Guest Byline Posts

Consumers continue to be bombarded with messages ranging from weekly fluctuating in-store policies, LinkedIn notifications, virtual greetings and so much more. It’s as if marketers turned things up to 11 and never turned the dial back.
But the influx we all received during this time highlights a central question around our role as marketers: What is really worth consumers’ time and attention?

Consumers are all being trained to expect more from brands, whether by Uber, DoorDash or boutique hotel experiences. Convenience and speed are commodities, and moving fast and connecting at a deeper level sets a higher bar.

• Pandemic or not, your product can’t suck
• Prove growth through personalization at scale
• Convenience and choice are the top commodities
• Measurable outcomes beat made-up metrics

Brand building is dead. Big brands. Big ideas. Big agencies. Big budgets. I call bull on it all.

We now live in a world where bare-budget Kickstarter videos have replaced multi-million dollar glossy magazine campaigns. Viral videos can propel a business and a $1 billion sale. And upstarts are upending the innovation continuum.

By Jeff Fagel, Chief Marketing Officer at Cofactor Marketers have reached a crossroads. The Internet is disruptive. Media consumption and consumer behavior have changed drastically and it has become increasingly difficult to break through the clutter. Marketers have always had to choose: Promoting the brand or making a sale.

We have reached a crossroads. While marketers have made strides in figuring out the "how" and the "where" to target an audience, they continue to struggle with delivering the "what" to impact the advertising metric that matters most--a sale.

My byline in Huffington Post:

Black Friday Is Dead: How 3 Brands Have Broken Through the Holiday Retail Clutter

So what are some ways to disrupt the clutter and break free from Black Friday altogether?

RAISE Your Prices on Black Friday
ALL Prices are Negotiable
Close Your Doors on Black Friday

Full article can be found here

By Jeff Fagel published March 24, 2015 I'm on a quest to get content marketing married. Call me crazy, but hear me out. Content marketing can work by itself, but it's most powerful when partnered with other techniques. The impact of B2C content marketing, in particular, will grow significantly when it's used in conjunction with transactional marketing efforts.

Marketing has seen a huge shift. Breaking though has become increasingly difficult. Everything is faster and this shift is reshaping marketing communications. This multichannel convergence forces us as marketers to change our perspective. We need to think, plan, organize and communicate differently more frequently to make browsing and buying decisions, they still thrive an intimate, one-to-one connection. And frankly, sometimes the anonymity of the web creates anything but an intimate experience.

This story is provided and presented by our sponsor You might say that Mat Herman is emerging as the Gary Vaynerchuk of chaise lounges. Like Vaynerchuk, who transformed his family's New Jersey Shoppers Discount Liquors store into a $45 million worldwide wine dynasty, Herman is hoping that a high-powered website and the masterful use of social media can reshape the trade he inherited from his father - while making him successful at the same time.

Jeff Fagel isn't "gaga" for Gaga, but says she can teach us something about successful marketing What if every marketing program was guaranteed to succeed - and what if success was measured not in the number of Facebook "likes" or retweets, but how well a marketer followed the path of Lady Gaga?

We've gone too far with the "next best marketing craze" buzzwords, from SoLoMo (the convergence of social, local, and mobile) to my new favorite, omni-channel retailing. While I am all for innovation, many retailers are getting distracted by these trends and failing to deliver on the fundamental tenants of good retail marketing.

This fall, the launch of Passbook marked Apple's first foray into the crowded arena of alternative mobile payment schemes. Considering its well-founded reputation for producing disruptive tech, it's tempting to assume Passbook is destined to do the same.

Best Buy was one of the first retailers to proclaim they are fighting back against showrooming, a phenomenon where customers browse for items in-store and then search for them online and buy them for less from eRetailers such as Amazon. To combat showrooming, Best Buy has made what had been a seasonal practice of matching prices a year-round policy.

My 5-year-old son is addicted to YouTube. He wants to watch everything from Lego videos to "Curious George," and he knows how to navigate my iPad better than my 65-year-old mother. Marketers who want to capture the attention of consumers in the age of mobile would do well to think more like he does.

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has created an ultra-connected mobile consumer, which has permanently disrupted the shopping experience. With smartphone penetration now more than 50 percent and tablet penetration at 25 percent (thanks to the iPad), it's no surprise that internet traffic on mobile devices is expected to soon eclipse desktop visits.

For all the hype about native advertising by marketers, agency creative folks and traditional news publishers, the genre is nothing more than a fancifully dressed up, repackaged iteration of the original magazine advertorial. GigaOM founder Om Malik has described native advertising as "a sales pitch that fits right into the flow of the information being shown."

If there's one thing I'm sure of as a marketer, it's that mobile is more than its channel - it's a behavior. The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has created an ultra-connected mobile consumer, which has permanently disrupted the shopping experience.

After two jam-packed days of panel sessions at the recent MobileBeat conference, featuring brand executives in the retail, CPG and travel sectors, my head (and my notebook) are flowing with mobile marketing insights and lessons.

When it comes to holiday shopping, competition is the name of the game. For shoppers, it's all about pushing through massive crowds inside retail stores, digging through the online clutter and snagging the deepest discounts and deals. For retailers, on the other hand, it's all about dominating consumers' attention and selling more.