Sean McCoy shares an older but always relevant post on why marketing departments need to align marketing spend with direction.  The CFO says to the CMO, “Let’s boost marketing spend by 1% this month. Where should we spend it?” The ability to answer that question is true north for Marketing departments in B2C industries. With big data and analytics radically reshaping the marketing function, CMOs now have the power to answer the CFO’s question almost instantly down to the specific…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Taoufik El Khazzani.  Tao spent 2 years within the Operations practice at McKinsey working within the telecom, hi-tech and automotive sectors. Following this first consulting experience, he joined Vivendi to lead trend forecast and strategy projects in the telecom and media space. He then decided to add another expertise focusing on the luxury and fashion industries : after a M.S. at Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), he has managed strategy and business development for…

  Thomas K. Hamann shares a white paper on the sale of cars in Germany and the factors that lie behind the current market situation. Car dealers in Germany have opened again ca. four weeks ago. But the situation has hardly changed since then; new car sales are still down (Helmut Kluger in Automobilwoche 11/12 2020). Do customers simply no longer want to buy new cars? Or is this due to hurdles that can be lowered by dealers, e.g. through…

  Abhinav Chandra takes a look at the forthcoming holiday season to predict how fashion companies will deal with customers’ expectations, and sales decline during the pandemic. Tackling the dual threat of COVID-19 and climate change; a data-driven action plan for retailers to adapt quickly to changing consumer purchasing behavior. It has been an eventful few months since we last published our forecast on May 13th 2020. We have seen the slowdown of COVID-19 cases in May/June and lifting of…

  Chris Moe and Jonathan Willbanks share facts, stats, and observations on Amazon during a sixty day period of COVID-19. The last couple weeks have been slow on Amazon – flat to slightly down for most brands. In a move that’s probably related, Amazon has removed stocking limits, turned coupons on, and started accepting deals. This was faster than we expected and we suspect grocery will be entirely “ungated” soon. What we have been seeing: DEMAND – slower for May…

  Cheryl Lim Tan takes a look at how the COVID-19 virus has affected what consumers are buying after the initial panic purchases. Let’s see how the stay-at-home economy is stacking up. The American consumer has until very recently, powered close to 70% of GDP. As we settle into what may be a few months of a nationwide stay-at-home order due to COVID-19, a very different looking consumer is emerging — in yoga pants, and in desperate need of a…