The Essentials Email campaigns, social media advertising and automated customer journeys have become standard tools for businesses seeking to acquire and retain customers. Yet personalised letters, printed catalogues and physical invitations continue to serve specific commercial purposes. Direct mail is not necessarily more effective than digital marketing, nor does its tangible nature guarantee that recipients...

The Essentials Meta has introduced Ads Super Burst, a new advertising product that allows brands to reserve concentrated windows of three to twenty-four hours across Facebook and Instagram. Advertisers can plan their reach and costs in advance, with category exclusivity available for selected bookings. The approach resembles television advertising, where brands have traditionally paid to...

The Essentials A shopper spends time choosing products, reaches the checkout and leaves without completing the order. To an online retailer, this looks like a sale lost at the last possible moment. Yet placing an item in a cart does not necessarily mean that a purchasing decision has been made. Some customers are comparing prices,...

The Essentials Winning a customer that represents 30, 40 or even 50% of revenue can transform a small business. The contract can fund recruitment, support investment and give the company credibility it would otherwise take years to build. But the larger the account becomes, the more commercial power shifts towards the customer. A pricing negotiation,...

The Essentials Nearly two-thirds of American adults now believe artificial intelligence is developing too quickly in the United States. An AP-NORC poll published on October 8 found that 64% share that view, compared with 27% who consider the pace about right and only 8% who think AI is progressing too slowly. The finding matters because...

The Essentials QR codes have become so common on packaging that consumers barely notice them anymore. Yet they are far from being used equally. Scanova’s benchmark of 46.9 million scans shows that 94.5% of interactions in consumer packaged goods come from just 5.06% of the codes analysed. The issue is therefore not whether consumers understand...

The Essentials Choosing between a franchise and an independent business is not simply a choice between safety and freedom. A franchise gives an entrepreneur access to an established brand, tested methods, support and an existing operating structure, but it also brings fees, contractual obligations and limits on decision-making. An independent operator retains much greater control...

The Essentials Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days on October 6 and 7 helped push online sales across U.S. retailers to $9.86 billion in just two days. Even more revealing, more than a third of participating shoppers said they had already completed at least half of their holiday shopping during the event. Amazon is therefore doing...

The Essentials OpenAI is reportedly running at roughly $50 billion in annualised revenue, even though a figure closer to $70 billion had circulated only weeks earlier. The company has not suddenly lost $20 billion in sales. Much of the difference comes from the way certain transactions through cloud partners are accounted for and from an...

The Essentials Insurers are beginning to prepare for potentially significant claims linked to AI agents capable of acting autonomously. The issue is moving beyond the quality of what models produce: an agent can access systems, use data, trigger operations or cause real losses. That creates a much more concrete question: who pays when autonomous action...