In February, SNL hilariously parodied the world of advertising and marketing with the “Pitch Meeting” sketch. In the skit, Alec Baldwin and Aidy Bryant are two ad execs, pitching Cheetos against a rival agency. In increasingly tone-deaf creative proposals, the duo appropriates one social issue after another, trying to prove their cultural relevancy while completely losing sight of the product.

You’re out at dinner and someone proposes an interesting question about an unfamiliar topic, and then everyone goes around voicing their best guess or thoughts. Only that doesn’t happen anymore. Everyone just looks around for a moment, some shrugs are exchanged and then one or two people whip out their smartphone and Google away. Boom. A world of knowledge is revealed with a couple taps.

Ten years ago, hardly anyone was using the phrase "content marketing." Now, it seems like we can’t escape it.

As we all know, the landscape of the social media world is ever-evolving. One minute you’re the trendiest app on the market, and next minute you’re Vine Camera (R.I.P. Vine). That being said, it’s important to understand what’s trending, and how to best leverage the platforms available to you by using sound strategy.

The term "programmatic buying" can be somewhat uncomfortable to the traditional media buyer. Everything they’ve been practicing and preaching their entire careers is coming into question when discussing buying TV audiences via CPM (cost-per-thousand) vs. programming and GRPs (gross rating points).

Digital, as a tactic, tends to be pigeonholed as just paid search or a series of pixel sizes to be placed on websites as banner ads. In reality, digital has the capacity to be one of the most enthralling & engaging tactics advertisers have in their arsenal.

We are all aware that data is everywhere – especially throughout a marketing campaign. We have the opportunity to allow for data-driven marketing to influence every facet of our campaign from the goals, objectives and strategies to optimizations and reporting.

1.23 billion. When you think of a number that large, it’s usually in reference to money, isn’t it? In this case, 1.23 billion is the number of daily active users Facebook reported as checking in at least once a day, as of December 2016.

There is a business theory that the first brand that goes to market usually wins. Research tells us that being early to market might be better than first. It will be interesting to watch this in practice as autonomous or self-driving vehicles begin hitting the market sometime around 2021. Most of the major automotive manufacturers are developing the vehicles and licensing the technologies that will dramatically change our lives in the very near future. So, first to market might be barely first and have no real impact. I like that because it means good marketing will decide the winner.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

OKLAHOMA CITY (April 13, 2017) – VI Marketing and Branding was named the Lowe Runkle Distinguished Service Award winner by the Oklahoma City Ad Club in ceremony this week. The Lowe Runkle is the club's oldest and most prestigious annual award.

Have you ever been in a bad customer service situation and thought to yourself, “It’s like the right hand doesn’t even know what the left hand is doing?” Me too, friend. Me too.