Sophia Amoruso rose from a rebellious youth and eBay seller to build Nasty Gal, a fashion empire that redefined online retail and millennial branding. After facing bankruptcy and stepping away from her company, she transformed her setbacks into a cultural movement through Girlboss, empowering women with content, community, and candid storytelling. Her journey is marked by radical self-belief, vulnerability, and a refusal to be defined by failure. Amoruso’s influence helped shape the aesthetic and ethos of modern female entrepreneurship, blending authenticity, digital fluency, and emotional resilience. Today, she mentors founders, invests in startups, and continues to inspire through her creative rituals, reading habits, and unapologetic approach to reinvention.

Brilliant leaders recognize that having all the answers isn’t the key to success. Instead, they use inquiry and collaboration to discover insights and create effective solutions. Acknowledging their limitations and seeking others’ input, they nurture an atmosphere of growth, curiosity, and joint problem-solving.

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.

Where is TV? Like so much of our 21st-century world, it is constantly in motion –evolving, metamorphosing, mutating.  As Tom Goodwin, EVP, head of innovation at Zenith, a part of Publicis Media, succinctly described it in a March 2017 opinion piece on Digiday: “Twitter is now broadcasting live sports. Apple has a radio station; YouTube has 2,000 channels with more than a million subscribers;

Negotiation is at the heart of every advertising sales job. Whether you’re working with small businesses or global brands, your ability to negotiate well can make or break a deal. It’s more than just getting to “yes.” It’s about creating value for both parties and ensuring long-term partnerships. Let’s dive into some creative techniques and strategies to sharpen your negotiation skills and boost your sales success.

Recognize the Humanity in Others as You Navigate Workplace Conflict To effectively navigate workplace conflict, prioritize connecting with the human at the center of it all. Begin by acknowledging the situation and expressing your optimism about finding a resolution collaboratively.

A number of industries and potential advertisers can benefit from grant money. Nonprofit organizations usually rely heavily on grants to finance operations and special projects, but the media can also benefit from these funds. Partnering with a nonprofit organization to apply for grant money gives your station a chance to help the group reach its goals, while generating revenue for your station.

Judgment is the ability to make good decisions. It’s a complex phenomenon requiring the ability to observe and understand things, draw upon knowledge and experience, form an opinion, and reach a decision. It entails discerning, comparing, and making considered decisions.

As a sales manager, it’s crucial to avoid common pitfalls that can negatively impact team performance. Here’s how to navigate ten key mistakes: Assuming Everyone Works Like You: Establish clear KPIs to guide different working styles. Hiring Based Solely on Experience: Prioritize performance over experience. Delaying Firings: Act quickly when someone isn’t performing. Failing to Identify Bad Reps: Remove toxic or unproductive reps promptly. Relying on Activity over Results: Focus on outcomes, not just activity. Allowing Low Win Rates: Coach reps, but don’t tolerate chronic underperformance.

Research from The Weather Company and Neuro-Insight shows that weather directly influences consumer memory, emotions, and purchase intent. They identified three “weather mindsets”—Creating (sunny), Relishing (cloudy), and Enduring (stormy)—each of which changes how people engage with advertising. Campaigns aligned with these mindsets can lift purchase intent by 10% or more, with detail memory strongly linked to buying behavior. Local media outlets and agencies can leverage these insights by timing creative, pricing inventory, and crafting messages that match real-time conditions. By integrating weather data into planning and measurement, sellers can differentiate their offerings and drive stronger results for local advertisers.

In many ways, decision-making is the quintessential job of a leader. It is also the biggest driver of performance in business and in life. Researchers estimate we make nearly 35,000 decisions each day. Therefore, it’s critical that leaders embrace a decision-making process that reliably results in wise decisions.

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Omnicom and Publicis report that advertising spending remains stable in early 2025, with clients continuing to invest to maintain brand strength despite economic uncertainty. Both agencies caution that volatility in inflation, tariffs, and geopolitics may impact future spending, but Q1 growth was solid—7% for Omnicom and 4.1% for Publicis in the U.S. Clients are taking a wait-and-see approach for the remainder of the year, holding off on major new investments until conditions clarify. Analysts warn that a potential decline in consumer spending could lead to modest reductions in ad budgets later in 2025.

Clipping mdash; the practice of sharing short video segments from longer content across social platforms mdash; is emerging as a stealthy but effective advertising strategy. Initially driven by influencers, this tactic is now attracting major brand dollars, offering new revenue opportunities for local media outlets. While still flying under the radar of regulatory oversight, clipping offers a model of snackable, high-engagement content that local newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and digital sellers can learn from or even leverage. Local media sellers must consider how to integrate or compete with this trend as advertisers look for fast, viral exposure over traditional placements.

AI Overviews are accelerating a shift toward “Google Zero,” where users get answers without clicking through, weakening the value of organic search traffic. That is a warning sign for publishers and marketers, but also an opening for local media sellers and agencies to reposition radio, TV, cable, print, outdoor, and digital as channels that build top-of-mind awareness, trust, and demand before a search ever happens. In a world where discoverability is increasingly controlled by answer engines, advertisers may place greater value on media that makes brands known, remembered, and hard to ignore.