The blog

Today we see that companies taking sustainability into account are more likely to outperform less sustainable competitors. This is very good news. It shows that sustainability is not just a buzzword, on the contrary, sustainability can create a competitive advantage if done right. In this article we look at how those companies outperform their competitors and give you the tools to do the same.

Ghosts may seem to be at work in your e-mail statistics, with some strange goings-on in. Understand what is really happening and learn how to correct the open rate errors and be smarter than your fellow-marketers.

Last week, I attended the UBA Trends Day 2021. For the second consecutive year, UBA organized this annual marketing conference virtually. In addition to a very promising line-up composed of Seth Godin, Katrina Dodd and Martin Lindstrom, two innovation and customer experience evangelists (that I love to follow), Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem, were co-hosting the event.

Let’s start with the story of the plastic bag. Go back 10 years to the days when it was normal to use a new plastic bag every time you went to get groceries. Your behavior has probably changed by now. And although this change in behavior can be put down to a number of drivers, your retailer is certainly an important one. By charging a small fee for plastic bags and making sure reusable ones were easily accessible at the check-out, retailers helped change their consumers’ behavior.

Research from Richard N. Foster has shown that the average lifespan of companies listed on the S&Ps 500 – the 500 most valuable companies traded on the U.S. stock market – was 61 years back in 1958. Today, the average lies more around 18 years. At this pace, 75% of the companies quoted today on the S&P 500 are set to disappear by 2027. Too big to fail? For FMCG companies, growth is no longer a given. Quick wins have become rarer, markets are becoming saturated, and the world has changed and evolved rapidly thanks to technology. A lot of smaller players have spotted opportunities and started grabbing market share from the big corporations. This triggers the question: How is it possible that small companies, with a fraction of the marketing budget of big FMCG companies, are winning more and more market share and hurting the big guys?

Telemedicine is a broad term. For the purpose of this article, we will define telemedicine as a two-way video and audio-based interaction between a healthcare professional and a patient concerning a health topic or issue, replacing a regular face-to-face conversation. For the sake of simplicity, the term virtual consultations will be used in the rest of the article.

To avoid this risk of failure when launching a new product or service, we revolutionized the Business Design Thinking framework by incorporating Integrated Data (ID) Marketing. By adding ID Marketing to your methodology, you put yourself in your customer's shoes while constantly checking in with them through validation. This is your key to successful innovation.

The popularity of online shopping continues to increase year after year. In a recent article we explained that online shopping can – under certain circumstances – have a negative impact on our beloved planet.

Since I was a kid, I’ve always been intrigued by sports. The tension, the competitiveness, the unreal happiness of winning and even the huge disappointment of losing are feelings that cannot be matched. As I wasn’t touched by a magic wand, my sporting career remained pretty recreational.

After a turbulent year in which quarantine, social distancing and lockdown have become part of our daily vocabulary, let’s take a look back at what we have learned as marketers. Which capabilities are crucial to step up and stand tall in times of crisis and to cope with the challenges we have all faced over the last months?