Getting work done today is very hard for me because I just found out that there’s a guy out there who looks exactly like Robert Pattinson. Anyway, here are some must-read articles.
Bridging the digital and real world divide usually means bringing more of the IRL to the Web. It’s telling how the reverse is happening now too. Burberry is redesigning its physical stores in order to make them more like its Web experience. This is a trend we can expect will continue as people cease to clearly differentiate between digital and physical. (The Guardian)
Brands and startups are doing a strange dance. The worlds most occupy are completely foreign to each other. Life moves fairly slow at most brands, which are established businesses that don’t turn on a dime for good reason. Startups are the opposite, often moving so fast because they’re motivated to get hot and get bought. Can’t we all just get along? Pepsi certainly thinks so. It has embedded a digital marketing employee at WeWork, former home of Digiday. (AdAge)
Google may finally get some competition in the search space, and this is a good thing for brands. Mark Zuckerberg is saying Facebook is ramping up its social search focus, since it already processes over a billion searches a day without even doing anything. One way Facebook could monetize is paid search ads. We’ll have to wait and see. (BusinessWeek)
Marketers are really worried about engagement on social media, more so than social ROI. We are finally getting somewhere. A few months ago we were at a point where every brand was lamenting social’s lack of ROI and was, therefore, missing the whole point of social. It’s all about engagement, aka interactions. (Forbes)
One marketer’s loss is another’s gain rings ever true in this article. Apple isn’t running video ads to promote the iPhone 5, and so Samsung is prospering as a result, with tons of videos promoting the Samsung Galaxy phone. Video is so important in this day and age, when the value of sight, sound and motion for selling product is so very important. (Business Insider)
Main image courtesy of Shutterstock
More in Media
‘The net is tightening’ on AI scraping: Annotated Q&A with Financial Times’ head of global public policy and platform strategy
Matt Rogerson, FT’s director of global public policy and platform strategy, believes 2026 will bring a kind of reset as big tech companies alter their stance on AI licensing to avoid future legal risk.
Future starts to sharpen its AI search visibility playbook
Future is boosting AI search citations and mentions with a tool called Future Optic, and offering the product to branded content clients.
Digiday’s extensive guide to what’s in and out for creators in 2026
With AI-generated content flooding social media platforms, embracing the messiness and imperfection of being human will help creators stand out in the spreading sea of slapdash slop.