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          Make Your Voice Heard: Reimagining Nightlife with Corean Reynolds

          Corean Reynold was recently appointed the Director of Nightlife Economy for the City of Boston, where she brings a wealth of experience and a passion for fostering an equitable and thriving nightlife ecosystem.

          10/04/2023

          6:00pm - 7:30pm

          Roundhead Brewing Company

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          Government Affairs
          2023 Government Affairs Forum: State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg

          Don’t miss our upcoming Government Affairs Forum with Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg. Register now!

          10/11/2023

          9:45am - 11:00am

          Bank of America

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          Talent
          MA Apprentice Network Fall Quarterly Event

          Learn about new ways of utilizing the professional apprenticeship model to create diverse, sustainable, and scalable talent pipelines.

          10/12/2023

          10:00am - 11:30am

          Edenred

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        • EQ to Elevate Workplace Well-being

          Designed for mid-level managers and supervisors, this new certificate program addresses workplace well-being through unique, innovative, and actionable methods.

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          Transformational DEI Certificate

          Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.

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          Economic Inclusion
          Economic Inclusion

          Our Economic Inclusion Committee provides strategic support around research, policies, and programs that are focused on building equal opportunity.

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          Economic Inclusion
          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

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          Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          2023 Fierce Urgency of Now Festival

          The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.

          09/12/2023 -

          09/16/2023

          Greater Boston

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          City Awake

          City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.

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          BIMA

          BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.

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          Women’s Network

          For nearly 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.

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          Massachusetts Apprentice Network

          The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.

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          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

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Bostonchamber
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          City Awake
          Make Your Voice Heard: Reimagining Nightlife with Corean Reynolds

          Corean Reynold was recently appointed the Director of Nightlife Economy for the City of Boston, where she brings a wealth of experience and a passion for fostering an equitable and thriving nightlife ecosystem.

          10/04/2023

          6:00pm - 7:30pm

          Roundhead Brewing Company

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Government Affairs
          2023 Government Affairs Forum: State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg

          Don’t miss our upcoming Government Affairs Forum with Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg. Register now!

          10/11/2023

          9:45am - 11:00am

          Bank of America

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Talent
          MA Apprentice Network Fall Quarterly Event

          Learn about new ways of utilizing the professional apprenticeship model to create diverse, sustainable, and scalable talent pipelines.

          10/12/2023

          10:00am - 11:30am

          Edenred

          arrow-go
          Read More
  • Learning & Development
        • Learning & Development

          • Overview
          • Call for Nominations
          • Resources
        • EQ to Elevate Workplace Well-being

          Designed for mid-level managers and supervisors, this new certificate program addresses workplace well-being through unique, innovative, and actionable methods.

          Read More
          Transformational DEI Certificate

          Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.

          Read More
          Women’s Leadership Program

          Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.

          Read More
          Boston’s Future Leaders

          Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.

          Read More
  • Economic Inclusion
        • Economic Inclusion

          • Overview
          • Economic Inclusion Committee
          • Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          • Pacesetters
          • Resources
        • ...
          Economic Inclusion
          Economic Inclusion

          Our Economic Inclusion Committee provides strategic support around research, policies, and programs that are focused on building equal opportunity.

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Economic Inclusion
          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          2023 Fierce Urgency of Now Festival

          The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.

          09/12/2023 -

          09/16/2023

          Greater Boston

          arrow-go
          Read More
  • Policy & Impact
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          Business Climate
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          Read More
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          Read More
          Housing & Development
          Read More
          Talent
          Read More
          Transportation
          Read More
  • Our Networks
        • GBCC’s Networks

          • Overview
        • OUR NETWORKS

          City Awake

          City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.

          Read More
          BIMA

          BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.

          Read More
          Women’s Network

          For nearly 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.

          Read More
          Massachusetts Apprentice Network

          The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.

          Read More
          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

          Read More
          Small Business

          We support small business through public policy initiatives, events designed to connect small businesses in Greater Boston to their peers and established business leaders, professional development offerings, and free small business advising.

          Read More
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Creating a Meaningful & Diversified Media Mix in a Murky Economy

Boston Chamber of Commerce

The advertising industry is at an interesting crossroads, making it a complicated time to be a digital strategist. Traditional channels like Out of Home (OOH) and Meta are still favorites amongst advertising strategists, while advertisers work to navigate the ROI and establish a presence on channels that are still being proven, like virtual reality, AI, and Connected TV (CTV). For some, there is a fear of being the first to dip their toe into something new.  

Given the economic outlook, campaign return is under the microscope. While everyone looks to Amazon using AI to power the whole shopping experience and the implications this has from an advertising perspective, and Disney using QR code games on Happy Meal boxes to promote their latest movie and fuse the tangible and digital worlds as holy grails, many brands don’t have the budgets to back campaigns and strategies of this magnitude. 

 How can advertisers be smart about spending while diversifying their strategy and future-proofing their campaigns? The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s recent panel with the Boston Interactive Media Association (BIMA), “Diversifying Your Media Spend,” which was moderated by Lauren Brickley of MobileFuse, looked at this in detail. Here are the key lessons learned from the esteemed panel.  

How To: Diversify Media Spending  

Our panel agreed: it is critical to fully understand your audience in order to guide diversification for clients, and sometimes the right decision is the safe one, or one that doesn’t try to do a little bit of everything. 

Gisela Germano, SVP of Strategy, Communications, Planning & Digital Media, Havas Edge, said that the best way to diversify is to: “Understand how the entire landscape of media is impacting the client, hone-in on consumption appetites, macro impacts changing the category and making informed decisions.”  

Sarah Doughty, SVP, Media Strategy, Digitas, added that, “Diversify doesn’t mean try and do a little of everything, it is equally important to be smart and audience-driven.” Jess Dashner, Director of Media Strategy and Operations at Gupta Media, took this one step further by adding that, “Sometimes diversifying a media mix is making decisions that are safer for your brand.” She added that although social platforms have changed over the last few years, paid social ads allow you to pivot quickly when you need to. 

For brands that do diversify amongst many channels, the message was clear: your strategy should also involve personalization. There should be a platform-specific strategy for messages and visuals so that things don’t look out of place. Sarah added that Spotify does a great job of this: “They are passion-driven and personalized. People share [their custom Year in Review report] with their friends online, they have ads in the subway, it is quite a mix.”  

Jess added that Farmer’s Dog (a dog food company) is another brand that is navigating the media landscape exceptionally well. From Super Bowl ads reaching hundreds of millions of people to gain exposure, they met customers where they are on their journey, asked for information on their dog’s name, their goals, and created very personalized 1-1 connections over email to continue the conversation. 

How To: Diversify on a Budget 

Before planning a media mix or testing a new concept of business model, we got two tips from the panel: Sarah urged advertisers to “pause and ask what you are solving for, use it as a filter to prioritize where you show up,” and Gisela added that it’s important to “find out what the best way to prove that business model is.” 

In terms of a tangible cost savings strategies:  

  • Jess suggested reallocating the media budget from the content side of things and commissioning creators to make the spots. These creators can endorse the brand, but also create spots that can be used for paid campaigns. 
  • When looking at integrating newer channels (like CTV) into a marketing mix, Jess shared that, “As streaming devices are newer, ad platforms have just developed, as have a high barrier to entry, wait lists, and limited inventory.” She suggested brands try Hulu, which has a self-service platform with no minimum spend and provides good results even at modest budget levels. Sarah added that CTV is still not the cheapest channel and that brands can have “a video experience in a more effective way.” 

How To: Avoid Common Missteps as You Diversify 

The first pitfall to avoid is “pumping the brakes too quickly.” Jess shared that some brands are “tempted to pull spend just hours after a campaign launches if they are not seeing results,” but it is critical to evaluate what you are asking people to take as an action from your campaign and how long that might take. Sarah added the importance of “understanding projections and returns.” While many clients have brand and demand teams, they can’t operate in silos. “There is an education factor, and you have to have a real conversation about the customer journey to determine how to track and optimize all together.”

Another strategy to avoid is comparing yourself against other brands in your industry and what they are doing for their campaigns. Gisela added that the real brands to watch are those that “don’t do things the way they are expected for their category and break the mold while still connecting with their audiences.”

Lastly, Jess added that being too tied to attribution is another trap to avoid falling into. She shared that it can be “tempting to go for whatever you can measure and what is giving you a large number, but make sure you have a nice healthy mix of demand generating and everything in between.” And, specifically for newer approaches like the Black Fox algorithm, “It makes it easy to flip campaigns on and see results, but there is a lot to navigate with this. You can’t see where results are coming from—are they incremental, or scraping the bottom of the funnel? This is a murky area where our industry is at and headed further.”  

 How To: Safeguard Ad Budgets in a Down Economy  

It’s easy to say that in times of downturn, brands should keep all systems go. In some cases, though, this is a luxury that not all brands can afford. So, they may have a “harder time bounding back,” but that could be their only option. Jess added that in our post-COVID world, there isn’t the same level of pent-up demand for some experiences, goods, and services as there has been, so some clients “need marketing more than ever before and are not getting the sale without grinding it out.”

Gisela added that one risk mitigation strategy is to, “Customize down to messaging and who the audience is to hit groups not as impacted by the downturn.” 

Trends are changing all the time, and the pendulum is always swinging—from brands wanting just a few partners, to looking for the cheapest and automated options, to looking to re-imagine old school channels and campaigns. At all stages, the onus is on the digital strategists to keep their clients focused on making data-informed decisions, optimizing by channel, going out with killer creative, and staying true to their brand.  

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