B2C marketing

Let’s be honest: There is a lot of hype around voice assistants (or, as we call them at Forrester, intelligent agents, or IAs). Marketers, agencies, and vendors alike are all excited about this potential voice search future. But have you ever had a voice search experience with an IA like the cartoon below? We wanted […]

Our 2019 B2C Marketing predictions hone in on the impact of rising customer power. Forrester has been evangelizing the age of the customer for a decade, but the message is approaching a crescendo. This year, we called that consumer desire for better data control, better experiences (especially in social), and better connections to their values […]

Is There A Resurgence For The CIO Role? For years, the CIO role looked like it had been moving toward “chief infrastructure officer,” with many executives feeling like the transformative part of their job had been carved out and handed to chief digital officers. We have always been dubious that CDOs without deep technology expertise […]

The feedback on Consumer Marketing 2019 is rolling in: Attendees loved our focus on the direct-to-consumer (DTC) challenger brand trend, why consumers are responding so positively, and how traditional brands can learn from these up-and-comers. In fact, the audience was so engaged with the content and speakers that questions kept coming in long after the […]

On April 4, IBM announced plans to sell its marketing technology (martech) assets to investment management firm Centerbridge Partners. Upon completion of the deal, likely midyear following the customary regulatory and closing requirements, Centerbridge will form a new, standalone company based around the former IBM tech. Current IBM Watson Marketing leadership and staff will continue […]

The last couple weeks have been an exciting time for the customer data platform (CDP) category. At long last, major marketing technology vendors formally declared their intentions to get serious about managing and activating data for marketing. For the CDP community, the entry of marketing clouds is a big deal, carrying equal parts excitement over […]

I’m excited to share that our evaluation of loyalty technology providers — “The Forrester Wave™: Loyalty Technology Platforms, Q2 2019” — is now live. In our 28-criterion evaluation, we identified the top 13 loyalty technology vendors — Aimia, Annex Cloud, Brierley+Partners, Cheetah Digital, Clutch, Collinson, Comarch, CrowdTwist, Epsilon, ICF Next, Kobie, Merkle/HelloWorld, and SessionM — […]

Apple first introduced Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) in 2017, but the latest update (2.1) creates a new set of challenges for advertisers, publishers, and tech vendors that make money from online behavioral advertising (OBA), attribution, web analytics, testing, and personalization. With new reports that Google may be following suit, we decided it was time to […]

More than 400 digitally native, direct-to-consumer (DTC) disruptor brands have burst on the scene — brands going beyond the online ordering offered by traditional catalog or eCommerce retailer models. They promise sleep, reimagined; oral care, like never before; sneakers, cool enough to wear to work; meal preparation, made easy; and all, delivered directly to you. […]

At Adobe’s marketing conference, the company focused on content and experiences as the key differentiators for brands. Watch my video summary of the event that explores these key themes. Questions or comments? Find me on Twitter. Forrester clients: Set up an inquiry.

Direct-to-consumer brands (DTC) are making a splash — for example, Glossier and Rent the Runway just reached unicorn status (a valuation of $1 billion or more) last week. What does this mean for incumbent brands? We’ll be unpacking the DTC trend and its repercussions next week at Forrester’s Consumer Marketing 2019 Forum in New York […]

Apple yesterday laid out a set of new services, including its new streaming TV service, but the overarching story is much bigger. Tim Cook orchestrated a show of Apple flexing the muscle of its 1.4 billion devices as a platform not just for services that will bolster its financial performance but as a force for […]

In this battle between direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups — cast as the proverbial David — and their large, established brand opponents, victory is not about size or stature; it’s about skillful weaponry. In fact, if one looks at DTC startups’ long-term growth numbers, a scorecard tally suggests that today’s Goliaths will continue to dominate consumer retail […]

Over and over, clients tell us they just don’t get enough funding for the kind of privacy programs that they want to create. In fact, many privacy budgets shrank in 2019 after firms were forced to spend more than they expected on GDPR compliance in 2018. But what if we told you that customer-centric privacy […]

One of our 2019 B2C marketing predictions is that enterprise marketing technology will meld with customer experience (CX) investments to deliver the relevancy and consistency that consumers crave from brands. Real-time interaction management (RTIM) provides critical capabilities that enable marketers to realize their CX ambitions. Forrester defines RTIM as: Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually […]

(Dave Novitzky contributed to this blog) It’s January, snowy, unbearably cold, and to make matters worse, a Monday. You’re trying to make it to the weekend so you don’t need to go outside . . . until you see an empty lounge chair on a beautiful warm beach floating down the Hudson River. Yes, you […]

As we gear up for Forrester’s Consumer Marketing 2019 Forum, I’m chipping away at a rather large research undertaking that quantifies why direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups deliver value to consumers and how this threatens big brands. In addition to mining rich quant, qual, and behavioral data sets, our advanced analytics illuminates the key drivers that predict […]

For the first time in 15 years, I will not attend Mobile World Congress (MWC). When I mentioned this to some clients, some of them told me, “Yes, you’re right: Mobile is dead. There is no innovation anymore. It is all about AI and blockchain these days.” (?!!) I could not disagree more. The reason […]

After New York City, San Francisco, Sydney, Singapore, and London, Forrester hosted its first event dedicated to customer experience (CX) in Paris. It was a great pleasure for me to host about 150 leaders in a unique venue: the Parc des Princes (PSG’s football stadium!!) for a networking event to discuss CX trends and best […]