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Student Voices I Making it in Modern Marketing: A Non-Linear Journey

Graduate | Nov 21, 2022 |

By Sam Ogden, MSMI ‘23

In a continuation of the Gabelli School of Business Industry Speaker Series, on October 12th, the Marketing Area hosted another highly successful virtual event titled, “Making it in Modern Marketing, A Non-Linear Journey,” featuring Shane McAndrew, global chief strategy & analytics officer at Mindshare.

McAndrew holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (BBA) from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining Mindshare, he worked in a variety of strategic positions, including SVP of performance & marketing analytics at Moxie, global VP of customer success & advanced analytics at Visual IQ and SVP of global product growth at Merkle.

Throughout the event, McAndrew emphasized the ever-evolving role of technology in marketing and its impact on marketers and consumers. He spoke in detail about Mindshare’s role within the advertising space, its goal of optimizing clients’ investments and about the ways in which new technology has allowed marketers to directly impact business and revenue growth—resulting in more and more marketers being approached to take on C-Suite level positions than ever before.

Key Takeaways From the Discussion Included:

Change and Adaptation Within Advertising
“Keeping your finger on the pulse of change” is essential to being able to predict its impact, according to McAndrew. Implementing a learning agenda with steps such as hypothesizing, discovering insights and taking actions based upon this information is what the best marketers do constantly,” with McAndrew adding “it’s a pattern that never stops.” With the world of marketing evolving so quickly and continuously, the winners are those who can make the most accurate predictions regarding future trends.

Advertising Trends and Social Commerce
McAndrew touched upon some of the top trends happening within the advertising world, including the consolidation of media into a select few platforms, the impact of top tech platforms on advertising and their mercurial dynamism, as well as the abundance of new commerce opportunities.

Mindshare predicts that media companies (such as TikTok and Instagram) will make major strides in social commerce or shopping via social channels over the next five years—eating into current players’ market shares (i.e., Amazon and Google). Social commerce is a $500 billion industry today, but in six years. it is projected to hit the $3 trillion mark. “The future (of commerce) is utilizing social platforms,” asserted McAndrew.

Consumers are in Control
McAndrew continues to speak about how consumers will control where they view content and take control of their data. The impact of this requires marketers to be creative, producing well-targeted ads that ensure consumers don’t simply block them using ad blocking tools, because they see them as being irrelevant or irritating. The government and many corporations support consumers in their right to control this data, and thus, it is imperative for advertisers to deliver quality content.

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