CohereOne + J.Schmid May 2025 Trend Report | CohereOne-Understanding Tariffs

Following a surprising high single-digit uptick in March, the U.S. ad market expanded just 1.7% in April, marking the weakest growth since September 2023, according to a MediaPost analysis of…

We spend a good deal of our marketing efforts incenting customers to be loyal to us; to be our brand advocates. But doesn’t loyalty go both ways? Don’t we, in turn, need to demonstrate our commitment to our customers? It’s a two-way street, after all—a dialogue. One way to display your commitment—or loyalty—to your customers is to show them you know them: who they are, where they are, what they buy, and what they want. We all experience this kind of dialogue daily online: ads served up to us reflect our searches from 5 minutes ago; recommender engines tell us what else we’d like based on what is in our baskets. These days, it’s expected. Ubiquitous, almost. But what about in print? I’d posit that sending a targeted, relevant print mail piece audience conveys a more authentic investment to your customer. The real impact comes from using data and understanding your customers’ behavior. Variable data printing allows us to create powerful, relevant direct mail that speaks to individuals on a truly 1:1 basis. Personalization allows us to move beyond mass mailings and “spray-and-pray” direct mail. Instead, we can create messages and offers based on customers’ demographics, preferences, and histories… and show them we know them. Let’s revisit a few ways to consider showing your customers you know them in print. I’ve written about them before: they are the Three Ps. read more at: https://www.jschmid.com/blog/show-them-you-know-them/

The festive atmosphere at Cannes may have been cooled a bit during a panel, titled “Trust and the Future of Media,” presented during Day 3 of Bloomberg Media’s Cannes Lions programming. “Winter is coming from a data privacy standpoint,” said Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase. Lim urged listeners to bring the right people to the table when trying to comply with regulatory bodies, saying the parties should realize “that you don’t know what you don’t know.” GroupM’s CEO North America Sharb Farjami added that “consumers now see data as a case of ownership,” and that there are now more questions about what brands are doing with that “property.”