Articles from AdWeek Advertising and branding

Amazon has a lot to learn from its Chinese doppelgänger, Alibaba Group, and its marketing machine, according to advertising industry experts and executives. Alibaba, planning its Wall Street debut possibly this summer, shows how an e-commerce giant also can run a sophisticated advertising network, making billions in addition to online sales. Marketers in the United States wish Amazon were as open to advertising.

Dana Anderson, svp, marketing strategy and communications at snack and gum giant Mondelez International, recalls a new business presentation she made in the early 1980s that was anything but sweet.  Photos: Kyrstina Archer; Hair and Makeup: Ashley Vest; Lettering: Jen Mussari “I looked at my boss, John Hayter, who was running the [Young & Rubicam Chicago] office, and I said, ‘I think I need a little help.’ I plopped right over and they took me into the office of someone who had a couch.

Even by New York standards, the Hotel Chelsea—a red brick monolith that’s dominated West 23rd Street for the past 129 years—is a hostel like no other. Behind its wrought-iron balconies, an artistic who’s who accomplished their triumphs and travesties: Dylan Thomas drank, Andy Warhol filmed, William Burroughs wrote, and Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death. All that, of course, is history—but it’s also marketing.

Despite e-commerce’s surge, some 90 percent of what people buy still comes out of brick-and-mortar stores. And when it comes to consumer-packaged goods, that figure is even higher. A recent study by Kantar Worldpanel predicted it may take another decade before online purchasing grabs even 10 percent of grocery purchases. But there’s a convergence point: the marketing that goes on inside the store itself. Shopper marketing—historically little more than cardboard displays and coupon dispensers—has undergone a digital makeover.