Breaking: Shopify Marketplace?, Next Door Ad Opportunity, Madam CJ Walker History, Brands Betting on Hip Hop, Agencies Rely on Stock Footage, Repurposing Product
Covering trends in commerce, media, and marketing daily
SIGNS OF SHOPIFY MARKETPLACE?: Stay Home, Shop Small: Get Handpicked Product Recommendations from Independent Businesses
There are also ways that we, as a global community, can secure the futures of our local small businesses and help them shine. We have choices right now. To help you navigate this new reality and direct your dollars to shopping small, we’re handpicking products from independent businesses around the world.
Why now? As people avoid busy places, many independent businesses have made clever pivots to service their customers without the need to connect in-person. But some things don't change. We still need to eat. We’re bringing our fitness routines indoors. Our work-from-home setups could use an upgrade. Small businesses are stepping up to provide these staples for staying home and staying safe.
Nextdoor adds features to help neighbors during the coronavirus crisis
Groups is also coming out of beta. Nextdoor, the social networking app designed around local communities, is launching a new interactive map to let neighbors offer help to one another during the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Google, for example, plans to launch a new website to provide information on the outbreak later this week , while Microsoft’s Bing team has made an interactive map to track the number of cases worldwide .
A Tour of Beauty Industry Pioneer Madam C.J. Walker’s Indianapolis
The hair-care magnate at the center of the new Netflix series 'Self Made' left her imprint on the city where she launched her career
Now, nearly a century later, Walker’s legacy as an entrepreneur, activist and philanthropist (she regularly made donations to black secondary schools, colleges and organizations, including the African-American YMCA, and was instrumental in furthering the work of the NAACP) continues to be a cause for celebration and is a prime example of the true spirit of entrepreneurship.
Now known as the Madam Walker Legacy Center , the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is home to a theater that over the years has played host to music legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Lena Horne.
Why brands are doubling down on hip-hop talent
Marketers are more deeply integrating rappers into campaigns to target wider audiences, providing a way forward after the current pandemic subsides.
"In the past, it was definitely more difficult to get a full endorsement deal through these channels, as spends on hip-hop artists commonly came from smaller budgets for limited campaigns from a multicultural or regional marketing team," he added.
"There's no limit to what [rappers] can do… they are part of pop culture," she said, pointing to Ice-T's 20-year run on "Law & Order: SVU," 50 Cent's Vitamin Water partnership and Cardi B's role in last year's "Hustlers."
Amazon says it unintentionally hid some competitors’ faster delivery options
The company is working on a fix after Recode alerted it to the issue.
This is causing negative impacts on sellers and customers at a time when people in many Western countries are relying on Amazon in an unprecedented way as they stay home to reduce the risk of contracting and spreading the novel coronavirus.
It’s also pushing to hire 100,000 new warehouse and delivery workers to handle front-line work as unemployment rates skyrocket, and the company has instituted weeks-long shipping delays for discretionary goods that would have been unheard of just one month ago.
As Video Production Stalls, Agencies Rely on Tricks of the Trade
Stock footage, animation and archives are coming in handy since live-action shoots have been canceled and delayed.
Take Kurt Kretten, executive creative director at digital marketing and social media agency Glow, which was recently in the “final storyboarding phase” for an upcoming live-action shoot.
Kim Jose, head of integrated production at Forsman & Bodenfors New York, said it feels like creatives are “being asked to exercise a different part of our brain by not jumping to live action” from the get-go.
Joyner Lucas Leverages Will Smith to Promote Album Drop
In the visual for the homage to the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , the Massachusetts rapper morphs into half a dozen classic Smith movie and TV characters as he unfolds the story of how influential the box office legend has been on his career.
The trip takes Lucas to the land of I, Robot , Shark Tale , The Pursuit of Happyness , I Am Legend , Concussion and Aladdin on the track in which the rapper implores us to pay homage to our heroes while they're still around.
Coronavirus Real-Time Ecommerce Trends - Updated March 2020
We gathered data from a variety of our eCommerce clients and are making it public. Read on to learn about the macro trends happening during this crazy time.
So check out the data below, CLICK HERE to view the real-time dataset on a Google Sheet, and email me at brandon at wallaroomedia dot com if you have any thoughts or questions about anything.
Aside from a day or two here and there, Return on Ad Spend, Add to Carts, and Purchase Conversions have all held pretty steady as well.
From Plows to Swords by Phillip Jackson | Insiders by Future Commerce
With so many US businesses suffering the economic hardship of social distancing, it seems as though we’re at war with coronavirus. Phillip reflects on companies repurposing their products in the current pandemic.
While America has always been the land of plenty, with capitalists ready to fill market voids, how is it that the richest country in the world can’t provide its medical staff with the most basic equipment like masks and surgical gowns?
Ambev SA, a Brazilian brewing company and a subsidiary of Anheuser Busch InBev, announced that in response to the global shortage of alcohol gel it will begin production of hand sanitizer at one of its beer breweries, which it will then distribute to public hospitals.