TikTok Trends for Brands
4 minute read
TikTok has emerged as one of the hottest platforms today, with more than 1 billion users worldwide. In the US alone, there are more than 80 million active users, and 60% of those users are Gen Z.
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Three Things Journey Mapping Reveals About Your Customers
4 minute read
Customer journey mapping isn’t a new concept, and there are several philosophies about how to go about it. But for many brands, the exercise is done when launching a new product or a re-brand and is typically not considered again until another major change in business strategy. However, this tool provides clear insight about your internal and external stakeholders – making it a worthwhile, ongoing exercise to reveal new ways of thinking about your audiences and how you connect with them.
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Building Brand Trust and Loyalty: Why keeping it real matters
2 minute read
It’s easy to get caught up in the imagery or clever copy in an ad, isn’t it? We see something that speaks to us because, “Hey, shiny object!” Or we find something we’ve been searching for or feel we need. But what happens if/when we make the purchase or use the service and it doesn’t match our expectation? You guessed it – we can easily lose trust in a company, which can erode our loyalty over time. Even worse, we may tell our friends about the negative experience. Ouch!
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Igniting Employee Engagement Through Social Impact
2 minute read
Employee engagement is at an all-time low. The Great Resignation is taking its toll. As we move from pandemic to endemic stage, how do we recapture the culture and connection that we’ve lost in the workplace over the last two years?
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Five Questions an RFP Response Won’t Answer
4 minute read
Have you reached the point of needing to hire an agency? Or, perhaps you already have one, but feel the need to make a change? What do you do now? Conventional thinking might suggest an RFP is the right way to go to find a new agency partner. That’s one way, but not the only way, and it might not reveal what you hope or need, relative to potential partners.
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Stop Trying to Reason with Emotional Decision Makers
2 minute read
The science behind decision making has come a long way in the past decade. Yet, for some reason, many marketers haven’t shifted their messaging strategies to address this simple fact:
Human decision making is based on emotion and not reason/rationality
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Why Audio Matters in Storytelling
2 minute read
When it comes to the finished sound of a story told through video or audio broadcast, there’s a huge difference between “ok” and “great!” Our most recent Shoff Chat guests shared their insights on the power of audio and how to get the most from the audio portion of your storytelling tactics. The team at Earshot Audio Post in Indianapolis has nearly a century of collective experience and a keen understanding of the classic as well as the cutting-edge in this area. Our guests from Earshot included Brice Bowman, Rick Such and Ben Ericsen.
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Trends and Truths About Local News Media Coverage
2 minute read
The news media landscape continues to change and with those changes come new challenges and opportunities for journalists and for those seeking to tell their stories through the media.
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Can marketing (to your employees) save your organization?
2 minute read
When organizations face turbulent times, historically the first line item to go – and the last to be restored – is marketing. Why? Because it’s often seen as non-essential or less important than other business operations. Statistics show that during the pandemic, “the proportion of company revenue allocated to marketing was cut almost in half, from an average of 11% in 2020 to 6% in 2021,” according to the GartnerCMO Strategic Priorities Survey 2020-2021. Despite the influx of more cost-efficient digital and content tactics to reach customers and attract new ones, external marketing efforts remain on the decline.
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Three Ways to Escape the Buzzword Echo Chamber
2 minute read
“Our goal is to create synergy that will help us pivot to new strategies when we utilize the talent of our right-sized organization while also finding quick wins.”
Wait, what? We’ve all read these things in internal memos or heard them come out of the mouths of leaders. And something happens when we hear these words and phrases used over and over – we check out. For me, I immediately start creating my grocery list or mentally reciting the lyrics to the last song I heard on my way into the office.
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