One of our clients, a global seller of lawn and garden products, has a term for how its teams manage content syndication across online retailer platforms: “spreadsheet hell.”

We wondered about it back in April. We tracked the daily developments throughout May and June. We watched as some colleges planned to have in-person classes, while others (like Harvard) decided in early July that fall 2020 classes would be online only. 

Like everyone else, we crossed our fingers that a sense of normalcy would return after the summer and that the Back to College time frame would find us all a little more back to business as usual.

The use of consumer data to influence marketing strategy has been integral to advertising for generations, well before re-targeting and customized content were even fleeting thoughts. But in this Age of Amazon, the landscape is rapidly changing and many brands are forced to play catch-up.