BrandKnew April 2021

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

Published by 02.22#101

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Dear Friends: One of the most tumultuous times in our history courtesy the pandemic has completed a year of torment the world over. And we are still quite some time away from getting anywhere close to normalcy.

There is more to think about and therefore we are offering more to chew on this edition. We encourage here to approach digital transformation with a marketing mindset. If agile is the go to, we converse about the six prerequisites that are needed for a responsive brand. We also take a look at the prevailing consumer sentiment as Covid 19 completes more than a year of pulversing the world. We wear a magnifying lens to look at how advertising will look in 2030 after the carnage it faced in 2020. CLTV(Customer Lifetime Value) gets a revisit in this edition and the hard truths get bared. We ask brand owners and brand guardians if they are mastering AI- otherwise AI will master them.

As an extension we also dive deep to talk how AI solves some of marketing’s biggest challenges. The good old ‘ brainstorming ‘ that we are all so used to gets a new look, since we were getting it all wrong. In this issue, we also unravel the brand endorsement potential of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, now that loyalty is not royalty any more. The precursor to becoming a better marketing professional is to strive for wisdom. Understand more in this issue. Content Marketing and Thought Leadership.

The twain don’t meet. Know why in this edition.

There is ample more to soak in and savour. So, till the next, my very best!

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Suresh Dinakaran @ISDGlobalDubai

@Brandknewmag

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Brand Knew is published by

Brand Consultancy | Advertising | PR | Publishing Digital Media | Film Academy For Advertising Enquiries: engage@groupisd.com or call + 050 6254340 All Copyright of the content in this issue rests fully & comprehensively with the respective contributors and/or media platforms at all times, as the case may be.

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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Chief Strategy Director: Rishi Mohan Brand Engagement and Outreach Specialist: Anuva Madan Chief Country Man, India: Rohit Unni Brand Trends and Research Architect: Meeta Pendse Revenue Growth Architect: Ritu Dey Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Performance Marketing Architect: Ryan Govindan

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CONTENTS The 10 most innovative design companies of 2021 Approaching Digital Transformation With a Marketing Mindset Six Prerequisites for a Responsive Brand How striving for wisdom makes us better marketing pros Are You Mastering AI? Or Will AI Master You? (More) digital trends for 2021: Making the new old again Advertising in 2030 after the impact of 2020 No More Taboos: Why Brands Are Telling The Unvarnished Truth About Bodily Functions The Hard Truth About Customer Lifetime Value The creative power of 4—and how it can make your teams more productive Brand Endorsement Potential Of Meghan Markle And Prince Harry Revealed In New Poll Top Marketing Trends for Recovering Brands Content Marketing and Thought Leadership: What’s the Difference?

Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong How AI Solves One of Marketing’s Greatest Challenges Marketing That Saves Lives: Jasmine Gee on Marketing Smarts [Podcast] Helping hands: the real value of mentorship in the ad industry Consumer sentiment on COVID-19 in 2021: Five actions for brands Rise Of Buy Now, Pay Later Brands Sparks New Lending Industry Marketing Battle This new Facebook ad targets the only people left who actually like the brand Microsoft’s Peter DeBenedictis: “tech is an enabler, but don’t lose sight of the human element” Book, Line & Sinker

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The 10 most innovative design companies of 2021

BY FAST COMPANY STAFF

Design used to be simple. Create the most beautiful objects and experiences you can to solve problems big and small.

Today, it’s complicated. Any new design must be weighed against its impact on the environment and human equity as much as its own purpose or practicality. This year’s selections for the Most Innovative Companies in Design balance cuttingedge breakthroughs with grounded perspectives. Plus, we have some fun with Mario along the way.

$130) that ditched metal and extraneous internal processors;

1. ADIDAS

perspective is appreciated by its confidential clients (who work

For demonstrating eye-popping green innovation Through relentless public experimentation, Adidas continues to develop new shoe-making technologies that mix performance, sustainability, and a bold aesthetic point of view. Adidas spent the last year updating its marshmallowy Loop shoe—made from one material, allowing it to be ground up, melted, and reformed. It also debuted Strung, which uses robots to wrap layer after layer of yarn to create an upper, before baking it into a near-zero-waste product that looks like string art. And in the waning hours of 2020, the company showed off one more trick: Futurenatural. Adidas can now mold the top of a shoe at the same moment it’s fused to the bottom of the shoe to create seamless footwear.

the device’s beautiful mirror finish reflects the design of your own room, while processing happens in the cloud.

3. LEVEL For rethinking industrial design tropes This San Francisco design firm is a rarity in the industry.

It’s female-founded, and staffed 70% by women. Level’s at big corporations you’d know). But 2020 was undeniably the firm’s breakout year, with the launch of Tempo, a smart exercise mirror that sneaks all necessary weights and accessories into a shell that looks like furniture rather than fitness equipment.

4. FLOYD For making work-from-home life more homey Direct-to-consumer furniture brands are a dime a dozen.

But Detroit-based Floyd has distinguished itself by offering just a few pieces of no-frills, quality-built furniture with a unique point of view, such as a couch designed to be easily disassembled and moved. In 2020, as much of the world

2. GOOGLE

began working from home, somewhat uncomfortably, Floyd

For championing a new pragmatism

modular shelving units and a standing desk. The shelves are

In 2020, as supply chains tightened, Google’s industrial design team took a step back from high-tech to focus on a philosophy of “just enough.” It ripped the superfluous 3D-scanning sensor from its $800 Pixel smartphones, resulting in a $499 Pixel that still has the latest 5G speeds and a huge battery. It did something similar with its Nest thermostats, creating a more affordable model (priced at

released two solutions: new add-ons to its best-selling, affixed to the wall with Velcro anchors and can be installed in 15 minutes. The standing desk has a spartan steel-andplywood frame that only subtly hints at its strength—350 pounds of lifting capacity, available with a button press.

5. SEVENTH GENERATION For eliminating disposable bottles

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11 Plastic containers like those from cleaning products are choking our environment. So Seventh Generation debuted a series of products in 2020 that ditch plastic altogether. These new products are pellets and powders rather than liquids; without moisture inside these formulas, Seventh Generation’s new line can be delivered in steel cans—which are far more likely to be recycled than plastic bottles.

6. TEENAGE ENGINEERING For cultivating a new type of audiophile To be an audiophile once meant that you bought $15,000 speakers and vinyl. Teenage Engineering is redefining the term for the 21st century to embrace quirky digital technologies and sharp industrial design. In 2020 Teenage Engineering sold a modular speaker and lighting kit through Ikea, developed a “magic radio” that memorizes the music you play and can replay it in an endless loop, and created a new handheld machine that lets you compose vintagesounding gaming tracks with a real 8-bit synthesizer and classic sounds from Street Fighter and Mega Man. 7. BOX CLEVER For turning the small design consultancy on its head Design consultancies have a tough business model: work for hire. That means a studio that creates the next hit product usually gets a flat fee for its work, while losing the longer-term upside to the business. Box Clever—hot off the creation of the hit direct-to-consumer brand Caraway cookware—wants to change that. Box Clever aims to make equity investments represent 70% of future revenue, with 30% of revenue brought in from traditional contract work. Big studios like Frog have tried this sort of model in the past, but how will a team with just 16 people pull it off? Box Clever is staging a new investment fund in 2021. This fund pays the studio’s own overhead for time spent on equity projects, allowing Box Clever to keep paychecks flowing while making bigger-bet investments.

8. VELAN STUDIOS For rethinking play After four years of working stealthily, this experimental design studio, focused on finding new ways to play, debuted a surprise hit in September: Mario Kart Live. Using a real radio-controlled car, Mario Kart Live turns the digital game into a mixed-reality experience. Not only did Velan figure out how to elevate mixed reality from a gimmick to a must-play game, it also convinced Nintendo to put one of its biggest franchises on the line and try it right out of the gate.

9. HMNTYCNTRD For challenging the ethics and equity of UX Algorithms can be racist and discriminatory. Apps are built to put the needs of business plans first and consumers second.

HmntyCntrd (which stands for “Humanity Centered”) is a selfascribed professional growth community for UX specialists.

Through classes and monthly meetups, the team unpacks creator privilege—what it actually takes to prioritize people in design—and within real work contexts as opposed to college campus theory. Launched in mid-2020, HmntyCntrd has already attracted employees from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, Shopify, Spotify, and Adobe.

10. CALLALY For bringing UX to periods Tampons can leak during heavy flow. Pads can feel inflexible and diaper-like. The startup Callaly developed a third option, called a tampliner. It’s a soft, cotton tampon that features a small, winged tip that tucks inside the labia to move with a woman’s body rather than her underwear. Since launching in 2020, Callaly has sold more than a million tampliners in the U.K. alone, and nearly half of customers reported that they would use a tampliner again. Now the company is planning global expansion into the U.S. and China.

Katie Mackay-Sinclair has been helping Ikea share the virtues of sleep for years.

She says that for the future health of every single one of us, brands need to play a more positive role in our bedtime, not just cram our every waking moment full of more entertainment, products and experiences.

Imagine you’re briefed on the launch of a new brand. One whose core product is abundant yet affordable, with the potent ability to dramatically improve human cognitive and physical performance. Surely everyone would consume it at as high a frequency as time allowed? If only. The brand is sleep, its product a good night of it – and none of us are getting enough of either.

Sleep on the wane If the past year has accelerated many trends, and exacerbated many woes, sleep has been doubly squeezed. Compared to our parents, we’re all getting less sleep and of a lower quality too; 70% of us sleep less than the recommended minimum seven hours a night, and a staggering one-inthree experience some form of insomnia. And these stats are before we layer on the toll of this past year. I’m typing this months after recovering from coronavirus, when the inability to sleep lingered long after my actual infection disappeared.

But Covid to one side, culturally, sleep has become something to be scrimped on, not luxuriated in.

It’s tempting to chalk this up to yet another thing that’s changed since the Boomers were young. But there’s something more worrying at play than the tally of missed shut-eye. Sleep – or lack thereof – is one of the biggest issues of our generation.

Opportunity cost or vital function?

A sobering fact: for every hour of sleep lost, we lose one IQ point. One sleepless night is cognitively the same as having a 0.1 blood alcohol level – too high to legally drive (the English, Welsh and Northern Irish driving limit is 0.08).

But it’s not just cognitive malaise; the time it takes for your muscles to get exhausted drops by 10-30% when you dip below six hours shut-eye in a day. The longer-term impact on our mental health is stark; in 2011, analysis of 21 different studies found that people who experience insomnia have a two-fold risk of developing depression over those who do not have problems sleeping.

Of course, humans wouldn’t have evolved to spend a third of their lives as downtime unless this played an important role in making our bodies and brains into the most dominant on this planet. From emotional resilience and creative thinking to basic brain maintenance, sleep is a big part of the reason we’re ahead. Thomas Roth from the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit put it pretty bluntly: “The percentage of the population who need less than five hours of sleep per night, rounded to a whole number, is zero.”

Sleep is big business, predicted to be worth $585bn by 2024.

And yet most marketing activity and innovation is focused on increasing the possibility of our waking hours; cramming

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Approaching Digital Transformation With a Marketing Mindset

By Katie Mackay-Sinclair

more experiences, more products and more entertainment into more and more hours awake. Ultimately, the focus is upon encouraging sleep sacrifice to create even more time for even more stimulation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 80% of us would prioritize catching up on the internet over getting the recommended seven hours. Which would be fine, if sleep didn’t actually do something pretty vital for our health and wellbeing.

We’ve worked with Ikea in helping to share sleep’s virtues and benefits for many years. Most recently, we told the nightbefore-the-race story from the perspective of both tortoise and hare and showcased the benefits of a good night’s sleep through the perspective of claimed benefits of fad products.

I am grateful for the personal benefit such an in-depth understanding of sleep has given me and everyone at Mother who has worked on the brand. And let me tell you, there’s so much more to a good night’s sleep than a good bed – although that is a good place to start.

Busting the sleep myth There’s a fallacy that we’re all born either good or bad sleepers. This just isn’t true. Everyone can sleep well. But in order to do it, you have to focus on techniques and rituals known as ‘sleep hygiene’. It’s not simply a case of jumping into bed, closing your eyes and ta-da, welcome to the land of nod. But it’s a heck of a lot less complicated than the booming sleep industry might have you believe. If you have children, you’re probably doing a lot of this ‘sleep hygiene’ for them already, and if you don’t, then I can bet it was part of your early life even if it has fallen by the wayside as an adult.

Consider the wonderful wind-down of childhood bedtimes: a

warm bath, followed by warm milk and a calming bedtime story told in gentle tones in a darkened room. Contrast that with how many of us end our day as adults. Sleep-related rituals have been supplanted by an environment that’s been evolving faster than we have ever since the industrial revolution. From light available on-demand 24 hours a day to the entirety of human knowledge and entertainment available in our hands 24 hours a day, transmitted to us via a sleep-suppressing blue hue. Advances in technology have extended waking hours, making sleep less alluring to our increasingly tired yet wired brains.

Brands at bedtime No doubt about it, we’ve fallen into a state of culturally encouraged sleep bulimia and the last 12 months have only compounded the issue. Brands can play a major role in recalibrating this, helping us to see hours asleep as vital (not wasted) in the pursuit of a full and fulfilling life. Both the bedtime ritual itself and the concept of ‘sleep hygiene’ create opportunities aplenty for brands to refocus themselves through the lens of sleep. From bedtime stories on Channel 4, to a range of sleep-inducing relaxing scents at The Body Shop, or sleep-encouraging paints by Dulux; there are few that couldn’t have a point of view and positive impact on sleep.

Experts call the FOMO-induced sleep deficit a ticking time bomb, warning that our cultural understanding of the sleep/ good health dynamic is probably where smoking was 50 years ago. For the future health of every single one of us, there’s nothing more important than a good night’s sleep.

Let’s prioritize it not only for ourselves but for the teams, brands and businesses we shepherd.

Six Prerequisites for a Responsive Brand

By Tim Brown

How quick are your brand’s reflexes? How quick should they be?

Consider that we live in an era in which a brand can be targeted without notice on social media one day, send all its employees home to work remotely the next, and have to convert its physical events program into a virtual one not long after.

Consider, too, that people’s media consumption habits altered almost overnight in concert with their (in)ability to travel, causing some media channels to fall off the radar and others to enjoy newfound popularity (webinar platforms of the world, take a bow).

In short, responsiveness has never been so important.

To date, most marketers have applied the term “responsive” to websites that adapt their content automatically to suit the screen on which they’re being viewed. But in 2021, “responsive” is better suited to describe a brand that can quickly adapt its marketing to communicate relevant messaging to customers as soon as they need it, in whichever channel they choose.

So how can marketing teams, many of which are facing the added pressure of reduced resources, set themselves up for success now that responsiveness is an essential ingredient for good brand health?

Examine your brand, structure, processes, tools, and expectations to ascertain whether your brand can truly be considered responsive. In particular, ask yourself the following six questions.

1. Can your brand respond to the changing market in hours rather than days?

In the post-COVID world, speed is about being able to respond to regulatory changes and shifting attitudes within hours, or overnight, instead of two or three weeks.

That capability doesn’t develop by itself. It’s not enough for the executive team to understand the value of a quick decision; the marketing team must, in turn, have the decision-making, production, and approval processes in place to facilitate rapid action, as well as the means to disseminate the word.

If you’ve pulled the pin on your physical annual conference, for example, you’ll need to get the word out quickly—

preferably alongside news of some other virtual activities you may be planning. At minimum, that means revisiting and updating all your conference marketing materials, from your website and conference site to your online ads and brochures.

B2B marketer RedHat quickly reinvented its considerable event program in 2020 from physical to virtual, and it still managed to attract 40,000 registrations to its annual summit. The shift was supported by a responsive production process that enabled the international marketing team to quickly edit and update multiple documents with universal changes in minutes rather than days.

Among the processes and tools that support such capability: • Automated daily or weekly reports. Monitor mentions, comments, and references involving your brand on the Web and on social channels daily. Track website traffic, content trends, and lead generation at least weekly.

• A structure to support rapid decision-making. Some companies have instituted a COVID management team that meets daily to discuss developments in the business and in the world, as well as ways to best handle those developments with customers in mind.

• A crisis management plan. If your brand is called out on social media or embroiled in a PR nightmare, it helps not to have to manage the response process on the fly. Having a plan in place will ensure that everyone involved knows their role and the amount of time they have to respond.

• Responsive production technology. The process of physically making small changes to large numbers of marketing materials is slow and expensive.

Communications across multiple channels must be able to be updated accurately and quickly while safeguarding the brand’s look and feel.

2. Is your brand identity able to be executed compliantly by anyone in the organization?

It’s not only Marketing that needs to adapt to quickly changing circumstances. Sales, Product, Human Resources, Finance, and Accounting are all likely to have changing requirements—whether that’s communicating new offers to the market, updating sales and product marketing collateral with new positioning, adapting work policies for a remote

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working environment, or providing customer relief through flexible payment terms.

progression as well as email delivery and contentbased nurture with marketing automation tools

Responsive brands such as Monash University have frameworks in place that enable their teams to selfproduce content within set brand guidelines to protect brand consistency, maintain flexibility, and facilitate speed to market while avoiding tying up limited marketing and design resources with repetitive, manual changes.

• Brand automation: Enshrining brand guidelines in responsive templates that facilitate rapid editing and production of approved assets within limited parameters at speed and scale

Your framework should include the following: • Brand and style guidelines that provide clear explanations of how the brand, logos, colors, language, and so on are used (and not used) to represent your brand • A central repository of approved assets, whether a library, digital asset manager, or file directory, with all your approved formats in it, accessible by the entire team • Editable templates that allow your teams to produce the collateral they need while also maintaining brand consistency (Locking down the templates to limit the changes teams can make will reduce the approval load on the “brand police” or marketing team.)

3. Is your brand marketing reliant on any one person to keep the wheels turning?

Many organizations struggle with a level of organizational inertia because of enshrined bottlenecks and blockers.

In brand marketing, it’s often the CMO who needs to approve all work, or the head designer who alone understands the brand guidelines.

Truly responsive brands take steps to grease the wheels. You might consider...

• An approval matrix: If it’s tiered according to the complexity or budget of the campaign, less complex marketing work can be approved by other team members, facilitating speed.

• Creative committee: In larger enterprises, a team of people that makes decisions about creative work, particularly from external agencies, can help develop a shared understanding of brand values as well as enabling work to get out the door even if key personnel are away.

4. Can your brand marketing be executed at scale?

If everything is a bespoke execution, your marketing organization will need to add resources to keep pace with growth. Responsive brands understand that to scale marketing activity, structure and tools must be put in place to handle predictable, repetitive, manual work so the marketing team is free to tackle strategic work and new projects.

Although most marketing teams use a variety of martech tools, brand marketing requires relatively low levels of automation, in general. At a minimum, it’s worth considering...

• Email automation: Automating lead scoring and

• Content automation: Tagging content as it’s created to enable its rapid use and reuse (for example, a listicle-style blog post repurposed, with minimal human intervention, for use as social tiles, checklists, and cheat sheets) • Process and admin automation: Automating compliance or billing processes, for example, that can save teams hours every week 5. Can your brand directly address your customers?

At the heart of a responsive brand is the ability to speak to customers in a personalized way; however, many personalization initiatives fail to generate the amount of content required to serve all key personas at different stages in the buying process.

Depending on the level of personalization required, integration may be necessary between tools used by the marketing team and those used by the broader organization, including the following: • CRM system • Marketing automation platform • Accounting software • Brand automation solution • Content management system • Digital asset manager 6. Is your brand marketing dependent on external production workflows?

A creative agency can be a huge asset to a brand, but regardless of how efficient and responsive, external suppliers always extend response timelines. And if your account manager takes a few days off, the process slows to a crawl.

In-housing, or the process of taking creative and other agency services in-house, has been picking up speed in recent years, according to the Association of National Advertisers, which reported in 2018 that 78% of brands have some kind of in-house capacity.

The importance of that capability is growing during the pandemic. Over 90% of advertisers say they have adjusted their messaging during the pandemic, and 55% nominated their in-house agency or another “internal team” (42%) as being “very important” for that (only 26% nominated an “external agency”).

Brands should be self-sufficient in their ability to respond quickly, not reliant on external agencies to find and update assets.

How striving for wisdom makes us better marketing pros

By Allison+Partners

Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge,

enables us to guide them through all sorts of comms tasks

experience, understanding, common sense and insight.

and challenges. So, it’s crucial to be curious. But it’s also

And it’s a quality that would benefit everyone in the

fundamental not to be judgmental or bring in your own

communications business.

biases.

Communications professionals who want to excel in their

Ambiguity Tolerance

roles should make wisdom the base of creative and strategic thinking and the core of our relationship to the people surrounding us. We’d be more thoughtful, inclusive and understanding, things that are also wins for us as human beings.

When we talk about ambiguity tolerance, we mean listening without bias and taking things as they are. But it’s also about carrying on – head held high and focused – even though you might have a murky picture of the situation or, in the worst case, no clue about the right thing to do. Ambiguity tolerance

Here are five factors that contribute to wisdom and are also

is a must-have for all wise people – you accept there are

part of the communications business:

things you cannot control. There will always be things that

Curiosity Being curious throughout your life is an excellent sign you’re on the right path to wisdom, as Judith Glück, a professor for developmental psychology, describes in her book “Weisheit” (German for wisdom).

happen outside your comfort zone and outside your value base. There is constant change in life, and it is often not easy to maintain a clear view on the right path.

Who in comms doesn’t understand this? Communicating around strategies that haven’t been thought through or navigating comms in crises demands calm and focus, taking

For communications pros, openness to new things is crucial

things in stride making the best of them. It’s one thing to

for our profession – especially on the agency side. Serving

see the necessity of this characteristic – it’s another thing to

clients from a variety of sectors requires a natural curiosity

actively live it. It’s tough, but it comes with practice.

for their fields and how they fit into society’s bigger picture.

Communicators must frequently ask: “Why? How? When?

Regulation of Emotions

Who?” And many more questions. Only by asking can

Ambiguity tolerance doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have

we understand the industry and the client in a way that

emotions or feelings. It means controlling and regulating

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emotions in a conscious way.

that lead to business success.

Emotions are essential indeed, but they tend to overwhelm

To me, this skill is THE must have for every communications

us from time to time, making a cognitive approach in

professional. Sensitivity, the ability to read between the lines,

communications often tricky. It’s not about shutting off

and a positive, curious attitude toward others support this key

emotions. It’s about handling them in a productive way and

requirement for wisdom – and communication pros.

dealing with a situation in an unbiased way.

Taking a deep breath before reacting or sleeping a night

Reflection

before answering a challenging email – there are many tactics

All this isn’t complete without the skill to reflect and understand

to help control emotions and keep a clear head. Finding the

complex interdependencies. Questioning yourself regularly

one that works best for you can be a complete game-changer

enables you to see the bigger picture and locate angles that

in your career.

carry the ability to improve any situation. Transferred to the

Empathy The fourth resource is described perfectly with the German word “Einfühlungsvermögen” – “the ability to feel or empathize.” Empathy is not to be confused with sympathy. To picture yourself in someone’s situation enables us to change perspective and to feel the strains someone is caught in.

If you can master this shift in communications, this can be

world of communications, this is the resource that catapults anyone from being caught in operations to becoming a strategist - a game-changer.

Understanding a shut-down of whole societies has specific effects on people’s behaviors, economical processes and political decision-making can give you a head start in creating the spot-on communication approach.

the base for relatable, trustful and authentic approaches

A great example is Budweiser’s campaign for Super Bowl

that make a difference to your target group. How is my

LV. For the first time in a decade, the beer brewing giant

key audience coping with the Pandemic? Where are the

chose not to create a video spot and instead opted to support

challenges and hardships, and what would make their life

COVID-19 vaccination efforts. With this choice, it made an

easier? If you feel it, you can create powerful connections

impact that will save lives.

Are You Mastering AI? Or Will AI Master You?

By Tom Kaneshige

Black swan events, like the global pandemic, show the shortcomings of analyzing historical data to predict buying behavior. Perhaps the only thing for certain is that people facing an abnormal event will not behave normally.

What marketers need is a way to understand the customer beyond historical purchasing patterns. This isn’t to say history doesn’t matter. Think of it as knowing your best friend after years of interactions and achieving a level of understanding about how they will likely behave in unprecedented situations.

business-outcome attribution.

Yet many marketers simply don’t have a good grasp of AI. They don’t know enough to separate fact from fiction, and this can get them into trouble.

Do we have such a system? Can it learn about people to this degree quickly and at scale? Absolutely. It’s called artificial intelligence, or AI.

Let’s say, for instance, a marketer relies on AI to analyze mountains of customer data and deliver actionable insights in the form of the best discount for a given customer or customer segment. Specifically, the “powered by AI” software analyzes past customer behavior, the customer’s current propensity to buy in the category, and buying behavior in other categories in regards to price and discounts. Then the sleek software churns out authentic-looking discounts that will be automatically offered to the customer in real-time.

Much has been written about AI, with the slogan “powered

by AI” appearing on all sorts of marketing collateral. This has resulted in a lot of confusion. I’ve covered AI for years, and the best definition I’ve seen comes from Michael Wu, chief AI strategist at PROS, who writes:

But are they the right discounts? Maybe the discount is too high, thus leaving money on the table for the company.

Maybe it’s too low and doesn’t convert enough customers.

Or maybe the AI is racially biased, in which case the unfair discounts pose a serious risk to the brand.

#AI = a machine mimicry of human behavior with two characteristics: (1) the ability to #AUTOMATE human decision and subsequent actions, (2) the ability to #LEARN and improve its performance with usage.

“If you don’t understand what is actually happening inside AI’s black box, you will be in a dangerous position,” Rajamannar told the CIO Council. “Your marketing team needs to be able to decipher and understand it.”

Let’s consider this definition in a marketing context.

Mimicking and automating human behavior is like having a marketer with the brain power of a superhero. The notion of learning, improving and adapting puts an emphasis on future behaviors, not historical models. What’s the net effect? Imagine having millions of friends and being able to predict with a high degree of accuracy their buying behavior in new purchasing scenarios.

How do you start? Rajamannar says marketers can begin with low-cost pilots with a small project and open-source AI. They can take online education programs from Harvard, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. He suggests marketers collaborate closely with IT, which has the technical wherewithal to debunk “powered by AI” software.

This is the promise of AI and the start of a company’s ambitious journey to become a customer-intuitive enterprise.

Isn’t this the future of marketing?

“AI is going to be a game changer in every aspect of marketing,” writes Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer and president of healthcare business at Mastercard, in his new book Quantum Marketing. “If they don’t understand the way it works and the possibilities it can bring, they will be missing the boat. AI will never replace marketers. But marketers who resist it will be replaced by those who understand its power.”

AI has the potential to greatly impact campaign planning, media buying, targeting, personalization and other critical marketing functions. It might soon be able to create content, including advertisements, without the involvement of human marketers. Rajamannar says some AI solutions can already estimate ROI in advance of a campaign or promo — a step towards AI helping to solve marketing’s problem of

Marketers need at least a basic knowledge of AI on their team, say, a marketing AI specialist. Much like a marketing statistician in the old days, this person should be technically savvy enough to consider many factors affecting output and be able to discern if AI is producing good insights. In other words, an AI specialist can help demystify the black box.

It’s time to take on any or all of these efforts, as AI becomes the engine of marketing.

“From learning about consumers deeply to enabling hyperpersonalization to optimizing programs on the fly, AI can hugely enhance marketing effectiveness and efficiency,” Rajamannar writes in his book. “At this stage of the evolution of AI in the context of marketing, it is important for marketers to get their head around it.”

Tom Kaneshige is the Chief Content Officer at the CMO Council. He creates all forms of digital thought leadership content that helps growth and revenue officers, line of business leaders, and chief marketers succeed in their rapidly evolving roles. You can reach him at tkaneshige@cmocouncil.org.

(More) digital trends for 2021: Making the new old again

By Jeremy Goldman

In December, we released our “10 Key Digital Trends for

according to recent OnePoll research sponsored by World of

2021” report, which contained major trends to watch for

Warships by Wargaming. Wristwatch preferences, particularly

in the year ahead, from the rise of Disney as a streaming

among collectors, have skewed toward favorites of yesteryear

powerhouse, to the enactment of a federal privacy law, to the

such as Swatches and Casio G-Shocks. Drive-in theaters are

ascent of first-party data—and, more importantly, what these

also making a comeback, and baseball card sales have

developments mean for marketers. But what else ought to be

spiked to a level not seen in years.

on your radar?

“During times of distress, it’s a natural coping mechanism for

Here’s our fourth in a series of additional transformative

people to want to think about happier times,” said Victoria

developments that should be on your radar throughout 2021.

Petrock, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.

Nostalgia marketing may win out over newness Especially for younger consumers, a significant attraction of digital products and platforms has been their novelty, as opposed to their utility. But the novel coronavirus has given most of us as much novelty as we care to deal with. As the pandemic drags past Q1 and into Q2, the desire for a return to normalcy will only grow stronger, to one degree or another.

This is why nostalgia marketing will likely continue to enjoy a

“People are baking homemade bread, doing jigsaw puzzles, and listening to classic music from decades past to try to find comfort in those experiences.”

Given that we’re far from out of the woods with the pandemic, we can expect the current wave of nostalgia marketing to continue. But all of this begs the question: Will harkening to the past bode ill for new technologies such as 5G and virtual reality (VR)? Will new and improved just not have their usual

renaissance in 2021.

edge over the tried and true? After all, the ongoing recession

Nostalgia saw an uptick after 9/11, during the Great

tech they don’t absolutely need. That said, while nostalgia

Recession, and amid the pandemic as well, as evidenced by the recent Super Bowl. Frito-Lay invested in nostalgia by hiring Mindy Kaling, Jimmy Kimmel, and Matthew McConaughey to reintroduce 1990s snack Doritos 3D Crunch. In a spot

will also limit the ability of many consumers to spend on new and cutting-edge technology may seem to be at odds, there’s no data that suggests a resurgence in one will lead to a decline in the other.

for Cheetos, the company enlisted Ashton Kutcher and Mila

“On the surface, this turn toward nostalgia may seem as if

Kunis, famous for their pairing on “That ’70s Show,” along

it’s signaling a return to low tech,” Petrock said. “But this isn’t

with singer Shaggy, for a rendition of the latter’s 2000 hit

completely true. New technology is actually making many of

“It Wasn’t Me.” Uber Eats reunited Wayne and Garth from

these nostalgic indulgences possible.”

“Wayne’s World”; the duo last hit movie theaters 28 years ago. Notice a pattern?

While some people are absolutely taking a step back to reevaluate their relationships with technology, most are using

It’s not just advertising that has been bitten by the nostalgia

tech to bring their past forward to the present, she said. “Right

bug. Some 71% of Americans said they began playing video

now, I don’t see a big rush to give up internet service, cell

games more after the pandemic began, with more than one

phones, or Netflix subscriptions. Maybe people in the future

in three turning to classic video games from their childhood,

will be using VR to experience what’s happening today.”

Advertising in 2030 after the impact of 2020

By Lee Walsh, Essence

Making public predictions is a notoriously embarrassing pursuit – think the Titanic is unsinkable and the iPhone will fail. Now with COVID-19, e-commerce, the ethical use of algorithms, and social and environmental issues, among other issues, predicting the next 10 years will be even harder.

But Lee Walsh argues that APAC brands that thrived during the pandemic should be able to adapt.

As the saying goes, predicting the future is easy, getting it

right is hard.

Recently, global media agency Essence surveyed over 50 marketing experts from around the world on their opinion of the impact of 2020 on the future of advertising.

The results are detailed in 2030 Revisited, a follow-up to the Advertising in 2030 report issued in early 2020 which asked the experts to assess the likelihood of 15 different scenarios occurring inside the next decade.

brandknewmag.com

23 Key themes that emerged as a result of COVID-19 and the upheaval of 2020 were: • e-commerce • the digitisation of experiences • trust and values.

Back to the future Before we jump into the predictions made by the great and good of the marketing, media and advertising industry, it is worth taking a quick look back at where we were 10 years ago.

In 2011, Google was already established as the number one search engine. Facebook was a runaway success preparing for a major IPO. The iPhone had already been with us for four years.

On the surface, you could argue that predicting the previous 10 years in advertising would have been relatively simple. Of course, it was always going to be search, social and mobile.

Yet, what lies beneath the success of these channels was the use of large data sets and algorithms to serve up ever more appealing content and targeted advertising.

Essence’s study showed that in 2021, it feels like we are at a turning point for the industry and the principles that have underpinned the successes of the past 10 years.

COVID-19, privacy, government regulations, e-commerce, 5G, the ethical use of algorithms, social and environmental issues – while each could set the industry on a different path, all of them taken together make predicting the next 10 years harder than ever.

Woke vs convenience E-commerce has been one of the major winners from the past year. The way many people research and purchase products has changed dramatically. Some brands are wellpositioned to capitalise on this, while others are still trying to bend legacy systems to the needs of today’s consumers.

“In a stressed world, ease and utility trump all other factors.

This favours brands with a seamless digital experience and flawless execution over all others, regardless of stated consumer preferences (for example, desire to support local brands or be more ethical or sustainable),” said Matt Isaacs, Counteract managing partner and Essence co-founder and former CEO/chairman.

At the same time, 60% of the experts surveyed forecast that the events of 2020 will accelerate the trend towards consumer prioritisation of environmental issues.

“Consumers are more conscious than ever of the power of where they spend their money,” said Miranda Dimopoulos, regional CEO at IAB South-east Asia and India. “We are seeing demand for companies to walk the talk, show diversity and inclusivity on their boards, implement environmentally considerate alternatives.”

But here is a conundrum for many brands and consumers: If you get used to $10 T-shirts delivered to your door, it is probably best not to think too much about the environmental

impact of your purchase.

Over the next 10 years, can brands convince consumers to value and pay for ethically sourced products in an e-commerce ecosystem where price is often the determining factor?

Trust me, I’m a brand One remarkable aspect of Amazon’s growth story is the rise of its private label brand products. In 2019, AmazonBasics goods were the sales leaders in almost half of Amazon’s 51 product categories.

The risk for many brands in the next 10 years is that they may be commoditised out of existence, such as in categories like batteries versus Duracell and tissues versus Kleenex.

What difference does this make in an online listing and how much are consumers willing to pay for that branded difference? That question ultimately comes down to trust in a brand. For companies not to be at the mercy of a marketplace’s algorithm, building a brand will be as important as ever.

In times of social stress and uncertainty, consumers will favour the trusted over the unknown. As Devin Cook from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at MIT Sloan School of Management put it: “People are falling back on tried, true and trusted brands, those that their moms would endorse!”

Virtual, but no less personal A major shift in human behaviour and a challenge for brands to maintain relevance: • 59% of respondents believe it is more likely that we will spend a majority of our time in virtual environments by 2030 “The biggest change this pandemic has brought about is that the consumer is negotiating ‘the idea of touch’ with brands,” said Abhishek Grover, Samsung Electronics Asia’s regional digital marketing head, mobile business. “Consumers across demographics are seeking convenient experiences that provide the joy of interaction in this digital-first world.”

And as pointed out by Veronica Barassi, professor in media and communications studies at the University of St. Gallen, virtual does not mean less personal.

“Brands will need to be able to develop more human-centred communication strategies to shape online interactions.

Consumers are craving face-to-face interactions.”

What does this mean for APAC brands?

History shows that trends are often accelerated in times of major economic and cultural disruption. Many of the topics highlighted in Essence’s research were already gaining momentum in 2019.

No one knows what the next 10 years hold. Yet, the brands which have thrived through the pandemic were the ones that already anticipated key trends and were capable of adapting to change.

Who would have predicted that the most prevalent technology to come out of the past year was probably the QR code? As Victor Hugo wrote in 1852, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

NO MORE TABOOS: WHY BRANDS ARE TELLING THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH ABOUT BODILY FUNCTIONS

By Jack Neff.

Images and frank talk about breastfeeding, periods and ‘poop’ hit the marketing mainstream—like it or not If the pandemic has made us yearn for one thing, it’s a good poop.

Well, among many other things. Along with far more serious issues like death and debilitating side effects, COVID-19 and the lockdown lifestyle it spawned have caused more constipation. So when Bayer’s Phillips brand recently launched an ad from Energy BBDO proclaiming, “You deserve a good poop,” it was very much of the moment, as Teresa GonzalezRuiz, VP of marketing for Nutritionals and Digestive Health at Bayer sees it.

People staying home, stressed out, sitting more, eating carbloaded comfort food–that all contributes to the constipation side-pandemic, Gonzalez-Ruiz says. Meanwhile, people have gotten used to a certain informality from a year of working at home, unshaven, in casual clothes, sometimes attending Zoom meetings. So when Energy BBDO came up with the colloquial “poop” idea, the time seemed right.

“The brand is on fire,” Gonzalez-Ruiz says of Phillips, and it’s been getting overwhelmingly positive comments since it launched the ad last month.

Bayer’s ad is among the milder manifestations of an ongoing trend toward marketers serving up the unvarnished truth about bodily fluids and functions. While in the past, advertisers might have used purposely vague representations and polite-company language in ads for intimate products, today they are telling it like it is. Gone are the blue liquids—today marketers are embracing blood or blood-like representations in sanitary protection products, nursing moms’ chafed and clogged nipples, Charmin bears’ itchy bottoms or cervical mucus.

And while a Harris Poll of consumers for Ad Age shows many people still uncomfortable seeing or hearing some of these things in ads, the trend only appears to be accelerating.

The reasons are myriad: Younger targets for mainstream brands are less likely to be offended by straight talk and big brands are increasingly competing with edgier challenger and direct-to-consumer brands that flaunt norms and don’t mince words.

From d-to-c to mainstream One of the bigger drivers of forthrightness in advertising has

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been the rise of direct-to-consumer challenger brands, which make a habit of talking frankly about the conditions they deal with, says Dipanjan Chatterjee, VP and marketing analyst with Forrester.

Squatty Potty, for example, has made a small fortune selling small step stools that help people excrete better. Its video showing a unicorn who poops rainbow-colored soft-serve ice cream has more than 40 million YouTube views. Poo-Pourri similarly has built a business for its toilet spray around potty humor. And Roman founder and CEO Zacharia Reitano talks frankly into the camera about his own erectile dysfunction problems on TV to pitch his online-prescribed solution.

The boldness of upstarts eventually finds its way to bigger incumbents, Chatterjee says. For example, while KimberlyClark Corp’s U by Kotex began mocking the fakery of traditional feminine hygiene ads in 2010, it didn’t actually try replacing industry standard blue-fluid demos with lifelike red in digital and social ads last year. That came six years after d-to-c player Hello Flo launched its “First Moon Party” viral video around the story of a girl who fakes her first period by squeezing sparkly red paint into a sanitary napkin.

Still, U by Kotex still hasn’t put much media support behind its red-fluid demos or other online ads in the past year, and it’s

been losing market share, per IRI data from Evercore ISI. And the Harris Poll shows why putting more media weight behind those ads might be a bad idea. As natural as red demos may seem, they’re far from a safe bet for certain demographics.

Showing actual menstrual blood, like period underwear marketer Modibodi has done, goes over even worse with older audiences.

By a 54% to 46% margin people in the Harris Poll disagreed with sanitary product advertisers using red rather than blue fluid to simulate blood. They disagreed with showing actual menstrual blood by a 71% to 29% margin. Perhaps surprisingly, females are more opposed than males to both red fluid or blood in ads.

Then again, advertisers using red fluid did get majority support among people 18-44 overall—who are the primary consumers for the brands in question—and from men up to 54.

Straight talk works better Procter & Gamble Co. hasn’t embraced red fluid just yet, but it is down with more direct approaches in advertising.

Its Tampax brand last year turned to Amy Schumer for a series of ads after Melissa Suk, VP-North America Tampax

and Always, saw the comedian joking about tampons on her Netflix comedy special.

Schumer has appeared in several Tampax ads, including a TV spot where she talks in a women’s room about what the right tampon size is for her, discusses with a gynecologist tampon ingredients and does mall-intercept interviews about the facts of life with teen girls and boys.

Tampax has spent more than $5 million on Schumer’s straight-talking ads on TV with additional online support, and the impact appears quite positive. The brands sales fell 6% in the second quarter last year vs. the prior year, per IRI. But since Schumer’s ads broke in July, Tampax sales have risen 5% in the third quarter, 4% in the fourth and 8% in January.

“We are excited to continue on our mission to make period conversations as normal as periods,” says Kristen Haun, global Tampax and North America Naturals senior director.

“People are inserting themselves in the conversation by not only sharing their personal stories, but also asking questions and letting us in on the secret that they, too, believed some of the crazy myths out there.”

Frida Mom finally gets its message out Another sign of growing acceptance for the direct approach comes from Frida Mom, which went from having an ad for its feminine hygiene products refused by ABC for the Oscar’s broadcast last year to having a different ad greenlighted by NBCUniversal for Sunday’s Golden Globes. True, the ad was different. But so were the network decision makers, says Frida Mom CEO Chelsea Hirshhorn.

Last year’s ABC-rejected ad for post-partum products showed a woman wearing her hospital-approved mesh underpants sitting on a toilet and struggling to change a sanitary napkin.

This year’s NBC-accepted spot also spent lots of time in bathrooms, but focuses on the trials of breastfeeding in notquite-graphic detail, partially showing breasts with blurred nipples, breast pumping and milk spurting. An extended cut for social media shows full frontal nudity and more graphic scenes.

“Large consumer products behemoths have a harder time I think unlocking that authenticity,” Hirshhorn says. She blames the legacy of “older grey-haired men in the boardrooms making decisions that were not the reality of what their consumers were going through. The more progress we make with women as business leaders, thought leaders, executives, there’s a heightened sensitivity to that reality.”

At NBC, “there were a lot of women in that boardroom making those decisions,” Hirshhorn says. “We had to blur some nipples. We had to cut and splice some scenes. But at the end of the day, we wouldn’t do it if we weren’t unequivocally comfortable with the message being sent.”

And while last year’s Oscar refusal led to speculation that Frida Mom was playing for shock value and the old “rejected ad” publicity game, Hirshhorn says the brand’s willingness to work with NBCU to make edits and meet broadcast standards shows otherwise.

It’s not strictly an old media/new media issue. Hirshhorn notes that when Frida Mom posted its extended cut on LinkedIn last week, bare breasts and all, the social network’s algorithm quickly flagged it and took it down, though it was restored after Frida Mom contacted LinkedIn.

And it turns out guys are largely OK with breasts in ads. The Harris Poll shows men, even over 65, are more comfortable than women seeing either partially or fully uncovered breasts in ads about breast feeding. Men by a 51% (comfortable) to 21% (uncomfortable) margin were OK seeing partially uncovered breasts in ads. Women were comfortable with it by only a 48% to 28% margin. The rest of each group said they could “tolerate” it.

Even men over 65 were comfortable with partially uncovered breasts in ads by 39% to 24% margin. But women over 65 were firmly opposed, with 17% comfortable and 68% uncomfortable. Similar breakdowns occurred with showing fully uncovered breasts, but with far less acceptance. Only 37% of people overall were comfortable with that vs. 41% uncomfortable.

Comfortable with ‘imperfection’ One thing people in general are comfortable with these days is “imperfection,” says Gonzalez-Ruiz, and that means openness to more direct talk. Millennial and Gen Z women often aren’t shy about telling their dads they’re going to the store to buy tampons, she says, though there’s actually more taboo around talking about constipation.

But the reality is that, whether they’re at ease talking about it or not, a good poop makes a difference to people, says Energy BBDO Co-Chief Creative Officer Pedro Perez. “We know that at the end of the day, if you have a good poop, you celebrate that. That’s how we should be. We want to normalize that feeling. It’s OK to talk about.”

Whether the frank approach works for a brand depends on whether it’s in character, says Leslie Zane, principal of Triggers Brand Consulting. Potty humor has always been part of brands like Poo-Pourri and bidet retrofit kit Tushy, Zane says. “Our research shows that explicit articulations can still be polarizing for mass audiences, particularly if the attitude doesn’t fit with the brand’s equity. For example, if a brand had a serious tonality before and suddenly used the word ‘poop’ in its communications, that would likely be too big a leap.”

Gonzalez-Ruiz says Phillip’s heritage of ads dating back to the 1980s where, for example, a wife interjects “You’re talking about constipation” into a dialog with hubby, makes “poop” less of a leap.

The word has never been banned on TV, even if it’s not universally OK with folks in ads, according to the Harris Poll.

People overall by a 61% to 39% margin believe advertisers should be able to say “poop” in ads for relevant products like laxatives and diapers. Males by a 68% to 32% margin, were more likely to be OK with it. And majorities in all age groups under 65 gave their blessing. But “poop” lost by a 52% to 48% margin among people 65 and up.

They traditionally might be seen as the core target for Phillips, but not for this particular ad, which aims at younger folks who, thanks to the pandemic, may be discovering constipation for the first time.

He’s based near Cincinnati and has previously written for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bloomberg, and trade publications covering the food, woodworking and graphic design industries and worked in corporate communications for the E.W. Scripps Co.

The Hard Truth About Customer Lifetime Value

By Kate Stephani

The CMO Council found that 80% of marketers have a limited understanding of customer lifetime value, despite how important it is. “LTV” is a term people love to throw around, but the numbers don’t lie: does anyone really know what they’re talking about?

150 CMOs shared their insights for CMO Council’s latest research, and the findings highlighted LTV blindspots and how marketers can redefine and track LTV in the increasingly digital landscape. The results were alarming: only 17 percent of Chief Marketing Officers track their LTV well. Surprising, since LTV enables organizations to craft meaningful relationships with their customers and respond to their everchanging needs. Not to mention, LTV is a huge revenue driver.

Data is a huge factor in relationship-building, and will only continue to increase in importance as time goes on Data is power, making LTV and data best friends. The more information brands have on their audience and their customer, the more they can create messages that customers will resonate with and respond to. From there, brands can develop relationships that are meaningful and create loyalty between the brand and the customer. But this is not new information; we knew that.

The kicker is you need to be using the right data to learn about your customers. Numbers don’t lie, but the way the numbers are read can be misleading. Make sure when tracking LTV that the right variables are accounted for—and track it consistently, because according to the findings of survey, 1 in 4 CMOs aren’t tracking LTV at all.

The CMO Council report also discusses how there needs to be ownership of LTV. Cross-functional alignment has been a huge topic for CMO Council lately, and rightfully so. Alignment for all stakeholders helps create a cohesive marketing strategy and a symbiotic relationship between marketing and the rest of the organization. However, the research shows that there is little-to-no ownership of LTV. Whether that can be attributed to a miscommunication and assuming someone else is “taking care of it” or to other teams not understanding the importance of LTV depends on the organization, but that doesn’t change the hard reality that most teams don’t communicate well cross-functionally. And that needs to change.

At the end of the day, what are we all doing this for? What’s the point of tracking LTV and developing all these initiatives to increase it? It all boils down to loyalty. One loyal customer can prove to be more valuable than 10 new leads, so it’s time we shift the conversation from constant lead acquisition to retaining and nurturing the existing customers. Provide value to them, even when their lead isn’t new and shiny anymore.

These customers show up for you, so it’s important to show up for them, too.

2020 jolted many marketers awake when they realized that when times get tough, customer loyalty is more important than ever. When budgets shrink and stress rises, customers shift to the easier, cheaper and more convenient options, regardless of what brands they may typically buy. How do you compete with that? And how can you show your customers that you care? There’s a reason the most effective LTVboosting initiative is when brands enhance communication of the product’s value proposition.

The creative power of 4—and how it can make your teams more productive

By WILL BURNS

John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.

Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine.

Famous groups of four are everywhere we look in the creative world—from rock bands to television. Maybe we should take note for the corporate creative process.

DISCOVERING THE POWER OF FOUR The pandemic is forcing many in the advertising and marketing worlds to be creative while working remotely.

Virtual creativity is different from typical in-person creativity, and understanding its nature is crucial to understanding its true power, pandemic or not.

I started Ideasicle, a virtual idea generation agency serving the advertising world in 2010, well before any pandemic forced remote work. It started as an experiment where I

recruited a pool of creative people, identified clients and idea projects, and we’d come up with ideas as a team.

One of the things I learned early on was how many people to include on a virtual team for maximum—and quality— idea generation. Turns out, those “famous fours” were onto something.

At first, I recruited teams of seven, eight, and nine people for various client projects. I figured the more brains, the better. I would also try smaller groups of two or three. Fewer people, but more time for each participant, I thought.

Turns out, when there are too many or too few people on the assignment the idea generation suffers.

MORE IS NOT MERRIER When there were more than four people working virtually on an assignment, there were fewer ideas posted, fewer

builds and riffs, and generally not enough energy in the virtual space. And when ideas were finally posted, they were completely thought through, as if trying to impress. (That turned out to be a clue.)

These projects were fine. I presented what we had, the clients were happy, and we got paid. But I knew the ideas could be better, so I started knocking down the numbers on the teams.

As teams got smaller, the number of ideas increased.

And there’s a logical, very human reason.

GOOD IDEAS REQUIRE RISKING BACK IDEAS Creativity is a very human, very intimate process for most people. To raise your hand and proclaim you have an idea is to expose a bit of yourself to others. It takes courage and confidence.

This fear factor correlated positively with an increased number of people on the teams. The more people, the more fear. The more fear, the less likely a team member is to share an uncertain idea. But “uncertain” ideas, I’ve found, are the lifeblood of a great virtual idea-generating session.

Because the magic of the virtual process isn’t just the ideas each individual posts, it’s what happens between the team members when they see each other’s ideas.

An exaggerated example of this effect was when a team member posted an idea to the Idea Stream notifying the team that he wouldn’t be able to post anything that afternoon due to a dentist appointment. The other three on the team saw that and turned it into an idea for the assignment! Just the notion of a dentist appointment triggered a whole thread of ideas and builds, one of which we actually presented to the client.

My mantra for virtual idea generation became: “When in doubt, post it.” You never know what it may spark in a teammate. And that kind of risk-taking is much more likely to happen when the team is unafraid.

Conversely, we had a few assignments where the budget was lower, so we did it with two or three on the team. And like those assignments with too many people, the projects went okay, but the energy in the virtual room was low. Why? Not enough perspectives colliding.

When you have only two people working on an assignment, you only have only two points of view, two perspectives, two outlooks on life colliding, and only one person’s ideas on which each can build and riff.

Teams should be not too big, not too small. Four.

QUADRANEURAL ACCELERATION After ten years of trial and error, teams of four truly seem to be the “Goldilocks number”—not too much, not too little, but just right. It’s so important to the idea-generation process that I decided to give it a name.

While I totally made up the phrase “Quadraneural Acceleration,” it perfectly describes what happens when four people work together on a virtual idea assignment: they accelerate the number and quality of ideas.

Here’s how to assemble the perfect team for any virtual assignment: Make sure everyone you recruit is an idea person. Each should be someone who loves coming up with ideas and isn’t shy about it. They don’t always have to be official “creatives” from the ad industry, but they do need to be idea people by nature. You know the type.

Mix it up. If the assignment calls for a social media idea, don’t stack the team with four social media people. Include two and fill the other slots with people from different industries, with different perspectives.

Anchor the team with a category expert. If the assignment is a promotion in the automotive business, have someone with deep experience in the auto market on the team, even if you have to go outside. This person’s role will be to come up with ideas, but also to ground the rest of the team into the realities of that category. But don’t overload the team with category experts or you’re less likely to get unexpected ideas for the category.

Have at least one creative director on the team. Could be a writer, art director, or designer. I usually include one or two classic “creatives” from the agency world who are professional idea people.

Include one wild card. If you believe like I do that having different perspectives colliding on the assignment is healthy, then leaving one spot for someone completely detached from the nature of the assignment can be an accelerant. A cultural anthropologist, public relations professional, or sales person will come at the problem in a very different way and with ideas on which the others can build and riff.

The fact is, you could put any number of people into a virtual idea generating assignment and come out with some quality ideas. But when you limit the team to four people and strategically pick exactly who those people are, you will greatly accelerate idea generation, and have fun doing it.

BRAND ENDORSEMENT POTENTIAL OF MEGHAN MARKLE AND PRINCE HARRY REVEALED IN NEW POLL

By E.J. Schultz and Adrianne Pasquarelli The potential post-palace endorsement power of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry came into full view in the aftermath of their blockbuster interview with Oprah Winfrey when the patio furniture brand they sat on sold out online within a day. And Markle’s quick mention of the “Humphrey Yogart” yogurt shop she worked at as a teenager resulted in a surge of business at the Los Angeles-area establishment, according to Page Six. But the couple’s biggest business opportunity is in apparel, streaming services and luxury goods, according to a new consumer poll.

About a third of Americans who watched the CBS interview on Sunday say they are more likely to purchase a product or service if Markle endorses it, and 28% said the same about Prince Harry, according to a new Ad Age-Harris Poll survey.

Of these people, 57% listed apparel as the category they would most likely be swayed into buying if backed by the couple, followed by streaming services (54%) and luxury goods (53%), according to the poll, which was conducted online in the U.S. from March 10-11 among 1,031 adults ages 18 and older. Respondents name-checked a few brand collaborations they’d like to see including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Burberry and Yeezy.

The couple’s popularity is higher with younger consumers: 36% of respondents ages 18-34 and 39% of those 35-44 say they would be more likely to buy a product backed by them, according to the poll. Support falls to 18% among people ages 45-64.

“What our research shows is that Meghan and Harry have an impressive amount of clout with Americans,” says Will Johnson, CEO of The Harris Poll. “And it’s the younger consumers and the consumers who are already keyed into the royal narrative that are the most likely to engage with products or services endorsed by the royal couple—likely because these audiences appreciate Meghan and Harry’s accessibility and relatability. There is an opportunity here for brands that align with the couple’s brand of authenticity and wellness to create collaborations that appeal to these values.”

Of course, Markle is already known for sparking interest in fashion—and any future collaborations in apparel would be a continuation of the style cachet she already carries.

The Armani silk dress that Markle wore during her Oprah interview is sold out at most retailers, with very few pieces left, according to Lyst, a fashion search platform.

Lyst has been tracking “The Meghan Effect” since 2017, when a coat Markle wore for her first public appearance

helped create a 164% increase in online searches for beige coats within 24 hours. Last summer, Lyst called Markle its “most powerful dresser of 2019,” noting that her outfits, on average, result in a 216% increase in searches for similar pieces.

But Sunday’s TV interview, which drew more than 17 million viewers, boosted Markle’s profile beyond fashion as she opened up on topics of race and mental health, including saying that an unnamed member of the royal family expressed concerns about the skin color of the couple’s son, Archie. She also described how she had suicidal thoughts and alleged that she was not able to get help from the royal family’s human resources staff.

Openness ‘a positive step’ Her openness about mental health was greeted favorably by American public: 55% of respondents to the Ad Age-Harris Poll said it is “a positive step that will help others in similar situations.”

Megan and Harry “in many ways have encapsulated that humanity and that authenticity that doesn’t typically get associated with the royal family,” says Ahmad Islam, CEO and managing partner of Ten35, an agency that specializes in reaching multicultural, millennial and Gen Z consumers.

“When you compound that with the natural curiosity around the royal family, it elevated their relevance and [the] interest in the things they do and the brands they might get behind and support.”

Among those paying close attention to the Sunday interview was Chelsea Hirschhorn, CEO of Frida, a mother’s personal care brand known for its realistic portrayals of childbirth and

motherhood. Two years ago, she published an open letter to then-pregnant Markle in the New York Times, asking her to be authentic and skip the unrealistic traditional royal baby photo outside the hospital following birth. Markle did not pose for a photo, and talked about this in the interview with Oprah, noting that she was not asked to.

Hirschhorn in an email interview this week with Ad Age said she applauds Markle for “challenging archaic conventions.”

“There will be plenty of brands that seek to leverage her based solely on her growing profile,” says Hirschhorn, referring to beauty and fashion companies. But Hirschhorn points out that only brands that have similar missions, including mental health, women’s rights and equality, will resonate with relevant consumers. “Brands like ours who are equally as committed to authentic storytelling will find her an impactful spokesperson,” Hirschhorn says. (Frida does not have a deal with Markle.)

The poll’s positive consumer sentiment on a streaming services collaboration seemingly bodes well for Archewell, which is the name of the philanthropic and content production organization formed by the couple. It includes a partnership with Netflix that is reportedly worth $100 million and is said to include documentaries, feature films, scripted shows and children’s programming, according to The New York Times.

The content arm, dubbed Archewell Productions, “will utilize the power of storytelling to embrace our shared humanity and duty to truth through a compassionate lens,” according to its web site. The Hollywood Reporter this week reported that the couple tapped Ben Browning, president of film and television production at FilmNation Entertainment, to spearhead the production company.

Top Marketing Trends for Recovering Brands

By Kate Stephani

As we move toward recovering from the pandemic, we’re seeing businesses opening again, business hiring again and marketing teams pivoting to adapt to the ever-changing needs of their customers. With a fresh mindset carrying us through the first fifty days of the 2021, let’s dive into some trends to keep an eye out for—and consider hopping on— this year.

will go away, but the way influencers present themselves on the two platforms are vastly different. See what fits your brand best, but remember, due to the nature of the TikTok algorithm, anyone (or any brand) can go viral at any time… and that’s its power. Long story short: don’t miss the TikTok train.

Increasing marketing spend

In our report, How COVID is Changing the Channels of Engagement, we touched on the rise of chat boxes. With exponential growth over the last five years, it doesn’t look like this trend is slowing down. Due to the spike in popularity, emphasis on developing the conversational capabilities of these AI assistants has spiked as well. If you’ve been teetering on whether or not you should implement them, rest assured they’re becoming more and more accepted by customers and now is the time lay the groundwork for them. Make friends with AI and you will have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Recent CMO Council research indicated that two-thirds of marketers are planning to increase their marketing spend this year. The only caveat is that they need to prioritize crossfunctional alignment to really make these changes work.

Agility is crucial right now, but make sure your teams are moving in sync. Regardless, upping investment into your marketing team isn’t a bad idea right now.

Brand accountability 2020 was a landmark year for the public holding brands accountable for their actions, marketing and political leanings. We discussed this a few months back, but it’s worth bringing up again: what you say and what you do need to align in 2021. Uniformity with brand messaging is imperative, now more than ever. Pay attention to what your audience is talking about. How do they feel about what’s going on in the world? Come from a place of empathy and, most importantly: be genuine.

Redefining the influencer Over the last year, TikTok has become an extremely powerful cross-generational marketing tool. With 69% of its 1 billion users representing the 13-24-year-old segment, there is insane potential with the app. There are rumors from some social media experts on the platform speculating Instagram will relinquish rule of the “Influencer Kingdom” to TikTok in coming years. Who’s to say? It’s highly unlikely that Instagram

Chit Chat

Remote Events It goes without saying that the idea of large conferences right now sounds outlandish to folks in most parts of the world. But that doesn’t mean you need to put a halt to events altogether.

Webinars have always been relevant, but brands like Workcast saw an 87% increase in webinar attendance last year. This trend is anticipated to carry over into this year and rightfully so: not only are virtual events pandemic-friendly, but digital, discounted (or free) events also make information more accessible regardless of geographic or socioeconomic factors, allowing brands to reach larger audiences at a much lower cost. Pandemic aside, digital events are likely here to stay.

The road to recovery is long, but things are looking up for marketers in 2021. With a new approach, fresh perspectives and the space to be creative with content, we have much to look forward to as the year goes on.

Content Marketing and Thought Leadership: What’s the Difference?

By Daniel Rosehill

Content marketing is a well-established discipline for generating inbound leads through keyword targeting and other methods. And since you’re reading this on MarketingProfs, you probably don’t need me to tell you what content marketing does and what it’s good for.

But what about thought leadership?

To some, the term sets off an instant buzzword alarm. Others assume thought leadership and content marketing are the same thing, which isn’t the case—although the two can be used together to good effect.

In this article, I’d like to provide a little bit of clarity about these two powerful forms of marketing, including how they’re alike and how they’re different.

Content marketing offers value in return for business Content marketing works in large part by creating a transmission of value from the content publisher to the reader.

Content marketers need to ensure they have valuable information to convey to their readership. Over time, providing that value—while also positioning yourself as its obvious supplier—is a clever means of creating a relationship with the reader.

There are a few things to note about that relationship, and I’m highlighting them to draw distinctions between content marketing and thought leadership: • The “commodity” being exchanged in content marketing is valuable information. Searchers want to find solutions to their problems. Content marketers learn what users are searching for and develop content that provides answers to their readership. Ultimately, searchers may choose the content marketer’s company as their supplier.

• The content marketer-reader relationship is typically topdown. As content marketers, we’re writing to a target buying audience, but that doesn’t mean it’s a one-way street. Good content is backed up by strong community

management, and there should be dialogue. But, ultimately, the architecture of the relationship is vertical rather than horizontal.

Thought leadership offers insights in return for introductions Executing thought leadership requires identifying a target audience and learning about its needs. That’s because thought leadership often requires exchanging insights for business introductions.

What’s the difference between that and what we’ve just discussed about content marketing?

Setting, for one. Thought leadership’s natural home is in large B2B marketing. Many organizations in that space have dedicated thought leadership managers. Those organizations don’t necessarily need to build up reputations, but having something original to say about an issue can be a useful way of distinguishing themselves in a crowded vendor landscape.

That’s particularly the case when the organization is trying to bring a new solution to market or disrupt some established practice in the industry.

Content marketing is used in both B2B and B2C selling contexts, but it is more appropriate than thought leadership in a B2C setting. It might, for instance, provide lots of useful information about how to get started with a homeimprovement problem, but it’s unlikely that the information being conveyed is cutting-edge research. More likely, it’s an informative guide about how to tackle a problem.

Needless to say, content marketing should be original, informative, and engaging. But there’s a difference between providing information that is useful and conveying insights

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that are original or have not been written about before.

The first is content marketing. The latter could be thought leadership.

In thought leadership, introductions valuable than near-term gains

are

more

Thought leadership tends to be less about selling than even content marketing. In fact, the selling target could be well off in the distance, and thought leadership’s immediate intended purpose might be solely to kickstart a relationship.

Large B2B selling processes are not renowned for moving at lightning speed. Moreover, many large contracts are awarded through the issuing of requests for proposals (RFPs) and governed by rigid procurement guidelines. Sometimes, adherence to them is legally mandated.

Trade media outlets, which often carry thought leadership, are important conduits of information for both sides of that process. Unlike blogs, the outlets are offsite placement locations—and remaining nonpromotional is often a style guide requirement.

In the context of long sale cycles, and in specialized fields, getting on a potential buyer’s radar might be more valuable than selling them something tomorrow. It’s for that reason that thought leadership is often employed in the B2B context primarily for its ability to create introductions.

The extent to which C-level executives carve time out of their busy schedules to read thought leadership content is surprising: 48% of decision-makers spent more than one hour per week consuming thought leadership material, according to the latest edition of the Edelman/LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. A solid 17% spend four hours a week reading it!

The good news, for those who wish to establish themselves as industry thought leaders, is that there’s a receptive market for that type of content. The bad news is that a cookie-cutter approach to all content simply isn’t going to cut it.

Content marketing is fundamentally different from thought leadership Thought leadership and content marketing both involve creating words. But make no mistake—they are not the same thing.

Content marketing provides value to readers to create relationships that should ultimately be beneficial to the authoring party. It typically does so through content on managed (onsite, owned) channels.

Thought leadership focuses on conveying original insights or interesting ideas to stimulate interest among recipients.

The information is often also carried to its readership off-site, through trade media and other niche publications.

Because their objectives and fundamentally different, thought marketing cannot be approached least not if you’re hoping for good

target audiences are leadership and content in the same manner—at results.

That’s not to say your content marketing writer cannot also produce thought leadership; rather, the tone of voice and content itself should differ. Setting a separate editorial calendar and strategy for each activity wouldn’t be a bad idea.

If you’re doing thought leadership, it’s important to do it well.

The latest edition of the Edelman/LinkedIn study bears out the risks of poorly done thought leadership. Organizations that scored an A-grade on thought leadership were awarded with heightened brand perception and a higher likelihood of being included in RFP opportunities. Conversely, those that did thought leadership poorly found that they suffered negative effects: • 38% of decision-makers said poor thought leadership had decreased their admiration for an organization.

• 27% of decision-makers said poor thought leadership had led them to not award business to an organization.

Unfortunately, the study also showed, a lot of thought leadership fails to achieve its desired objectives: Decisionmakers commonly complained that thought leadership... well, didn’t really contain much “thought” or much “leadership.”

Here’s what thought leadership should be To avoid authoring low-quality thought leadership that may damage your reputation, think about what thought leadership should be, and then strive to author content that carries the right messaging.

Thought leadership should contain high-quality thinking.

Thought leadership isn’t about reiterating somebody else’s ideas and dressing them up in fancy language. If your thought leadership is going to be worth the time of an executive readership, it should contain original insights that they haven’t read or can’t read somewhere else.

In all likelihood, your readership knows who you are, what you do, and what you’re ultimately selling. The unknown element is your thinking and your vision. Thought leadership should make that unknown known.

If your insights are truly original, often your readership will expect that you support them with research. If you don’t have the budget to commission your own, check whether there is already research that you can draw from to support your case.

At minimum, before putting pen to paper on a thought leadership article, ask yourself: • Has this been written before, or am I just rehashing somebody else’s ideas?

• What’s the insight that I’m trying to convey? It is something that the readership is likely to find original?

• Is this a subject that my readership is likely to be interested in?

Thought leadership and content marketing work well together The good news about content marketing and thought leadership is that you don’t need to choose one over the other.

If you have a strong marketing team ready to produce great content, there’s no reason that you can’t do both. But a different style and different content are both called for.

After all, the two types of assets will be pursuing different objectives.

Done well, both forms of content can benefit your business.

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Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong By rook Zimmatore

When your team is tasked with generating ideas to solve a problem, suggesting a brainstorming session is a natural reaction. But does that approach actually work?

than they did before. In contrast, when people work alone, they tend to diverge in their thinking, because everyone takes a slightly different path to thinking about the problem.

Although the term “brainstorming” is now used as a generic term for having groups develop ideas, it began as the name of a specific technique proposed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1950s. He codified the basic rules that many of us follow when getting people together to generate ideas: Toss out as many ideas as possible. Don’t worry if they’re too crazy. Build on the ideas people generate. Don’t criticize initially.

You can harness the power of divergence and convergence to fix brainstorming, and several studies demonstrate that this works effectively. Here are some of the lessons from this research.

These rules seem so obvious and clear that it’s hard to believe they don’t work. However, decades of studies demonstrate that groups that use Osborn’s rules of brainstorming come up with fewer ideas (and fewer good ideas) than the individuals would have developed alone.

There are several reasons for this productivity loss, as academics call it. For one, when people work together, their ideas tend to converge. As soon as one person throws out an idea, it affects the memory of everyone in the group and makes them think a bit more similarly about the problem

Let Individuals Work Alone First Early in creative acts it’s important to diverge, that is, to think about what you are doing in as many ways as possible. Later, you want to converge on a small number of paths to follow in more detail.

Many techniques use a structure like this. For example, in the 6-3-5 method, six people sit around a table and write down three ideas. They pass their stack of ideas to the person on their right, who builds on them. This passing is done five times, until everyone has had the chance to build on each of the ideas. Afterward, the group can get together to evaluate the ideas generated.

There are many variations of techniques like this. What

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they have in common is that they allow individual work during divergent phases of creativity and group work during convergent phases.

Techniques like this can be used in multiple rounds. For example, it is often important to spend time agreeing on the problem to be solved. A whole round of divergence and convergence on the problem statement can be done before giving people a chance to suggest solutions.

Take Your Time Another difficulty with brainstorming is that there are often some people in the group who don’t like uncertainty.

They want to finish the process quickly and get on with implementing the new solution. These people are high in a personality characteristic called need for closure.

It’s important that groups have time to explore enough ideas that they can consider more than just the first few possibilities that people generate. One reason why techniques like 6-35 are successful is that they slow the creative process down.

They alert everyone in the group up front that evaluation isn’t going to happen until everyone has generated ideas and has had a chance to build on them. As a result, even people high in need for closure are forced to wait until the ideas are developed.

Let People Draw Many brainstorming sessions involve people talking about solutions. That biases people toward solutions that are easy to talk about. It may also lead to solutions that are abstract and may never work in practice.

As a result, many techniques (such as C-Sketching) require people to draw pictures rather than writing. Our studies suggest that a combination of drawing and writing is ideal for generating creative solutions to problems.

There are several reasons why drawing is helpful.

First, it’s hard for people to describe spatial relationships, so any solution that requires a spatial layout is better described with pictures than with words. Second, a large amount of the brain is devoted to visual processing, so sketching and interpreting drawings increases the involvement of those brain regions in idea generation. Third, it is often difficult to describe processes purely in words, so diagrams are helpful.

One caution about drawing: People tend to sketch quickly, in ways that make their sketches hard to interpret, so it’s useful to have words in the diagrams to help with the interpretation of these sketches. But haste may not be all bad. The same studies I referenced above also demonstrate that when other people look at crudely drawn sketches, they may misinterpret elements of the drawings in ways that serendipitously lead to new ideas.

One of the joys of the brainstorming session is you, as the group leader, don’t need to spend that much time facilitating or preparing. You just get people in a room and go. But while this makes things easier for you, it’s not good for the group. To develop stronger ideas, you need to manage the conversation so that the team doesn’t converge on a solution before everyone hears what others are thinking. Until you develop some expertise in helping groups to develop ideas, use a technique like 6-3-5. It’s often easier to follow a process and watch how it unfolds than to try to manage a group dynamically and sense when the group is ready to start working together.

Art Markman, PhD, is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin and founding director of the program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations.

How AI Solves One of Marketing’s Greatest Challenges ByMark Kilens

We asked marketing leaders to tell us about their greatest individual marketing challenge. The number one answer?

Scaling marketing efforts.

In fact, 62% of all those surveyed for our 2020 Marketing Leadership Benchmark Report listed it as a top challenge.

However, when these same marketers were asked about their top priorities over the next 12 months, scaling marketing efforts didn’t even crack the top five.

Why might this be?

As marketers, we have a world of opportunity. And these opportunities grow with every passing year. New social platforms, new best practices, new tech solutions—each forcing us to think, “if only I had a bigger team, more time, or a bigger budget, I could try all of these.”

When it comes to scaling marketing, artificial intelligence can be the untapped solution to your biggest problem.

How AI technology enables companies to scale Before diving into marketing use cases, let’s think about

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47 how AI is already scaling efforts for companies you interact with every day.

Google Maps, Netflix, Amazon—these solutions you use every day are made possible and are only possible because of AI:

you to engage with every single website visitor.

Customer experience One fear companies have with passing off interactions with buyers to machines is that they fear it will worsen buyer experiences.

• Google Maps helps millions of users find their way every day. This service works because each direction is personalized and based on context (weather, traffic, and more).

However, why do you always come back to Netflix at the end of the day? Or why do you buy from Amazon when there are an infinite number of stores to choose from?

• Netflix creates a unique experience with personalized recommendations based on each of its users. It’s content curation at scale, made possible through millions of data points that humans could never parse through on their own.

Undeniably, it’s all about the exceptional experiences they deliver. Specifically, buyers value the personalized experience they get when they open up the Netflix homepage or the recommendations Amazon makes based on past purchases.

• Amazon, the largest ecommerce business in the world, essentially reorganizes their digital storefront for each user every time they reopen the app or visit the website.

Personalization-at-scale is made possible by AI and by the vast amount of data it makes predictions from.

Each of these cases is made possible by AI. A team of humans may be able to imitate the experience of Netflix for a few individuals at a time, but it is absolutely impossible to offer any of these experiences at scale without AI. With that understanding of how AI helps other companies scale their services, let’s dive into how marketers can begin to scale their marketing efforts with AI. How to scale your marketing with AI As we mentioned before, scaling marketing efforts is the top challenge facing individual marketing leaders. Yet, they are not making scaling their marketing efforts a top priority in the coming months.

Here are a few examples of how scaling marketing efforts can help you more quickly or efficiently achieve the goals marketers are prioritizing.

Lead generation Is your website a static asset that generates leads through forms, or is it a robust asset that generates qualified leads by providing exceptional experiences to buyers?

Powered by AI, Drift is one technology that turns your website into a lead generation machine. Specifically, Drift infuses online chat with AI. Human-manned chat requires a dedicated team with a large headcount to engage with every single website visitor.

AI-powered chat makes 1-to-1 conversations possible at scale.

You might think first of unhelpful human-built chatbots, but this is entirely different technology. AI-powered chatbots don’t rely on rigid decision trees, which require humans to make guesses about the questions visitors will ask and set the rules for a response. Instead, AI-powered chat uses vast amounts of data to answer questions with human-like responses; and they get smarter over time.

With your robust, AI-powered Conversational Marketing, you can start to generate leads through conversation.

AI-powered chat scales your marketing efforts by enabling

For instance, AI-powered chatbots can 1) engage with every prospect, but also 2) personalize the experience similarly to how Netflix or Amazon do.

A well-designed chatbot will: 1. Use existing conversation data (if available) understand the type of questions people ask.

to

2. Analyze correct answers to those questions through a ‘training’ period.

3. Use machine learning and NLP to learn context, and continually get better at answering those questions in the future.

AI-powered chat scales your marketing efforts by providing the personalized experience of a human to every website visitor that engages with the chatbot.

Revenue generation and acceleration Not only can AI-powered chat deliver an exceptional experience for buyers, it can also generate pipeline for marketers and accelerate revenue.

How? Not only is the experience personalized, but with AI, the chatbot knows when to serve the right message at the right time to achieve your desired result. If that means passing off the highest quality leads to a human at a certain point, then it can do that. If you want the chatbot to schedule meetings based on your reps’ calendars, they can do that too.

Based on the infinite amount of data you have access to, but don’t have time to review in real-time, the chatbots predict when a successful interaction is most likely.

AI-enabled chat scales your marketing by engaging with buyers at their moment of highest intent. They then pass off leads to humans at the right time.

Mark Kilens is VP of Content and Community at Drift where he leads the blogging, editorial, social, Drift Insider, and HYPERGROWTH teams. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP and founder of HubSpot Academy.

Marketing That Saves Lives: Jasmine Gee on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

By Erika Wheless

As marketers, we strive to make sure our jobs are meaningful and that we’re having a positive impact on people’s lives. In today’s episode, Jasmine Gee shows us how marketing is working to actually save lives by helping with the rollout of Covid vaccines and ensuring critical information is reaching those who need it most.

It’s no secret that healthcare marketing tactics often seem behind the times. As an industry that’s chock-full of regulations, healthcare is not one where the words “new” and “innovative” are typically applied to marketing efforts.

It’s usually pretty easy to identify healthcare marketing when you see it (hint: look for a lot of blues and whites, and smiling people in lab coats).

Jasmine Gee, vice-president of marketing at Arcadia.io, joins Marketing Smarts to talk about how marketing is helping to save lives by ensuring that patients make (and show up to) appointments and that they hear from their individual practitioners.

A lot of what’s happening now in healthcare tactics, Gee concedes, would be considered Marketing 101 for those outside healthcare, but those tactics have proven remarkably effective.

For example, we think of patients in the same way as we’d think about leads. Someone who has missed a visit or needs a vaccine is a “lead” and we’re hoping to get that person to a “conversion.” Only, in this case, the conversion is not downloading a whitepaper or completing a webform; it’s reaching out to their clinician and getting a vaccination or the treatment they need. It’s about facilitating real, meaningful change in patients’ lives.

We also discuss the evolving role of healthcare professionals and how they now have to wear the marketing hat as well.

It’s no longer enough just to practice medicine, practitioners now need to ensure they’re winning the hearts and the minds of their patients.

One way to do that is by ensuring that they’re reaching and serving their patients in the ways patients want to be reached—and for marketers that’s all about personalization and relevance. To make a stronger connection, the message should come from their doctor—the last one they’ve seen.

Gee notes that such relevance can come only if the data is there: Having the right list is critical; imperfect data make this type of personalized outreach nearly impossible.

Aside from making connections and being relevant, the real coup is getting vaccine information out to the public and ensuring that those most at risk are aware of current guidelines and updated information. Such outreach programs have been “shockingly successful,” having sent over 2 million messages with open rates of up to 50%.

“Healthcare lacks humanity, which is ironic, because it’s healthcare,” says Gee, noting that the standard blue and white healthcare marketing with doctors in lab coats isn’t cutting the mustard any more. “We need real faces of real-life people dealing with real-life situations, feeling supported.”

And there’s nothing wrong with injecting humor into the marketing mix, as Jasmine demonstrates. Those of us marketing in highly regulated industries can still have fun with our marketing; we just need to be mindful in how we approach the use of humor.

Listen to the entire show now from the link above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes, via Spotify, or via RSS and never miss an episode.

Helping hands: the real value of mentorship in the ad industry

By Ellen Ormesher

Both informal and organized mentorships have long been popular within the ad industry, and the idea that such a relationship could be bought and sold has led to a great deal of anger of late.

Following a recent social media outcry over a junior-level ad industry worker being charged for a mentorship, an initiative has now been launched to connect mentees and mentors pro bono.

The program invites mentors from across the industry to share their contact details with those searching for guidance and experience, with a collaborative Google Doc now reaching some 90 pages long.

A good mentee and mentor relationship should be mutually beneficial, says Sara Patel, fundraising director at Nabs, with “the sharing of information and learning coming from both directions”.

“It needs to be a supportive and constructive relationship, so it’s important to have clear check-ins to monitor progress and development, but it must also be a safe and supportive space, to be honest and have an open discussion.”

Breaking down doors The notion that mentorship could be charged for is damaging, says Gemma Butler, marketing director at The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), who states that mentorships in the industry are vital, “because they break down silos, break down doors and open up people’s perspectives“.

Brixton Finishing School is a 10-week, free program that particularly aims to help underrepresented groups gain experience in the industry. Its head of mentorship, Maria McDowell, stresses that as well as altering the authentic, interpersonal dynamic that constitutes a successful mentoring relationship, charging for mentoring services could also create a barrier to entry for underrepresented and marginalized groups.

“I think mentorship is amazingly important, as getting to speak to people who are in those rooms that you don’t always have access to is incredibly beneficial. Another benefit for mentees is getting to know somebody with insight and lived experience who wants to help them. Many of the young people we work with have never had that access, never had somebody championing them, and you can really see it build their confidence.”

Not just for newbies Patel from Nabs emphasizes, however, that mentorships are not solely for entry and junior level workers, but for people at any stage in their career, including working parents or people looking to pivot their careers – and that the relationships have become even more important over the last year.

“The world is in a very different place to where it was a year ago. We’ve gone through a global pandemic, we’re still going through a global pandemic. Black Lives Matter (BLM) gained momentum last year and has been a pertinent topic.

She adds: “If we start charging for these things then you’re effectively eradicating what mentoring is set out to do because it completely changes the dynamic.”

“It’s really important for people to feel connected, which is particularly difficult at the moment as most of us are still working virtually. It’s also important for people to have a safe space to discuss topics such as redundancy, career growth, the impact of Covid-19 on work and wellbeing.”

CIM currently runs a free mentorship through its Affiliate Professional membership package, which starts at £160 per annum. However, there are other organizations and services that currently run pro bono mentor pairing services.

Because of these ongoing anxieties about the future and the turbulence of the last year, Patel says mentoring relationships are more important than ever as they also serve to sharpen the leadership skills of the mentors involved.

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“Mentoring relationships enable everyone, as a collective, to share their insights, which can then help inform their business decisions, how we make and manage policies and how we manage organizational change.

“They are a great opportunity for mentors themselves to listen, learn and adapt to the culture, as well as evolve as leaders. We see these relationships as more crucial than ever as we continue to work from home indefinitely.”

Helping hands Kev Chesters, partner at Harbour Collective and former Ogilvy chief strategy officer, says that for senior leaders with expertise and a comfortable income, there is no reason why mentorship should not be offered free of charge.

“All senior leaders who’ve been lucky enough to have a career and make a few bob should mentor people,” he says.

Speaking on the practical ways in which people in leadership positions can help, he says. “Start by understanding your target audience. Treat it like any strategy project. What do they want to get out of it? What drives them? What’s the ultimate objective and how can you help define a strategy to help them get there?

“Try to give simple and practical advice and commit. Commit, don’t wimp out or bunk off. I’ve loved the mentoring I’ve done. I’ve got so much out of it because you get out what you put in on both sides.”

He says he always tries to mentor people who aren’t like him, tending to prioritize people he thinks wouldn’t just sail into the industry. “That’s why it’s so important to do it pro bono if you can – and most senior leaders are comfy enough to give an hour of their time away for free!

“Diversity of thought, diversity of personality and diversity of background is really important to provide original thinking in our industry. Free mentoring is vital for that to make sure

as many people as possible get a leg up into the industry that they might not have had before.”

Brixton Finishing School alumni Priscilla Britton and Krystal D’Anjou agree that mentorship has been a vital experience for them as they look to enter the workforce in this challenging period.

“Mentoring has been a space for me to speak privately, be coached through situations and work through thoughts and concerns,” says Britton. ”I have been able to speak in confidence to someone who understands the industry and is able to share informed objectives and welcome advice.

“Through the actions identified in these conversations, I secured a role at Adam&EveDDB during a pandemic! I hope more people invest time into helping others, like me, navigate a full career in this industry.

“Money shouldn’t be a barrier to realizing your potential or accessing education in school or at work. Think of how indebted we’d be to each other if we had to pay for every act of help we received.”

D’Anjou sees why, when it comes to ’paying’ for a mentor, people would do it. ”In some cases, you really are getting that insider information that mentors don’t want to share with everyone else, but it comes down to that whole exclusivity thing.

“There are plenty of amazingly talented people who might not necessarily be able to pay a mentoring fee but are still as deserving as those who can. Everyone should be given equal opportunities.”

As we enter uncertain economic territory due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be more important than ever that those at the top use their power to assist their colleagues and employees in any way they can – whether that be by offering help with contacts and guidance, or simply by providing a safe space and a willing ear.

Consumer sentiment on COVID-19 in 2021: Five actions for brands

By Mobbie Nazir

A second ‘Roaring Twenties’ complete with ‘sexual licentiousness’ and ‘reverse religiosity’ is likely after the pandemic crisis passes following month after month of suspended social interaction, social epidemiologist Dr Nicholas Christakis, a Professor at Yale, colourfully predicts.

Brand owners are best advised to be more cautious, however.

Analysis of social conversations between November 2020 and January 2021 reveals stoical optimism, modest desire for pleasant surprises and responsibility as prevailing consumer sentiments.

Since March 2020, We Are Social has been monitoring social media sentiment about the COVID-19 pandemic across 14 markets, including: the UK, France and Germany; the US; Japan, South Korea and Singapore.

Using in-depth social listening, we hoped to better understand consumers’ emotional state about the present as well as their hopes and plans for the future.

And for brand owners, the latest quarter – covering the period from November 2020 to January 2021 – contains a number of surprising and actionable insights.

For a start, talk of ‘never getting back to normal’ fell 77% between July and October last year and, since then, has remained low. This demonstrates the ‘slowly but surely’ mindset that now prevails, with raised hopes that life will return to normal balanced by acceptance that this will take longer than many might like.

By January, conversations about coronavirus were trending markedly downwards and only 1.4% of chats studied referred to ‘life after lockdown’. Meanwhile, social conversation about vaccines was up 12% over the same period.

Overall, the consensus was that though things are improving, 2021 will be ‘a difficult year’.

Second, a sense of relief was evident in social conversation as the first COVID-19 vaccines were administered and

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people began sharing stories of loved ones being vaccinated and, in some cases, plans – such as travel plans – for when restrictions ease.

Frustration was also evident, however, with a significant proportion of chat across many markets in the quarter criticising the behaviour of people – influencers, especially – acting as if the pandemic is over.

There was concern, too, about the spread of misinformation – about vaccines, especially – and the negative effect this is having on trust, in particular regarding lower than average uptake of the vaccine in the UK among certain ethnic and religious groups.

Trust is another current issue of concern.

According to our analysis of the social chat, scepticism concerning the pace of vaccine roll-out was evident, as were doubts about the numbers of those vaccinated and the efficacy of extending the gap between jabs recommended by vaccine manufacturers.

In many markets, for example, there were conversations about President Trump’s poor COVID-19 strategy for the US compared with New Zealand’s achievements. In continental Europe, there was frustration about national roll-outs compared with the rate of the UK’s achievements. And in the UK, there was confusion about whether vaccine rollout data related to the first dose or both. Who and what to believe were recurring and widespread themes.

Finally, our evidence suggests consumers’ desire to treat themselves – both as a reward and, also, to break the monotony – not in a ‘Roaring Twenties’ kind of way, as predicted by Dr Christakis, however, but in a way that is responsibly indulgent.

This underlines other research already out there – such as from Canvas 8, which revealed that 15% of Gen Z and Gen Y Britons have bought more luxury items during the pandemic. In America, meanwhile, people are finding smaller, affordable ways to indulge – meaningful (as opposed to luxury) jewellery, for example, or pet fashion.

In the light of all this, we recommend that brands should consider the following responses: 1. Don’t centre communications around COVID-19 Consumers are tired – of the restrictions on their lives caused by COVID-19, of the uncertainty of when normality will return (and what that normal will look like), and brand communications that attempt to reassure with messages like ‘We are here for you’ and ‘All in it together’.

COVID-19 remains an important – if not, critical – topic, but the message is clear: consumers on social media are talking about it less.

2. Don’t bang on about the imminent ‘return of normal’ The social chat is loud and clear: the world’s current predicament is anything but short-term, and brands should also factor this into their thinking.

Whether consumers will snap back to old expectations and behaviours once the pandemic crisis has passed remains a topic of conversation for some. For others, focus is on which new expectations and behaviours prompted by the pandemic are a temporary shift, and which will stay.

More important than either for brands now, however, is to respond to consumers’ normal-for-now attitude to COVID-19 and its related restrictions (for however long ‘now’ lasts). And they should remember that, though an end is in sight, for consumers it feels a long way away.

3. Do accentuate the do-able …

Consumers tired of lockdown restrictions and craving old freedoms want to hear about what they can do under current circumstances, not what they still can’t.

Opportunity for brands lie in offering consumers entertaining and engaging content that provides a break from lockdown monotony and, also, in providing pleasant surprises that reward. This includes things that are novel, as with more free time to fill, many people in lockdown are more open than they were before to trying new things.

4. … but accentuate the do-able responsibly Responsibility is key – as underlined by the recent backlash against influencers jetting off to Dubai to ‘do lockdown’.

The clear majority of consumers want to be as sociable as they can be, but only within current restrictions. This creates opportunities for brands to position themselves as a responsible enabler, and to then innovate around that accordingly.

Brands should proceed with caution, however.

Vaccination roll-out paves the way for an eventual release of pent-up demand for spending, especially on travel, where global consumer spend fell by more than 50% in 2020, according to our Digital 2021 report.

But with vaccination roll-out plans in most countries involving the most vulnerable – including older age groups – to be prioritised ahead of younger age groups, selling yourself on freedoms before everyone can have them also risks backlash.

Ryanair’s ‘Jab and go’ ad, which was first condemned as irresponsible then withdrawn after being criticised for misleading claims by UK advertising watchdog the ASA, is a case in point.

5. Do keep reading the room, emotionally Consumer sentiment is fragile, and emotions are intense.

Yes, many people are now starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, but that light still feels – and is – a long way off.

Though protection in markets where vaccine roll-out is most advanced feels closer, high numbers of people still falling seriously ill and dying. This, combined with the emergence of new variants, can make the ongoing situation feel all the more upsetting.

Brands cannot and should not assume that people are yet ready to celebrate – or, indeed, ever will be.

RISE OF BUY NOW, PAY LATER BRANDS SPARKS NEW LENDING INDUSTRY MARKETING BATTLE

By Adrianne Pasquarelli.

‘It is an arms race competition,’ says one industry expert about the $8 trillion credit, debit and prepaid card business While this year’s Super Bowl featured many of the usual suspects of advertisers like Amazon, Doritos and Bud Light, a host of newcomers entered the fray. One, Klarna, the Swedish payments brand, built buzz for its quirky use of a celebrity—albeit in miniature, quadrupled form—to explain its modern day appeal to shoppers. In the spot, four tiny cowgirl Maya Rudolphs pay for a pair of sparkly boots in four small installments, illustrating Klarna’s buy now, pay later approach to payments.

“This Klarna commercial has me howling,” tweeted @ TheReelGay, while @LoriMartin tweeted “I don’t know what a Klarna is but I’m here for @MayaRudolph and Patrick Swayze’s brother.”

Ponying up the $5.6 million needed for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial may have worked in Klarna’s favor as the 15-year-old brand tries to penetrate the U.S. market, which it entered four years ago. According to Harris Poll, Klarna got a 5.9-point boost in consideration after the spot aired. Klarna Chief Marketing Officer David Sandström says the ad’s feedback has been “fantastic,” noting that it was “showcasing to consumers and to retailers that we mean

business in the U.S.” Yet Klarna is not the only fast-growing brand with such aspirations. In recent years, a host of buy now, pay later companies have popped up across the globe, including Afterpay in Australia, and Affirm in San Francisco. Such companies offer a compelling proposition to both retailers and consumers. For merchants, offering a buy now, pay later service could attract younger consumers eager to spend but not willing to use an interest-accruing credit card that could result in more debt—particularly after watching relatives get into financial trouble during the 2008 recession. When using buy now, pay later lenders, consumers receive the item but pay for it over time, often in four installments, with no interest or late fees if paid on time. Like with credit cards, customers undergo an approval process up front at point-ofsale, before they’re able to use a buy now, pay later service, which makes money by collecting a percentage ranging from 2% to 8% for each item’s sale from the retailer.

“The idea of layaway is almost 100 years old—this is nothing new and has been around since the Great Depression,” says Sara Rathner, a travel and credit cards expert at Nerdwallet.

“When something is new, or new again, there’s lots of players in the market and they’re trying to get that precious market share and profit from it but after the initial trend explodes, it’s going to be a case where certain players in the field are going to rise to the top.”

Online shopping fast-tracked the category But there is a key difference between old-school layaway programs, and buy now, pay later that is helping to fuel its rise: Buyers take possession of the products right away.

Buy now, pay later is also gaining momentum as online shopping surges in the pandemic because it offers an easy digital checkout experience. Market research firm CB Insights projects that buy now, pay later lenders in the coming years will gain a growing slice of the $8 trillion market of credit, debit and prepaid cards. The buy now, pay later industry, which generated $20 billion to $25 billion in purchases last year, will grow as much as 15 times its current volume by 2025 to exceed $1 trillion in annual gross merchandise volume.

Traditional lenders and credit card brands are confronting the threat by introducing similar services that break down payments into installments portioned out over multiple periods. But brands are using different models. For instance, American Express late last year gave more of its card holders the option to choose how they pay of their balance—including one option in which users create monthly payment plans with fixed fees and no interest. “We’re bringing buy now, pay later to these cards because we know our customers want to be in control of how they pay,” Rachel Stocks, executive VP of global premium products and benefits at American Express said in a statement.

“The ecommerce aspect of buy now pay later was perfectly poised for the pandemic,” says Oliver Yu, an analyst at CB Insights. “As soon as lockdowns happened, in-store shopping capacity dropped to zero overnight and buy now, pay later really enabled merchants to still make those sales and offer an attractive differentiator.”

Earlier this year, Affirm went public. Six-year-old Afterpay, which came to the U.S. in 2018, was valued at a market capitalization of $30 billion. Retailers including Sephora, Macy’s and Peloton are all tapping buy now, pay later services to help spur demand with shoppers. According to CB Insights, buy now, pay later services were mentioned on earnings calls by corporate executives a record number of times in 2020. “[Klarna] also has been a nice accelerant for us in terms of new customers,” said Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette on a recent earnings call with analysts, noting that two-thirds of the shoppers brought in by Klarna during the fourth quarter were not previously shoppers at the chain.

But as established financial brands expand into the sector, and new players continue to grow, they are challenged to increase consumer awareness. When a checkout screen offers a bevy of logo choices, these marketers are banking on brand equity to carry them through the sale.

“At first it was all about the exclusive merchant relationships,

and now it is an arms race competition between many players in terms of building trust with consumers,” says Lindsey Slaby, founder of Sunday Dinner, noting how now some payment providers have partnerships with the same retailer.

Over the last year, PayPal has followed the trend of consumers looking for alternative payment strategies by expanding its pay later options, which now include a “pay in four” option it rolled out in October ahead of the holiday season, according to Greg Lisiewski, VP of global Pay Later Products at PayPal. The service is applicable to purchases between $30 and $600 in cost.

Yet unlike newer brands like Klarna or Affirm, PayPal carries the weight of two decades of brand recognition in the U.S. According to a recent survey from Ad Age-Harris Poll, 56% of online shoppers are already aware of PayPal, compared with 23% for AfterPay, 20% for Affirm and 19% for Klarna.

Lisiewski says that PayPal’s edge in the new buy now, pay later product is that it is likely carried at all of the same retailers that may have individual relationships with rivals such as Affirm or Afterpay.

“What’s nice about our offering, from a consumer perspective, is because we can build the awareness—as long as PayPal is there, you’re going to get Pay in Four,” says Lisiewski, noting that even if a merchant already has a deal with a competitor, PayPal will still have its logo at checkout. “We have essentially ubiquitous coverage so the consumer doesn’t have to wonder, ‘Should I get it with Affirm or Afterpay, I can just get it all with PayPal.’” While newer brands are especially adept at attracting younger shoppers—Macy’s Gennette noted the influx of shoppers under age 40—PayPal says its new service has seen robust repeat usage across demographics. That includes digital natives, but is not exclusive to that population, according to Lisiewski. The company is using its broader marketing program and established retailer partnerships to promote the offering.

Regulation challenges ahead But while afterpay adoption is still relatively nascent in the U.S., it could meet with increased inspection from financial regulators moving forward, experts predict. Critics have said that these brands are persuading younger consumers to incur debts that in some cases, they cannot pay off.

“Any time you buy something now and pay it off later, it is a form of debt,” says Rathner.

In the U.K., for example, regulators are already paying close attention to the potential debt pitfalls, recently banning an Instagram ad from Klarna that likened shopping to mood boosting.

“As this model continues to gain traction, regulators are going to pay closer and closer scrutiny to it to make sure consumers aren’t being predatorily targeted and that’s it’s not adversely affecting the consumer,” says Yu. In the meantime, the model remains appealing to both consumers and merchants. Younger customers, already

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accustomed to shopping online, are gravitating to pay later services now more than ever. More than 50% of online shoppers ages 18 to 34 said they use pay-by-installment services at least half of the time they make purchases, compared to 39% two years ago, according to a survey conducted by Ad Age-Harris Poll. Overall, 30% of online shoppers use such payment plans at least half the time, compared to 25% in 2019, the survey found.

“You look at millennials and Gen Z—their lifestyle—they’re already used to subscription models,” says Greg Fisher, chief marketing officer at Affirm. “Think about Netflix or Rent the Runway or Dollar Shave Club where they’re used to receiving a product or service and having that fixed monthly payment versus what you would get with a credit card with variability.”

For retailers, teaming up with an after pay provider gives them access to new customers, reachable through the provider’s own marketing network. For example, if a retailer signs up with the Afterpay brand, they are part of the Afterpay community of merchants that get blasted to Afterpay’s entire customer network with emails and in-app communications to shoppers, according to Dan Wallace-Brewster, senior VP of marketing at Scalefast, which helps brands improve their ecommerce offerings.

“The value for merchants in terms of positioning from BNPL providers is they will increase your cart size and conversation rate, but more and more they’re going to be able to provide that new customer,” he says.

Tapping differentiators To stay ahead of the competition, Klarna is trying to position itself beyond simply a payments provider. After the awareness boost from the Super Bowl spot, the company recently hosted a 48-hour live-streamed shopping event with Cosmopolitan Magazine that featured exclusives from brands such as Rebecca Minkoff and Bluemercury. Klarna plans to do more of such events, but it is also investing in initiatives like sustainability goals in order to better connect with today’s modern customers. Klarna pledged 1% of the capital it raises moving forward to sustainability efforts, Sandström says.

“We’re always looking for new ways of engaging our consumer base and retailers,” he says. “If you look at online retail today, it is very transactional and it’s lacking a lot of the emotional components that you’d have in the physical space—talking to your friends, trying stuff on. Us slowly starting to tap into digital events and live shopping, that’s really in line with what we want to become as a brand.”

Afterpay is focusing on its merchant relationships and using its app and website to refer traffic back to retailers. In December, Afterpay referred more than 45 million customers to brands with which it has relationships, according to Geoff Seeley, who joined as chief marketing officer a year ago after working at Airbnb. Though Afterpay has done some TV and out-of-home advertising, it’s also focusing on marketing itself, with its retail partners, to its younger customers where it knows they live—on social channels. The company was a

sponsor of London Fashion Week, for example. In the fall, Afterpay worked with Crocs for a promotion called Croctober that included TikTok content around how customers prefer to wear the straps on their clogs. The campaign included a custom song that resulted in 60.1 million views. Seeley notes the value of community in building the Afterpay brand.

“Our job as the verb in the category is to build equity in that—what is to afterpay?” Seeley says. “It’s not just a payment tool that’s buried deep in a merchant’s site. We’re a brand that represents the lifestyle our customers are living and increasingly demanding.”

Affirm, which has run marketing campaigns with retail partners including Walmart and Warby Parker as well as its own holiday “Gifts not Gotcha” brand campaign, is exploring other industries where a buy now, pay later strategy might resonate. The brand is looking into the travel category, for example, according to Fisher. In addition, Affirm recently announced it will begin offering a debit card, which is connected to a bank account and usable anywhere that accepts plastic already. The advantage of the card is that it gives users the option to review eligible purchases after they’ve been made and switch them to payments over time, Fisher says.

“This card is going to be game-changing for any person that wants to pay over time,” he says. “It’s literally opening up all of commerce.”

The card could also be useful for customers returning to instore shopping. While many buy now, pay later providers also offer a brick-and-mortar option, they’re challenged to recruit new customers within physical stores because of the length of time it may take for credit approval. Online the approval process takes one or two minutes, but in stores, that could appear lengthier if there is a queue.

“It’s making sure the user experience is very smooth,” says CB Insights’ Yu. “The availability in store and omnichannel is going to be key.”

Along with that seamless experience, brands, particularly the newcomers, need to make sure they are building confidence with consumers through trust.

“Trust is huge because when you’re dealing with something as personal as people’s money, if you feel as if the company has done you wrong, it hits you in the gut—you’re not going to give them your business anymore,” says Nerdwallet’s Rathner. “But if you feel like a company has enabled you to make a purchase you needed to make and everything they’ve told you has been true, then suddenly that company is on your side—they’re still a company and they’re there to make a profit, but their service is of value to you.”

A reporter with Ad Age since 2015, Adrianne Pasquarelli covers the marketing strategies of retailers and financial institutions. She joined Ad Age after a dozen years of writing for Crain’s New York Business, where she also focused on the retail industry.

This new Facebook ad targets the only people left who actually like the brand

By Jeff Beer

A cat adoption café. Specialty fashion accessories. Goat yoga. There’s one place it all can find an audience. Here’s a hint: It’s one of the two places that gobble up more than 60% of digital advertising dollars. This week, Facebook launched a new ad aimed at every type of small business and entrepreneur, pitching itself as the best place to have an idea found, precisely because of its ubiquity as a social platform.

For every idea out there that gets the love it should There are five more that don’t succeed, and some are lost for good Some of them are pretty flawed, and some of them are slightly odd But many are small businesses that simply lack the tool To find excited people who’ll stop and say, “That’s cool” And these two they like this idea, and those three like that one And that’s because personalized ads find good ideas for everyone.

I mean, it’s no “Pull Up to the Bumper.” However, as Facebook

still finds itself in “necessary evil” territory for most people— they like to see pics of their friends’ kids but, y’know, hate all the misinformation and privacy issues—the company lately has decided to lean into the last demographic that actually likes them: small businesses.

Small business accounts for nearly 75% of Facebook’s $70 billion annual ad revenue, according to Deutsche Bank, and it was the bulwark that prevented last summer’s advertising boycott by major brands from having any meaningful or lasting financial effects.

So it’s no surprise that the company continues to woo small businesses, even if most are there not because of any semblance of brand loyalty. To be coldblooded about it, Facebook offers the cheapest marketing option with the most reach. In May 2020, the company rolled out Facebook Shops e-commerce to serve small businesses, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself touting how Facebook hoped that it would mean “there’ll be higher conversions and more sales for small businesses.”

A couple of months later, during the company’s earnings call last summer, in which the phrase “small business” was said 34 times, Zuckerberg invoked the sector when he pitched hard for the power of targeted ads, saying, “That’s

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why I am often troubled by the calls to go after internet advertising, especially during a time of such economic turmoil like we face today with Covid . . . . The much bigger cost of such a move would be to reduce the effectiveness of the ads and opportunities for small businesses to grow. This would reduce opportunities for small businesses so much that it would probably be felt at a macro-economic level.

Is that really what policymakers want in the middle of a pandemic and recession?”

The drumbeat continued in September 2020, when the brand launched a tear-jerker ad—shot by an Oscarnominated cinematographer and featuring a soft emo cover of “I Will Survive” by Lykke Li—celebrating a beloved New York neighborhood restaurant called Coogan’s that was forced to shut down during the pandemic. It’s a lovely tribute to a uniquely specific small business, and yet . . . zoom out and remember that Facebook is the place where, according to advocacy group Avaaz, misleading health content had garnered an estimated 3.8 billion views over the past year.

And lest we forget, in December, Facebook decided to retaliate against Apple’s decision, beginning with iOS 14, to require mobile apps to request permission to track users for advertising purposes. Facebook’s response was to take out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal stating, “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.”

People are now generally more wary than ever about how their personal information is being used. The brand appears to think the same old pitch about getting more relevant ads that we’ve been hearing from tech companies for a decade will somehow sound better when it’s sung by Grace Jones.

(It doesn’t.) Droga5 creative director Thom Glover told Muse By Clio, “We knew going in that it’s hard for people

to understand the value of the ads they see on Facebook and Instagram every day. Our challenge was to tell a story about personalized advertising showing that value.”

Advertisers may buy that, but actual users may not be such an easy sell. Recall the response from WhatsApp users in January, when it was rumored the messaging app’s privacypolicy changes would allow WhatsApp to read users’ messages and hand the information over to its parent company, Facebook, which the company has denied.

WhatsApp quickly began to bleed users, and encrypted apps such as Signal got a significant boost. Or remember when there was some mishandling of Instagram passwords.

Undaunted, Facebook continues to make its case. Just a few weeks ago, the company created a new pop-up prompt to users, extolling the virtues of its data-collection strategy, such as personalized ads, which it wants us to think about before clicking through to the new privacy warning coming soon to iPhones from Apple.

This new ad, then, is Facebook taking a page from every Midwestern conservative who ever ran for Congress, wrapping itself in the dream of American entrepreneurship and small business. The specificity and story of each highlighted business warm our patriotic hearts while obfuscating any broader policies that may actually be against our best interests.

As a marketing strategy, it’s pretty damn good. Need, after all, can be as powerful a drive as love.

Jeff Beer is a staff editor and writer with Co.Create.

He’s a former staffer at Advertising Age, Creativity and Canadian Business magazine. He lives in Toronto.

Microsoft’s Peter DeBenedictis: “tech is an enabler, but don’t lose sight of the human element”

By Chiara Manco, WARC

Peter DeBenedictis, CMO, Middle East and Africa at Microsoft, will be chairing the panel of the 2021 WARC Prize for MENA

Strategy. Here, he talks to WARC about his learnings from the past year, the need for companies to rapidly digitise, and the

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role of strategy in enabling businesses to thrive.

Describe your role and what it involves.

I look after all of Microsoft’s field marketing and marketing communications covering 79 countries in the Middle East and Africa region, up through to emerging markets such as Turkey and Pakistan.

How has your role been impacted by COVID and lockdowns this past year?

2020 has been a challenging year for the industry as a whole, but it hit B2B marketing particularly hard, as up to 70% of its investment lands in some form of in-person event.

Fortunately, we had a good set-up in our organisation, which allowed for the proliferation of digital events. It’s worth bearing in mind that organising these requires a different set of skills than putting on in-person events, though. I believe marketers need to think a lot more like television producers rather than event managers to keep consumers engaged and avoid fatigue around digital events.

How has strategy across the region evolved to respond to the changes brought about by the pandemic?

In terms of consumer engagement, you saw many businesses which had traditionally been brick and mortar switch to online in order to respond and survive. The growth of online retailing enabled online payments to skyrocket across the region, in turn requiring banks to adopt new processes.

Within this ripple effect, the companies and industries that rapidly digitised were the ones that were able to not only recover, but also prosper.

As a technology company, we have been right in the middle of that change, acting as a true enabler for companies to respond, recover and reimagine. Take Teams in the UAE: in the first half of the year, we turned on over a million students onto the platform within three weeks. By the same token, we saw companies who were previously resistant to smart working, suddenly asking for up to 50,000 users to be switched on in Teams. Being able to empower students and employees has been really rewarding.

Do you think that, whenever possible, brands will strive towards more of an integration between physical and digital?

The last year has shown that digital engagement works: you can get more scale and reach more customers than with inperson events. I believe the in-person experience will come back to a certain extent, but we will see far more hybrid types of marketing, where you have in-person and digital coexisting in the same space. Similarly, I don’t think most companies, where they are able to, will ever go back to 100% in-office working.

Products such as Teams have been at the forefront in 2020, essential in enabling people to work and study from home. What lessons can you share on how to better serve consumers in this space?

The first lesson we learnt was around training customers fast and at scale, creating the right content that would make them comfortable using Teams to replace their work environment.

We had to do a lot of education – digital events, user guides – which needed to be tailored to the pandemic and the situation. It took a tremendous amount of hard work and

effort, but we were able to do it in a nimble and agile way, and marketing played a huge role in it.

The second thing that we learned is how to add capacity to our data centres. The massive surge in users required a superhuman effort by our engineers to add the capacity needed and, in a sense, keep the world moving on Teams.

Last month, we saw 2.7bn meeting minutes in a single day on Teams – that’s just mind-blowing.

The third thing we took away is to not underestimate the power of technology to bring and keep people and communities together. During this pandemic, technology has truly been a force for good, a massive enabler for society as a whole.

If you could name one priority for businesses at this time, what would it be?

First, businesses need to figure out which stage they are at in dealing with the pandemic – responding, recovering or reimagining. Then, the key priority for any company is to digitise: the need to digitally transform to survive now is the new normal.

Whether you are a small, medium or large business, it is imperative to figure out the digital transformation journey that the company needs to go on. Start small, but start now, or you risk becoming obsolete – because if you’re not doing it, your competitors definitely are. Accelerate as fast as you can, so that when the economy and the world hopefully start to recover in 2021, you will be as well positioned to take advantage of it as your competitors.

What is your one takeaway from this unprecedented year?

No matter how much we digitise, we still need human contact.

As much as technology is an enabler, a way to accelerate business transformation and improve productivity, there is nothing like meeting people face-to-face. When thinking about strategy and how their business is going to evolve moving forward, marketers shouldn’t lose sight of the human element.

What are you hoping to see from this year’s papers?

As companies have been faced with an unprecedented challenge, I am hopeful we will see interesting innovations and applications of strategy that combine data and insight to help their customers navigate uncertainty. We have already experienced some such work as consumers, watching companies transform very quickly thanks to strong strategic thinking.

Marketers’ decisions can determine a company’s fortunes, so I am excited to see outstanding work showing how marketing helped inform strategies that have enabled businesses to not only respond and recover, but also thrive and grow.

What advice would you give anyone considering entering the WARC Prize for MENA Strategy?

Over the years, the best types of submissions I’ve seen are the ones that combine strong customer data and insight to get to their strategy. It’s also essential to demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy: too often that last mile is left out. The best entries are not just great ideas and clever campaigns, but ones that thread the needle between all these different elements.

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Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition (Updated and Expanded Edition)

By Steve Miller What separates average businesses from extraordinarily successful ones? Better product?

Nope. Your competitor will rapidly reverseengineer your “secret sauce” and get their “better-than-you” version on the market faster than you can say “Usain Bolt.”

Sinker The Advertising Concept Book: Think Now, Design Later (Third)

By Pete Barry Structured to provide both a complete course on advertising and a quick reference on specific industry topics, it covers every aspect of the business, from how to write copy and learn the creative process to how agencies work and the different strategies used for all types of media.

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World

He Said, She Said: Branding

By Brendan Kane

In He Said, She Said: Branding, the husband and wife team of Jaci and Michael Russo share what they’ve learned over their combined decades of experience working in branding and with each other.

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World, by out of the box thinker Brendan Kane, breaks down the most effective strategies to generate new opportunities, innovate and scale your business, and create a compelling brand— both online and off—so you can thrive in the new micro-attention world in which we live

Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader

by John Rossman

Social networks are the new norm and traditional marketing is failing in today’s digital, always-on culture. Businesses across the world are having to face up to how they remain relevant in the choppy waters of the digital ocean. In an era where a YouTube star gets more daily impressions than Nike, Coca-Cola and Walmart combined, traditional marketing as we know it is dead.

Good Is The New Cool: Market Like You Give A Damn

By Andrea Fryrear Marketing has an image problem. Mediasavvy millennials, and their younger Gen Z counterparts, no longer trust advertising, and they demand increased social responsibility from their brands—while still insisting on cutting-edge products with on-trend design. As always, brands need to be cool—but now they need to be good, too.

By Michael Russo

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

By James Clear No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day.

James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Customer Experience that Turns Satisfied Customers into Customer Evangelists

By Shep Hyken In today’s competitive business climate, you can’t just satisfy your customers. You have to be better than that, giving them experiences that they won’t forget. Author Shep Hyken has spent thirty years studying great companies and the evangelists they create.

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Be Amazing or Go Home: Seven Customer Service Habits that Create Confidence with Everyone

By Shep Hyken Want to amaze your customers, impress the people you work with, and outshine your competition? Going from average to amazing isn’t an out-of-reach goal. In fact, amazement is a habit that anyone can master—and Shep Hyken knows the tricks to making it your own.

Binge Worthy Branding: Build Customer Loyalty Using AI and Personalization Like Amazon, Netflix, and Starbucks

By Kevin Albert More than 4 years of research, 34 entrepreneurs interviewed, $30,000 invested, hundreds of enemies made along the way, 1 attempted lynching, barred from the lucrative circle of ‘experts’...

From Individual to Empire: A Guide to Building an Authentic and Powerful Brand

Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media

By Laura Bull

Every one of your favorite influencers started with zero followers and had to make a lot of mistakes to get where they are today—earning more money each year than their parents made in the last decade. But to become a top creator, you need to understand the strategies behind the Insta-ready lifestyle . . .

Bull spent ten years with Sony Music Entertainment, becoming one of the company’s youngest executives and spearheading artist development and marketing for globally recognized brands.

She is an expert who specializes in transforming entrepreneurs into viable brands and teaching what it takes to become a powerful “influencer.

The Business of Aspiration

By Ana Andjeli The Business of Aspiration is about how consumers’ shifting status symbols affect business and brand strategy. These changing status symbols, like taste, aesthetic innovation, curation or environmentalism create the modern aspirational economy.

Activate Brand Purpose: How to Harness the Power of Movements to Transform Your Company

By Scott Goodson We live in an age of activism - the conscious consumer is more socially aware than ever before, and this is reflected in their buying habits.

Yet, activism on behalf of brands is lagging. While many claim to be ‘purpose driven’, far too often this purpose is relegated to a plaque above the CEO’s desk, and never goes any further.

ByBrittany Hennessy

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

By Rory Sutherland “Sutherland, the legendary Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, uses his decades of experience to dissect human spending behavior in an insanely entertaining way. Alchemy combines scientific research with hilarious stories and case studies of campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft and the like. This is a must-read.” —Entrepreneur (“Best Books of the Year”)

The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media

By Gavin Turner We are in the midst of a massive media revolution.

For the first time in history, ordinary people around the world have the ability to create, distribute, and consume content instantly, from anywhere, using connected devices.