Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages during the holiday season, especially through email, a veritable constellation of offers. Inboxes typically start to get flooded during the BFCM weekend, but with the holiday season extended and some shoppers crossing off their lists as early as October, consumers will become overwhelmed by brand messages earlier than ever. 

Future Commerce’s latest New Modes Report found that 55% of consumers will even unsubscribe from brands they like if they are too heavy-handed, so brands need to be thoughtful and intentional with their approach. 

In the fast-paced world of marketing, skipping audience feedback can lead to costly mistakes. Kantar’s Stop Guessing, Start Asking, How Instant Consumer Feedback Can Prevent Campaign Misfires emphasises the importance of quick-read research to safeguard campaigns from misfires and ensure they reach the right audience effectively.

What You’ll Learn :

The hidden costs of skipping research : Understand how assumptions lead to wasted media spend, poor targeting, and missed opportunities.

Discover the strategies and trends shaping the next chapter of beauty and fashion creator marketing. Traackr’s2025 Beauty & Fashion Insights report reveals the shifts, strategies, and standout brands shaping the creator economy in 2025. Based on US data from January through June 2025, this report uncovers why audience attention is slipping, which creators and platforms are breaking through, and how top brands are rewriting the playbook for success.

The marketing funnel is no longer an easy road paved with gold. These days, it can feel like a bumpy ride in a city cab—potholes and all. When the customer journey is choppy, it can become a real issue for marketers tasked with creating and managing a brand, generating awareness, and driving sales-qualified leads. Instead of a smooth, clear path that reinforces loyalty, you get a bunch of lost, would-be customers who quickly lose interest.

How do influencers and social platforms affect how people consume content, research and buy products, and connect with community and brands? Learn more about how consumer social media usage and purchase behavior are impacted by influencers.

Will you be using X for your holiday promotions this year? Elon and Co. have been busy touting the platform’s improving ad offerings, now powered by its Grok AI tool, which enables advertisers to rely on Grok to find the right audience for their promotions, and optimize performance in the app.

And if your audience is active there, it could be worth considering, and this week, X has launched a new holiday marketing hub to help guide your X ads approach this coming season.

Unilever’s pledge to commit half of ad spend to social is just one piece of a larger evolution for a category trying to shed its stodginess and win over Gen Z. More CPG marketers are betting on social- and influencer-first strategies to modernize. Experts say the category needs to be open to creative risk and different ways of working with agencies to succeed.

Social media has been around for ages in marketing terms, but its current era feels like it started in the pandemic haze of 2020 with a TikTok video of a man sipping Ocean Spray while gliding along on a skateboard and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The blissful clip, later expanded into a TV campaign by the cranberry juice maker, led Ocean Spray to fly off of store shelves — and helped place “Dreams” back on the Billboard charts — while serving as an early indicator of TikTok’s distinct power in sparking viral product sensations.

Shoppers bounce between apps, sites, and screens faster than you can say “attribution.” Expectations stay sky‑high, budgets don’t, and every quarter someone asks you to squeeze more juice from the same orange. Here’s what’s piling on the pressure:

Budgets playing limbo. CFOs keep lowering the bar, expecting more revenue from the same (or smaller) spend.

Channels multiplying overnight. Retail media networks, social platforms, video streams, connected TV – keeping up with the must-have channels can make your head spin.