There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Trending: 👀 How marketers are preparing for a cookie-less world.

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SEO: 🤳 The basics of SEO in 2022.

Cuts: 🚨 60% of CMOs to cut marketing analytics teams by 2023, Gartner predicts.

If you’ve read about KPIs, I’m sure you’ve seen the SMART analogy; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. I won’t go into that in this article as there are so many breakdowns of this analogy available online. What I will go over, however, is which KPIs you should be tracking and how to set and monitor them. 

Firstly, make it clear how tracking the KPI will help the company reach a specific business goal. Think beyond numbers and data. How do the metrics you’re tracking support the business and play into the larger, carefully designed strategy?

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Tip: 💡The best way to prepare for the future is to study history.

What does a recession mean for brands, and how should clients and agencies navigate the rocky road ahead?

The best way to prepare for the future is to study history says Fletcher on AdAge. There have been several economic downturns over the past few decades. Therefore, we know what successful brands have done not only to stay afloat but to get ahead. To wit:

Companies that keep investing in their brands during a downturn bounce back faster. Brand awareness builds familiarity, which leads to trust, so if you lose top-of-mind awareness, that precious bond you had with your customers is broken. Once wallets open up again, you’ll be spending your way out of a trough while your competitors build on a base of loyalty they never lost.

Building your brand and driving short-term sales are not mutually exclusive. Terms like “performance marketing” get tossed around like a panacea. How many decades of studies must be published for marketers to understand that zero brand support will erode performance, while no lower funnel support results in lower conversion? You need both, and the challenge amidst economic uncertainty is the chance to try different combinations to see what works best for your business.

To survive, publishers have had to find new revenue streams, and an increasingly popular option is selling their backlog to Hollywood, per Axios.

Hollywood licensing has been embraced by massive imprints like The New York Times and The Washington Post, but it’s also become popular with smaller publications:

• The Atlantic recently announced that its first two film and television projects will soon be released on Peacock.
• Texas Monthly pulled in ~$1m last year after making 20+ licensing deals between 2020 and 2021.

According to Scott Brown, president of Texas Monthly, a credit in the main titles can drive viewers back to the magazine's properties, making the deals a profitable marketing play in addition to licensing revenue.

Hollywood could use help, too

While the 2022 box office began strong, it has since cooled, and recent data suggests that superhero fatigue is setting in.

Publisher archives can be a great source for non-Marvel fare and can lead to massive hits a Texas Monthly story was the source for “Tiger King,” which took over Netflix in 2020.

A union of these two struggling industries could be the love story we never knew we needed.

All this ridiculous, racially-coded nonsense over Halle Bailey as a black Ariel in Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid got us thinking about reboots, remakes and marketing. Remakes and reboots are prime advertising placements with the hope being that audiences will be as attracted to the branding as they are to the familiar stories and characters.

For example, when Peacock’s in the States premiered Bel-Air - a reboot of the beloved Fresh Prince 90s sitcom - it had plenty of promotional backing from NBCUniversal, State Farm, Unilever, and Lexus.

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For years, marketers have utilized musical branding as a key part of their strategic playbooks, tapping mainstream artists to craft original songs that represent the next evolution of the jingle. 

The huge opportunity for brands is to lean into what the platform is already offering and doing with creators. With TikTok… a lot of it is music based. You have songs that take over the entire platform in just a matter of days.

McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Trident are among the marketers updating a cultural tactic for the leading social platform.

The big challenge: As with any efforts involving influencers and creators, a major challenge remains finding the balance between the brand’s ideas and the talent’s identity. This is especially true when partnering on original songs that require authenticity to be successful.

• Ryan Reynolds teams up with Creatively to offer $5,000 grants to creatives beginning their careers.
• Why is Shutterstock removing AI-generated images?
• Who owns big media now? How to track which media company owns your favorite show and why that may no longer be a media company.