Italian supercar manufacturer, Lamborghini, has virtually launched its Huracan EVO Rear-Wheel Drive Spyder in augmented reality, an unprecedented, and definitely an industry first for an unveiling.

The 2020 Mahindra Thar has been spotted testing ahead of its launch in India. Vehicle testing has resumed as the nation-wide lockdown has been eased in certain states across the country.

Skoda Octavia RS 245 deliveries have commenced in the country. The company has started to deliver the performance sedan as the nation-wide lockdown has been eased at select cities including Bengaluru.

Mahindra has announced the launch of its new 'Own-Online' retail platform. The new online platform from Mahindra promises to be India's most complete, end-to-end, online vehicle ownership solution.

BMW has launched its most luxurious models in the Indian market, the 8 Series Gran Coupe and the M8 Coupe. The new BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe is offered in two variants: 840i Gran Coupe and 840i Gran Coupe ‘M Sport' Edition.

The new Maruti Suzuki Dzire has been spotted at a dealer's yard for the first time since it was launched in the Indian market. The images of the new Dzire by Gaadiwaadi have surfaced indicating deliveries will begin soon.

Hyundai India recently announced that it will be restarting its operations in India from the 6th of May 2020. The company has slowly started to reopen dealerships across India in a phase-wise manner, as per the government's lockdown relaxation guidelines in many parts of the country.

Honda is planning to sell the outgoing Honda City sedan alongside the new models at the same time. This news was confirmed according to a report by Autocar India. Moreover, the new Honda City is likely to get a suffix in

Due to the nationwide lockdown, amidst COVID-19, the automobile industry along with others are suffering huge losses. Now, since the Government has put an ease on the curfew businesses across have started to resume.

Hyundai India announces unique finance schemes for new vehicle ownership in the country. The new finance schemes are aimed to offer increased convenience and ease of ownership with new vehicle purchases.

Hyundai India is offering huge discounts and special offers on select models in the brand's lineup. The company is also offering extended warranty and road-side assistance packages with new purchases.

MINI has discontinued the Clubman model in the Indian market. The company has also unlisted the Clubman for their website. Before it was unlisted from their website, MINI had launched the Clubman Indian Summer Red Edition in the country during February this year.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, India is currently facing a nationwide lockdown and because of that, businesses across the nation have been affected badly. To resume business, the Government has come up with some guidelines which the companies have to follow strictly.

Jeep launched the Compass SUV back in 2017 in the Indian market. Since its inception, the SUV has been a popular name in its segment as it comes loaded with several standard safety features. The Compass is available in a five-seater

Honda is offering huge discounts and special offers on select models in the brand's lineup. The company is also offering a three-year maintenance package at 50 per cent cost, worth Rs 8,000, on select models and trims.

The Hyundai Grand i10 NIOS BS6 petrol variant mileage figures have been revealed. The company had updated the petrol engine to achieve BS6 compliance earlier this year, and also added a new turbo-engine to the Grand i10 NIOS BS6.

Hyundai India has announced that they have resumed production operations at their facility in Sriperumbudur, Chennai. The manufacturing facility of Hyundai has been shut since the 23rd of March 2020, amidst COVID-19 pandemic.

The track is for "all those in the frontline, all around the world... the people who are risking their lives to save us and save our families," guitarist Brian May told Reuters in a video conference call interview from his home in London.

While the novel coronavirus pandemic has closed down sporting action like almost everything else, there are some football films to watch, for fans and others.

Under the initiative, eligible beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) would be able to avail their entitled foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop in the country using the same ration card.

He said the state government has given a grant of about Rs 275 crore to the cow shelters which will provide relief to their operators who are suffering due to coronavirus pandemic crisis.

During the hearing held through video conferencing, Special Public Prosecutor, appearing for the police, opposed the bail application saying Pathan was leading the mob and the whole country saw the manner in which he was leading the mob.

In a statement, Thorat, who is also the state Congress president, alleged that arbitrary decisions taken by many states regarding migrant workers had worsened the situation.

Under the PM-KISAN (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi) scheme, each farmer gets Rs 6,000 in a year in three equal installments directly in bank account.

Industry body Assocham on Tuesday demanded to bring petrol and diesel under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to ensure uniformity in automobile fuel in the country.

"At this time, instead of reducing prices, the decision of the government to raise prices of petrol and diesel by Rs 10-13 per litre is unfair and should be withdrawn" he said

Indian industry is raising the pitch to bring petrol and diesel under the GST for sure, but BJP and Congress leaders indicated on Wednesday that it is unlikely

The listless trade in last few days shows that gold needs new factors to move out of the $1,675-1,750 per troy ounce range seen for last few days.

We feel with the current situation Gold price is in a holding pattern. It remains to be seen as to what will be economy#39;s direction hereafter.

ICICI Bank#39;s asset quality is also expected to improve in the March quarter on account of write-offs.

The liquidity facility will help avoid a one-off event snowballing into systemic risk

The engineering to software conglomerate, which houses LT Mutual Fund under listed arm LT Finance, had put the mutual fund business on the block earlier in a renewed attempt to find a suitable buyer

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Alphabet Inc's Google said on Friday it has asked employees to take a day off on May 22, to address work-from-home-related burnout during the coronavirus pandemic.

The fed funds futures market is pricing in negative U.S. interest rates next year, a scenario the Federal Reserve has said it wants to avoid as many doubt that it would be an effective tool to stimulate growth.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he aims to present plans next week to reopen the economy, as key sectors like carmaking look to begin business again after over a month of quarantine measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

A week packed with U.S. economic data is likely to provide investors with more evidence of the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has hit growth, sharpening the debate on whether a rebound in stocks has been justified amid an unprecedented slowdown.

While their importance pales in comparison to many other things taken away by our society’s ongoing lockdown, I do find myself missing sports. Going without them during a difficult time causes me to appreciate the comfortable routine and reliable distraction they provide all the more.

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I’m longing for baseball especially — everything from strikeouts and singles to slides and steals. But there is no part of the game I miss more than home runs.

Home runs are among the most satisfying individual achievements in sports. When a batter goes deep, he takes care of everything, going from home plate to home plate and putting a run — or more — on the board single-handedly. It is the literal representation of “covering all your bases.”

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With baseball and many other cherished forms of entertainment amiss, content marketers can help fill the void by focusing on experiential content, which is characterized by its ability to pull in a user through immersive, interactive, impactful elements. These kinds of deeper digital experiences are also more valuable from an engagement and awareness standpoint, at a time where in-person events are off the table.

“Because people are figuring out how to thrive in an almost entirely online world, their expectations towards a brand's digital experience [are] also changing. It's no longer about clicks, downloads, and impressions,” writes Diginomica’s Barb Mosher Zinck in recapping Mark Bornstein’s chat from the Discover Martech Virtual Event last month. “It's about engagement. It's about experiential marketing.”

With this context in mind, how can marketers hit a home run with experiential content, covering all the bases for both their audience and their business?

Covering Every Base with Experiential Content

Reflecting the baseball diamond, I see four key aspects of knocking it out of the park with experiential content, at a time where doing so might be especially beneficial for marketers.

Base 1: Entertaining and Effective

The proverbial square one (or first base, in this case) is that experiential content needs to be compelling and engaging. If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.

Technology is always offering new ways to increase the allure of experiential content, including tools like virtual reality, augmented reality, feature integration, and interactive functionality. Small touches like the animations and clickable elements in TopRank Marketing’s Break Free of Boring B2B infographic, for example, can go a long way. The more you bring the user into the experience and make them feel like part of the story, the more successful your content will be.

It’s not just about the entertainment factor. That second word — effective — is equally important, if not more so. Your content should effect the person consuming it, be it emotionally or attitudinally. Ideally, the person consuming this experience will feel something, and come away thinking differently about its subject.

Once you accomplish this, you’re rounding first base and heading into second.

[bctt tweet="“If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Base 2: Educational and Informative

Most marketing content is designed to inform in some way, satisfying the curiosities of its audience while intertwining a distinct point of view. The experiential dynamic is particularly valuable for this purpose. As the old saying goes: “Show me and I’ll forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I’ll learn.”

AT&T is one example of a company that’s using emerging experiential technologies for employee training purposes, taking advantage of the heightened ability to make information stick. As you plan a content marketing initiative, think not just about ways to entertain your audience, but also ways to memorably imprint the messages and revelations you want them to take away.

By this point, you’re already halfway home.

Base 3: Collaborative and Orchestrated

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a solo home run. But the feat is far more exciting when there are runners on base to drive in. Teamwork comes into play in multiple ways when it comes to maximizing the value of experiential content.

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First and foremost, your efforts should be strategically orchestrated throughout the organization. While marketing drives the bus, plenty of others ought to be riding along. By nature, experiential content is intended to address a nonlinear customer journey in which B2B buyers average 17 meaningful interactions on the way to completing a purchase (per SiriusDecisions). How do all those interactions come together around your experience in a consistent, unified, personalized way? How will you ensure that every customer-facing function is aligned?

Secondly, there is the importance of collaboration within the marketing department itself. Generally speaking, a great piece of experiential content is shaped by many different talents and skills: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable, etc.

And finally, there is the influencer aspect. While not always a fit, influencers can usually power up experiential content in profound ways:

• Adding unique insight and perspective from their expert point of view
• Bringing built-in credibility and trust with their own established audiences
• Amplifying promotion of the content through their own networks

One example of interactive influencer content in action can be found in the self-guided experience around AI and finance that TopRank Marketing put together with Prophix. The asset beat engagement benchmarks by 642%.

[bctt tweet="“Great experiential content is shaped by many different talents: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Bringing It Home: Impactful for the Business

The three components above all focus on making experiential content valuable to the audience. This is a worthy point of emphasis, since strengthening relationships and building trust are essential objectives for modern brands, especially in our current climate.

But of course, investing the time and resources into creating a high-caliber content experience also needs to be justified by bottom-line business impact. The good news is that bringing users into the experience lends itself to driving action; for example, statistics show that interactive content generates twice the conversions of passive content.

At all comes back to the overarching strategy. What specific business results are you hoping to achieve? How will you facilitate them in a user-friendly way that nurtures trust and builds momentum in the customer journey? Which other tactics will support these goals?

It’s important to think about setting up positive outcomes beyond the direct conversion. A person interacting with your content may not be inclined to fill out a form at that moment, but if they remember the experience, and the way it altered their thinking, and it brings them into your marketing funnel weeks or months later, that’s a win. This reinforces the value of getting it right with items one and two on this list — effect and educate.

Make Your Experiential Content Campaign a Round-Tripper

We may not have sports, but we still have sports metaphors. I’ll keep seeing to that. And the home run serves as a perfectly fitting allegory for experiential content, which can produce so much value for a brand on its own, with one swing of the proverbial bat.

When you combine immersive entertainment with memorable learnings, collaborative clout, and measurable business impact, you’ve got yourself a marketing moonshot. All that’s left at that point is the bat flip.

via GIPHY

For more practical tips and guidance on this subject, I encourage you to check out Joshua Nite’s recap of the B2B Marketer’s Journey To Experiential Content presentation from B2B Marketing Exchange in February.

The post How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

A white former police officer and his son were arrested in Georgia on Thursday and charged with murder in the death of an unarmed black man, an incident that has sparked furor in the community and among civil rights activists across the United States. Gloria Tso reports.

The sting of the Asian giant hornet can kill and that's not just an expression of speech. Since their discovery in 2019 in the US, traps have been set to see if Asian giant "murder hornets" have settled in the state. Libby Hogan has more.

Across Africa, centuries-old cultural traditions are being foregone in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen governments impose restrictions on gatherings and other practices around death and burial. Francesca Lynagh reports.

A campaign in Mexico City to get residents to wear face masks is now reinforced with a new secret weapon: clowns. They're telling metro riders, 'Wear a face mask -- don't be a clown!' as they spray riders' hands with disinfectant. Gavino Garay has more.

With a home office like no other, when Red Bull mountain biker Fabio Wibmer 'works', you can expect an array of insane tricks and stunts to keep his roommates company.

With a home office like no other, when Red Bull mountain biker Fabio Wibmer 'works', you can expect an array of insane tricks and stunts to keep his roommates company.

A campaign in Mexico City to get residents to wear face masks is now reinforced with a new secret weapon: clowns. They're telling metro riders, 'Wear a face mask -- don't be a clown!' as they spray riders' hands with disinfectant. Gavino Garay has more.

Sunny days and warm weather are proving to be as challenging to manage as restaurants, hair salons and other businesses as about half of U.S. states partially reopen their economies after the coronavirus lockdown. This report produced by Zachary Goelman.

It's only 'Rock and Roll,' but one of the world's preeminent museums likes it; New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will display instruments from Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain, Lady Gaga and more until October 1. Rough Cut. (No Reporter Narration.)

It might be hard to imagine but space is getting crowded. ‘Space junk’ is becoming a dangerous hazard for orbiting satellites, and now some countries are joining forces to tackle it.

Three Indian soldiers were killed in a gunbattle with militants in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir on Monday, a day after a similar incident in which five were killed.

The U.S. special envoy on Afghanistan is on a mission to press Taliban negotiators in Doha and officials in India and Pakistan to support reduced violence, speeding up intra-Afghan peace talks and cooperating on the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said on Wednesday.