25 GIU 2024 · Hiki is the world’s leading app for friendship and dating in the Autistic community. It stands out from other dating apps because of its mission: to enable the Autistic community to connect with each other.  Autistic people are 4x more likely to feel lonely than others. A contributing factor is that false assumptions and misinformation have created biased images in media and advertising that misrepresent those on the autism spectrum.   Hiki aimed to challenge these limiting views and drive genuine representation of the community. Sef Cavendish, Social Media Coordinator at HIKI, and Rachel Lowenstein, Global Head of Inclusive Innovation at Mindshare, talk about this important initiative.

25 GIU 2024 · The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one out of every thirteen people have enough hearing or vision impairment to depend on captioning and descriptive audio for their media use.   By 2050, WHO also anticipates that 2.5 billion people will be living with some degree of hearing loss.  While these statistics may seem overwhelming, the Ad Access Alliance, a group led by ISBA and Union des Marques, under the aegis of the WFA, with founding member Procter & Gamble, is joining foreces with others in the advertising ecosystem to ensure all ads are accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments. Today, Taide Guajardo, Chief Brand Officer Europe at P&G, and Phil Smith, Director General of ISBA, or the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, discuss an ambitious program to make all content more accessible.

20 GIU 2024 · Lana McGilvray is the co-founder and CEO Of Purpose Worldwide, a communications consultancy that specializes in helping clients define and connect purpose to growth.  In an era of accountability, particularly in marketing, even the most noble missions must be associated with economic outcomes.  Given her broad experience with brands, associations, nonprofits, and tech companies, Lana discusses the biggest challenges in pursuing a committed purpose agenda. She also offers insights on how notions of purpose can evolve to reflect societal issues.

9 GIU 2024 · Parity was created in 2020 to close the gender income and opportunity gap in professional sports, and CEO Leela Srinivasan has been in her role for a year. To help revolutionize the financial model for women athletes and create meaningful opportunities for brands, she has championed what may be the most extensive study of women’s sports fandom to date. In partnership with SurveyMonkey, Parity surveyed 14,000+ consumers in 7 countries to find out who’s watching women’s sports, why, and what they think of women athletes.   The results led Leela Srinivasan to declare that women’s sports have moved from “having a moment” to being mainstream.  She emphasizes, “Brands that don’t forge partnerships with women athletes are missing a massive opportunity.”   Today, we discuss the survey findings, how results differ by country, and some remarkable statistics about purchasing intent related to female athletes.

31 MAG 2024 · Michael Kelly has worked in digital media and communications strategy roles at consumer packaged goods and technology companies for much of his career.  Now, he has accepted a “dream job” as Communications Director of World Bicycle Relief.  While he’s a cycling enthusiast, he’s also passionate about the mission to provide bicycles to remote regions of the world so individuals have transport to education, paid work, and healthcare services—helping these secluded communities to thrive. In addition to learning more about World Bicycle Relief’s business model of combining nonprofit programs with social enterprise sales, we also discuss the intrigue of nonprofits and the marketing differences with for-profit companies.

22 MAG 2024 · Rahul Malhotra is responsible for global brand strategy and architecture for the Shell brand family, which includes overseeing brand identity, brand stewardship, employee ambassadorship, and brand purpose. Over 125 years old and valued at over $50 billion, the Shell brand is one of the world's top 23 most valuable brands, and its yellow and red scallop shell logo is one of the most recognizable symbols around the globe.   Shell follows a single brand strategy and employs roughly 3000 empowered frontline marketers and another 3000 agency partners in the 50 markets worldwide that use the trademark. While AI may be one of the most discussed issues in marketing and advertising now, Rahul Malhotra is doing more than talking about it. He’s worked to help Shell teams in every country have better access to the company’s vast creative assets through new AI tools.

5 MAG 2024 · For the past decade, Anthony Farina, Chief Communications & Brand Officer of biotech giant CSL, has been part of the company’s extraordinary evolution. From his beginnings as the first communications leader in CSL’s century-long history, he has helped champion a purpose-driven ethos or “promise,” which enabled the CSL family to unify as one global brand as it doubled in size through acquisitions.  Now, CSL has achieved another brand milestone. The biotech leader is the #1 Fastest-Growing Brand in the Pharmaceutical Category, according to Brand Finance, with brand value growth of over 30%.   Anthony Farina discusses various topics, from transformation to brand positioning, from differentiation to the power of content, and from the significance of purpose to the responsibilities of a leading corporation.

28 APR 2024 · Gilbert Dávila is among the most sought-after experts on multicultural marketing in the United States today.  After spending 25 years working as a senior marketing executive and multicultural market expert at Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, The Walt Disney Company, and others, he co-founded DMI Consulting in 2010.  He also co-founded AIMM, The Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, in 2016 with a passion-driven mission to help CMOs and their teams realize the full multicultural market growth potential for their brands.  AIMM is part of the ANA.  After hosting the Second Annual ANA/AIMM GrowthFronts in New York, an upfront event for diverse-owned and targeted media, he discussed closing the gap between intention and action and new research on the investment level in diverse media and its potential for brands.

26 APR 2024 · Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel believes that brands reflect culture and actively shape societal norms and values. Her new book, Cultural Intelligence for Marketers: Building an Inclusive Marketing Strategy, demonstrates how marketers can create programs that resonate effectively with audiences and meaningfully impact society.    Her book is devoted to helping marketers view culture more critically and act on that cultural knowledge to find answers for their own brands and businesses. Dr. Gabriel says her goal is to enable brands to “ignite cultural innovation and leverage the power of media for good.” Our discussion focuses on the framework of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, social responsibility, and the future of marketing strategy.

7 APR 2024 · Few can boast of a professional life that includes investment banker, equity research analyst, long-time agency executive, and developer of two of the global advertising industry's most widely relied upon data sets.  Brian Wieser has devoted much of his career to understanding trends in media spending, its overall effect on advertising budgets, and what this means not only to marketers but to investors.  His strategic advisory firm, Madison and Wall, is just over one year old, and Brian is raising his expectations for the advertising industry in 2024 by forecasting ad growth at 5.6%.  While he explains clear risks and opportunities, he currently sees an upside in ad spending as far out as 2028.  In looking at specific media, he sees strength in commerce media and weakness in TV advertising.