🔊 Brand messaging when silence is not an option

Plus, a Pro Tip on ad budgets and automated bidding. Jun 11, 2020 Good morning Marketer, amid social unrest, how should brands respond? Historically, big brands are apt to play it safe when it comes to taking a side on political and social issues. While that narrative has shown signs of change over time, the conventional wisdom has largely remained: Stay out of it. But at a time when silence is no longer an option – and consumers, activists, and public figures are speaking out – [brands are increasingly expected to take a stance on social and political issues](. A recent Washington Post [poll]( found that 74% of Americans support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-police brutality protests, but beyond this general support, there are more complicated views on whether brands should be speaking out – and about which issues. One of the other challenges for brands, as a January Morning Consult [survey]( showed, is convincing audiences that their positions are authentic or sincere. A plurality of consumers (42%) said companies “try too hard to make it seem like they care about things besides their own bottom line.” Another 22% said they “didn’t know” and 36% were supportive of brand activism. While pressure to take political positions has been growing for some time, the urgency to speak out could be a watershed moment of sorts. Brands that went all-in on BLM and the protests will be expected to equally stand up for other issues going forward. As our own editor, Greg Sterling, puts it, this could be the start of a new and much more complex era of brand marketing. Keep scrolling for more, including a Pro Tip on ad budgets and automated bidding. Taylor Peterson, Deputy Editor Webinar TODAY! How Digital Transformation Empowers Brands To Deliver To Consumers With Urgency We’re living in a world disrupted by factors out of our control. But in the wake of a pandemic, companies still need to deliver – and with urgency. As shoppers navigate their interrupted world, they are changing the way they browse and shop for products. With delivery and curbside pickup turning into the preferred, and sometimes only, option for shopping, the integration of physical and digital channels in the supply chain is now more critical than ever. Join this webinar to discuss how disruptive changes to the CPG industry during the pandemic have accelerated the need to transform the way we do business. [There's still time to RSVP! »]( Social Shorts Don’t pause campaigns, reduce budgets to keep learning “We know that the machine learning models for automated bidding are constantly learning, even before campaigns are set on automated bidding,” [explains Fred Vallaeys]( of Optmyzr. “All the system needs to learn is for conversion tracking to be enabled. From that point forward, every query’s data becomes part of the model that calculates the probability of a future query to convert. Because many advertisers temporarily halted online ads, we now have some new insights into what happens to automated bidding algorithms when you starve them of recent data. Campaigns that were paused during the pandemic seemed to stop learning and when re-enabled were confused about the new state of the world and needed significant time (~2 weeks) to again understand how to help set the right bids to help advertisers reach their goals.” [Learn more on Search Engine Land »]( Explore the SMX Next Agenda! Searching for a professional training experience that delivers fresh, actionable SEO and SEM tactics for more traffic, leads, and sales? Search no more! Join us online, June 23-24, for free to access 40+ tactic-rich sessions from search marketing experts at Condé Nast, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and more! [See the agenda »]( What we're reading We've curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader [Reddit Turns to Michael Seibel to Replace Alexis Ohanian]( – Gizmodo [Hybrid Marketing Marries the Online and Offline Worlds]( – CMS wire [Nielsen brings gaming, extreme reality tech to shopper marketing program for CPGs]( – Marketing Dive [Alibaba taps international influencers to sell more globally]( – TechCrunch [Facebook lifts ad ban on non-medical face masks]( – The Verge [US Retail Sales to Drop More than 10% in 2020]( – eMarketer [AMC Becomes First Independent Network To Join The On Addressability Initiative]( – AdExchanger [Marketing Land] []( [Want to advertise?]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. [Unsubscribe.]( [We respect your privacy.]( This email was sent by: Marketing Land - a Third Door Media, Inc. publication with headquarters at 279 Newtown Tpke. Redding, CT 06896 USA [Manage my preferences.]( © 2006-2020 Third Door Media. All Rights Reserved.