Whether it’s placing Frank Sinatra on a Coca-Cola poster or Nike contracting Michael Jordan for shoe ads, marketers have been leveraging their audience’s affinity for influential stars for ages. The reason influencer marketing is currently being viewed with skepticism is because while the concept has been around forever, the game has completely changed. So before we write off influencer...

I remember the days when sports, particularly baseball, were played and managed more by feel and intuition rather than strictly by the numbers. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. As sports adapt to a data-obsessed world, I fear the same thing is happening to the communication profession.

With the advent of Sabermetrics in the late '70s, later popularized by Michael Lewis’ book,...

Nearly six years ago our hearts were shattered and our souls were shaken as news broke of the 20 young children and six adult staff members killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School during the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Few issues are as politically polarizing or emotionally charged as guns. This time, I and my fellow Starbucks teammates, where I was the head of global...

While the technologies that power autonomous vehicles are rapidly improving, consumer sentiment and confidence is headed in the opposite direction.

In a Cox Automotive study released in August 2018, nearly half (49%) of all consumers surveyed said they would never buy a fully autonomous vehicle. That’s up from 30% just two years ago. The perception of autonomous vehicle safety has also...

On Friday, Nov. 2, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative had the pleasure of attending TheWrap’s Power Women Summit held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. The theme of the summit was “The Road to 5050 By 2020,” and featured Q&A’s, breakout sessions and workshops that tackled the question, “How do we achieve gender balance by the year 2020?” Here are a few highlights from...

If current studies are correct, about half the people reading these words have listened to a podcast sometime this year.

Nielsen Insights reports that 124 million people in the U.S. have listened to a podcast in 2018. There are currently 525,000 active shows with over 18.5 million episodes. People walk around with dedicated podcast apps on their phones, and services like CastBox and...

How would you like to be running an automobile business today? How about a toy company? Media conglomerate? Hotels? Maybe own retail stores?

Virtually every client I work with is dealing with some form of disruption or change, and for many, it means the very survival of their business.

The management of disruption is a pervasive and phenomenally difficult challenge. If you're a...

Retail therapy has been a refuge for stressed-out consumers since the 1980s, but today, retailers need their own therapy to win over a new breed of Gen Z shoppers. Born between 1995 and 2010, they will represent 40% of consumers by 2020 and wield unprecedented influence on purchases made by both family and a wider community. They are known as Pivotals, Gen Y-fi, Screenagers or Gen Z. But no...