Moving Beyond Linear Customer Journeys in 2021

Companies had to move beyond traditional, linear customer journeys in 2020 and build digital experiences across an exponential number of channels. As the world continues to adjust, here’s what IT leaders should prioritize in 2021, according to Kevin Cochrane, SVP Product Marketing of Acquia. During a year when practically everything felt unsteady and unpredictable, digital transformation was the guiding light for organizations looking to come out ahead and remain connected to their customers. I

Is It Time for Us to Be Transparent About the Marketing in Content Marketing?

Catchy jingles, front-and-center product placement beneath boldly emblazoned brand logos, and impossibly gorgeous actors posing beside their latest purchase—it’s easy to tell when you’re watching an ad, right? Maybe not so much anymore. A 2016 report by MarketingTech found that only 19 percent of consumers were able to tell the difference between marketing and non-commercial content on social media platforms. This new development is worlds away from the in-your-face tactics of marketing’s past

A Culture of Content: Why Avid Is Passionate About Sharing Customer Stories

It’s 1999, and in Paris, an alternative rocker struggling with creative burnout discovers a new sound and goes on to release a smash hit album that both reinvigorates his passion for music and reinvents an entire genre. It’s 2005, and on a Los Angeles film set, an Academy-Award-winning director takes a risk on a gritty superhero film that breaks box office records and drives the conversation around popular comic-book movies for the decade-to-come. It’s 2018, and at the PyeongChang Winter Olympic

5 Ways Technology Can Solve Hybrid and Remote Work Challenges

The working world doesn’t look like it used to. Companies planning their transition back to the office are looking for a way to create a better employee experience in-office, remotely or a mix of the two. According to , 55% of U.S. workers prefer a hybrid work model where they would have the ability to work remotely three days per week while keeping the option to visit the office on an ad-hoc basis. Employees now feel more empowered to leave their jobs and find new ones if the employee experienc

3 Lessons for Reshaping CX Strategies in 2021

Forbes Communications Council member Lynne Capozzi is the CMO of Acquia, an open source digital experience company. She has a successful track record in building and leading marketing organizations through all phases of companies — from lean startups through larger public companies. Even before the pandemic struck, business leaders were pushing to keep up with the explosive growth of touchpoints, technological advancements, and continuously rising customer expectations. Now, with COVID-19 as an

First-Party Data Is Marketers' Secret Ingredient for Customer Loyalty

This year’s Girl Scout cookie season may have successfully gone virtual, but in the tech world, the relevance of cookies has long expired. Google announced weeks ago that it was planning to phase out support for third-party tracking cookies in its popular Chrome browser within two years. This move has been viewed by many as the final blow in the death of third-party cookies in marketing and the latest wave pushing us toward stronger privacy-focused open web standards. The collapse of third-part

How COVID-19 Impacted Digital Accessibility in Education

For many families and educators, the COVID-19 pandemic and the mass shift to at-home learning cast a spotlight on critical issues of equity and a lack of resources that students and teachers have been grappling with for decades. As the pandemic closed universities around the globe, concerns grew over how students could keep up with their classes without proper internet access and equipment. Similarly, public school systems needed to find new ways to facilitate learning at home without the same a

The Evolution of Web Content Management to Digital Experience

Is web content management gone for good? Or has it simply evolved into a new model? Gartner retired the Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management (WCM) in 2020. We believe the decision was driven by the notion that the WCM market has reached maturity and the world is now moving toward a broader range of digital experience capabilities that offer the flexibility to deliver omnichannel experiences bundled into . As Gartner notes, “WCM functionality now constitutes a subset of DXP.” While the WCM

Episodic Video Content: What It Means for the Future of Social Storytelling

Sure, Netflix may have revolutionized the way we watch television by giving viewers the ability to consume stories on demand, without advertising interruptions. But what if instead of getting just one story, viewers could now experience stories within stories? While some marketers may feel like they just stumbled into the plot of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, this multi-content experience is quickly becoming a reality as more brands start exploring serialized video content and long-form visual

The Art of the Blurb: Lessons for Marketers from Writing Book Jacket Copy

They say never judge a book by its cover, but that rule doesn’t hold true to back covers. As bookstore customers browse through aisles of titles, packed with hundreds of stories spanning dozens and dozens of chapters, they generally only spend a few seconds skimming a novel’s back cover or inside jacket blurb before determining if it’s worth buying. Even if a work is as revolutionary as The Great Gatsby or The Lord of the Rings, no one will ever know if it doesn’t have an interesting sales pitc

What Hank and John Green's YouTube Community Can Teach Us About Youtube Marketing

Video marketing—unlike the written word, where it can often be difficult to convey tone, or audio, which lacks the benefit of facial expressions—is one of the most impactful ways of engaging customers and providing a full, immersive experience. And, as two YouTube entrepreneurs proved with a now eleven-year-long stream of video content, video provides a communication opportunity to connection with millions of international followers. In 2007, brothers John and Hank Green, under the joint YouTub

Activism en Vogue: The Rise of Inclusivity in Marketing to Women

Fashion and beauty brands have often presented themselves as VIP only clubs. From Juicy Couture’s socialite spokesmodels to Hermes handbags tantalizingly limited supplies, traditional practice for luxury brands has been to set lofty standards for female buyers to aspire to in pursuit of an elite status beyond that of the other ‘regular women.’ However, with the current cultural push for more inclusive feminism and the focus on activism efforts like the “Me Too” movement pushing to let all women

Play It Again—Spotify's Personalized Content Experiment Could Solve the Ad Block Dilemma

“Yeah! Can you play that jammin’ new Google Chrome ad?” Okay, while sponsored ad breaks might not make it on your end-of-summer hits list, one popular music streaming service is testing out new ways for audiences to discover and interact with commercialized content. In August, Spotify embarked on an experiment in Australia they’re calling Active Media, where users of Spotify’s free ad-supported service are given the freedom to skip an unlimited number of ads. The test also lets advertisers par

The Wombats – Fix Yourself Not the World: A Cheery Existential Crisis

The Wombats‘ new album may be the most pleasant mental breakdown ever set to music. The Britpop band is known for changing up their sound with every new record, and Fix Yourself, Not The World continues that evolution. Longtime fans may be disappointed this record lacks the punch and harder rock elements of their earlier hits, “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” or “Moving to New York” as the band goes all-in on the brighter pop and synth sounds they’ve been experimenting with since 2015’s Glitterbug.

On Hazards Penelope Scott Shows Gen Z’s Fears Underneath the Apathetic Aesthetic

Gen Z is angry (but they’re tired of talking about it). With the monumental success of 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour this year, there was a lot of hype about music returning to the pop-punk era. After a few years of mellow indie ballads dominating the charts, angsty anthems with faster tempos and a harder rock edge were refreshing. However, this current pop-punk music doesn’t look quite the same as the Warped Tour and Hot Topic era of the early 2000s. Today’s teenagers are doing

"The Hamilton Mixtape": An Underwhelming Hollywood Historical Reenactment

Everyone from Busta Rhymes to Michelle Obama to your kid brother can’t get enough of the hit musical "Hamilton" Though it may be difficult to recall a time when Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling of the life of America’s first Treasury Secretary wasn’t a media sensation, in 2015 this hip-hop musical seemed like a concept that would never last past a limited run at an off-Broadway theater. But just like the story of a poor, Caribbean orphan’s unexpected rise to fame in the American Revolution, "Hamil
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