SajitonTech: November 2017

Thursday, November 30, 2017

A.I. Will Transform the Economy. But How Much, and How Soon? Technology

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Pinterest's President Kendall To Exit

Pinterest's President Kendall To Exit

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Pinterest is losing its president, Tim Kendall, at the end of the year.

“Tim Kendall is leaving Pinterest after nearly six years to start his own venture,” a company spokesman said on Thursday. That venture just happens to be a healthcare company focused on device addiction.

Asked whether Kendall’s venture could challenge Pinterest, and other mostly mobile services that rely on heavy consumer engagement, the spokesman said: “Its early, and we don’t have a lot of details to share on how it could relate to consumer internet services.”

Kendall was not made available to address the potential conflict by press time. After his departure, however, Kendall is expected to continue to serve as an advisor to the company, as well as remain a shareholder.

Taking Kendall’s place will be Jon Alferness, Pinterest’s current senior vice president for ads and commerce.

Alferness has only been with Pinterest since August. Previously, he spent 13 years at Google, where he ultimately served as vice president of product management and head of the search giant’s shopping and travel products.

The news of Kendall’s planned parting -- first reported by Recode -- comes at a critical time for Pinterest. The company is trying to cement its position in consumers’ lives and advertisers’ balance sheets.

Investors continue to watch for signs that Pinterest is preparing to go public. Fueling their interest, the company recently brought on Todd Morgenfeld -- formerly VP of finance at Twitter -- as its first CFO.

Moving closer into the mainstream, Pinterest debuted its first ad campaign. Revolving around the broad question “What if?” the effort was designed to position the pin-based social network as the perfect platform to take risk and visualize ideas, big and small.

This year, Pinterest is reportedly targeting roughly $500 million in ad revenue.

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November 30, 2017 at 05:57PM

Time Inc Sells 'Sunset' Magazine

Time Inc Sells 'Sunset' Magazine

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After a tumultuous few weeks culminating with the sale of Time Inc. to the Meredith Corporation late Sunday night, Time Inc. has sold Sunset, of one of its acclaimed regional magazines.

Sunset had been with Time, Inc. for 27 years at the time of the sale. The publisher was its third owner in nearly 120 years of existence. The publication boasts a readership of 6.5 million over all platforms.

Purchased by California private equity firm Regent, the Sunset brand, which encompasses a monthly print publication, digital and social platforms, books and events, was founded in 1898.

Literary giants like Jack London and Sinclair Lewis found a home there, and the magazine is also affiliated with the modern environmental movement and Sierra Club, which it is credited for offering a supportive arena to early on.

Known for its coverage of the lifestyle of the modern American West, Sunset’s editorial extends from food and wine to travel, home and gardening. The brand’s Celebration Weekend, which began in 1998, has hosted hundreds of thousands of visitors drawn to its lineup of celebrity chefs, wine seminars and garden tours.

The brand will continue to expand with the launch the Sunset Idea House program in February 2018 at the Modernism Week design festival in Palm Springs.

Michael Reinstein, Chairman, Regent L.P., stated: “We are excited to partner with Sunset’s talented Editor-in-Chief Irene Edwards and her accomplished team to ensure that Sunset continues to thrive for generations to come.”

Prior to its acquisition by Meredith, Time Inc announced in August that it was exploring the sale of three of its titles, Coastal Living, Sunset and Golf.

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November 30, 2017 at 04:31PM

Patch Continues Expansion with Charlotte, NC Edition

Patch Continues Expansion with Charlotte, NC Edition

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Ear lier this year, hyper-local news hub Patch reported it was not only surviving, but thriving.

While sites like Gothamist and DNAinfo close, the website has found a model that works for them.

In fact, in October, Patch CEO Warren St. John told Publisher’s Daily the site boasted an audience of 27.5 million unique monthly users, saw a gain 25% in new users each year, and employs 110 (now 154) full-time editors, writers and other staff.

The website, which has a presence in all 50 states, has continually seen a profit for 15months straight and recently launched in Miami, Birmingham and Austin.

Now Patch continues its climb with an expansion into the Charlotte, NC, market, adding to its 1,200 communities. The Charlotte Patch will cover 10 local communities.

The Charlotte Patch is headed by veteran reporter and North Carolina native Kimberly Johnson, who began her career in community news before moving to Washington, D.C. There, she covered Congress and the federal government, then became a stringer in Iraq for USA Today and other outlets.

Johnson hopes to run more long-form journalism on the site.

“I reported for Al Jazeera America Digital, which gave me an opportunity to dig into important social issues through long-form reporting on topics such as race, poverty, education and policing,” Johnson says. “I see opportunity for that here in Charlotte, where the community, like most, continues to grapple with these same issues.”

Patch provides an outlet for local readers to post their own news items and events to a community calendar. The publication counts on reader feedback and participation, which ultimately creates a strong connection between the website and its visitors.

“Being able to tailor news to individual communities and adjust angles and stories based on reader feedback, fills a void that was missing in local Charlotte news,” she stated. “It’s not about sensationalizing a story, it’s about covering what impacts the daily lives of our readers.”

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November 30, 2017 at 03:45PM

Search Engines Could See New Tax Levy

Search Engines Could See New Tax Levy

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Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft’s Bing, along with other search engines, could see extra levies under the latest rewrite of the global tax policy by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The tax policy for internet companies -- which is spearheaded by the OECD, which aims to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide -- could be written into the April 2018 interim report to the Group of 20s finance ministers on tax and the digital economy.

Determining taxes for internet companies is a top OECD priority -- and a complex one, as some countries have already taken action on their own to collect tax, according to Bloomberg.

An email sent to Bloomberg on Wednesday from Giorgia Maffini, deputy head of the OECD’s tax policy and statistics division, explains that the organization "will be considering" a levy for search engines.

Search engines have touted exchanging their free services for consumer agreeing to opt-in and provide data, but this exchange of information for services could be the very fodder that will initiate the tax.

"Under the U.K.'s value-added tax laws, barter transactions typically occur when businesses exchange goods or services," reports Bloomberg. One could argue that a VAT charge should be applied to search engines, Bloomberg writes, citing the Treasury’s paper.

Some countries have already begun to collect taxes. The UK in 2015 introduced a "diverted profits tax" after Alphabet and others engaged in "aggressive" tax plans, shifting profits overseas. Then India in 2016 began to levy online advertising revenue of foreign ecommerce companies and Australia in July 2017 began to enforce a diverted profit tax.

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November 30, 2017 at 03:25PM

CNN Considers Turning 'Great Big Story' Brand Into OTT Network

CNN Considers Turning 'Great Big Story' Brand Into OTT Network

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CNN is weighing whether to turn its “Great Big Story” video brand, which publishes short-form videos on social platforms and YouTube, into a full-fledged OTT service. With an average viewer age of 27, GBS "is really the bullseye for what advertisers say they want to reach," said CNN president Jeff Zucker.

Speaking at the Business Insider Ignition conference, Zucker said the company will decide how to proceed over the next year or two.

“There has been such demand for short-form video that we think there is an opportunity in the marketplace,” Zucker said. “This has been the big story over the last few years. Everybody wants to do short-form video, and they found out, you know what? It is not so easy. For us, it is what we do.”

GBS does not feature any CNN branding, and combines uplifting editorial content with branded videos from sponsors.

At the moment, CNN offers a streaming version of its linear TV channel for verified pay-TV subscribers, which is included in a handful of “skinny” streaming bundles, but it does not offer any standalone OTT products.

As millennials increasingly forgo large pay-TV bundles for skinny bundles or a fragmented mix of streaming services, CNN still wants to have some sort of presence in their video diet. Zucker argued that pursuing a strategy that reaches millennials through brands relevant to them, rather than trying to change their viewing habits, is the correct course of action.

“If we go chasing millennials to watch CNN [on TV], we are going to fail,” he said.

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November 30, 2017 at 03:25PM

Domino's Pizza Launches Baby Registry, Sweeps

Domino's Pizza Launches Baby Registry, Sweeps

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After seeing a strong response to a pizza wedding registry it introduced in February, Domino’s Pizza has now launched a baby registry, powered by Gugu Guru.

Parents can create a customized registry at dominosbabyregistry.com, and choose from various gift-card themes to use before and after their babies’ arrivals.

For instance, well-wishers can send expectant moms and dads Domino’s e-gift cards to provide pizza for a gender reveal party, or for a last pizza meal before baby’s arrival.

Once registrants select their desired gifts, they can share their wish lists with family and friends on social media or via a unique URL.
"Earlier this year we introduced Domino's wedding registry, which was extremely well-received by our customers," said Meenakshi Nagarajan, Domino's’ director of digital marketing. “Introducing a baby registry was a natural progression—in fact, it’s making its debut exactly nine months later."

Through December, Domino’s and Gugu Guru — a universal baby registry site that makes customized product recommendations — are also running a sweeps, on Gugu Guru’s Facebook page, offering one prize of free pizza for a year, plus pizza-themed baby products prizes like leggings and onesies.

The registries are part of Domino’s’ focus on “the customer experience” — the current strategic rallying cry for QSRs, retailers and other marketers striving to differentiate themselves with younger consumers, in particular.

The same focus has inspired Domino’s to offer a roster of options for ordering through the latest tech, and to team with Ford to test self-driving pizza delivery cars, notes MLive.

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November 30, 2017 at 01:54PM

The Best Ways to Share Your Smartphone Photos This Holiday Technology

By BRIAN X. CHEN from NYT Technology http://ift.tt/2ikcq9i
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'Speaking' To The Hispanic Millennial

'Speaking' To The Hispanic Millennial

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New research suggests Hispanic Millennial shoppers are “a driving force” of the U.S. economy, reports Marketing Land. This means that a wide margin of the market’s $1.5 trillion purchasing power is now controlled by young adults between the ages of 18 to 32.

If you want to boost your online business in 2018, it’s time to start targeting this market.

And what better way to do that than through language? Univision reports that nearly 72% of Hispanic Millennials speak Spanish at home, and some insist it’s important for future generations to speak Spanish, too. It's also one of the best ways to build customer trust and streamline the transactional experience.

Mobile is important for this group as well. Google research identifies Hispanics as “power users” of mobile devices, and with good reason. Nearly half prefer accessing the web via their mobile devices. Hispanic Millennials, in particular, spend 25% more time on their phones than the general population, per Marketing Land. Research suggests that they are buying more online than they were a year ago.

You must also optimize for SEO. This goes beyond localizing keywords. While using on-site keywords will drive organic traffic and improve engagement, smart businesses do even more to drive further activity.

For instance, are you localizing “under the hood” text that resides in website metadata? This content is often neglected by traditional translation services and can greatly improve a site’s search rankings. Localizing this hidden content doesn’t just help search engines locate and display your localized website. It also works within the unique pixel and character limits of regional search engines, so that the localized site “plays by the local rules” to further improve its ranking.

Another way that you can boost localized SEO is by translating structured data. These coded markups highlight or sample snippets of content in search engine results pages. When your Spanish site’s structured data is optimized for SEO, search engines will identify the type of content provided on the website and display it accordingly. This strengthens both brand visibility and click-through rates.

You should also consider other digital assets, like banner ads and email campaigns, that need to be translated to suit the shopper. These must seamlessly speak to the shopper in their preferred language, with the right cultural references throughout.

Consider leveraging social to reach Hispanic Millennials, too. Research by Viant suggests they’re more open to interacting with brands on social media. For instance, nearly 50% of Hispanic shoppers reported they had either discussed a brand online with others or used a brand’s hashtag in social messaging compared to 17% of non-Hispanic shoppers.

Lastly, it’s important that marketers remember that U.S.-based Spanish speakers won’t be the only customers visiting a localized site. Data that we have collected suggests that U.S. Spanish sites following these best practices may receive up to 60% of their “free” organic traffic from underserved international markets such as Mexico and Latin America. These shoppers are most-often searching for products unavailable in their local market.

With the Hispanic Millennial market skyrocketing, and with smartphone adoption rates hitting new highs, companies that engage these consumers on their devices of choice—in their languages of choice—stand to gain a powerful competitive advantage.

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November 30, 2017 at 01:17PM

Cybersecurity: A Marketer's Problem?

Cybersecurity: A Marketer's Problem?

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Because my day job is investing in artificial intelligence, I end up thinking a lot about cybersecurity, which is the largest category of AI solutions. Reflecting on themost recent high-profile corporate hack, where Uber revealed a breach exposing data from 57 million users and drivers, I found myself wondering how many brand marketers felt a chill.

None would relish the cleanup Uber now faces to reestablish the trust that has been lost from its base.

According to a survey conducted by Ponemon and identity services firm Centrify, “The Impact of Data Breaches on Reputation and Share Value,” the fallout from a data breach can have a significant and long lasting negative effect. The study found that 31% of customers will likely discontinue a relationship with a brand due to a breach, but a drastically higher number -- 65% -- will lose trust in the company. Think about Equifax and the daunting task its marketing team now faces, trying to acquire new customers in the aftermath of an epic data breach.

This typical slide in the customer base is generally compounded by a hit to the company’s stock price and valuation. Most will remember Yahoo’s ill-timed breach of an estimated one billion email accounts (now known to be three billion) that knocked close to $400 million off the price under negotiation with Verizon in the final days before its acquisition. According to the Ponemon study, public companies generally experience a 5% decline in their stock price directly after disclosing a breach.

To say the least, a data breach is painful for everyone in a company, and marketers in particular. So, how comfortable are you that your company is safe from a similar disaster?

The human tendency is to think, “Our IT team has our backs and would not let the worst happen.” This kind of confidence reminds me of an old routine from comedian Jerry Seinfeld about the misplaced trust most people have in New York cabbies. These guys are professionals, right?

In reality, there may be an IT disconnect about protecting customer data. In the Ponemon study 71% of consumers said they believe organizations have an obligation to control access to their information, while only 46% of IT practitioners believe this to be true.

In addition, the siege of cyber hacks is on the rise, making it more and more difficult for even the most well-managed and -architected organizations to protect their vulnerabilities. Ponemon cites this frightening statistic: 51% of Fortune 500 companies are attacked hourly. This is war.

It’s no surprise, then, that cybersecurity is the largest category of AI solutions. I am exposed regularly to new technologies that automate the identification of security vulnerabilities currently addressed manually (a scary status quo).

“AI is playing a role because humans can’t keep up with the pace of hacks – especially with the growing complexity of all our systems,” Rick Grinnell, managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, says. “The bad guys are increasingly more sophisticated and well-funded. It’s easier for them to find a weak link in the chain, given the chains are getting longer.”

In other words, the attack surface of the network is growing, with the incorporation of cloud storage and more connected devices all creating more ways in.

If you want to give yourself a scare, try reading “Future Crimes,” by Marc Goodman, who shines a light on the dark side of technology advancement. Goodman illustrates the exponential volumes of data people are generating and all the ways it can be accessed and used unbeknownst to the average person at the heart of that data’s value.

He warns, “The more we plug our devices and our lives into the global information grid -- whether via mobile phones, social networks, elevators, or self-driving cars -- the more vulnerable we become to those who know how the underlying technologies work and how to exploit them to their advantage and to the detriment of the common man. Simply stated, when everything is connected, everyone is vulnerable.”

“So why is this my problem?” you ask. A fair question.

Preparing for cyber threats, after all, is not in a marketer’s job description. However, it would surely be a big mess to deal with if your company (god forbid) were to experience a data breach. Also, as news about such events continues to break, your customers may start asking how you are protecting their data. At the very least, you should know the answer to that query.

A certain amount of paranoia is healthy, and the responsibility of brand stewardship is expanding to new cyber territory. Marketers should make it their business to understand their company’s cybersecurity strategy — because it is their problem.

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November 30, 2017 at 12:56PM

Microsoft-Owned LinkedIn Plans Improvements, Including Changes To SlideShare

Microsoft-Owned LinkedIn Plans Improvements, Including Changes To SlideShare

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LinkedIn plans to make a series of enhancements to the platform in the coming months. Those upgrades will include improvements to search and changes to SlideShare, which the company acquired in 2012 for $119 million. SlideShare has become a major tool for marketers, as many build out a link strategy on the social network.

"I can confirm we're making improvements to the platform," said a LinkedIn spokesperson, without providing details. "We're doing some tests around these changes, but we're not quite ready to announce them yet."

Marketers can expect some of those improvements in the first quarter of 2018.

Most recently, LinkedIn removed the ability to re-upload documents to SlideShare, and it seems to have created a firestorm after Mathew Sweezey, who leads marketing insights at Salesforce, brought the misstep to the attention of the social site's community.

Sweezey fell in love with SlideShare several years ago. Now the "heavy" user admits to making mistakes often in his slides. The "re-upload" feature allowed him to go back an fix them or just update the presentation at a later date.

He says SlideShare took away the ability to re-upload slides -- instead recommending that he use a "workaround," after finding a post in a forum from October 2017, explaining the changes.

For the workaround, someone at LinkedIn suggested deleting the presentation and creating a new presentation, which would have a new URL. "They have no clue how marketers use this thing, or how the internet works," he wrote. "A new URL means all my old links are dead."

Dead links create challenges for marketers. Sweezey says the old analytics will be lost -- not because of the link, but because the analytics are tied to the content. Second, he said, it kills the conversation.

Old comments are deleted and social activity is lost, such as 1,000 likes. Nick De Mey, founder and creative director at Board of Innovation, wrote that he has more than 6 million views on SlideShare, and added that being able to re-upload to update content or fix errors is crucial.

A dead link means all previous efforts in creating, sharing content for link building "go down the drain," wrote Paul Alves, digital strategist and entrepreneur.

A long list, with more than 82 comments on Sweezey's post, express the same sentiment.

"Whoa, seriously? I use it all the time," wrote one follower. "Why would I kill a perfectly good link with existing stats?"

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November 30, 2017 at 11:59AM

Swiffer Sells 'The Art Of Adulting'

Swiffer Sells 'The Art Of Adulting'

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In the eyes of the law, Swiffer — an 18-year-old brand — is an adult. And with adulthood comes adult responsibilities, like cleaning.

Thus, the brand has launched a new digital effort titled, “Art of Adulting.” Featuring actress and comedienne Abby Elliott (who has been going through some of her own personal adulting milestones, like getting married and moving across the country), the videos take a humorous look at what it means to be a grown-up in your own living space.

“When Swiffer launched in 1999, it reinvented the way Americans cleaned,” a brand representative tells Marketing Daily. “As we were brainstorming how to bring our new campaign launch to life, the idea of adulting came up and we realized that people often view cleaning as an ‘adulting’ moment.”

One video, which is on Swiffer’s YouTube channel, begins with Elliott sitting alone in an unkempt and dusty living room (and shot in drab colors). In a voiceover, she identifies herself as “overwhelmed,” thinking someone else would clean up her mess (at one point, she even calls for “mom,” before realizing she doesn’t even live there). Eventually, she discovers Swiffer, returning the color to her world and the joy to her life. “I discovered ‘Adulting’” she says. “I just do the things I don’t want to do faster, so I can do the things I do want to do longer. But I do enjoy the Swiffering.” A second film takes place in the kitchen, and highlights the brand’s WetJet cleaner.

“The video series helps us bring those relatable moments to life in a unique way and shows consumers that while adulting may be hard, Swiffer make it easy,” the representative says.

The “Art of Adulting” series is meant to build on a campaign the brand launched earlier this year, that showed off how Swiffer fit into the normal chaos of everyday life. The campaign used the line, “If you’ve got ____ [filling in the blank with something messy], you’ve gotta Swiffer.”

“The campaign is based on the insight that families these days are time-starved, and are looking for the fastest and easiest way to enjoy a clean house without spending their lives cleaning it,” the representative says. “The ‘Art of Adulting' video series shows some authentic every day scenarios where people use Swiffer to get a quick clean and get back to the business of living.”

The ‘Art of Adulting’ videos will be available on the brand’s YouTube channel, which is appropriate for an audience looking “to get video advice in different formats,” and also will hopefully foster social sharing, the representative says.

<span>VIDEO</span>

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November 30, 2017 at 11:59AM

The ANA's Solution To Bad Creative Briefs (Of Which There Are Many)

The ANA's Solution To Bad Creative Briefs (Of Which There Are Many)

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A large number of creative briefs stink, and clients shoulder much of the blame.

That’s the conclusion of a new ANA whitepaper, “Better Creative Briefs,” completed by the ANA Briefing Task Force that was established to provide guidance for developing briefs and optimizing the briefing process.

The task force was comprised of nine ANA members and two ANA staffers, all steeped in the creative brief process. They interviewed 11 subject matter experts – advertisers, agencies, and consultants – in which each of them provided a thoughtful, well-informed perspective to share.

The whitepaper reinforced the findings of a 2015 ANA study among clients and agencies that found an alarming gap between how each side rated the quality of briefs provided by clients to their agencies. In that study, 58 percent of clients believed they provided clear assignment briefings to the agency, while only 27 percent of the agencies agreed.

The brief is a road map and catalyst for creative. A good brief provides useful direction and inspiration that leads to imaginative work. A bad brief can start a time-consuming and expensive process heading off in the wrong direction, leading to many rounds of revisions, confusion, and unnecessary tension in the client/agency relationship. And the final result of a poorly written brief can be subpar creative in the marketplace, which translates into wasted money.

The ANA whitepaper revealed that most marketers don’t set out to write bad briefs, but bad briefs happen for a number of reasons.

Marketers are often reluctant to focus on “one thing” in a brief because they want to be thorough. They want consumers to know everything great about their brand, but end up communicating very little. With poor direction to the creative team, confusion ensues.
Writing a brief is often delegated to a junior team member who has limited experience and practice. It is typically not something they’ve been trained to do, and they don’t know what a good brief looks like or why it’s so important to create one.
Marketers may not clearly understand the strong link between a well-written brief and the quality of work that an agency is capable of delivering in response to the brief.

Here's what we learned about great briefs:

Great briefs inspire! They get the agency excited to deliver brilliant work. Every subject matter expert who contributed to this project stressed this point and used the word “inspire” or “inspiration.”
Great briefs are the result of a collaborative effort—they aren’t written in isolation. They include input from multiple players in the marketing organization. These include marketing researchers and agency planners who can help identify and clearly describe the consumer target while providing insight and core opportunity.
Great briefs are written by senior-level people who believe in the power of a great brief, have invested the time it takes to write the best one they can, and have leveraged every resource available to them (input from stakeholders, senior leaders, researchers, and planners) in the process. The stakes are too high to delegate the assignment to junior-level staff.
Great briefs are brief. The client-side team needs to synthesize data and decks and stacks of material so that the brief can be concise, focused, and unambiguous.
Great briefs are clear, but not prescriptive. They provide the “what” and the “why,” but leave the “how” to the agency creatives. They provide guardrails, not handcuffs.
Great briefs are profoundly human and brutally simple (that’s why they’re hard to write).
Great briefs avoid marketing jargon; they’re written in plain and simple language that any consumer would understand.

It’s also essential to keep in mind that a great written brief is just the start. The art of “briefing,” or delivering the brief, is just as critical. The more important the business outcome of the brief, the more important the briefing experience. This should be done in-person in a relevant and inspirational setting with the right people. The briefing should create belief within the agency and connect the creative team emotionally to the assignment.

There is also new thinking about how the creative brief is developed. Traditionally, the client first creates the assignment brief (sometimes called a business or marketing brief) and the agency then produces the creative brief. The new thinking is that there should be one brief — not a client brief and then an agency brief — but one collaborative brief, led by the client. Here, the client writes the brief with input from the agency planner or researcher. The agency may refine the brief, and there is back and forth to ensure alignment on changes, but the client leads the process.

The focus on better creative briefs is an outgrowth of the ANA Masters Circle, a community of chief marketing officers who have developed a 12-point action plan to galvanize the CMO community and drive growth. One of those points focuses on brand and creative excellence. As we heard from one of our members, “We need better business results, which is why we need better briefs.”

Creativity has never been more important than it is today. Consumers are bombarded with thousands of messages a day from hundreds of media sources, and making split-second decisions about which ones to pay attention to. If work isn’t highly creative and engaging, it will be ignored, no matter how much is spent on media. If the work is good, consumers will share it on social media, dramatically amplifying media spend.

Marketers need to understand that in order for their agencies to deliver impactful and engaging work that will deliver a solid ROI, they must provide them with proper direction and guidance. If you want great creative work, you must deliver a great creative brief.

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November 30, 2017 at 11:35AM

Publicis.Sapient, Fortune Knowledge Highlight Path To Digital Transformation

Publicis.Sapient, Fortune Knowledge Highlight Path To Digital Transformation

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A new report from Publicis.Sapient and Fortune Knowledge Group, identifies insights that collectively illustrate how digital innovations are impacting company profitability, customers and corporate culture.

The study analyzes the digital “maturity” of 500 global organizations as it relates to 32 specific innovations to provide guidance to leaders grappling with digital changes.

For one, the rapidly changing competitive landscape is a key driver behind most digital transformation strategies. Three-quarters of what the report calls “digitally mature organizations” - such as Delta and Panera Bread - say that it is “likely” or “very likely” that the leader in their industry will be a digital disruptor within five years’ time, compared to just 21% of digitally immature companies.

“As an industry, we are long on analytical people who are capable of reviewing data and telling you why something happened," stated Tim Mapes, senior vice president, chief marketing officer, Delta Airlines in the report. "What the world lacks, and what we strive to have is a higher concentration of people who can look at data and tell you what’s going to happen.”

It is also critical that leaders are able to articulate the tangible benefits afforded by emerging opportunities. For example, mature digital companies are twice as likely as digitally immature peers to report a "very large impact" on the overall business from mobile technology (50% vs. 25%), social media (38% vs. 13%), and advanced analytics (35% vs. 10%).

Furthermore, digital leaders are twice as likely as their immature counterparts (48% vs. 24%) to say "deep customer insight" is the most important factor driving success of their organization’s digital transformation strategy.

Data complexity is the biggest obstacle to digital transformation for mature companies (41%), while just 32% of immature organizations say the same. This gap is potentially explained by lower levels of technology used by immature organizations. Complicating matters, 24% of mature organizations cite ‘inadequate analytics skills’ as an obstacle to transformation.

"Keep in mind that technology is a component of, but not the critical instrument behind, real change," states the report. "Engaged people are." Nearly three in 10 (27%) of digitally mature organizations believe that an enterprise-wide digital transformation vision is "vital" to their efforts, compared to only 18% of respondents from immature organizations. In addition, respondents from digitally immature organizations are much more likely than their mature counterparts to report that senior management lacks vision (33% vs. 18%). “There needs to be a complete, end-to-end approach to transformation that requires an in-depth analysis of the company and a willingnessto rethink its fundamentals.”

Given the speed of speed companies need to transform rapidly through "agile, sprint-based test and learn cycles tuned for creating velocity, not perfection," adds the report. Compared with immature counterparts, mature organizations are more likely to set timeframes of 1-2 years (27% vs. 16%), whereas immature organizations more frequently adopt 3-5 year horizons (36% vs. 22%).

Also, the report emphasizes that transformation is not cheap. Whatever approaches an organization takes, executives must be prepared to invest sufficient capital — human and otherwise — to ensure transformation is both comprehensive and ongoing.

The full report can be accessed here.

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November 30, 2017 at 10:27AM

How 41 People in Lithuania Took Over Your Facebook Feed Technology

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Rule By Trump Tweets Put The US-UK 'Special Relationship' Under Strain

Rule By Trump Tweets Put The US-UK 'Special Relationship' Under Strain

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For a President intent on lecturing the world from Twitter, it is little surprise to see the social media platform is front and centre in a row between two countries. It is a little surprising to find that it is with the UK that the country with the so-called "special relationship" between The White House and 10 Downing Street.

President Trump rebuking UK Prime Minister Theresa May because she questioned his sharing of three posts originating from the vile, far-right, anti-muslim group Britain First is headline news here, even if it isn't yet in the U.S.

There you go -- the vile group got its name-check for reference, now let's go forward without giving them another blast of the social media oxygen they need to thrive and make a rag bag group of right-wing thugs look more popular than just a collection of online shares from faceless cowards.

Many people who don't know the organisation may have inadvertently shared its content before it became clear who they truly are. The group are masters at using patriotic days to get people to share the flag on social media or agree that our service veterans deserve to be looked after. People leap to like and share, not always knowing who the vile group really is. Several documentaries in the UK and ongoing legal action against its female co-founder have ensured that the majority of Brits know all too well what the organisation stands for.

That's why the whole of the UK thought Trump's twitter account had been hacked or he had inadvertently shared misleading tweets. We expected either an explanation about about a cyber attack or an apology. The country got neither. Instead, our Prime Minister was rebuked for questioning Trump's retweets.

In case you haven't seen, the three videos purport to show a muslim smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary, a group of muslims throwing boys off a roof and a muslim attacking a Dutch boy on crutches. The latter has been dispelled by the Dutch authorities who say the young male behind the attack on the Dutch boy was born and raised in The Netherlands and has been dealt with. The video of men pushing boys off a roof is apparently old footage of the Egyptian uprising and is, by definition, muslim-on-muslim violence. Again, the criminals were caught, and in this case, executed. As for a single guy smashing a hand-sized statue of the Virgin Mary, I have no idea. I guess it happened, but I'm not too sure it proves anything more than one person being completely disrespectful to another religion's treasured icon.

The point is that none of the videos really show us what the group in question want us all to believe -- that we're under attack from Islam and need to arm ourselves to defend the British way of life.

Channel 4 News, as ever, had the best take on this last night. First we saw the female cofounder of the vile group being interviewed during a break in her court case. Oh, the irony. She accuses muslims of stoking race hatred when, actually, it is she who is in the dock for the very same crime. The news channel asked the big question that we all want answered, "Does Trump know about you?" A wry smile with "no comment" made it clear, as far as she was concerned, that Trump knew exactly whose posts he was retweeting.

Then we had an interview with Ann Coulter, who is in the papers today claiming it is irrelevant that the videos are misleading. The conservative commentator is one of only 40 or so people Trump follows on Twitter, and it was her sharing of Britain First tweets that caught Trump's eye. On Channel 4 News last night, she repeatedly claimed she did not have to prove anything -- it was up to everyone else to prove the videos were fake or misleading.

So I think Americans need to ask what they would think if our Prime Minister was sharing tweets from the Klu Klux Klan or some alt-right group that are clearly misleading and intent on stirring up racial and religious hatred. Imagine if Trump had told her that wasn't a great idea and she had retweeted that he needs to deal with some more pressing issue, perhaps the growing number of women who are accusing him of sexual misconduct?

The UK has always felt it had a special relationship with the U.S., and I think, it is usually reciprocated. However, President Trump's outbursts and rule by Tweet have put that relationship under strain. No more so than with last night's tweet telling Theresa May to butt out. We're in new territory here, not only with an outspoken President but one who sees Twitter as a better means for announcing policies and conducting diplomacy than traditional channels.

In one single tweet, however, he did at least manage what has proven elusive after seven years of conservative rule -- unite an entire country in support of Theresa May.

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November 30, 2017 at 09:09AM

Century 21 Launches Recruiting Campaign

Century 21 Launches Recruiting Campaign

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Century 21 is targeting “ambitious go-getters” in a new recruiting campaign.

The effort, created by Mullen Lowe, includes tongue-in-cheek out-of-home, audio streaming and social ads. It is strategically timed in the wee hours of the night and morning, targets entrepreneurial-minded self-starters, doers and workhorses -- whether they are up early, on the go, “always-on” or fighting sleep.

The company is “looking for the best and the brightest, not only within the real estate industry, but also outside it,” said Cara Whitley, chief marketing officer, Century 21 Real Estate. The campaign points to a new era at the company, which was ushered in by Nick Bailey’s appointment in August as president and CEO.

It is running in Boston, Indianapolis and Seattle through the end of December. Each of the cities is known for their entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, but ultimately, like the real estate agents that serve them, they each have their own local attributes and characteristics, she says.

“For now, the plan is to digest the overall effectiveness of the campaign and then decide where to expand in 2018," Whitley tells Marketing Daily.

The brand consistently has recruiting activities in-market.

“This is a focused effort to highlight the mindset that really defines the ‘relentless’ Century 21 agent," she says. “The campaign itself is a natural progression to the brand identity work we started last year that focused on the importance of tech innovation, human knowledge and shared experiences.”

Recruiting is not a “one and done” process, she adds.

“It’s prudent for agents and other industry professionals to spend time going over the ‘pros and cons’ of transitioning to a new broker or entering a career that makes even better sense than their current one,” Whitley says. “Our goal is to start a conversation and build relationships with potential new agents, brokers and other like-minded entrepreneurs, so if and when they’re ready to make a move, they know that Century 21 shares their beliefs and mindset.”

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November 30, 2017 at 05:51AM

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Amazon Trumpets Its Cloud Lead With N.F.L. and Other Deals Technology

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Why Old-Fashioned Tools Remain Key for Reporting Technology

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Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say Technology

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Oh, Snap: Why An Identity Crisis Is Behind Wall Street's Biggest Flop

Oh, Snap: Why An Identity Crisis Is Behind Wall Street's Biggest Flop

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When Snap revealed its third-quarter earnings on Nov. 7, there was a collective (although not entirely unexpected) groan from Wall Street. A golden child-turned-black sheep with revenue landing $30 million shy of expectation, Snap isn’t so much on a slippery slope as it is plummeting toward imminent demise.

But how did this happen -- and more importantly, can Snap still save itself?

It's impossible for the company to escape the inevitable comparisons to Google and Facebook -- the latter of which reported its best earnings ever in the third quarter. With a new redesign on the immediate horizon aimed at creating a “great personalized content service," Snap certainly sounds like an echo of its competitors.

But there is a fundamental problem with the way Snap views itself -- a problem that in many ways answers the question of how everything went so wrong for a company that was poised to get it right. Google and Facebook are mammoth data companies. Snap is simply … not. And if it can't change its stripes, failure is inevitable.

Snap's average revenue per user (ARPU), a key metric by which Wall Street is judging it, grew to $2.17 in North America for the quarter. By comparison, Facebook's North American ARPU was $21.20 last quarter. This number alone is a clear indicator that Snap is not able to monetize its audience the same way Facebook can, nor can it extract the same overall value from its users.

And why not? Because Snap does not know enough about its users. It does not collect or house enough interesting and diverse data to be able to understand what users want, who they are or how they behave.

Meanwhile, Facebook continues its unstoppable data play, allowing it to increase ad prices (by 35% from the same period last year). And what Facebook charges, Facebook gets, because it has the kind of hyper-targeted, data-driven advertising opportunities that give buyers confidence.

Snap's attempts at bigger data plays -- such as its acquisition of Placed -- beg the question of whether or not the company will even know what to do with what it has. Is this, combined with the impending redesign, enough to turn the tide, or is Snap just patching a sinking ship with bubblegum?

There's also the question of inventory versus data. Eighty percent of ads on Snapchat are now delivered programmatically, up 60% from the previous quarter. But CPMs have also dropped 60% from last year, which, as CEO Evan Spiegel said, “has made it harder to grow revenues at the rate we would have liked.”

But high CPMs are usually achieved through one of two avenues: inventory or data. Snap has premium inventory, but lacks the premium data that allows for hyper-targeted ads and content. Facebook and Google, with their enormous data sets, have that to offer.

As Snap prepares to roll out a redesign that sounds as though it has been created to compete with the likes of Facebook, the focus should also be on how it can become more of a data company and less of a social or entertainment company. If comparisons to Facebook and Google are going to continue to abound, Snap has to make a decision. Will it go for the bigger data play that turns those apples-to-oranges comparisons into apples-to-apples? If so, what does that look like?

The acquisition of Placed is a start, but without a smart strategy behind what to do with newfound data (and a team in place who knows how to turn strategy into action), Snap is like someone who has just acquired a boat and has no idea how to sail. The other viable option would be to turn more fully to the social and entertainment space, where usage and attention is the main driver for Snap's ad model and revenue growth.

Either way, decision time is coming. Because as Snap stands now, in a position where Facebook and Google comparisons -- no matter how misdirected -- are inevitable, it will always come out on the losing end.

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November 29, 2017 at 11:09PM

Andy Rubin, Android Creator, Steps Away From Firm Amid Misconduct Report Technology

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Punting iPhone Calls to Voice Mail Technology

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Brands Turning To Amazon, Looking For Safer Display Ad Platforms

Brands Turning To Amazon, Looking For Safer Display Ad Platforms

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New ad dollars will shift the focus of advertising toward mobile — mostly for video and social — while programmatic will become the new standard for online media buying, according to a Forrester Research report released Wednesday. Amazon also might benefit from several changes coming down the pike, as advertisers look for a safer environment to sell their products and services.

The updated report estimates that U.S. advertisers will spend nearly 70% more on display and social media advertising between 2017 and 2021. Investments, however, will be met with ad blocking and invalid impressions. The two challenges still continue to pose challenges for advertisers and test their faith in display.

The report — 2017 To 2021: US Online Display Advertising’s Great Reckoning — highlights changes in online display and social media advertising spend during the next five years. It focuses on how the dynamics will drive growth and what the landscape will look like in 2021.

Digital media channels, excluding search, will represent more than one-third of total advertising spend in 2021, up from one-quarter in 2017.

Forrester estimates that in 2017 about 43% of U.S. online adults reported using an ad blocker on at least one device, and 16% use it on a smartphone. The inability to view inventory and ad fraud adds to the challenges.

Overall, the challenges will eventually "wipe out over a third of online display ad spend annually until 2021,' as it becomes clearer why marketers question not just the effectiveness of online display advertising but the dynamics of the media channel as a whole.

Investments in social media advertising will carry the majority of the growth -- nearly doubling in the next three to four years. Mobile display ads also will see a bump.

Amazon will benefit from the exodus as advertisers flee from open-exchange programmatic platforms as they head toward a handful of channels, according to the report. Amazon’s U.S. ad revenue is forecast to surpass $2.5 billion by 2021. And while its ad business is still small, advertisers are looking to advertiser in a "safe" and trackable platform.

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November 29, 2017 at 02:13PM

Snapchat Remakes Itself, Splitting the Social From the Media Technology

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As NFL Ratings Drop, Advertisers Need To Call An Audible On Their Digital Campaigns

As NFL Ratings Drop, Advertisers Need To Call An Audible On Their Digital Campaigns

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by Tim Sims , Op-Ed Contributor, 7 minutes ago

We're in the thick of it, people: Coolers are filled, grills are hot, Sundays are reserved for all things football … but NFL ratings are down 15% since 2015, according to the Daily Wire. This comes as no surprise, though, with the rise of connected devices — everything from smart phones to smart TVs — consumption of football, overall, is evolving. Fans no longer have to be on their couch, with their TVs on, as soon as the whistle blows in fear of missing the game. They can plug in at a moment’s notice, on any device, and even multitask without missing a play.

Personally, I love football. But, how did I watch the Alabama vs. Auburn game over Thanksgiving weekend? On my CBS All-Access app on AppleTV. How did I watch the fight erupt in the Raiders vs. Broncos game on Sunday? My HD Digital Antenna on the local Fox network. All of this while following fantasy stats on my phone. Spoiler alert: My fantasy team won last week.

So, while many “Football Sunday” traditions remain the same year after year, a key shift is taking place for both the devoted NFL fans who tune in every week and for the advertisers who hope to reach them. Of course, traditional TV advertising remains a key piece of every marketing mix, but it should no longer be the sole strategy. Rather, advertisers should incorporate digital tactics alongside their traditional strategy to reach football-focused audiences more effectively no matter their viewing habits. So, as we find ourselves in the height of football season, here are three ways you should use digital to increase the impact of your campaign.

1. Reunite with cord-cutters and discover cord-nevers via connected TV

Cord-cutters. They’re the people described above, the ones trading in their traditional TV subscriptions for internet-connected packages. Then there are the cord-nevers, or the younger generation of Americans who never had traditional TV in the first place. This growing portion of digital TV viewers is livestreaming football games through their NBC app on Sling TV, for example, as opposed to flipping to the NBC channel at game time. And the rate at which they’re making this transition is accelerating fast, so fast that eMarketer reduced its original estimate for US traditional TV ad spend for 2017, predicting that TV’s share of total media spend will drop by 5% this year and by a whopping 20% come 2021. Meanwhile, digital video consumption is expected to grow 9% from last year.

So, while the availability of connected TV inventory for live sporting events is still growing, the audience exists. And it’s multiplying quickly, bringing with it opportunities to tailor precise messaging for this highly engaged, target group of viewers.

2. Reap the reward of addressability through digital

The decision to incorporate digital strategies into a campaign mix, particularly when targeting an audience as diverse as football fandom, is critical for more reasons than simply following cord-cutter eyeballs. Think addressability. Because connected devices reach audiences at the individual level, whether that’s specific households in the case of over-the-top platforms or specific people on their mobile devices, advertisers can drive higher returns for brands by delivering relevant commercials with greater control than ever before.

Take a company that sells hot dogs, for instance. A digital strategy would allow this vendor to exclude vegetarian football viewers from their addressable audience, helping them reach a higher-quality customer-base far more efficiently.

3. Reach viewers wherever their attention takes them with an omnichannelstrategy

Alongside the changes in device types and targeting capabilities comes a shift in viewer behavior. According to Deloitte’s annual “Digital Democracy Survey,” multitasking has become a large part of the media consumption experience, particularly among Gen Zers and Millennials who admit to simultaneously using other devices to text, browse the web, use social media, read email, or shop online. In other words, while a television ad for hotdogs may be onscreen inside a target household, it’s possible the ad goes unnoticed by the viewer who happens to be checking the score of another game on his mobile browser in that same moment.

Advertisers can call an audible on their multitasking audiences by incorporating additional touch points into their digital campaign strategy, particularly with the likes of connected TV retargeting. Now, for those viewers who have watched a commercial on their connected television, advertisers can retarget fans as they browse across different devices and other channels during the game, including the likes of in-app, mobile and native advertising. With an omnichannel play, a consumer’s brand experience becomes seamless, running up the advertiser’s score regardless of how that individual chooses to engage.

Ultimately, there’s no denying the importance of broadcast television advertising when it comes to targeting football fans this season, just look at the numbers. Roughly one-third of the country, or 111.3 million people, watched Super Bowl LI on Fox’s broadcast TV channel earlier this year, which is low compared to Super Bowl viewership in recent years. And as fans continue to become increasingly connected, with more devices and options for tuning into games, it’s likely those traditional broadcast viewership numbers will continue to drop.

That doesn’t signal the end of heart-warming Budweiser or Audi commercials. In fact, it means just the opposite. With a digital play, football advertising can finally step up its own game. Combining the impact of television advertising with the precision of digital campaigns will impact advertisers everywhere, earning more ROI for brands while creating hyper-relevant and seamless ad experiences for viewers.

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November 29, 2017 at 01:10PM

Macallan Taps Ivy For 'Rare' Live Event

Macallan Taps Ivy For 'Rare' Live Event

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In an attempt to reach upscale Millennials, Macallan is working with networking company Ivy and its in-house ad-marketing team on an extensive partnership that includes live events and array of content.

Macallan's "GratiTuesday Series" of experiential events will visit New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston during the holidays to toast members of the Ivy community as well as offer tastings of The Macallan Rare Cask Scotch whisky. Each gathering will include about 50 people as every Ivy member is bringing a plus-one to extend the reach of these events.

Then, Ivy's in-house team will design specific content pieces from these events for both brands, including videos to stream on IVYTV, which will also be pushed out nationally via the Ivy Media weekly newsletter. They’ll also be placed on Ivy's social media channels Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Other integrated content will appear in photo galleries on Ivy.com, additional social media posts throughout the holidays, and email communications with Ivy's 300,000+ network. For brand support, Mccallan's social media channels will integrate the content as part of its broader Gratitude platform. And M Booth, Macallan's PR team, will further amplify messaging.

Although Ivy has worked with various beverage brands in the past, this is the first time the company has attempted a project of this scale with four markets in one month, says Ian Gerard, chief partnership officer, Ivy who originally approached M Booth to discuss potential partnerships.

Last year, Macallan teamed with Esquire magazine and Havas Media on a content partnership that included a Macallan whiskey ad in 3-D augmented reality. @The_Macallan

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November 29, 2017 at 12:09PM

Snapchat Launches Redesign, Removes Stories Page

Snapchat Launches Redesign, Removes Stories Page

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Taking what CEO Evan Spiegel called a real “risk,” Snap unveiled Snapchat’s highly anticipated redesign, on Wednesday.

Along with some subtle stylistic changes, the biggest changes include the removal of the app’s Stories page, and a clear line between personal communications and media.

As Spiegel explained, the new division is reaction to negative trends in the social media space, like the spreading of “fake news” and inauthentic self presentation.

“While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting Internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves,” Stories notes in a blog post.

“The new Snapchat separates the social from the media,” Spiegel said. “This means that the Chats and Stories from your friends are on the left side of Snapchat, and the Stories from publishers, creators and the community are on the right.”

The redesign also includes a “dynamic Friends page,” which can be found to the left of the camera. It displays users’ friends based on their communication preferences.

“You can think of it as a more sophisticated Best Friends algorithm that makes it easier to find the friends you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them,” Spiegel said. “We’ve all had the frustrating experience of scrolling endlessly through our Chats to find the right person -- now your Friends will be listed in the order that you want to talk to them."

Additionally, a new Discover page -- to the right of the camera -- includes Stories from publishers, creators, and the community.

Users’ subscriptions live at the top of this page, followed by other Stories they might be interested in watching. Over time, Discover will become personalized for users, according to Spiegel.

“While the Stories on Discover are personalized algorithmically, our curators review and approve everything that gets promoted on the page,” he said.

The changes come at a critical time for Snap. Earlier this month, the social communications platform reported its third consecutive losing quarter. During the period, it racked up revenue of just $208 million -- a net loss of $443 million -- and, worst of all, only 4.5 million new daily active users.

Earlier this month, Spiegel warned the redesign likely wouldn’t fix Snap’s problems overnight. “There is a strong likelihood the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term,” the young CEO said.

Some analysts have suggested that Snap could simply be suffering from unfair comparisons to Facebook.

“My optimistic side likes to think that the past three quarters since Snap’s IPO are helping to set expectations regarding reasonable growth rates for new advertising-driven businesses -- expectations that have been thrown for a loop due to Facebook's unprecedented success,” Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish recently told Digital News Daily.

This past quarter, Snap blamed revenue deceleration on an increased reliance on programmatic ad sales. In fact, 80% of impressions were delivered programmatically in the third quarter -- up from zero last year.

Snap said this caused advertisers to shift from direct sales to unreserved auctions, which reduced CPM-based pricing by about 60%, year-over-year. “It makes perfect sense that moving to an auction-based environment would drive down CPMs, and the extent to which that will happen is hard to predict,” Parrish said.

Yet, marketers seem increasingly wary of Snap.

“From an advertiser’s standpoint, it’s tough to recommend Snapchat right now beyond its obvious cultural relevancy,” Ian Baer, Chief Strategy Officer at full-service marketing agency ‎Rauxa, recently told Digital News Daily.

“When faced with the opportunity to include Snap in brand campaign recommendations, we’re finding most often it’s smarter and easier to recommend Instagram," he added. "From a targeting and analytics standpoint, as well as overall market trends, Instagram can deliver the same audience in a more stable, predictable way.”

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November 29, 2017 at 11:54AM

Landor Projects 'Trump' To Remain No. 1 Issue For Brands In 2018

Landor Projects 'Trump' To Remain No. 1 Issue For Brands In 2018

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As Donald Trump's presidency approaches its second year, consumer brands are expected to have a higher-than-usual political profile in 2018, as consumers demand to know where they stand on key issues. That's the outlook from WPP's branding consultancy Landor, which just released its 2018 outlook for brands. While other issues such as Amazon's expanding influence and the role of new technologies -- especially AI, blockchain, etc. -- will be a big focus of branding next year, it is the heightened state of political discourse that remains the No. 1 factor, according to Landor's experts.

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November 29, 2017 at 11:30AM

Fifa's Sponsor Issue Isn't Just Corruption, But Brand Indifference

Fifa's Sponsor Issue Isn't Just Corruption, But Brand Indifference

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As Fifa hosts the World Cup draw in The Kremlin on Friday, the smiles of former stars and the inevitable gasp at the "group of death" will be overshadowed for marketers by a massive issue.

This time it isn't just about Fifa corruption, or even that of the host nation for the 2018 host nation, Russia. While both are a major factor that is being touted as the reason for the difficulty it is facing in signing up World Cup sponsors, I'd suggest there is a third even more pressing issue -- indifference. Sponsorship doesn't actually buy brands a great deal, so why bother?

True -- corruption is the kind of issue no brand wants to be associated with, and it may be hard to think of a more tainted organisation and host nation than a combination of Fifa staging its premiere event in Russia. Who knows how Russia and Qatar won the rights to the the 2018 and 2022 competitions -- but it's no surprise that there are suggestions of corruption, given that Fifa was so clearly riddled with backhanders and bribes for so long that even the Teflon man himself, Sepp Blatter, had to be booted out.

So, the 2018 World Cup was always going to struggle for sponsorship. However, the underlying trend is that sponsorship appears a rather high price for a negligible rise in brand awareness. Fifa is still looking for a GBP100m partner and a GBP50m sponsor for the 2018 event. Of the 32 regional supporter sponsorships across the globe, it's offering just one that has been snapped up, and even then only by a Russian bank. These are believed, by Marketing Week, to be up for grabs for GBP8m each -- although the magazine suggests they must surely plummet in price before next June or risk a huge embarrassment for Fifa.

I would suggest that in addition to the obvious brand image implications of being associated with both Fifa and Russia, the elephant in the room is that nobody cares who the sponsors are and nobody can even recall them. Savvy brands run football-based campaigns, often involving sports stars they sponsor, to coincide with a World Cup or Euro Championships. Pepsi is a past master at this, ruffling the feathers of official sponsor Coca-Cola. Nike and Adidas do the same to each other.

Remember Euro 2016? When a thousand people who like football were asked to name its sponsors, only one of their top five answers was correct. Only 12% of those surveyed correctly identified Coca-Cola as a sponsor.

The real clincher for any brand marketer, however, is that just 10% knew Nike was an official partner -- and to rub salt in to the wound, 9% actually thought it was Adidas. Would you want to pay a rumoured GBP100m for a 1% lift in brand association with a World Cup run by an organisation with corruption issues, hosted by Ukraine-occupying, fake-news-spreading Russia?

And there is more. Police forces are deeply concerned about Russian football hooligans staging repeats of the trouble that marred Euro 2016 in France. England fans are, again, their prime target. Yesterday, the worst possible scenario occurred in the practice draw. The first name out of the hat to play the hosts in the opening game was England. The carnage if that were to be repeated in the real draw on Friday would be unimaginable.

Nationalist Russian thugs and corruption issues aside, however, I suspect Fifa would be struggling for sponsors anyway. In the days of social media and mass television advertising, nobody even knows who has paid GBP100m to be an official partner, and who has just spent one million on a campaign to make it look like they're more involved than they truly are.

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November 29, 2017 at 09:35AM

Meetup Works For WeWork, As Similar Minds Meet To Make A Deal

Meetup Works For WeWork, As Similar Minds Meet To Make A Deal

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In a blending of work and free-time, WeWork Cos. announced yesterday that it is acquiring Meetup, the 15-year-old online social networking service that facilitates gatherings worldwide for book lovers, first-time moms, the cross-gender community, pickup soccer players, urban farmers and just about any other pursuit that people undertake in common. Both organizations are based in Manhattan.

“A lot of CEOs talk about community. But Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman has a unique insight into the concept. His definition of community is simply ‘people talking,” WeWork co-founder & CEO Adam Neumann writes in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

Heiferman will continue to lead the company, which has 4 million members RSVP for events being held in over 180 countries every month, Neumann says. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. And it’s not as if they’re total strangers.

“Over the past couple years, WeWork organically became the fastest-growing choice for where Meetup organizers choose to host their Meetups,” according to an unsigned Meetup post published on Medium.

“In WeWork, we met our match. WeWork creates community, like us. If you think of WeWork as a desk rental company, you haven’t been to a WeWork space and felt the pulse of community there. And their vision for positive impact is big, like ours. See http://we.co. WeWork is also WeLive (co-living), Rise (fitness), WeGrow and Flatiron School (education). And now it’s Meetup, too,” the post continues.

“By acquiring Meetup, WeWork gets an avenue to reach Meetup’s millions of members (including 300,000 group organizers) while potentially taking advantage of WeWork’s existing real estate to offer those members places to meet after work hours,” observes Tom Huddleston Jr. for Fortune.

“Already, roughly 100,000 people have attended a Meetup gathering at a WeWork location, according to the companies,” Michael de la Merced reports for the New York Times.

“You need a proper community space for that,” Heiferman tells de la Merced. “You can’t have a musty church basement or whatever space people used in the old days.”

The business of helping people meet people face-to-face has itself gone viral, it seems.

“WeWork’s purchase of Meetup comes as a growing number of companies are eyeing in-person networks to drive growth. Earlier this month, Facebook Inc. relaunched a new app called ‘Facebook Local’ focused on events in local restaurants. The move came after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s mission statement and said it would work to help fix a ‘striking decline in the important social infrastructure of local communities,’” Austen Hufford writes for the Wall Street Journal.

“Earlier this year Snap Inc. launched a new maps feature for its flagship app, allowing opted-in users to see the location of their friends, helping them connect in real life,” Hufford continues.

“WeWork, which launched in 2010, is worth an estimated $20 billion. Its footprint spans 17 countries with 170 locations across 58 cities,” writes Ashley O'Brien for CNN Tech, reporting it has raised more than $9 billion from investors and made a bunch of acquisitions since Emily Keeton, who helped oversee mergers and acquisitions at IAC, joined the organization in May.

“While the acquisitions appear to be all over the map, Kathleen Smith — principal at Renaissance Capital — said the buying spree isn't an ‘uncommon’ strategy for a company looking to bolster revenue and quickly scale,” O’Brien continues.

“It's trying to acquire operations that will enhance their infrastructure and get more use out of it,” Smith says. “I think this is an effort to build a more substantial company [that can] get it to the point of going public.”

Deals it has made this year include “Singapore-based co-working company Spacemob, computer coding academy The Flatiron School and investing in fast-growing women’s-only social club The Wing,” Gerrit De Vynck reports for Bloomberg.

“A lot of people say ‘Oh my gosh they’re growing too fast, they’re acquiring all these different things,”’ Scott Belsky, a venture partner at Benchmark Capital and an investor in Meetup, tells De Vynck. “Meetup makes sense, it might be one of the acquisitions that makes the most sense.”

WeWork is also developing its own projects, such as the Services Store it opened in April that offers access to the likes of Slack, Salesforce, Upwork, Zipcar and Citi Bike.

Meetup, meanwhile, “has at least broken even over the last few years and has not taken in outside money in years, Mr. Heiferman said. But the company believed that to grow — and especially to do so abroad — it needed to bring in investors again,” Michael de la Merced reports for the New York Times.

Sound like a match.

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November 29, 2017 at 08:29AM

Gift Cards Provide Multiple Rewards

Gift Cards Provide Multiple Rewards

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According to the First Data study, "The Evolution of Branded Currency: 2017 Prepaid Consumer Insights Study," reported by Alex Palmer, when people use gift cards, most of them end up spending more than the full value of that card -- almost $40 more.

Drawing on the responses of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers, the study also found that for 44% of consumers a gift card leads them to visit a store they would not otherwise have visited. Additionally, 53% said they are likely to visit a store more often because they received a gift card. This was even more pronounced among Millennials, 55% of whom said they would visit a store they would not otherwise, due to a gift card, and 64% of who are likely to visit a store more often.

Overall, the findings from the report illustrate how effective gift cards are as a consumer incentive. 75% of respondents reported overspending when using their gift card, and those who overspent did so at an average of $38. This was $10 more than the average overspend by consumers last year.

The research found that gift cards can also be a potent employee incentive, with 69% of respondents saying they would be interested in receiving a gift card as an employee reward.

"Self-gifting" continues to be big among gift card users, particularly among younger generations. 62% of Millennials reported self-purchasing gift cards, with 37% of consumers across age groups pointing to loyalty/rewards programs (35%), and online shopping (27%), as their biggest motivations for doing so.

Dom Morea, senior vice president and head of gift solutions at First Data, concludes "… there is a tremendous opportunity for businesses to… build brand loyalty by implementing gift card strategies… from employee rewards and customer service programs… to social media promotions and marketing campaigns… gift cards are their own form of currency… offering convenient solutions for gift card purchasers, and receivers alike…"

The study found a few other points of note, says the report. Consumers purchased an average of 6.5 physical gift cards on an annual basis, an increase from the 5.9 average purchased in 2016, 5.5 in 2015, and 4.7 in 2014. Digital gift cards were just behind, with consumers purchasing an average of 6.1 digital cards over the year, a big jump from the average of 4.0 purchased in 2016. Mobile gift card apps may be helping to drive this digital gift card use, with 52% of consumers saying they have used an app, and 65% of Millennials saying the same.

For the full report from Incentive Magazine, please visit here.

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November 29, 2017 at 08:29AM

The Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death. Technology

By FARHAD MANJOO from NYT Technology http://ift.tt/2AhDAEv
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A Parting Shot On Social Media, Fake News And Trump

A Parting Shot On Social Media, Fake News And Trump

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Nobody likes to fail, and whenever a project or cause you believe in receives a setback, it’s only natural to look for someone or something to blame. On that note, it’s pretty clear that many Americans with liberal or moderate views (and not a few conservatives) are still upset about Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election and looking for someone to blame.

One of the favorite scapegoats is social media, including Facebook and YouTube, which stand accused of distributing fake news and abetting Russian attempts to sow dissension in the American public.

However, as I sit down to write my last Social Media Insider column forMediaPost, I would like to take the opportunity to urge against settling for explanations that encourage us to point the finger at new technology, scam artists, foreigners – anybody but ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong. Nobody should feel comfortable about the idea of foreign governments trying to influence U.S. public opinion during elections or at any other time.

Fake news is a scourge, Russia is a menace, and if social media helped foreign agents attempting to meddle in U.S. politics, we must take countermeasures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The voluntary steps taken by Facebook and Google to identify fake news producers, direct users to real news and trace the origins of online ads are all steps in the right direction, though more will be needed.

The danger, however, is that the losing side of the 2016 election — including left-leaning members of the political establishment, media elite and academia, among others — will cite evidence of Russian meddling to dismiss the election’s results as illegitimate.

This is risky for two reasons.

First and most importantly, blaming social media and fake news allows those who espouse such views to retreat to a comforting but simplistic conclusion that Americans didn’t really mean to elect Donald Trump, but instead were tricked into doing so by Russian spooks.

That interpretation is dangerous because it gives Trump’s critics carte blanche to disregard the resounding, if unpleasant, messages that his supporters sent by voting for him. Economic desperation, loss of feelings of dignity and self-respect, rampant drug addiction, stifling political correctness, and anger at a corrupt, self-dealing political class — these were just some of the factors that delivered Trump to the White House.

And they are very real, enduring problems, not transient phenomena or figments of our imagination.

The fact that 7 million people who voted for Barack Obama switched their allegiance to Trump in 2012 speaks volumes about what really happened. A careless and complacent political class ignored the grievances of half the country and finally paid the price.

Going further back, there is evidence of angry populism, fed by disillusionment with mainstream politics, such as Ross Perot’s surprisingly successful run as a third-party candidate in 1992. Did the Russians contrive to give him 19% of the vote as well?

The second reason blaming social media and fake news is dangerous is because it shifts responsibility for all the various shortcomings of the American electorate — economic illiteracy, racism, xenophobia, and so on — onto unnamed foreigners bent on stirring up trouble.

How plausible is it that hordes of Americans suddenly became bigots because of an ad or fake news story they saw on Facebook? Much more likely is the classic marketing model: Voters who were already so inclined found their prejudices and fears confirmed and encouraged by things they read and saw on Facebook.

Perhaps this validation made them more likely to vote, but in the end, it is still our nation’s own deep-rooted dysfunctions that are to blame. The 2016 election was not the first time savvy politicians have called on the meaner angels of our natures — and unfortunately, it will not be the last.

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November 29, 2017 at 07:04AM

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Net Neutrality Hits a Nerve, Eliciting Intense Reactions Technology

By CECILIA KANG from NYT Technology http://ift.tt/2ieWp4d
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J. Crew Gets A Cyber Tongue-Lashing

J. Crew Gets A Cyber Tongue-Lashing

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Remember that Oscars snafu where a couple of PricewaterhouseCoopers bean counters botched the hand-off on the Best Picture award leading Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to name the incorrect winner on live TV?

Well there must be some senior IT types at J. Crew who feel pain somewhat akin to what those PwCers felt, when on Cyber Monday the retailer’s site crashed.

Oh boy. Yeah, that’s tough. After all the planning and effort for one of the biggest sales events of the year to have that happen. I can empathize a bit. I mean I’m not perfect and I’ve had an embarrassing moment or two in my career. Hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales weren’t at stake but nonetheless.

And the chatfest that is social media wasn’t pleased.

J. Crew received the most negative social media chatter during the past long weekend of marathon shopping when the retailer's site crashed in the middle of Cyber Monday, according to agency Drumroll. The Austin-based agency measured the love and negative feedback for brands' social mentions during the weekend-long shopping rush to assess the impact on both brand affinity and awareness.

On a more positive note, the agency reported that Microsoft and peripheral gaming hardware brand HyperX experienced the highest fan sentiment. HyperX's headset and keyboard giveaways drove the majority of mentions and positive chatter as did Microsoft's Mixed Reality and Surface deals.

With over three million tweets monitored, Etsy and Amazon were the most-talked about brands, with over 9,000 and 8,600 mentions, respectively.

Shoppers engaged in an unusually high number of audio-based posts, with words like “sound”, “noise-cancelling” and “wireless” all landing in the top 1% of words used. 4K TVs were also one of the most discussed products customers were looking for with the 50" model being the most popular size. Yeah, the bowl games are going to look particularly awesome this year from the living room couch.

Video games, gaming consoles and accessories rounded out the most popular deals over the weekend.

According to Drumroll, other Black Friday-through-Cyber-Monday chat trends this year included the rise of peer-to-peer shopping sites like Etsy, Ebay, Shopify, Zazzle and Society6.

Amazon's AmazonSmile was in the top 1% of all words used per the Drumroll analysis at least in part due to Amazon’s bulked up promotion of the cause-related platform this year.

In addition, REI's #OptOutside campaign, which encourages employees and customers to spend their day off with REI closing down for the day, saw some heightened sentiment as a result.

According to Drumroll’s analysis, the Top 10 most loved brands are: HyperX, Microsoft, Sephora, Rawlings,
Vizio, BJ's Wholesale, Samsung, Sony, Bose and Sam's Club. And the top-10 overall most talked about brands are: Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, Bose, Victoria's Secret, Xbox, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Apple.

Yeah, I don’t think any of their sites crashed. There’s an insight for you J. Crew. Keep that in mind for next year.

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November 28, 2017 at 07:15PM