If your team dreads meetings, it might not be the idea of meetings they hate—it might be the way they’re being run. Many leaders haven’t evolved past the outdated meeting practices of the 1990s. Endless talking, rigid agendas, and one-way communication no longer work. Today’s teams need meetings that are dynamic, inclusive, and productive. If you’re running meetings like it’s still 1995, it’s time to rethink how you bring your people together.

Holiday sales in 2025 are projected to rise 4% to more than $975 billion, a healthy but below-average pace as consumers balance rising wages with debt and economic uncertainty.

Bain Company advises retailers to “go big” with bold, event-driven promotions—especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday—as cautious shoppers still flock to high-impact sales moments.
In-store spending is expected to gain 2.75% while e-commerce growth slows to 7%, making an integrated digital-plus-brick strategy essential.

Retailers that highlight value, deliver warm in-person experiences, and use timely, personalized ads are most likely to outperform.
For local media reps and ad agencies, the forecast is a call to action to pitch concentrated campaigns, bundle traditional with digital, and help clients turn calculated consumers into confident buyers.

Industry Press Highlights, Media, Retail, Advertising and the Economy

What takes a long time to build and a short time to destroy? Trust. One of the greatest attributes a leader can acquire is the ability to build trust. Even though competency is part of the trust formula, trust isn’t gained by being the hardest worker, having the most seniority or being the most skilled at a particular job.

The programmatic advertising landscape is evolving in ways that benefit premium, trusted media sellers. A Q1 2025 ANA study reports that effective impressions are rising and low-quality ad placements are sharply declining. However, inefficiencies like optimization gaps and data compliance concerns remain. For local media—TV, print, digital, out-of-home—this presents both a challenge and a powerful opportunity to highlight the unique value of trusted, local ad environments.

A record 186.9 million Americans plan to shop from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, creating unprecedented opportunities for local media sales and advertising agencies as retailers compete during the industry's most critical period. While Black Friday remains dominant with 130.4 million expected shoppers, Saturday's local business focus and 59% of shoppers using digital wallets demand multi-platform strategies spanning the entire weekend. With 58% of consumers already shopping by early November and total spending forecast to exceed $1 trillion, advertisers must launch campaigns earlier with value-driven messaging across search, mobile, and geo-targeted channels.

(By Loyd Ford) The power in sales starts with what you believe. It’s in what your local sellers believe, too. To flip around the old saying, “If you believe it, you will sell it.” Every single person on your team wants to win. The difference between those sellers at the top of their game and those in the middle or dragging up the rear comes in what each one thinks actually produces winning for them.

Media sales professionals must refocus their efforts on understanding the advertiser’s business rather than simply promoting their own multi-media offerings. While digital media has become ubiquitous and powerful, traditional media still plays a vital role in building trust, reach, and local relevance—and the two work best when used together. Tools like The Media Audit and Scarborough provide rich qualitative insights into consumer behavior and advertiser categories, helping media reps consult rather than just sell. The key to success lies in empathetically listening to advertisers, diagnosing their challenges, and crafting solutions that genuinely serve their goals. In a world full of shiny digital distractions, media reps must “keep their eye on the ball”—the advertiser—and build relationships rooted in strategy, not salesmanship.

Per new research, a mere 26% of organizations say 90% or more of their reps met quota last year. Today’s uncertain economic climate only complicates matters. Many revenue leaders have gone in search of the right tools and strategies to help sellers thrive. And many have turned to sales enablement. At Mindtickle, we recently commissioned a survey of 500+ sales leaders, sales reps,

As vehicle prices, monthly payments, and loan terms continue to climb, local auto dealers are facing a more affordability-sensitive consumer who is focused less on sticker price than on payment structure, trade value, and financial flexibility. For local media sales reps and agency professionals, that creates an opportunity to help dealerships move beyond generic price-and-urgency advertising toward clearer, more useful messaging centered on transparency, inventory fit, financing options, and service retention. In this environment, the most valuable media partners will be the ones who help dealers sound relevant, trustworthy, and practical to shoppers navigating a more complicated path to purchase.

You may not remember the time when large, enterprise-level organizations required you to complete an RFP (request for proposal). However, you wouldn’t be the only salesperson competing for the client’s business. Depending on the size of the opportunity, you might have a dozen or more rivals answering the same questions and prompts. If you find yourself in a situation where you must respond to an RFP, you may be asked to complete the same RFP two or three times, even though the company has made no changes.

Out of the mouths of babes. It’s an expression used when someone young or inexperienced says something surprising for its wisdom. Wisdom like this, the idiom implies, is usually the stuff of those who’ve been around a long time, weathered the storms, climbed the hills and hierarchies. “Leader” is the word we often use to describe them. Age and seniority can be helpful, yet these have far less to do with actual wisdom and impact than two more potent and often overlooked factors: exposure and asking questions.

The podcast industry has evolved from a niche medium to a serious revenue generator, with ad loads increasing from 7.9% to 10.9% of runtime since 2021 and per-hour advertising rates tripling to 6 cents per listener hour in 2024, creating both competitive pressure and significant expansion opportunities for local media. While podcasts compete for advertiser attention, established local media companies possess crucial advantages including existing advertiser relationships, community market knowledge, and content creation infrastructure that position them to capitalize on podcast monetization rather than lose market share. Smart local media operators are launching complementary podcast offerings that create premium advertising packages, extend audience engagement, and generate new revenue streams while leveraging their trusted local brand positioning. The key opportunity lies in integrating podcast strategies into existing business models to offer advertisers multi-platform campaigns that command higher rates than traditional single-format advertising.

Nov 16, 2024 | Media, Retail, Advertising and the Economy, Industry Press Highlights Editorial credit: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.com Executive Summary: Advance Auto Parts plans to...

Bill Bernbach, co-founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, revolutionized advertising by prioritizing creativity, honesty, and emotional storytelling over formulaic sales tactics. His campaigns—like Volkswagen’s “Think Small” and Avis’s “We Try Harder”—reshaped how brands connected with audiences by respecting their intelligence and appealing to human insight. Bernbach’s collaborative model between copywriters and art directors set the industry standard and empowered more inclusive voices in advertising. For today’s media sellers and agency professionals, his philosophy remains a powerful reminder: great ideas and emotional connection still drive results in a data-saturated world.