Data analytics is becoming a primary marketing expenditure as brands try to keep up with rapidly changing consumer needs and media usage, but many marketers are coming up short obtaining complete views of their performance and customer base, writes Invoca CEO Gregg Johnson. He offers four tips on using data to uncover truths and notes, "It is more important than ever before to make decisions that are grounded in facts and connected to revenue."

Liz Flora looks at E.l.f.'s continued TikTok marketing in which the brand is hoping to repeat the success of its fall 2019 #eyeslipsface campaign with a second campaign, consisting of an #elfvanishingact hashtag challenge and the original song "Vanishing Act" for its Poreless Putty Primer. Chief Marketing Officer Kory Marchisotto says the organic popularity of #elfcosmetics on TikTok early last year was the impetus of the brand's platform involvement, adding, "All of these signals were telling us that we should really lean into this platform."

Droga5 created a "Whatever Gets You Talking" music video for the Ad Council's "Seize the Awkward" campaign, which features a track from rapper Akinyemi and stars a host of Generation Z influencers mixed in with animation. The video, timed for Mental Health Awareness Month, urges teenagers to check in with friends. The push is supported by Billboard, Instagram, YouTube, Snap, Spotify, Tumblr, TikTok and others, and ad placements secured pro bono by Initiative.

Chipotle released an augmented reality Instagram lens that contains a rebus puzzle for fans to solve. A 15-second video shows the new lens in action.

Quickserve restaurants need to adapt their promotional efforts amid dining area closures, sheltering consumers and reduced commuter traffic and move "beyond one-upmanship competitive marketing," writes Influence Central CEO Stacy DeBroff. She suggests marketers utilize a variety of tactics, including localized and personalized messaging, geotargeting, incentives, apps and digital advertising to "remain a signature part of American culture long after the pandemic subsides."

A PepsiCo/Ipsos survey found that 80% of respondents say empathy is now more important given the coronavirus pandemic and 56% think that brands that address the pandemic show empathy. The survey also found that respondents say brands portray empathy by, in order of ranking, being respectful, being humane, listening to people, showing that they care and acknowledging when they're wrong.

Google is giving advertisers until the end of August to fix ads that require too many resources to become viewable and often drain users' battery power and chew up network data, which is predominant among ads that mine cryptocurrency and those that double as mini-games. Ads that pass the consumption threshold will display an error message and be blocked.

Reddit has hired former Pinterest and Google executive Harold Klaje to serve as vice president of advertising and has restructured its sales team into three groups to provide services tailored to business size and marketing strategy, reports Digiday. The social platform also is testing a blockchain-based program to enable moderators to reward points to active community members that can be used to buy special memberships and other perks, writes Social Media Today.

The 2020 ANA Brand Masters Conference was jam-packed with valuable insight from some of today's leading thinkers in the world of brand marketing. Here are seven of our favorite quotes from their presentations.

The global rise of mobile, social and crowd-sourcing technologies has given customers superpowers, bringing unprecedented levels of transparency and profoundly changing how brands are defined: the brand is no longer what a company says it is; it's what the company actually is. So, what can organizations do to prepare for an increasingly transparent future?