2015-08-28

Don’t get left in the digital marketing dust…

We’ve put our competitive intelligence platform to work to surface the week’s top marketing stories and trending topics. Here’s the must-read marketing news from the week of August 24th, 2015!

1. The Burger Wars: Fully Loaded — Burger King vs. McDonald’s

To boost global awareness of Peace Day, Burger King served up a marketing Trojan Horse — ahem, peace offering — to fast food rival, McDonald’s.

The ask? Come together to serve a limited edition, co-branded burger dubbed the McWhopper, of course!



Burger King launched the so-called “McWhopper proposal” with a content marketing full-court press (including full-page ads and a fully-branded McWhopper microsite).

McDonald’s refusal of the proposal is being lampooned as an epic branding and PR failure…and McDonald’s loss is Burger King’s gain. Read our analysis of Burger King’s #McWhopper brand lift here.



2. How The New York Times Gets A 70% Open Rate On Its Newsletters

Did you know that The New York Times offers 33 curated newsletters? It’s a niche-focused email marketing play from the Times that is paying off:

subscriber volume is up 14% over the past 6 months;

the average gross weekly newsletter open rates is 50% (vs. the 38.5% industry average, per MailChimp);

niche-focused newsletters like “Motherlode” and

What’s the ROI payoff? Times users are twice as likely to become paid subscribers if they signed up for a newsletter first, DigiDay reports.

Some of the secrets to the Times that your brand could emulate (even without the Times’ 12-person, dedicated newsletter team) include:

Offering curated, theme-focused newsletter content.

Using social media to gauge niche newsletter interest.

Testing templatized, hyper-visual layouts.

Read more on the secrets of the Times’ success in the complete article from DigiDay here.

3. SLIDESHARE: Why your company’s tone of voice could make or break your business (Tone of Voice Series 1 of 4)

The first installment of this SlideShare series examines “why your company’s tone of voice is so important and the potential impact — either positive or negative — that it could have on your organization.” It’s a cautionary tale featuring 3 messages expressed with different tones of voice, to varied impact.

FUN FACT: When Acrolinx CMO Steve Rotter shared this SlideShare on Twitter, the tweet reaped 64X more interactions than his average tweet! Notice that the SlideShare is nicely embedded in his tweet:

Your company’s tone of voice will make or break your business #contentmarketing #slideshare http://t.co/06jfynaQpk

— Steve Rotter (@sjrotter) August 26, 2015

4. The Digiday Podcast with David Droga

“No industry works harder at being lazy than advertising,” quips David Droga, founder and creative chairman of independent agency Droga5 in the latest episode of The Digiday Podcast.

Hear Droga’s take on creativity, disruption, and the transformative power of marketing content here.

Can’t-Miss Marketing Events!

Content Marketing World 2015

Join us in Cleveland September 8-11th for Content Marketing World — the one event where you can learn and network with the best and the brightest in the content marketing industry.

Overwhelmed with amazing content marketing sessions? Check out our Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Content Marketing World to plan out your week!

Open Lounge at Dreamforce

If you’re attending Dreamforce this year, we’d like to offer you exclusive access to the Marketer’s Open Lounge. The Open Lounge will give marketing leaders like you a chance to break from the madness, refuel your mind and body, and hear from innovative speakers — all in a relaxing environment.

We’ll be there Tuesday, September 15 until Thursday, September 17. RSVP here and feel free to drop in and out whenever you like!

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on what matters in digital marketing today!

The post ICYMI: Burger King’s “McWhopper” Victory, The New York Times’ Newsletter Secrets, and More appeared first on TrackMaven.

Show more