held by motorcycle owners presents a clear challenge in creating and promoting content that will bring would-be buyers to the company’s showrooms.

When it comes to winning the approval of customers, handing out money can be an effective strategy – although perhaps not a sustainable one.

Social media managers spend a lot of time worrying about the expectations of their external audiences. But they’d also do well to worry about their internal audiences.

One of the challenges of bringing any advanced technology to market is that it can sometimes be ahead of customers’ ability to use it. That problem is further compounded when the technology is capable of solving problems clients are not yet aware they have.

Picture a Venn diagram containing the words ‘fast’, ‘cheap’ and ‘good’ in three separate circles. Conventional wisdom suggests the best any organisation can hope to achieve when designing a product or service is two out of three. If you want something fast and cheap, it won’t be good, or if you want something good and fast, it won’t be cheap, and so on.

Australian consumers are known for their love of sport. But for any new team that wants to build an audience, establishing a brand among so much competing noise can be a difficult challenge.

The science of psychology has long and deep associations with marketing, but it also offers a lot to marketers as leaders within their organisations.

The desire to take brands into new territories can be hard to resist for marketers, especially when the reasons for doing so are compelling. But it is also possible to extend a brand faster than customers can adapt.

Today’s marketing teams are filled with specialists in fields such as data analytics or the use of specific tools, and the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening to increase the need for dedicated professionals. But perhaps AI might also be the tool that finally lets marketers get back to doing marketing?

The digital era has heralded a golden age for video content creators, enabling them to reach audiences in ways that were unheard of only two decades ago.

Imitation might be the greatest form of flattery, but for business entrepreneur, David Freeman, it is also vindication of his plan and a reassuring reminder the issues that matter so much to him are becoming more mainstream.

The measurability of digital platforms has enabled some unlocked capabilities for testing and optimisation. But in the race to measure and optimise performance, should we even be trying to optimise the process in the first place?

One of the great benefits of digital advertising has been its inherent measurability. But while digital advertisers have a far easier time of understanding how many eyeballs are witnessing their messages, there is another conundrum that digital technology has yet to prove so adept at solving – causality.

‘Buy-now/pay-later’ has been the breakthrough new service category of the Australian payments industry, with Roy Morgan research estimating more than 1.5 million Australians used one of the many services in 2018.