On consumer modes:

People respond far better, purchase more often, and remain more loyal when marketers design campaigns that are targeted to their situations. Not to their personalities. Not to their preferences. And not necessarily to their past purchase behavior.
…
A mode is a mindset and a set of behaviors that people get into temporarily
…
The brands that understand consumer modes can effectively target the mode and support the buying process of anyone who is in that mode.

Seems a much better model than personas and funnels.

More from EMARKETER about tariffs but really about brand building in any economy:

as a brand you can no longer rely on undercutting your competition and tariffs only underscore that. You need to make sure that you have a loyal customer base or you’re trying to have a loyal customer base because you’re not going to be able to slash prices forever.

It used to be: better, faster, cheaper; pick 2

But faster and cheaper is pretty much impossible to achieve now, so you need to be better in some way.

One client (who owns their own factory) was told the worst case scenario for Trump’s Trade War (at the time) was a 33% price increase.

EMARKETER reports potential impacts like:

​auto prices could rise as much as $12,000
&​
an extra $3,300 or so to annual expenses for a family of four
&
​43% of people are already seeing tariff related price increases

And of course tariffs beget tariffs.
​ Who knows where Trump’s Wheel of Trade War stops spinning, but consumers will pay.

Structured Serendipity

the promise of consistent, reliable delight

Consistent, reliable delivery of novel experiences, wrapped in the comfort and structure of expected experiences.

People want the surprise of the new rooted in the comfort of the familiar.

The repetition-to-new ratio.

via Sounds Profitable

You can now use company lists and retargeting lists to build LinkedIn Predictive Audiences.

Full list of audience sources that can now be used as seeds for Predictive Audiences:

• Contact list
• Company List
• Conversion
• Lead Gen Form
• Retargeting

And yes, this feature uses AI. 🤖

So as your building your thing, refining your process, engaging your audience…How much has to be new and how much can be repeated (to the delight or unawareness of the audience)?

Repetition begets routine begets habit

Newness begets surprise begets delight

One without the other is hard to sustain

The combination creates a flywheel

via Gabe the Bass Player

Property incentivizes us.
Prices guide us.
Profits lure us to new changes and losses discipline us.

Pete Boettke on what’s pretty much the core of marketing.

Incentives matter

Part of the abstract from the paper The Rank Length Effect:

The same ranked items elicit more positive judgments when the rank length is longer (vs. shorter), although the differences in judgments between the ranked items are smaller. This effect is driven both by consumers’ tendency to narrowly focus on the rank list and by the manner in which they map the rank list onto their mental number line. The rank length effect extends to willingness to pay, and choice.

Translation: ranking well is more impressive if the list is longer (Top 25 vs Top 10).

Performance PR professionals take note.

A business enterprise has two basic functions: marketing and innovation

-Peter Drucker

Marketing is the act making a promise—or a series of promises. Good marketing delivers on that promise. Bad marketing pisses people off.

Daring Fireball breaks down how Apple Intelligence broke Apple’s promises.

The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that.

You can stretch the truth and maintain credibility, but you can’t maintain credibility with bullshit.

Apple either drank its own Kool-Aid or forgot who its real customers were.

A slew of earnings reports last week from the consumer discretionary sector raised the specter of sapped spending as executives discussed the possibility of increasing prices on goods to offset the costs of tariffs on shipments from Canada, Mexico, and China.

Retail roulette continues

via The Daily Upside

Word of mouth is always the best marketing…but after your first impression doesn’t go as planned, it’s the only type of marketing that makes a difference.

So make it cool and less risky for your fans to re-tell their friends.

-Gabe the Bass Player

I love this ad

Not because it’s especially good or cool.

Because instead of rambling on about features or tech specs, it frames things in terms of the emotional benefit to the customer.

Shoppers don’t care about the technical stuff until they’re about to make the purchase.

Grabbed tacos with some coworkers last week from a restaurant that opened in an old UPS Store space. Even if we hadn’t known (we only knew because one of the crew remembered it being there), it would have been obvious as soon as we walked in.

All the UPS Store fittings were still there—counter, table, shelves, carpet—with some thematic decorations and touches layered over the top.

This wasn’t a place to sit and eat, it was a grab-and-go counter. And it was delicious (bonus points for having beef tongue tacos, not often seen on menus around here).

They could have put money into renovations and appearance, or they could focus on the food—the actual product.

I’d go back, so I guess they focused on the right thing.

Plus, the absurdity of the interior makes it more likely that I’ll talk about it and remember it.

“Hey, let’s go get tacos at the old UPS Store.” 🌮

More findings from Podscribe’s recent podcast performance report:

• Ads bought per episode (“episodic”) outperform buying across shows (aka “run of network”)—more conversions on more efficient spend
• Host-read ads drive more purchases but cost effectiveness might be a wash
• Mid-roll ads are more efficient per impression, pre-roll are on a per dollar basis—and post-roll are trash
• Longer ads deliver better performance, especially on a per dollar basis

New study sheds light on the role of sound and music in gendered toy marketing

commercials aimed at boys, the soundtracks tended to be louder, more abrasive, and distorted, reinforcing notions of masculinity through harsher soundscapes. In contrast, ads targeting girls featured softer, more harmonious music, reinforcing traditional associations with femininity.

[music-primed gender schemas] merge aesthetic and gendered meanings, priming listeners to associate certain sounds with masculinity or femininity. In the context of advertising, this can reinforce narrow conceptions of gender roles, which, in turn, shape children’s perceptions of what is ‘appropriate’ for boys and girls

According to the first author, toy commercials can be described as “semiotic bombs,” packing multiple layers of meaning into short bursts of sound, imagery, and language.

Don’t just zig when your competitors zag, try zigging when your brain zags. Doing the opposite of what “feels right” or “normal” or “standard.”