In the marketing industry, we’ve been told over and over again to listen to users. Articles and industry experts boast the benefits of putting your customer first. They know best. Mindful listening is the most crucial resource for ideation. You don’t know if your product/solution is successful until effectively listening to the end-user. The list could go on.

Don’t get me wrong, paying attention to your users is an invaluable tool. It is absolutely crucial to your design process. However, where I think most have gotten it wrong is that we rely too heavily on the listening aspect of user… Read More

Back in 2018, Zion & Zion published an article called, “What Does TV Mean in 2018?” where I discussed the changing landscape of consumer video consumption and how advertisers should approach the use of screen-agnostic video as part of their media campaigns. A year has gone by, and in this quickly-changing sector, some things are clearer, and some are more complicated. What’s clearer is that video is here to stay, and consumers are rapidly adopting Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) and Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD). What’s more complicated is the technology itself and the number of options for… Read More

Influencer marketing is no longer just a buzzword. It’s a growing industry and is becoming a marketing tactic that more and more companies are turning to. In fact, according to a study by Mediakix, $1.6 billion was spent on Instagram influencer marketing alone in 2018, and influencer marketing will become a $5-10 billion market by 2020.

What exactly is influencer marketing, and how do you know if it will be beneficial for your business? Read on for a 101 lesson in influencer marketing.… Read More

Do you ever come across a beautiful image of an exquisitely composed plate of food, on social media or in an advertisement, and wonder how it came out so perfect? I would like to offer a few tips revealing how they did it and how you can go from a novice food photographer to a seasoned pro.

There are many things to consider when setting up a subject that is both appetizing and visually appealing.

One of the first steps is to sketch out your idea. Composition is very important to… Read More

Anyone who’s watched an episode of Real Housewives knows that the best episodes are the dinner party episodes. They quickly devolve into a screaming argument. First, someone boldly states a controversial opinion or asks an offensive question. Then, someone else gets triggered. Voice volume increases, others chime in, and then everyone at the table is yelling. It’s at this point that the network adds captions to the bottom of the screen, because when everyone is yelling at the same time, our brains can’t pick which person to focus on.

People yell to get attention, but when… Read More

Considering the large volume of ads a person typically encounters in a day, it’s understandable that, over time, we have become conditioned to block out some of that noise. With the average person’s screen time at an all-time high, people are exposed to more ads than ever before. Consequently, people are starting to experience a phenomenon we call “banner blindness.”

Banner blindness is based on our natural instinct to block out anything that we perceive as ‘noise’ in order to complete a task such as reading an article online or scrolling through our Facebook feed. Although… Read More

What is virtual reality? What is augmented reality? And, what is in store for the future in regard to both of these? Let’s start by describing each.

Virtual reality is an interactive, computer-generated experience that takes place in a simulated environment. Typically, a person wears fully enclosed goggles or a helmet, closing off any sense of the outside world.

Augmented reality is an interactive experience of your real-world environment where objects that reside in your real-world are “augmented” by computer-generated information. Information about your environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world. A user can wear… Read More