We’re featuring inspiring work this week. Because we all need it, right?

It’s a big week for promotional marketers. Chief Marketer editors announced the winners of the 2020 PRO Awards, recognizing excellence in brand activation and promotional marketing, at our first virtual celebration. Click here for full coverage of the best campaigns of the year. And if you missed the event, sign up and watch the full broadcast. Ally Financial took our top award, the Platinum PRO, and top brands including State Farm, Michelob ULTRA, Ford, Under Armour and HP, Inc. were recognized for exceptional work.

How about some inspiration from the next generation of experiential marketers? Yes, please! This year's top 10 winners of the Brand X Challenge student experience design competition were announced by our sister pub Event Marketer. This talented bunch powered through COVID-19, even when their universities had closed and forced them to work on projects in remote teams. Check out their innovative campaign ideas—plus a Q&A with some of the winners and their thoughts on how experience design will be affected by the pandemic.

Speaking of remote teams… Now that many marketing teams and agency partners are working virtually, it may be time to adjust budgets accordingly. Here are four new strategies to consider when reallocating budgets during COVID times.

Talk about backtracking. Apple’s iOS 14 rollout will not be featuring the dreaded updates to IDFA, Apple’s mobile ad ID, until early next year. When the changes do go into effect, developers and app publishers will need to get permission from users for ad tracking and measurement.

For marketers, that complicates measurement, attribution and acquisition strategies. Plenty of folks are breathing a sigh of relief at the postponement. But the update will arrive—and marketers still need to adjust to new data-collection processes. Here’s the story.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

Kaylee Hultgren
Group Content Manager
Chief Marketer

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