After a down year in 2019, love is in the air in 2020. That's right; after a decade-low 51% of Americans celebrated the holiday last year, 55% are planning to do so in 2020. With that increase in participation will come a major increase in spending, too, with Americans set to spend $27.4 billion in total. Here, we take a look a who people are spending on, what they're buying, and where they're buying it.

After starting with us as a summer intern following graduation from the University of Connecticut, Katie Wargo joined the Inspira team full-time as Business Development Coordinator. Get to know more about the Norwalk, CT native in this edition of the Employee Spotlight!

At a revitalized Boston Seaport that exceeds the square footage of New York City's Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards, direct-to-consumer brands are showing up in droves. With over 40,000 visitors per day, this 1.1 million ft² space has proven to be the perfect landing spot for The Current, a village of pop-up DTC retail locations.

This year, nearly 194 million adults across America are expected to tune in to the Big Game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. While consumers have varying degrees of interest in the result of the matchup, Americans are set to spend over $88 per person and over $17 billion in total on this year's event. Here, we take a look at their plans for the game, the reasons they tune in, and what it costs to get in the door at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

For the second consecutive year, our team had the pleasure of working with Jeep in bringing its Winter X Games sponsorship to life in Aspen, Colorado. The on-site experience at Buttermilk Mountain included an immersive dome experience that put fans in the front seat of a Jeep Wrangler as it embarked on an uphill, off-roading excursion through the extreme terrain of the West. Afterwards, guests were given the opportunity to get behind the wheel of real Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator models, enter sweepstakes to win Rossignol ski packages, and customize leather Jeep keychains with the GPS coordinates of their favorite adventures.

Founded in 2008 by Jeff Snyder, Inspira is a different kind of agency — one where relationships and doing the right thing are front and center, where people come before profits, and where the team is passionate about the work it does. 

Despite buzz around the cannabis industry reaching a crescendo in 2019, it was a tough year for many businesses within the booming category. While retail sales grew to over $12 billion in the United States, a number of challenges prevented the industry from further reaching its potential.

Last week, a number of Inspira team members made the trek into New York City to check out Showfields, the self-dubbed “most interesting store in the world.” While Showfields Co-Founder and CRO, Katie Hunt, made sure to point out that the tagline is partially tongue-in-cheek, there is a different quality to Showfields that separates it from your run-of-the-mill retail store. Located at 11 Bond Street in NoHo, Showfields is a retail concept that is designed to engage consumers’ sense of discovery through a revolving array of in-store brand experiences. Put simply, Showfields is a hub of experiential retail.

We all know that today's consumers are investing in experiences over material things, and the travel industry has been a direct beneficiary of this trend. In fact, a study of Millennial consumers found that behind only saving for an emergency and housing, banking money for a vacation is a top priority. Just as the desire to invest in bucket-list experiences grows, the way consumers evaluate and select destinations continues to evolve. As we enter the next decade, consumers are becoming increasingly conscious about the impact of travel on the environment and are endeavoring to forge deeper connections with the people and places they visit. Here, we explore the emerging travel trends of 2020.

Experiential marketing has become an essential part of the marketing mix for brands looking to create one-on-one connections with consumers. After all, there’s no better way to get to know a brand than through a personal experience where consumers are given the opportunity to interact with products and services first-hand. Of course, experiential marketers understand that dwell time in the footprint is an important piece of the puzzle. From an intuitive level, the more time they spend with your brand, the more likely it is that a long-term bond will be forged.