As marketers and innovators, we love a good brand moment; and as humans, we love a good chuckle. When those two things collide on a day as natural as April Fools’, it can feel like a shoe-in for companies to participate.  

The Creator economy has grown exponentially over the past few years, with influencers now fueling a reported $20 billion industry. And yet the latest trend of deinfluencing has some marketers on edge. So, what is this trend and what’s a brand to do? 

When a majority of consumers migrated their online searches from desktop to mobile in 2016, it marked a seismic behavioral shift. In recent years, consumers have shifted their search habits again, and the aftershock promises to have similar, long-lasting impact. 

As expected, the social media landscape saw tremendous change in 2022. From Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter to the rise of BeReal, we witnessed user behaviors shift with the changing social tides, leaving us wondering what we can expect in the year ahead. While we can’t predict the launch of the next big app or the demise of longstanding social superpowers, we can tell you what to anticipate from user behaviors in 2023 to help inform your social media strategy. 

Brand power and resilience have become hot topics in break rooms and board rooms, as the array of enterprise stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, partners, communities) seeks to define their own shared purposes and align with others whose purposes they admire. A+P believes purpose and values are a brand’s heartbeat. As such, they should fuel everything the organization does… down to how it organizes and names other brands in its ecosystem. Properly aligning the lead brand with other named sub-brands, and even named product brands, permits leadership to maximize the business value of the whole brand system.

Do you remember crafting as a kid? Something about November makes me reminisce about arts and crafts. It could be because I grew up in a desert environment where the only autumn leaves were made out of construction paper and decorated the halls of my school. Crafting was like a sport to me, so getting involved in the decorating process was something I looked forward to.

This year, the end of October brings a witches’ brew of uncertainty. It’s a gut-wrenching formula for up-all-night anxiety. Ongoing economic turmoil + the relentless barrage of political advertising + Elon Musk buying Twitter = mega Sunday Scaries, especially for those of us who make our living designing brands and delivering them to the world.