Do you know that influencer marketing is the easiest way to enhance your brand recognition?

 How many of us consult reviews, ask friends and family, check comparison websites before finally deciding whether to buy or not. People are constantly connected online and more than ever before. In our world, each individual is influenced by someone else's experiences and decisions. Moreover, today marketers could see the high immunity that has been developed against traditional advertising. Nowadays people are rejecting strongly one-way communication and that might be one of the factors standing behind the influencer marketing rising and success. 

Digital advertising: do brands and consumers think the same about it?

Nowadays, each individual has his own Smartphone, a laptop or a tablet. The days that used to gather people around a movie that is interrupted every now and then by an advert are gone. The rise of internet streaming services, video gaming, and social media platforms just made it worse. We would think that that's it, TV advertising does not worth it anymore, people are spending much more time online than watching television. Obviously, technology change and people habits are changing even faster, but brands are still extremely reticent about allocating a large portion of their advertising budget to the internet.

Black Friday, Boxing day and Cyber Monday: Aggressive customer behavior

I had the chance to witness Black Friday, Boxing Day and many other special shopping holidays and I was fascinated. Long queues, a surprising patience, and some pretty crazy chaos as well. On one hand, for retailers as well as for customers these are huge sales opportunities. On the other hand, they are a lot of pressure. Excited, confused and frustrated, a number of shoppers exhibit an aggressive and potentially dangerous behavior.

Even though these exceptional dates find their origins in the US, The figures show that they are very profitable in Europe as well and it is fair to say that these events acquired strong European identity. Thus, the holidays shopping periods uncovers many facets related to the consumer behavior and it deserves a closer inspection.

Everyone is awaiting Black Friday. But what is the story behind it ?

What is known to most of us is that “Black Friday” is the day of the year when retailers propose the biggest bargains and shoppers descend to the stores or goes online to take advantage of the low prices proposed to buy what was seen as unaffordable before.  

Is targeting based on age is no longer valid?

Segmentation and targeting a group of people based on their age is a very frequent practice. Almost all companies create boxes and fit themselves inside. Market segmentation provides marketers with an identifiable group of submarkets to target. Based on age, for instance, A target group might be the mature market, aged 50 years old and above. Others companies might focus their efforts on the age group 10 to 19 years old and it goes on and on.
What became obvious today to many leading companies is that people who reached 50 years old do not want to be categorized in this group, some of them want to look as young as possible and in the group 10 to 19, some of them try to imitate their older idols, a sister, a parent or a famous person and to look much mature. Besides, Nowadays the percentage of people who reached 50 and above represents the largest category in many countries, especially in the developed one. Thus, it might be a great mistake and missing opportunities to target a certain group based on age. Some people belong to certain age categories but behave like being part of another and ignoring this would result in achieving a growth that is smaller than the organization's potential.

Fear appeals marketing strategy: Brexit and US vote success

The second half of this present year was full of big events. First, the British people decided to leave the European Union and Now the United States people decide to have Mr. Trump as a president. Big decisions, but what about the outcomes? For The Brexit, we saw the Pound's value decreasing to levels never reached before, Businesses thinking of relocation, people protesting "Brigret" and the government is still uncertain whether to trigger the article 50 or find a way to regain the European Union before it is too late. The second event is quite new, how successful the united state will be under Mr. Trump presidency cannot be predicted at this stage. 

What concerns me the most and what I wanted to share with you in this article is on which basis those decisions have been taken? In my opinion, Fear appeal advertising has something to do here? 

Let’s find out first what it is. Then I will outline how fear can be a major motivation in decision-making.

Personal data vulnerability: where does my personal information go?

The Brexit was a huge phenomenon, it attracted everyone's attention. The major reason for which the UK people voted exit was that they do not want any more people from other countries on their own. The news still devotes the first pages to this event. One of the articles was particularly attractive to me. "Chinese tourist influx prompts police call as some baffled residents fear for their privacy" released by Oxford mail. Kidlington residents qualified a group of tourists as invaders. They didn't like them snooping around their properties, walk in their gardens and take pictures of their belongings. What was even more captivating is that this influx pushed some residents to call the police and record complaints. Privacy, it was and it will be forever dear to us, to each of us. 

Pokemon Go: success secret

I was very surprised when I first heard about Pokemon Go through social media. Most of my Facebook friends suddenly started publishing pictures of the old known Pokemon in the real world, sometimes in weird and funny places. One of my closest friends went mad for it and I felt the urge to download it. I was curious. I needed to see by myself what drives them that crazy. what was the secret?

New nutrition labelling: does it improve the consumer's behavior?

While eating healthy and preventing obesity lies under personal responsibilities. In 2008, New York city was the first to apply the nutrition labeling legislation. By labeling, the government decided to play a bigger role in the population health through helping and encouraging the consumer to make healthier choices. At the time, the legislation was limited to the restaurants. Generally speaking, the fast food outlets become obliged to visibly expose the calories on their menus especially for their usual available meals as part of the new consumer protection scheme. Nowadays, the food industry is seriously locked between a number of regulations developed to improve public health. Do this kind of regulation change the customer's habits? do they encourage healthier consumption? do they have any impacts on manufacturers and retailers revenues?

What is big data ?

Popular among scholars, entrepreneurs, and business circles, Big data is a new term relatively vague.  The internet, mobile devices, and cloud computing together moved a great deal of our personal and professional lives into the data system. each of us is generating a huge, valuable and varied flow of information. We are in an era in which each device is online and the data is continuously growing. While a lot of data may have always been big, the way it is used is what matters the most and it has been proved how complex and long process it is. On one hand, knowledge is power, but little knowledge if added to poor judgment, a lot of damage can be the result. On the other hand, Being able to effectively manipulate data and extract the right information is considered a competitive advantage. Professional agreed on the fact that it is much easier to target and offer based on the data generated. The big data is expected to impact all the sectors from energy to education, for this purpose, techniques, and technologies have been developed to analyze this flow of information.