The WFA, with Kantar Research, Offers Imperatives on Marketers’ Role in Sustainable Actions. Özlem Şentürk Explains…

The World Federation of Advertisers has been proactive in linking sustainability with marketing imperatives. At their annual Global Marketer Week Conference in late April, they presented new research in partnership with Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice. Entitled Sustainable Marketing 2030, the study highlights the current gap between intention and action on sustainable marketing practices. Furthermore, the results consider the critical role marketing can play as businesses continue to transform to satisfy climate concerns.

Özlem Şentürk, Senior Partner at Kantar, presented the WFA research. She covers a series of thought-provoking topics ranging from product innovation to circular frameworks to recognition that current concepts of growth may have to be reconsidered if businesses aim to be compatible with a sustainable future.

The Internationalist (https://the-internationalist.com/) focuses on the continual reinvention of marketing by highlighting the ideas of inspirational marketers around the world as they move the industry forward. Internationalist Marketing TV shares these perspectives through video with case studies, interviews, discussions, and personal stories.

Ask branding expert Allen Adamson his perspective on the most important shift in contemporary marketing, and he’ll tell you it’s the need to focus on the consumer’s experience, rather than stressing product differentiation. His new book, Seeing the How: Transforming what people do, not buy, to gain market advantage explores why today’s most successful businesses are those that have significantly transformed our daily routines, or literally, “made life as we live it better.” He stresses that “successful experience disruption is the de facto new competitive advantage across all categories.” Allen is also Co-Founder of Metaforce, a consultancy that helps clients identify growth strategies and then activates them in market. His new book debuts on May 2nd. Today we touch on some of marketing’s most significant topics—from growth strategies to the changing role of the CMO, and how the entrepreneurial mindset and marketing innovation should be better aligned.

It’s not every day that someone champions a global redesign of an iconic brand. PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini led the process to refresh Pepsi’s logo and visual identity to make it more relevant for today and tomorrow. Most of the marketing world has now had a glimpse of the new logo, revealed earlier this month with new colors—electric blue and black, a bolder, all-caps font, and a striking Pepsi wordmark within a larger globe. However, most may not realize how and why it came about. Today, Mauro Porcini talks about innovation, design, what inspires people to buy brands… as well as the very long, inclusive process to get a major global rebranding right…

Nick Bayer, Founder and CEO of Saxbys®, a certified B Corp with a mission to “Make Life Better,” has always been in the business of bringing people together. When he created Saxbys in 2005, he never considered it to be just a chain of coffee cafes, but rather a social impact company fueled by great food, beverage, and hospitality.

Ever driven by his company’s mission, Nick Bayer introduced Saxbys’ pioneering Experiential Learning Platform® (E.L.P.®) in 2015 in partnership with Drexel University as the nation’s first entirely student-run cafe where participants earn full academic credit and wages through a university cooperative education program. Bayer’s vision is to embolden the next generation of entrepreneurs, providing undergrad students with tangible experience as a supplement to traditional classroom learning.

Today we talk about the entrepreneurial mindset, being purpose-driven, and the future of business.

Martyn Etherington is CMO of BMC Software, which specializes in designing software for today’s digital enterprise-- including products used for multiple functions like automation, service management, operations, workflow orchestration, and security. Martyn in a believer in the importance of being a “Growth CMO,” and often attributes success as being “fearless” in that role. He views marketing not only as the means to shape a company’s overall growth mindset, but as being critical to aligning any organization with strategy deployment, operationalization, and continuous improvement.

Today we talk about that Growth CMO in turbulent times and how Lean Marketing can overcome economic instability.

Brian Wieser has spent his career understanding trends in media spending, its overall effect on advertising budgets, and what this means not only to marketers, but to investors. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Brian has now branched out with his own consulting company called Madison and Wall. Today we talk about better interpreting the nuances of global digital media growth versus deceleration, those issues of greatest concern in 2023, as well as some of the self-fulfilling industry prophecies of 2022.

Tim Love is the former Vice Chairman of Omnicom Group, and a man who has devoted a lifetime to loving advertising, marketing, and thinking differently. When he saw storm clouds on the horizon of his chosen profession. he responded by questioning those with the greatest vision. The result is a new book entitled,

Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World. The book grew out of a series of podcast interviews about the effects of social media with marketing executives, industry experts, academics, and well-known people throughout the world. Discovering Truth is an insight-filled exploration of the role of media in communications and how today’s social media affects trust in institutions and divides an increasingly polarized society. From the rise of fake news to destabilizing foreign and domestic extremist content, more information does not necessarily lead to more facts.

Most importantly, the book offers ways to navigate the discovery of truth in a world where technology platforms instantaneously share and feed misinformation. This could not be timelier, as the book offers a path to a future where we all might better discern between fact and fiction… if we are willing to do the work, ask the right questions, and see more than one perspective.

Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World by Tim Love is published by Internationalist Press, the book publishing division of The Internationalist.

Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), sees several opportunities ahead for marketers to have broader influence in those issues of greatest concern to consumers. Despite a turbulent 2022 and worries about economic uncertainty in 2023, he is adamant that marketers are now able to drive sustainable growth for their brands and for their businesses.

In fact, Stephan Loerke outlines a list of items that should be on every global marketer’s agenda in the coming year. Among them is avoiding the “green hush” regarding climate credentials.

There’s no better person to understand what’s on the minds of marketers than Bob Liodice, chief executive officer of the ANA, one of the world’s oldest and largest marketing associations.

Today we talk about the trends that emerged from the organization’s annual Masters of Marketing conference, as well as look ahead to 2023. While Bob admits that he does not have crystal ball, he does share a long list of important topics that are affecting how brands market responsibly today. From current economic realities to issues regarding talent, metrics and creativity. Bob Liodice offers a view of the next 12 months that all marketers must consider.

According to Dave Knox, “the leaders of yesterday have to learn the rules of an entirely new game of business in order to maintain their position as the leaders of tomorrow.”

He combines his marketing talent with an entrepreneurial instinct to continually rethink today’s fast-changing business world. A Procter & Gamble alum, a brand builder, an investor, an entrepreneur, and author, he is now the Executive Director of Blue North, a community for entrepreneurs, creators, and builders in the eleven-county Northern Kentucky region. Today, he shares not only his personal career journey, but talks about that critical intersection of marketing innovation and notions of “disruption” that are so essential to both entrepreneurial thinking and contemporary brand building.