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Most professionals can look back to a time in their careers when a selfless individual provided them with guidance, encouragement, or advice. Usually, it was someone more experienced, who had seen and done much more than they had, who provided the needed direction. That small sacrifice, that gift of time and talent, ultimately had a profound impact on their professional journey.

Unfortunately, many people don’t have such a person in their lives. For marginalized members of society, including those dealing with homelessness or addiction, learning the basic skills necessary to find and retain a job is a formidable challenge, especially without help navigating topics like resume building, financial planning, and public speaking.

This is where San Francisco-based Code Tenderloin is … Continue Reading

As mentioned, at the 39th Association of National Advertisers/Brand Activation Association Marketing Law Conference, “Breakthrough: Legal Strategies for Dynamic Businesses,” I gave a presentation on the key trends and legal developments sweeping the advertising and marketing ecosystem. Today I will share with you final installment of this series…

Let’s take a look at the regulatory landscape today. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a long history of enforcement against false and misleading advertising.

Since the FTC’s 1983 Policy Statement on Deception, the FTC has been continually applying and refining its standard based on case law, guidelines and workshops.  But with a new administration in Washington, the question is – are the FTC’s enforcement priorities changing?  Since the inauguration, the FTC … Continue Reading

As mentioned, I gave a presentation on the key trends and legal developments sweeping the advertising and marketing ecosystem at last week’s 39th Association of National Advertisers/Brand Activation Association Marketing Law Conference, “Breakthrough: Legal Strategies for Dynamic Businesses.” Today I will share with you the second installment of this series…

The question of who has access to consumer data and device information – and how it gets used – is one that we all need to worry about.  But when it comes to brands, how can they create compelling content to convince a consumer to stay connected and share their data?

And how can brands stay transparent and give consumers real choice about the use of their data?  The need … Continue Reading

It was an incredible three days in Chicago at the 39th Association of National Advertisers/Brand Activation Association Marketing Law Conference, “Breakthrough: Legal Strategies for Dynamic Businesses.” During yesterday morning’s general session, I gave a presentation titled “Transformation Sweeping Advertising and Marketing: Key Trends and Legal Developments,” exploring not only the trends and changes in the advertising and marketing ecosystem, but how lawyers can and are responding to keep pace with the industry and their business clients’ demands.*  In the next series of posts, I will share some highlights from my presentation. Let’s dive into the first one…

Influencer marketing isn’t just the fastest channel for consumer acquisition – it’s also one of the most cost-effective.  Studies have shown that working … Continue Reading

Sports and marketing have come a long way since a young Pittsburgh Steelers fan offered Mean Joe Green a Coke in the classic 1979 television commercial. For one thing, the audience has changed. The oldest millennials were just being born in the late 70s, but now comprise one quarter of the U.S. population. Highly coveted by advertisers, millennials are often painted as fickle beasts. New data, however, challenges that notion. In fact, according to a pair of new studies, millennials are the most brand-loyal generation of all. This makes it all the more important for brands to get an early foothold with these prized consumers.

One entity helping brands pull off that difficult trick is Whistle Sports. This booming digital … Continue Reading

My colleague and friend, Andrea Levine, has been the Director of the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council’s National Advertising Division (NAD) and Senior Vice President of the Council of Better Business Bureaus for the past 20 years. It’s quite a title, and tenure, and as she prepares to move on to her next challenge, I asked her to share some of her experiences and wisdom.

Twenty years ago, I appeared at NAD’s offices armed with 7 years’ experience in the NYC court system defending poor people from the consequences of “trickle down” economics, a decade on the front lines of multi-state consumer protection advocacy as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York, and a stint as Special Counsel for … Continue Reading

In the last few years, Intel’s advertising has become a lot less inward-focused. For decades, the company’s “Intel Inside” campaign directed consumers’ attention to the chips that Intel puts inside electronic devices. While that campaign (with its instantly recognizable bong-bong-bong jingle) helped make the company what it is today, Intel hasn’t been content to rest on its success. This is a company with innovation in its DNA, after all.

With new CMO Steve Fund at the helm, Intel has added an outward looking element to its Intel Inside message. The company’s latest marketing push is focused outward, highlighting the shuttle launches, solar-powered car races, animated dragons, high-tech garments, and other wonders that Intel technology brings to life. The initial video … Continue Reading

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, but what about video? Whoever is behind the famous aphorism never crunched the numbers on video, but you’d have to think that the words-to-video conversion rate would be very large. After all, video advertisements are known to have tremendous advantages, even over those that use pictures. Video ads are more likely to be discovered (search engines love video content), shared (consumers share video at high rates), and acted upon (according to Amazon and eBay, video ads accompanying product descriptions increases the chance of a purchase by as much as 35%) than other formats. All of which helps explain why people are watching so much video these days.

According to data gathered by … Continue Reading

Winemaking is a timeless craft—or so you might think. If you do, one visit to a Jackson Family Wines facility powered by Tesla batteries and you’ll soon realize that wineries are certainly keeping up with the times.

One of the country’s largest family-owned wineries, Jackson Family Wines has been innovating in all kinds of ways as it carries on the family’s winemaking legacy (including production of the popular Kendall-Jackson brand). It has shown both foresight and ingenuity in adapting to climate change, which has begun to affect the California landscape on which the company grows its grapes. In some cases, it has implemented low-tech solutions that farmers of yore would recognize: using owls and falcons instead of pesticides to control … Continue Reading

Influencers – from bloggers, vloggers (video bloggers), YouTube stars and Instagram personalities – are truly the stars of social media, and brands are eager to harness their power and reach.

Millennials are estimated at having a purchasing power of $1.3 trillion, according to Social Media Week, and as social media continues to gain speed as one of millennials most coveted forms of currency, brands are taking notice. In order to best communicate with this growing demographic – whose attention span lasts a total of 8 seconds as reported by TIME Magazine – brands are heavily leaning on social media.

We are seeing these personalities being woven into brands’ advertising strategies, particularly in the form of sponsored content. More than … Continue Reading