B+LOG
Expo West Report: 2016’s Hottest Health Food Trends
Every year, natural products brands, retailers, distributors and their devoted and influential consumers converge on Anaheim, California for the Natural Products Expo West & Engredea, presented by New Hope Network. A record-setting 77,000 attendees made this year’s Expo West the world’s largest natural product event in history. Attending on behalf of B+L and our client…
Read More
Marketing Lessons from WIGCOT: Embrace Change or Else
As a marketer in the travel and tourism industry, you know that spring and summer are right around the corner when 1,000 industry professionals converge on a destination for the annual Wisconsin Governor’s Conference on Tourism (WIGCOT). The theme of this year’s conference, held at Ho-Chunk Casino in Wisconsin Dells, was “Better Together.” But based…
Read More
The 5 Reasons Why I’m Having a Shamrock Shake
Every time March rolls around you can count on three things happening in our office: 1) Someone will come around with an NCAA bracket to fill out. 2) Someone (usually younger than me) will ask me about my St. Patrick’s Day plans, to which I will reply “I’m too old to get sick on nuclear-green…
Read More
Re-Packaging America’s Healthy Snack Industry
We’ve always been a world that snacks; from the introduction of Oreos in the 1910s, Twinkies and Fritos in the ‘30s and M&Ms in 1941, which were a way to send heat-resistant chocolates to WWII soldiers. In the ‘60s and ‘70s snacks as a convenience item blew up – the less assembly required to make…
Read More
Life on Earth® (the brand)
I always attempt to describe brands as entities so complex, they rival human physiology. With fears, goals, strengths, weaknesses and so on, well-orchestrated brands use personas so adeptly, they feel like friends and neighbors. Before any one of us knew it, we found a friend in Coca-Cola, we have relationships with our Apple device, our…
Read More
Wanderlust or Bust: How Millennials Are Reshaping Travel
It seems that every time I go online I see endless pictures of 20-somethings posing on Machu Picchu, Facebook check-ins to New Orleans’ Café du Monde and Pinterest boards filled with maps, travel tips and the word “Wanderlust” overlaid an obscure landscape image. There’s no doubt about it, millennials have been bitten by the travel…
Read More
Financial Industry Embracing Social Media
People expect certain businesses to be available 24/7 and especially their customer service departments. Many banks offer customer service phone lines for 24-hour support, but more and more are turning to a new medium – social media. These social media platforms, specifically Twitter and Facebook, are becoming a permanent outlet for customer interaction. As digital…
Read More
How to Beat Ad-Blockers in 2016
A new year always brings different developments and challenges for professional communicators, and 2016 is no exception. This year will be unique in the sense that marketers and publishers must work together to solve a common problem: ad blocking. With the rise of ad-blocking technology (up over 41% last year), digital marketers must become the…
Read More
Heineken’s “Moderate Drinkers Wanted” Spot: Freud Would Approve
Like all major brewers, Heineken regularly launches responsible drinking campaigns, and with good reason. It helps them to stave off undue regulation, keep advocacy groups in check and generally look responsible and civic-minded—while still raising brand awareness. Unfortunately, many of these campaigns are so creatively lackluster that they seem like an afterthought, leaving no lingering…
Read More
5 Social Media Predictions for Marketers in 2016
Welcome to 2016! Thanks to an ever-evolving social media industry, 2015 absolutely flew. Looking forward, the New Year means a clean slate and endless (read: exciting!) possibilities. A renewed emphasis on content marketing was evident in 2015. There were more attempts by – and success stories of – brands creating more personalized connections and seamless…
Read More