BrandKnew December 2017

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Dear Friends: It’s that time of the year when we bid as the French say it au revoir to what has been a momentous year for the world of branding and marketing. 2018 promises a lot and we do take a look at what CMOs have to say about the technology trends that will dominate in the coming year. Since disruption and tectonic shifts have become routine,we examine in this issue why the future of Ad Agencies in the times to come will not be Advertising at all. VR has been a story waiting to be told and now at the cusp of critical mass eruption and we look here how Socialization will take the technology mainstream.

A related article on how budget headsets will change the VR landscape would also find serious interest with brand marketers. For the purists, in these days of influencer marketing, the feature on how to master branding will be like manna from heaven. We also take a deep dive into why not all influencers are created equal. It’s said the ‘automobile ‘ is going to be the most significant marketing destination in the future and the article on Marketing in a Driverless World will bear testimony. There is heaps more to soak in and all of us here at BrandKnew look ahead to continuing this exhilrating journey with you in the New Year as we wish you and yours the very best for 2018. Till the next…

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26 Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran

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suresh@groupisd.com Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Content Creation Architect: Arunima Takiar Digital Outreach & Engagement Specialist: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Associate Brand Connect: Hasitha Fernando Creator: Brand Stories: Salindu Sadishan

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CONTENTS

5 marketing technology trends CMOs need to master for 2018 Brand Storytelling That Stands Out in the Crowded Food and Beverage Market The Evolution of 13 Famous Logos [Infographic] Branding Has Never Been Harder. Here’s How To Master It #TheFutureIsExciting: Inside Vodafone’s Global Brand Refresh The Future Of Ad Agencies Might Not Be Advertising At All Marketing in a Driverless World Marketers Are Opening Their Eyes To Visual Search Are These Five Marketing Buzzwords and Concepts Overhyped?

Not All Influencers Are Created Equal The Three Content Marketing Tactics E-Commerce Marketers Often Miss Could the push into budget headsets be a tipping point for VR advertising?

Socialization will make VR mainstream Book, Line & Sinker

5 marketing technology trends CMOs need to master for 2018 AS WE EDGE CLOSER TO 2018, COLUMNIST JIM YU LAYS OUT FIVE MARTECH TRENDS YOU’LL NEED TO MONITOR TO LEAD YOUR ORGANIZATION TO SUCCESS IN THE YEAR AHEAD.

By Jim Yu

As you put together your marketing strategy for 2018, there have never been more tools and tactics fighting for your budget. Technologies considered emerging over the last several years are beginning to peak as marketers inch closer to realizing the full potential of AI, machine learning and voice search. Privacy concerns over tracking and data collection have given way to demands for greater personalization across platforms, channels and devices.

All of this increasingly granular, targeted marketing powered by technology enables more meaningful consumer interactions, driven by a massive amount of consumer data.

The next big step in moving the needle on performance requires that you sync your tech around your understanding of that data, and martech is leading the way.

As you prioritize your areas of focus, know that mastering these five martech trends will be critical in 2018.

1. Capitalize on the convergence of martech and ad tech Given the competitive nature of budget allocation between ad tech and martech, it’s no wonder many executives dread their convergence. Take it from Joe Stanhope at Forrester, though: This convergence of ad tech and martech is nothing to be afraid of.

In a recent CMO.com column, Stanhope shared the two major benefits of the convergence: economic throughput and contextual marketing. Convergence redefines the path of marketing spend across technology, data, media and content, he wrote. As for the latter, it also advances the technology stack and drives engagement across touch points, devices and stages of the customer life cycle.

I’ve written about this convergence myself here at MarTech Today, including the skills you’ll need to navigate this brave new world where ad tech is automating markets and martech is scaling business outcomes. Marketing technology has grown rapidly to claim a 33 percent stake of the marketing budget, according to Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 20152016, and you should expect that to grow in 2018 and beyond.

Dig into this great read on “Becoming a martech mastermind: Agility, proficiency and accountability” to learn more about the mindset and skill set that will best lend to your success as a hybrid marketing leader.

2. Put the AI revolution to work for you Are you prepared to speak knowledgeably on artificial intelligence and defend its role in your organization? How will you measure the ROI of your AI efforts?

Because it’s not a magic-button solution for every challenge, there’s great value in making sure you’re applying AI only where it can actually move the needle. Home in on those high-volume, low-margin areas of the business, and examine the ways AI could help reduce frustrations and improve ROI. Go for the quickest wins first to prove its value early on and win buy-in across the board.

There are even greater gains to be made with a customerfirst approach. The machine learning component of your AI technology drives deeper, more insightful connections along each customer’s journey, enabling you to engage with content that resonates when it matters most.

This is critical in 2018, which may well be smack in the middle of the rise of the Internet of Things. By 2020, some expect the IoT to have grown to a sobering 75 billion connected devices.

Machine learning is critical as we try to keep pace with the rapidly evolving consumer behaviors and preferences that brings.

3. Take advantage of the wide open spaces in voice search

The opportunity that is voice search increases exponentially when you look at how many marketers are dropping the ball.

My company, BrightEdge, found that 31 percent of marketers believe voice search to be the next big thing, and we already know that 20 percent of all Google searches now stem from

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voice queries. It’s going to get bigger, too; comScore predicts that by 2020, 50 percent of consumers will be interacting with voice-activated technology.

Companies like MapQuest are evolving with voice search in mind. MapQuest is working to improve natural language navigation so that users can interact without a visual interface, Andy McMahon, MapQuest’s director of search and local data, said at a conference earlier this year. He said voice search is in an awkward “first date” phase, but will grow and evolve.

Smart marketers are all over voice search, so how do we explain that over 60 percent still have no plans to prepare for voice search?

While they sort themselves out, there’s a huge opportunity for forward-thinking CMOs to take advantage of the reduced competition caused by those dragging their feet. You can begin mapping your content consumer intent at the right points of their decision-making journey.

For example, we know that the majority of voice search queries are conversational in nature. Your understanding of that intent enables you to tailor your content and position it as the best answer for those voiced queries.

Increase your content’s visibility by answering questions using in-demand keywords that align with the topics that matter to your brand. Which brings us to…

4. Create SMART, purposeful content to win eyes and conversions Now that you’ve mastered process and production, you have a solid underpinning of quality content to build on. Shift your focus to discovery and performance, where the most impactful gains can be had.

Poor content performance is a nearly universal challenge for marketers, 71 percent of whom say that less than half their content is consumed at all, our company research concludes.

I recommend that CMOs look at content through the SMART lens (where S stands for Specific, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant and T for timely), ensuring content is: 1. targeted to exactly what customers want and need when they need it.

2. optimized to make the content more visible and discoverable.

3. always on and always optimized — adaptive, dynamic, and relevant.

4. integrated and activated across devices and the entire marketing stack for maximum impact.

5. profitable for the marketers because the content delights and engages readers on topics they have intent for and primes them for conversion.

Martech, AI and the power of ad tech-based automated buys will make content promotion more effective and power increasingly more granular targeting. Tackling your content strategy with SMART in mind will ensure that you have the

most thoughtful, helpful, relevant content to feed your ideal consumers’ needs for information.

5. Get granular with a hyperlocal mobile search strategy Even national or global multilocation brands need a local marketing strategy. Nearly a third of all searches from a mobile device are related to location, and the previous years’ trend of rising “Near Me” searches has given way as consumers have dropped the qualifiers and instead assume results will be relevant to their location, according to Google.

Martech is really the only way large brands are going to be able to handle the demand for accurate, timely location information at scale. Consumers simply won’t give you another chance if the store hours for Store #847 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, are wrong, and they click for directions to a closed store. Worse yet, inaccurate location data undermines search engine trust in your brand and can negatively affect your ability for locations to rank in the communities they matter most.

Nearly two-thirds of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites or apps customize information to their location, according to Google.

In 2018, smart CMOs will get on board with local marketing technology designed to empower local managers while retaining brand controls.

Optimizing the listings for hundreds or even thousands of locations at scale is a challenge that demands highly localized content, from in-store photos to current promotions to local customer reviews.

Martech gives even the smallest franchises, corporate locations and service-based businesses access to powerful, enterpriselevel content and SEO tools. Make sure your locations aren’t missing out on these highly motivated consumers who are on the go and in their need-to-buy moments.

Setting your organization up for martechdriven success in 2018 As we redefine our marketing spend across technologies and human capital, we’ll find that perhaps fewer people are needed but those in control of these powerful martech tools will be uber-specialists across disciplines. In that way, even as the prevalence of martech grows, the humans who drive it will become more — not less — important.

Be careful not to place too much emphasis on inputs, as well.

Prioritize outputs — your revenue, your customer value — but more importantly, the performance imperative should be your top priority as you’re planning for the year ahead.

You can learn more about making martech decisions that prioritize ROI here.

Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise content performance and SEO Platform. He combines in-depth expertise in developing and marketing large on-demand software platforms with hands-on experience in advanced digital, content and SEO practices

Brand Storytelling That Stands Out in the Crowded Food and Beverage Market

By Lauren McMenemy

Brand storytelling is great when you’ve got a multimilliondollar budget and endless possibilities for creativity. But not every brand is that lucky; most have little with which to make an impact, especially if they’re small, a start-up, or hitting a very limited niche. It gets worse when that minor budget needs to make a splash in a crowded space, such as the food and beverage market. Few succeed; even fewer survive to become household names.

So how do they do it, those lucky few food and drink success stories? How do they engage in storytelling to stand out from the crowd?

Once upon a time the go-to name to learn from was Innocent, the juice brand that helped spearhead the real food revolution. But, as Hugh Thomas, co-founder of Ugly Drinks, pointed out when we spoke, Innocent is almost two decades old now. Instead, the new brand Thomas created with his former Vita Coco colleague Joe Benn is carving its own niche, and they’re on a self-proclaimed mission to change the food and drink industry.

“We saw a problem,” says Thomas, “which was partly too much sugar and sweetener in carbonated soft drinks, but really the lack of transparency in the industry. Consumers were buying products they thought were healthy, that were being marketed as products that will make you happier, stronger, etc., but essentially weren’t going to do that. I think that’s really what our business is set up to do, to rebel against carbonated soft drinks.”

Ugly is essentially sparkling water plus flavor, served up in a can. But its founders knew the importance of standing out and having something to say. Its tone of voice and style have been integral to the brand development; its design is there to subvert “Big Soda.” Says Thomas: “There’s a lot of thought that’s gone into how we talk, the image we put across, and how we communicate. We really wanted something that resonates with consumers. Transparency and authenticity were super important to us. That’s something you can’t control.”

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US launch in early 2018 as its first international market. They recognize the importance their storytelling is going to take in this next growth spurt—including that well-established oneto-one style for social media, which they hope to leverage for e-commerce sales soon.

“We want to be storytellers in a number of ways across a number of platforms, and I feel as we get bigger we can really develop that, our style and tone. To talk to consumers where they are and create content that is relevant for where they are spending their attention. Storytelling is fundamental to our transparency thing as well. We want to tell the ups and downs. We always talk about the challenges, because that’s the truth. And as a bonus, people really like it.”

You can see echoes of Ugly Truth, the making a splash, in the brands Thomas cites as inspiration: Netflix’s people and culture policy, the video blogger Casey Neistat, and, importantly, those punks at BrewDog. “They’re not necessarily the same attitude as us,” Thomas is quick to point out, “but the commitment and the way they inspire their team internally and inspire consumers, there’s a lot to be admired in that. It’s growing incredibly quickly.”

Brand Storytelling with No Fake Promises He continues: “What the Ugly name stands for is us talking about the Ugly Truth. We didn’t want a name that was like ‘Health Water’ or ‘Happiness Water’ or something like that.

We’re just going to be truthful; no fake promises come with it.

That mentality of taking things out and doing things differently to how it has been done before, it’s been fundamental to every decision we’ve made, whether that’s how it looks, the brand name, the style of marketing. It comes from wanting to change that lack of transparency in the food and drink market.”

The rise of boutique brands such as Ugly has thrown down the gauntlet to the big boys, but it also means there’s such a glut of new players that it’s difficult to stand out. Sure, kooky labels and artwork can play a part, but there are only a handful of boutique brands really making an impact. Red Bull went to space to grab attention, but there are more attainable ways to make your name. Ugly’s marketing on a shoestring has thus far focused on creating one-to-one conversations, mainly through in-store demos and via social media, and that’s something Thomas says they plan to scale as best they can while growing. Eschewing the usual European jaunt for a UK brand, Ugly is instead looking towards a

BrewDog is marketing’s new Red Bull. The craft beer label started by school friends in a garage in Scotland a decade ago is the UK’s fastest-growing food and drinks company, with a £1 billion valuation. So successful are they that they’ve just sold a 22 percent stake to US investor TSG as they build their first US-based operations.

An Uncompromising Tone of Voice Stands Out It is also, however, a brand known for a style of attentiongrabbing guerrilla marketing and self-promotion that has made BrewDog a love-or-hate entity. Among their most notable stunts are an ale packaged inside the bodies of dead animals, a Viagra beer created to celebrate the Royal Wedding, and a Putin-inspired protest beer made for the Sochi Winter Olympics. BrewDog’s tone of voice is uncompromising, as is the brand itself; it’s known for taking on the establishment and doing its best to live up to the punk ethos it espouses.

Brand Storytelling That Stands Out in the Crowded Food and Beverage Market Writes Cameron Clarke in the Drum: “Strip away the extremities of the punk rhetoric, and what Brewdog’s success really comes down to is people identifying with its spirit of being different. According to research from YouGov, BrewDog’s customers like to shop local (80% agree), experience new food and cuisines (83%) and don’t mind paying extra for good quality products (88%). As BrewDog gets bigger, and unavoidably becomes a multinational monolith itself, it will once again need to turn to marketing to restate its credentials as a beer like no other.”

It’s easy to see why BrewDog’s approach would appeal to young drink start-ups. Co-founder James Watt told PR Week that BrewDog considers marketing to consumers based on demographics to be an outdated strategy: “Everyone wants to be someone they are not—young people want to be older; old people want to be younger. So you are essentially marketing towards the stereotypical aspirations of a stereotype, and I think that just falls down under the weight of assumptions.”

BrewDog’s content strategy is confrontational, yet it appeals to the craft beer movement that’s been gaining steam on both sides of the Atlantic.

“BrewDog embodies, in short, much about modern life that many people love to hate, particularly online and almost certainly beneath this article,” writes Jon Henley in the Guardian. “You don’t have to search far to find someone on the internet calling BrewDog ‘hipsters’, ‘pretentious’, ‘wankers’, ‘assholes’ or simply ‘full of shit’. In the small but passionate world of British beer nerds, few subjects arouse stronger feelings than BrewDog: ‘an instinctively repulsive . . . operation of expanding beards and stupidly named gaseous beverages’, as one blogger put it.”

But you know what? It got BrewDog noticed. It made them stand out. There are few who haven’t heard of BrewDog, even if they’re not beer drinkers. Brand storytelling can’t rely on old tricks anymore; it needs a new direction.

“The obituary for the old form of brand is increasingly written across the marketing and business press,” writes Jeff MacDonald. “The death of the outdated transactional relationship between brands and people has been signaled very clearly by the Havas Media Meaningful Brands study.

The need for a radical overhaul in thinking on propositions and activation could not be clearer. Headline findings in the most recent 2017 study include the damning facts that people wouldn’t care if 74% of the brands they use just disappeared and that 60% of the content created by the world’s leading 1,500 brands is ‘just clutter’ that has little impact on consumers’ lives (or business results).”

Brand Must Play a More Significant Role in Shaping the Wider World MacDonald continues: “Businesses need to move on from the now outdated, transactional model of ‘love brands’.

Today’s consumer is seeking more than just the functional and emotional benefits being offered from products and features and image based comms and experiences. People are looking for brands to play a bigger, more significant role in supporting them to build the type of world they seek.”

Consumers are also looking for storytelling that speaks to them—that screams of the authenticity that Ugly’s Hugh Thomas spoke of. It’s something the founders of Fever Tree knew. The tonic maker increased its value tenfold in two years, having spotted an opportunity for a better quality tonic water to go along with the boom in premium gin brands. Yes, that’s quite a niche market.

“I love how they picked what was a pretty un-sexy product category,” writes David Taylor. “Tonic is a ‘mixer’ that is used to create a drink, not even a drink it its own right. But Charles Rolls and Tim Warrilow felt there was space for a better quality, premium tonic, after discovering that most mixers on the market used preservatives like sodium benzoate or similar substances, cheap aromatics such as decanal and artificial sweeteners (such as saccharin).

“Fever Tree built its brand not by what it said but rather by what it did. They don’t do any emotional, sizzle-based, lifestyle advertising. Instead, they simply and impactfully communicate a compelling product story: ‘If 3/4 of your drink is the mixer, make sure you use the best.’ This is supported by the truth of being in the world’s top bars or restaurants.”

Such brand storytelling won’t work for the big labels; people don’t turn to the uber-brands for tales of small craftsmanship and vintage pedigrees. (OK, so maybe it works for Jack Daniels.) The big brands are also dealing with being the face of anti-obesity campaigning, as Coca-Cola discovered when it was forced into a campaign promoting its record of making low-calorie drinks. Likewise, KFC’s “The Whole Chicken” advertisement likely failed as it isn’t an accurate reflection of who the brand really is.

The important thing for those looking to stand out in the crowded food and beverage market, then, is authenticity.

Find your niche, stick to your passion, and flaunt the heck out of it. And, mainly, be brave. Don’t be afraid of the ugly truth.

Lauren is a storyteller. A journalist by trade, she has worked in agencies, in-house and in the media over her 20-year career. She’s worked as an editorial strategist and content creator for some of the world’s biggest brands, setting up processes and guidelines, advising on planning, auditing content – pretty much handling the stuff with words.

The Evolution of 13 Famous Logos [Infographic]

By Ayaz Nanji

How have iconic logos evolved over time?

Do logo changes tend to correspond to periods of revenue growth for brands?

To find out, C+R Research examined the important logo changes of 13 well-known brands: Starbucks, Apple, Google, Amazon, Levi’s, Microsoft, Dell, Twitter, Nike, Coca-Cola, IBM, Shell, and Airbnb.

As part of the analysis, the researchers mapped major logo changes to each brand’s revenue history.

Check out the infographic to see the findings Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and the cofounder of Inbound ContentWorks, a marketing agency that specializes in content creatio. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His past experience includes working for Google/ YouTube, the Travel Channel, AOL, and the New York Times.

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Branding Has Never Been Harder.

Here’s How To Master It

By Meg Miller

TREMENDOUS CULTURAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES HAVE EXPANDED THE PARAMETERS OF IDENTITY DESIGN. HERE ARE FOUR KEY PRINCIPLES FOR BRANDING IN THE AGE OF AMBIGUITY.

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The emergence of new technology has changed and will continue to change the identity design profession. Gone are the days when fluency in the Adobe Suite was as far as your technological expertise needed to stretch. The past few years have brought web and mobile design to the fore; now there’s VR/AR, and increasingly bots and artificial intelligence. Even if identity designers aren’t working in these mediums directly, they are increasingly asked to understand their value and their challenges in order to communicate them to the general public.

We saw these shifting technologies and priorities reflected in the projects submitted to this year’s Fast Company Innovation By Design Awards. Of the finalists in the Graphic Design and Data Visualization category, several projects focused on branding for mobile apps, or for companies for whom mobile was a central focus (see R/GA’s Can’t Stop campaign for Samsung, or Moving Brands’s animated branding for the Magisto app). There was also the Brooklynbased agency Praytell, which designed an animated 3D logo and overall identity system for the virtual reality company Within. Meanwhile, our winner in this category, Wolff Olins’s branding for dotdot, ingeniously visualized a new universal IoT language for the forward-thinking Zigbee Alliance.

Even with other finalists whose projects skewed toward more traditional identity or data design work (see Base Design’s visual language for JFK’s Terminal 4, or Artefact’s USAFacts website), we were struck by the ways they leveraged technology to create work that’s both visually effective and incredibly useful.

We reached out to four firms honored in this category to ask about what is in store for the branding space over the next 10 years. What new technologies should designers be fluent in? What ethical issues should they be prepared to face?

And how do they expect branding to have changed 10 years down the road?

From their answers, we put together four branding principles for the future of design:

1. LEARN HOW TO USE CUTTING-EDGE DESIGN TOOLS–BUT DON’T LET THEM TAKE OVER “Over the past five years we’ve come to expect wider technical expertise and media fluency–strong candidates are no longer just Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop experts, but also skilled at 3D modeling, animation, coding, and editing. Constantly shifting formats necessitate adaptable systems for different audiences and expressions from brand experiences, spaces, layout or even logo design.

“The design industry is in danger of pointless banality and a sea of sameness–from designers pulling all the same references to simply producing inoffensive work. Increasingly, as we face competition from crowdsourcing and generative automatic design there is a lot of work that might look OK, but lacks deeper meaning or the ability to standout with purpose.

The risk of purely decorative design is that it simply fails to give meaning — or at its worst, even obscures unethical behavior.”—Cynthia Pratomo, creative director at Wolff Olins & Jan Eumann, design director at Wolff Olins

2. DON’Tv JUST COMMUNICATE–LOOK FOR WAYS TO SHAPE THE TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION “We seek out UX designers who understand that technologies change, but fundamental human behaviors and needs are much more constant. It’s important that UX designers are always fluent in what’s next, but at the same time have a core understanding of people, their motivations, and their priorities that carry through no matter what medium they are working in.

“More and more, designers need to be good communicators.

First, they need to be able to jump into a broad range of problems and complex situations and be able to listen carefully and learn what clients are truly asking for.

Designers then need to be able to communicate what it is they create and why, and we are increasingly looking for fresh and different methods for doing this, such as using VR to prototype an experience rather than showing screens and slides. As communicators, designers have the rare ability to create their own tools to communicate, so young designers should be exploring and pushing how we can design new ways of presenting what we do in the most compelling ways possible.”—Holger Kuehnle, UX designer, Artefact

3. ADOPT AN ETHICS-FIRST DESIGN PROCESS “Looking toward the future, the humanization of technology, whether it be bots or fully realized AI technologies, is well underway. We will as designers need to take gender, name, tone of voice–literally, to developing functionality, personality, attitude, and more–into consideration as brand collides with these artificial ‘beings.’ It indeed raises many ethical questions and represents both a challenge and opportunity. It’s worthy of discussion and deep thinking.”—Min Lew, creative director and managing director, Base Design, New York

4. EMBRACE AMBIGUITY “We are on the cusp of so many utterly transformative technologies that the world will be a very different place, even in the near future. AR and MR will become more commonplace, less clunky, and more indispensable.

Automation and machine learning will mean that we interface with technology less and less. Which leads to the interesting question of how you can create a distinct signature when a brand has few or no touchpoints?

“Clients’ needs are becoming less clearly defined–we often don’t know what the outcome will be at the start of the process. In fact, the process is sometimes helping them find what they need rather than answering a need. We use design to help prototype and pilot various scenarios rather than to answer a brief. Things just aren’t that neat anymore.”—Sean Murphy, creative director, Moving Brands

Meg Miller is an assistant editor at Co.Design covering art, technology, and design.

#TheFutureIsExciting: Inside Vodafone’s Global Brand Refresh

By Sheila Shayon

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Vodafone is opting for optimism in a new global brand positioning campaign that is rolling out across the 36 countries where it operates. It’s the brand’s first refresh since the 2009 introduction of its ‘Power to you’ tagline (which retires with this brand refresh) and underscores the brands belief that new technologies and digital services can have a positive impact on enhancing people’s lives and helping to transform society.

The new tagline — “The future is exciting. Ready?”

— will appear in local languages, with the second part, “Ready?” – presented in English. For example: “il futuro è straordinario. Ready?” in Italian; and “El futuro es apasionante. Ready?” in Spanish.

Vodafone Group is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies with mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 49 more, and fixed broadband operations in 19 markets. The company has 523.5 million mobile customers and 18.5 million fixed broadband customers, and aims to target them all with greater optimism.

The lead TV commercial is focused on how human interaction remains constant while technologies evolve over time and was produced by Ridley Scott Associates—a commercial production firm owned by the famed British director.

“We believe there are very good reasons to be optimistic about the future as emerging innovations in science and technology begin to have a profoundly positive impact on society,” stated Vodafone Group Chief Commercial Operations and Strategy Officer Serpil Timuray. “Our new brand positioning is intended to embody Vodafone’s mission and purpose to help our customers and communities adapt and prosper as these remarkable new trends reshape the world.”

“Technology can be complex, can be overwhelming and can sometimes alienate people,” she added. “But at the same time we know that digital innovations have significant benefits for individuals and for societies. “In order to express this point of view, we will be repositioning the Vodafone brand on the theme of future optimism.”

A new font and speechmark logo with a 2D design replace the previous skeuomorphic 3D approach, and will be used in all brand marketing and marketing communications.

“We were conscious that technology is really changing at a very fast pace and that there are new digital services that are emerging,” Timuray told Marketing Week. “We thought we could take a role in bridging these new technologies that may not look accessible for everyone and making them very daily, simple and useful. We thought it was an excellent time to really reset and announce our new agenda going forward.”

Sara Oliveira, Vodafone’s global head of brand and media told The Drum, “We did research in 10 markets and I think this is the beauty of the whole process—there were more similarities between the markets than we were expecting. All over the world … people were saying: ‘We want

a brand who will partner with us on this journey [into the future]’. And it was this partnership that we then tried to bring out in all of the advertising.”

The name Vodafone derives from voice/data/fone and reflects the power of communication via mobile. Adding optimism to the brand positioning sweetens the deal for all.

The campaign was informed by insights and data gained through research in a bid to gain a better understanding of consumers for its products. Vodafone commissioned a YouGov survey of 13,000 people in 14 countries and found: · People of all ages believe that technology innovation will have the most positive influence on the future over the next 20 years · 18-24 year olds are the most optimistic about the future · 62% of younger people surveyed believe that living standards will be better in 20 years’ time compared with today · Respondents of all ages believe that their living standards, and those of children, will improve over the next 20 years.

In addition, Vodafone commissioned the Futerra consultancy to identify emerging trends that could transform home and working life, a process that identified: · 3D printed components for housing construction, with 4D printed components that evolve over time as families’ accommodation requirements change; · A five-fold increase in global power generation capacity as clean energy such as solar panels are extended from rooftops to windows, walls and even some highways;

· Personalised medical interventions such as 3D bioprinting of organs and limbs; · New public transportation systems connecting cities with trains running at up to 600mph (966kph); · Large-scale water capture projects, including precipitation harvesting, groundwater replenishment and improved desalination, transforming the lives of 1.2 billion people in water-constrained areas; and · A tripling of connected sensor usage in farming leading to increased food yields coupled with the development of new protein sources that increasingly displace meat.

The Future Of Ad Agencies Might Not Be Advertising At All R/GA CHAIRMAN AND CEO BOB GREENBERG ON HOW CONSTANTLY RE-EVALUATING HAS HELPED HIS COMPANY—WHICH STARTED IN FILMMAKING—STAY AHEAD OF INDUSTRY DISRUPTION.

By Jeff Beer

To call R/GA an ad agency is a bit misleading. Sure, it’s created award-winning ad work for brands like Nike, Beats and Samsung, but over the years the company has also branched out to include a venture practice, business consultancy, design and more. In an industry that’s quickly and constantly changing thanks to technological innovation and consumer behavior, R/GA chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg sees self-disruption as a key business operating principle, one that has served the company well in the past and will ensure its survival in the future.

Speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, Greenberg outlined how this strategy has always been a part of the company. Founded in 1977 as a computer-assisted filmmaking company, R/GA has evolved beyond motion graphics and a digital studio, into an interactive agency, and now a consulting and ventures practice, all while creating award-winning work for brands around the world.

“Disrupting the agency business is something we feel pretty confident in. We’re helping clients grow, and we do it through connected communication and connected design, but we always have to explain that we’re very interested in storytelling,” said Greenberg. “It shouldn’t be because we’re talking about digital things, that we’re not interested in storytelling. I think we’re very evenly balanced throughout our agency capabilities around the world with systematic designers and storytellers.”

The company works well outside the traditional ad agency purview—it has an ongoing tech venture program partnership with the L.A. Dodgers, for instance–while still pushing boundaries in marketing work with projects like a

Twitter series for Converse starring Miley Cyrus and Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams. For Greenberg, the key is to never view the company as a finished product.

“At best, we like to think of ourselves as an 80% company because we feel that if you’re 100% you’d be like the advertising business,” he said. “That’s what makes the advertising business fall into the deconstruction situation that’s been happening now for a couple of years. There’s nothing new, particularly, in outbound advertising, marketing communications that needs to be developed. It’s been 50 or 60 years, and they’ve done a wonderful job, but we’re looking for things that we’re 40% into or 50% into. We’re very far from our 80%, and we like to say we’re always a work in progress.”

Jeff Beer is a staff editor at Fast Company, covering advertising, marketing, and brand creativity. He lives in Toronto.

Marketing in a Driverless World AUTONOMOUS AND CONNECTED VEHICLES COULD CREATE UNPRECEDENTED NEW MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT OPTIONS FOR PASSENGERS. FOR MARKETERS AND MEDIA COMPANIES, IT’S NOT TOO SOON TO BEGIN RETHINKING THE TRANSIT EXPERIENCE.

By Greg Merchant

For most of automotive history, drivers have been limited when it comes to entertainment in their vehicles. With their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, they’ve had little choice but audio entertainment—music, news, talk radio, or audiobooks—to break the monotony of the morning commute or endless road trip. That likely will change with the rise of autonomous vehicles, which could usher in a new era of in-transit media experiences.

In the United States, drivers collectively spend more than 160 million hours going from point A to point B each day—some 47 minutes per citizen per day, seven days a week.¹ With the emergence and proliferation of autonomous vehicles, those drivers will, in theory, become passengers who can spend their transit time in entirely new ways. For media companies and marketers alike, such a seismic shift in personal mobility could present a range of opportunities for connecting with audiences.

Consider the road trip of the future in a hypothetical large, self-driving family van. The interior is configured for various purposes such as entertainment, productivity, and relaxation.

One passenger selects the productivity setting on her individual touch screen and catches up on work email, while her husband listens to a jazz playlist through an individually targeted speaker system. Meanwhile, one of the couple’s two children watches a movie on her individual screen via the family’s streaming service account, while her brother plays

an augmented reality (AR) racing game set on the very road on which the family is traveling. At dinner time, using voiceactivated controls, the family asks an automated system for restaurant recommendations along the route. A menu of options with ratings, hours, and directions fills the AR windshield. The vehicle system ‘For media companies uses the family’s dining history and preferences to highlight and marketers alike, tailored offers and discounts. such a seismic shift Achieving such a future state in personal mobility will likely involve a diverse could present a range mix of players, including auto of opportunities designers and manufacturers; mobility-as-a-service providers for connecting with that integrate content libraries, audiences.’ streaming subscriptions, and social networking into vehicles; infrastructure enablers that provide a ubiquitous network of fast and reliable connectivity; and experience enablers that offer content in various forms.

With a mobility ecosystem in place, in-transit entertainment experiences could include the following variety of potential content offerings and marketing opportunities: Video/broadcast. Technology advances are making it increasingly plausible that a vehicle’s interior walls and ceiling could become high-definition touch screens that

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incorporate AR or virtual reality (VR). This would require creators and distributors of content to radically reimagine the video entertainment experience. New possibilities could include interactive, 360-degree entertainment that gives passengers the experience of being in the center of a concert, sitcom, or action movie. Beyond traditional video options such as scripted shows, news, or documentaries, content could include, for example, short reviews of restaurants for a passenger on her way out to dinner based on data about her dining habits.

Advertising. New forms of content delivery could drive increased customer engagement—and increased ROI—for advertisers. Traditional outdoor media like billboards could evolve from static, mass-market messaging to more targeted advertising, bringing the sophistication of digital media to out-of-home campaigns. Clear Channel Outdoor, for example, has begun investing in these capabilities through an analytics suite that uses aggregated, anonymous mobile data to understand travel patterns and enables advertisers to buy out-of-home displays designed to reach specific audience segments.

As vehicles evolve to include more screens that are interactive or feature AR technology, in-vehicle display advertising also could provide a new level of mobile audience engagement with highly personalized messaging. The combination of these technologies and car sharing could even give rise to “sponsored” routes past advertisers’ locations. Advertisers could present longer, more targeted ads and even offer passengers the option to purchase while in transit.

Music. In-vehicle streaming music could evolve to be seamlessly delivered and highly customized—for example, incorporating a traveler’s preferences or continuing a playlist already in progress at home. This could be especially critical for shorter trips, during which riders might otherwise not bother to make a selection. Sirius XM’s $480 million

investment in Pandora suggests that media executives recognize the importance of providing high-quality radio content on demand—and of being able to offer it across multiple modes and business models, including ad-supported and subscription.

Gaming. AR and VR technologies, combined with vehicle connectivity and autonomy, could create new forms of mobile interactive gaming. In AR- and VR-enabled selfdriving vehicles, passengers could interact not only with the surrounding environment but also with other vehicles and passengers. Gamers could fend off hostile aliens attacking the vehicle from the surrounding city or mountain landscape on AR windows; play movement-based games to break up extended periods of inactivity on long road trips; or engage in multiplayer games with passengers in surrounding vehicles.

All these gaming experiences could be ad-supported, encouraging players to upgrade experiences with in-transit purchases. ***** Marketers and media companies can position themselves for the future of mobility by exploring partnership opportunities, potential models, and innovative types of content. What experiences might passengers in driverless vehicles desire?

What alliances will be necessary to deliver those experiences?

What data agreements and monetization models are most likely to provide value? The advent of autonomous vehicles raises questions—but also presents a significant opportunity to connect with consumers in an unprecedented way. The media companies and brands best positioned to capitalize on this opportunity are those already thinking through these questions and building the content for tomorrow’s automotive experience.

Greg Merchant, managing director, and Dan Schlaff, manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Derek M. Pankratz, research manager, Deloitte Services LP

Marketers Are Opening Their Eyes To Visual Search

By Joe Gizzi

A picture is worth a thousand search queries. At least that’s what Pinterest, Google and Amazon would like you to believe.

Why type in a description of what you’re looking for when you can just aim your camera at your object of desire?

This has become a timely question. While Amazon’s Alexa is spurring talk about voice-based search, visual search is evolving quickly, too. In May, Google introduced Google Lens, an AI-driven visual search app that reads and translates visual information. Point Google Lens at a restaurant sign and it will show you reviews, what hours it’s open and then let you make a reservation for a table. Lens, which will show up on Pixel phones later this year, is the latest advance in visual search. Pinterest and Amazon have both been offering that functionality for years.

The implications for retailers are clear: Consumers can point to items, find similar ones and buy them. No wonder Target has joined forces with Pinterest for visual search. Furniture shops like Wayfair and West Elm are following suit, allowing users to match found or taken photos to products available on their web shops.

And fashion brands like Neiman Marcus and Macy’s are looking to Pinterest performance metrics and visual search as opportunities to recommend and sell entire lines to their clientele.

Visual search isn’t just a tool for consumer discovery. Here are seven ways all marketers can retool their digital offerings with visual search: 1. Create Comprehensive Visual Analytics. First things first. Take stock of all brand photography on your website, e-mail and social media and begin tracking its performance across the web. This means tapping into visual search tools like Curalate or Tailwind that catalog your content and match it pixel for pixel on blogs, Pinterest, Instagram and other sites. That way, even if fans are pinning your products without explicitly naming your brand, you can find exactly who shared your images and how far they spread across the web.

2. Launch a Visual Content Planning Program. Next, start using that data to make decisions in your content planning. If you’re a fashion brand, is the green sweater outperforming the yellow sweater in organic visual content?

Or is it that unbranded image performing stronger among high-end shoppers vs. mainstream customers who didn’t know where it came from? Use this data to decide what products become your future hero creative and who should see them next.

3. Look for Upsell Opportunities. Visual inspiration sites like Pinterest, Google, Amazon, and Instagram often prompt

customers to jump from one product to the next — and not limited by brand. Learn more about the types of products viewers look at following yours to understand if you have gaps in your own product lineup, where you might be losing market share, and where there is room to upsell unexpected pairings.

4. Protect Your Brand in the Visual Domain. Without specific text to search against, it’s very possible your logo is being used in all sorts of contexts you can’t imagine — both positively and negatively. Some tools like BrandWatch and Logo Grab offer logo-specific search tools to catch instances where you or your products might show up in imagery that wasn’t sourced from your website.

5. Find Advocates. Just as you may not know how your brand imagery is being used, you also may have no idea how broad of an audience is using it. You might be surprised to finding influencers and everyday product advocates who already feature your line in their posts without ever mentioning it directly.

6. Conquest for Larger Share of Basket. Target, West Elm and Wayfair are already hoping that being early adopters of visual search will net them a leg-up against brands that are slow to market. West Elm, for example, has partnered with Pinterest to allow users to find “similar products” on its site, regardless of the brand that created the image. Visual search can also protect you against unwanted competition by identifying counterfeit retailers selling your wares under different names.

7. Refine the Customer Journey. Knowing that a photo was taken from your brand website and posted to an independent design blog, whose readers then found the photo and shared it to Pinterest, which in turn led 20 consumers to click through to purchase via your ecommerce site can help structure future partnerships and refine your understanding of your savviest customers.

Looking ahead, we’re not far from a time when everything we see can unlock a bank of online knowledge. If you’re taking a nature hike, Google will tell you what type of flower or mushroom you’re seeing. If you spot someone with a killer pair of shoes, you can quickly see what type they are and where to buy them.

Search lenses have the potential to detail product specs, instructions for use and pairing recommendations by activating a whole host of online knowledge APIs, location data and mobile AR capabilities. In this way, the camera truly becomes the keyboard, speeding you from real world discovery to online product comparison and checkout in just a few moments.

Are These Five Marketing Buzzwords and Concepts Overhyped?

By Ayaz Nanji

Nearly half of marketers say artificial intelligence is an overhyped idea/term, according to recent research from Resulticks.

The report was based on data from a survey conducted in September 2017 among 318 marketers in the United States.

Respondents were asked whether they believe five ideas/terms—artificial intelligence, Big Data, omnichannel, real-time marketing, and personalization—are overhyped (i.e., closer to fantasy than reality).

Some 47% of marketers say artificial intelligence is overhyped; 31% say Big Data is overhyped; 23% say omnichannel is overhyped; 20% say real-time marketing is overhyped; and just 14% say personalization is overhyped.

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Some 40% of marketers say they feel skeptical when they hear the term “artificial intelligence”; 34% say they feel exhausted when they hear the term “Big Data.”

Some 55% of marketers say they blame marketing technology vendors for overhyping buzzwords; 38% say they blame journalists/bloggers.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted in September 2017 among 318 marketers in the United States.

Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and the co-founder of Inbound ContentWorks, a marketing agency that specializes in content creatio. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His past experience includes working for Google/YouTube, the Travel Channel, AOL, and the New York Times.

Not All Influencers Are Created Equal OPINION: 38 PERCENT OF MARKETERS ARE UNABLE TO TELL WHETHER INFLUENCER ACTIVITY ACTUALLY DRIVES SALES

By Evan Neufeld

The unexpected growth of influencer marketing means that dollars are often spent without a clear sense of return on investment or best practices.

According to a recent survey, 38 percent of marketers are unable to tell whether influencer activity actually drives sales, and 86 percent are unsure how influencer fees should be calculated.

Influencer marketing has been defined by brands deploying pricy deals with A-list celebrities and mega-influencers like Selena Gomez and Amber Rose in a bid to reach the widest audience possible.

Brands mentioned an average of 24 influencers during the study period, with luxury and beauty brands mentioning over 30. However, it’s important to note that Instagram mentions provide only a glimpse into the full scale of influencer partnerships, as some brands may sponsor dozens more influencers than they mention explicitly on their social media properties. This is especially true in the beauty industry, where brands often work with scores of smaller influencers in order to flesh out brand awareness among key market segments.

However, not every brand can afford premium celebrities. As a result, budget-conscious brands are working with a wider range of influencers, often prioritizing engagement quality over scale.

While mega-influencers can rack up follower counts in the millions, brands can still generate quality engagement— along with an increased perception of authenticity—by partnering with smaller influencers whose images reinforce specific brand values.

L2’s Influencers report reveals a marketplace of widely divergent strategies, even within industries. Some brands opt for a large cast of smaller, strategic influencers; some focus their investments on one or two high-profile endorsements; and still others adopt a hybrid approach, relying on both social media powerhouses and niche personalities.

L2 researchers collected all Instagram content shared by the 1,145 brands featured in any Digital IQ Index between April 2016 and June 2017, which amounted to more than 2 million posts. Over 5,000 unique influencer accounts were mentioned in total, with 922 brands mentioning at least one influencer and the most active brand, Red Bull, mentioning more than 400. Influencers were then categorized into seven segments based on how many followers they had.

Across categories, the study finds mega influencers mentioned more frequently than any other class of influencer.

Activewear is a notable exception. There, the preponderance of influencers belongs to the medium class, which includes many of the athletes that are central to activewear campaigns.

L2’s study finds a strong inverse correlation between follower count and engagement rate in the Advocate to Low classes.

However, engagement levels out at just below 2 percent in the Medium to Celebrity classes.

As brands seek to navigate the still-emergent landscape of influencers, they should start with an end goal in mind.

Celebrity influencers work best with product launches and tentpole campaigns where scale is key, while the network effects of micro influencers can increase brand awareness with new consumers, as well as engagement with existing ones.

Brands should also be sure to choose influencers whose cadence, authenticity and previous sponsorships are consistent with broader branding efforts. Above all, they must be cognizant of the fact that not all influencers are created equal.

The Three Content Marketing Tactics E-Commerce Marketers Often Miss

By Helen Scott

When was the last time you shopped in a physical store?

Struggling to remember? It’s not surprising, considering that an increasing number of consumers are opting to shop online instead of heading to the high street. With e-commerce growing 23% year over year, more businesses are focusing their efforts online, and many are duly reaping the rewards.

Although e-commerce is inherently virtual, customers interact with an e-commerce store in other ways that extend beyond the digital realm. Read on for three effective tactics for extending your content marketing reach right now.

Content marketing is also on the rise, accompanying the growth of e-commerce. More cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, content marketing is uniquely suited to online businesses. Brands that create custom content have the power to establish a closer, more intimate relationship with their consumers, an invaluable stand-in for the traditional instore model of face-to-face customer relations.

Many e-commerce businesses give priority to the functionality of shipping—how to ensure the product gets to the customer as efficiently as possible and intact. That is undeniably important, but often it means the aesthetics of packaging can be overlooked, or conceived hurriedly as an afterthought.

Effective content marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools for online businesses; it has the capability to generate brand value and open up channels of communication with customers, as well as the potential to establish and sustain brand loyalty.

Many content marketers, however, focus their efforts solely on external communication channels, such as social media pages, video channels, and blogs. Yet, it would be a mistake to neglect other important touchpoints of the customer’s interactions with the brand.

1. Brand Messaging via Packaging

Keep in mind that packaging may well be the first and only physical point of contact you have with your customer. It’s also presented to customers at a time when they are feeling most receptive to your brand: They’ve ordered a product, it’s arrived at the door, and it’s exciting!

Much more than practical protection for its contents, packaging is a content marketing platform in its own right.

Compare packaging’s potential to that of a blog post, for example. The internet is vast, and a browser’s attention might be diverted elsewhere. Receiving, looking at, and opening a box presents a longer window of time in which your brand messaging can be absorbed.

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An automated email following a transaction doesn’t represent the end of an interaction; rather, consider it a step toward developing a longerterm connection with that customer. This sort of email isn’t promotional in nature, and most customers will want to see proof of their purchase, so it’s more likely to be opened than a promotional email. So hold a reader’s attention with genuinely helpful content.

Include a mini how-to article or link to an instructional video for relevant products.

So what can you do to ensure your message gets across?

First-time customers will appreciate in-depth product introductions on packaging inserts. Packaging is also the perfect opportunity to communicate the benefits of a product.

Explain why you made it, who made it, where the materials are sourced from, how to use it, and why it’s so fantastic.

Involve the customer further by requesting feedback and making the instructions for doing so clear; this not only encourages complaints or constructive opinions to be shared with you privately—and not splashed across online review sites—but also proves invaluable for your own product development and crafting customer testimonials.

2. Engaging Emails Automated emailing is one of the easiest ways to communicate with your customers, but a robotic-sounding message in your inbox can damage the relationship you’ve so carefully forged with your customer through their online shopping experience.

Don’t fret, there are simple, actionable steps you can take to ensure your automated note of thanks helps the customer feel truly appreciated.

Personalization in marketing is nothing new, but it comes into its own when you adopt a warm and human tone in automated emails. Liven up your language, speak to the customer directly with a cheerful, casual tone, and keep the design simple. Using signatures and team photos are neat ways of adding an extra, personal touch and putting a face to a name.

Customers also value transparency, so make it clear how they can get in touch with you and encourage that interaction.

Featuring Instagram shots of the product in use is also an absorbing way to pull readers over to your social media channels.

You can also use automated emails to build the value of your brand by including a company narrative that informs customers of activities the brand is connected to, such as charity work or industry events, or shares the latest industry research.

Including something silly and fun is also a good way of connecting with your customers on a more informal level.

Fun surveys such as “what should we name the office dog?” can get people involved and offer an insight into the daily workings of your business.

3. Getting Influencers on Board Swinging shopping bags from your arm might be more evocative of Clueless and Sex and the City than contemporary e-commerce, but such purchase-flaunting behavior isn’t outdated—it’s simply moved onto digital platforms.

“Unboxing” your latest buy is big news on Instagram— whether it’s boomeranging shoe boxes or doodling hearts around postal delivery bags, consumers can’t wait to share the thrill of opening their purchases.

The more impressive the unboxing experience, the more likely it will translate well to visual social media, and there are simple ways you can up the wow factor.

Look into trending packaging styles on social media: Are

there certain colors, fonts, or box formats which make for compelling photos? Look at how influencers pose the packaging and products they promote: Could you imitate the style of the packaging pictured?

Luxurious and tactile touches to your packaging—such as metallic foiling, colorful UV coatings, or laser cutouts—also add an interactive dimension to your designs, which translates well to videos, snapchat, and boomerangs.

You can also focus on attracting social media influencers to

your cause. “Macro-influencers,” people with hundreds of thousands of followers, can hugely extend the reach of your brand, but don’t neglect the impact of “micro-influencers,” too; they have smaller reach, but hold just as much sway over the buying patterns of their social circles.

For fashion and lifestyle businesses, the impact of the influencer is particularly powerful, and getting an influence on board is a stealth way of attracting likeminded consumers to your brand.

Conclusion For content marketing, it pays to think outside the box (or, in the case of packaging, on the box!). Content in unexpected places can be a simple way to communicate your brand values, position yourself within a lifestyle market, and build rapport with your customers.

Whether you give your packaging a makeover, make your robotic emails more human, or make influencers a key part of your marketing strategy, you’ll find that your content marketing becomes more diverse and much richer, helping to forge longer-lasting and more valuable relationships with your customers.

Could the push into budget headsets be a tipping point for VR advertising?

By Jonny Peters

When someone like Mark Zuckerberg says he’s aiming to get one billion people using Virtual Reality (VR), people start to take notice.

Even for someone that has been working in the industry for a while, that sort of headline makes you listen a little more intently. It’s a big goal, especially considering that dedicated VR headset sales are expected to be around the 22 million mark in 2021.

But it’s also the sort of big goal that Zuckerberg has achieved before, having taken the number of monthly active users on Facebook from roughly 20 million in April 2007 to over one billion in 2012, and then much further.

Of course, one of the most important dynamics in that change was Facebook’s mobile-first strategy which dovetailed with the advent of the smartphone. It’s no coincidence that the number of smartphones in use around the world passed one billion in – you guessed it – 2012.

That symbiotic relationship between smartphone use and Facebook use has definitely not been lost on Zuckerberg.

It is one of the reasons behind his announcement earlier this month that Facebook’s Oculus unit will release its ‘Go’ device early next year. Oculus designed Go to tackle two key ongoing barriers to adoption of this technology. The first is portability, with the cordless Go not requiring any wired connection to a nearby computer.

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The second is price, with the Go set to retail at $199, a level that is far more inline with the mobile VR options than the more powerful tethered devices that Go will compete with.

High price has been one of the stand out barriers to VR adoption so far and Facebook’s not the only one to notice.

Microsoft, Google, HTC and Sony among others have all talked about the prospect of cheaper headsets and it’s a significant movement within the market right now.

Even if it is the catalyst for mass adoption though, there is still a huge industry blindspot that seems to have gone unnoticed.

VR advertising needs more than new devices From the technology perspective, lowering the price of devices and making them more portable is really important.

However, for VR advertising to really take off, the content within these worlds needs to be truly compelling.

of the environment.

In terms of advertising, it’s the equivalent of clicking through links and pages on a website, as gaze control enables user engagement to be measured and thereby monetised. It should be the dynamic that any future proofed advertising model for VR is built around and is such a significant element within VR that it could be the foundation for a huge monetised economy.

Instead of viewers being bombarded with ads and overlays within the constricted space of a phone, tablet or laptop screen, the VR environment and the use of gaze control mean that branded content can fill a huge space. Overlaying the pop up ads of old into it would be the worst result. However, at the more interesting end of the spectrum, everything from tiny, grabbable VR objects to huge festival experiences could be generated by brands.

While more content creators are needed, we know from the experience of other content environments that there must be a monetisation model in place to really attract them.

Unfortunately, advertising in VR is fundamentally flawed. This needs to change if content creators and the brands that fund them are to dive in head(set) first.

Of course, this awe inspiring world of branded engagement goes way beyond the click throughs and likes that current digital advertising models are based on. To help it function, it would need a backbone that was highly secure and able to keep up with the constant flow of micro-transactions that monetise user engagement.

One of the main reasons for the flawed VR advertising model is that attempts to design it have not gone beyond the existing models that are used in other environments.

Fortunately, a parallel technology revolution provides a solution for this complexity. Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is being introduced across markets because of its security, transparency and ability to track a huge swath of micro-transactions.

Facebook and Google currently make billions from the system of content indexing and publishing that exists on their search engine, social media and affiliated ecosystems.

Brands either pay to have their ads and content appear in front of consumers or the pay only when a consumer clicks.

Unfortunately, this simple model seems to have grown and grown to the point where the customer journey has become the constant closing of popup ads, as the increasing reliance on ad blockers shows.

As VR technology is adopted on mass, content producers and advertisers will flood the market. Establishing gaze control as a unit of measurement can form the foundations for advertising that mean it adds to – not interrupts – the user experience.

Google has already built a prototype advert for VR, that developers can play around with to see how advertising might work. However, it looks like an uninspiring attempt to bolt a broken model onto an exciting new environment.

Combining this with the power of the blockchain will ensure that brands, advertisers and content producers can embrace this new world knowing that their ownership rights, and the money that flows from them, is not only secure and transparent but also managed quickly and efficiently.

A really useful advertising model will not think ad first but user first. It needs to focus on the dynamics of the VR environment and the potential of this medium, so that advertising makes the experience flow, not stop.

Mark Zuckerberg can see the great opportunity of VR advertising. By combining gaze control and blockchain, that opportunity could become a reality.

‘Gaze controlled’ measurement An important thing to keep in mind here is gaze control – the way in which VR users can engage with the world around them by moving their head and eyes towards particular parts

Jonny Peters is founder, GazeCoin.

Socialization will make VR mainstream

By Stan Glukhoedov

Recent price drops in virtual reality headsets have created a wave of excitement in our community by signaling a significant and encouraging step toward mainstream adoption of the technology. However, tech experts and VR aficionados alike know that hardware accessibility is just one small piece of the puzzle, which also consists of better content creation tools, applications, network mechanics and more. Another crucial component of the big picture is social VR. For those unfamiliar with the fairly new term, it generally means multiple VR users share the same virtual experience regardless of their physical location.

Historically, human interaction has been a powerful force in many of today’s game-changing technological advancements, especially, as its name suggests, social media. One example is how the gaming giant, Nintendo, started their recent comeback after collaborating with Niantic to release Pokémon Go, a location-based augmented reality game with physical team play. The social aspects of this massive multiplayer gaming app contributed to its enormous popularity.

Similar to the Pokémon Go approach, the market can activate greater interest in VR by offering more social interaction opportunities, as they play a critical role in mass consumer adoption. Following is a look at the advancements, hurdles and opportunities for social experiences in VR:

Social platforms One of the most pivotal applications in the growth of social

VR is the introduction of platforms in which users can virtually engage with one another, similar to traditional social media outlets. This includes AltspaceVR, Facebook’s “Spaces,” Linden Lab’s Sansar (creators of Second Life) and TheWaveVR where interactive content and live moments are shared as well as game-play with personalized avatars.

These platforms enhance general communication applications. We can now share our environment in 360-degree video, make calls, play games and even watch movies with one another. Furthermore, many experts believe that the increasing interest in live moments on VR applications and platforms, such as esports and concerts, will make the market especially appealing.

Live events VR is considered the next revolution for real-time events, similar to the shift from radio to TV aside from the fact that we have the ability to share these live moments and engage with each other. The live VR market is already flourishing, and by 2021, it is expected to exceed $75 billion, where concert, gaming and sporting events already take the lead in the industry.

Live content is experiencing tremendous success on social platforms that support video, such as Instagram and Twitter.

Livestreams in VR mirror the current trend of live video on popular social networking sites and allow people to have intimate conversations in real-time. Viewers are spending more time on live video than on-demand content, and

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brands and content creators have taken notice. Subsequently, live video is fast becoming the foundation of much of the content on the internet. By 2019, video content alone will account for 80 percent of all global internet consumption and VR livestreams will account for a large percentage of the projected rise.

User-generated content For the most part, premium VR content (360-degree video and real-time computer graphics) is produced by professionals with expensive camera rigs. The ability to create rich VR content has been one of the biggest gaps in the lack of social interplay in VR. Thankfully, companies like Samsung are making 360-degree cameras more affordable and mobile. Also, 360-degree imagery has recently become widespread with many mobile phones carrying pre-installed camera apps for 360-degree photo capturing. These advancements allow users to create and share 360-degree videos, photos (VR-selfies) and livestreams, which is key to further encouraging social interactions in VR.

Content application tools The ease of sharing high-quality content is crucial to empowering VR users, but equally important are application tools that set the stage for the next killer social VR app.

Whether developers create VR games, social experiences or educational apps, users need simplicity and intuitive usability within application interfaces. These consist of eye-tracking technology and motion control for improved displays in addition to better navigation and avatar creation that allow life-like interactions and versatility. Even though extensive implementation of these technologies is still a ways to go, software development kits (SDKs) and application program interfaces (APIs) are more available thanks to companies/ platforms such as Oculus, HTC Viveport, making it easier for developers to bring a natural, human-like engagement between digital alter egos to life.

With these tools firmly established, we will likely see a surge of stellar VR apps that encourage socialization. One such case is Mindshow, which provides a VR toolset for storytelling and the possibility for users to construct their own animation that unlocks unimaginable boundaries of creativity. In the social context, these toolkits provide a sky’s-the-limit mentality in VR development that will bring more social exchanges.

Distributioin There’s a lot of technical mechanics to overcome when it comes to VR content distribution for socializing. Major players in the space like Samsung Gear and Oculus Rift all permit content production on their individual platforms and are mostly unshareable. The increase of VR app creation and marketing will alleviate this issue and social platforms like AltspaceVR will continue to progressively facilitate the production of cross-platform content where multiple users can interact on PC or mobile with different VR headsets and enjoy the same content.

Another major obstacle amid these various platforms is internet bandwidth. This relates to connectivity requirements, speed and data storage. Blockchain technology has recently surfaced to be a logical and versatile solution to this problem. VR platforms that are powered by blockchain’s decentralized, immutable ledger technology will give users better experiences; alleviating overwhelmed data networks.

Blockchain’s ability to handle workflows equally among participants and eliminate intermediaries promotes an ecosystem where users can socialize and transact freely.

As the industry continues to enable users to easily create and share experiences, along with the increasing rate of investment in VR, it’s clear that technological capabilities will dramatically increase over time. Consumers will soon participate in the ultimate VR experience while the community as a whole perfects the art of immersive socialization.

Stan Glukhoedov is a VR evangelist as well as the CEO and co-founder of Prosense.tv, a global leader in broadcasting live VR events.

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Think Outside the Inbox: The B2B Marketing Automation Guide by David Cummings

Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

By David Cummings; Adam Blitzer

By Alexandra Watkins

Marketing automation has been called the most transformative advancement in sales and marketing since the advent of CRM. Never before have sales and marketing professionals had so much insight into prospects’ interests, behaviors, and buying intentions. Many people think of email marketing, and the inbox, as an effective part of online lead generation and nurturing, and it is.

Every year, 6 million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone—even noncreative types— can create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names...

Manufacturing Demand

Scientific Advertising

By David Lewis

By Claude Hopkins

In Manufacturing Demand, marketing guru David Lewis, CEO of Demand Gen International, reveals the transformations taking place in marketing today, including the rise of the marketing geek and the emergence of the so-called fifth and sixth P s of marketing: Process and Programming. You ll learn about the key practices and principles of creating your demand-generation factory : buyer personas, the demand funnel, lead scoring, lead nurturing, and analytics.

This Edition Includes: How Advertising Laws Are Established - Just Salesmanship - Offer Service - Mail Order Advertising - What It Teaches Headlines - Psychology - Being Specific - Tell Your Full Story - Art in Advertising - Things Too Costly - Information - Strategy - Use of Samples - Getting Distribution - Test Campaigns - Leaning On Dealers - Individuality - Negative Advertising - Letter Writing - A Name That Helps - Good Business

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters

By Seth Godin What if you see a black and white cow after only ever seeing brown cows? It stands out. But what happens when you keep seeing more and more black and white cows? What stands out then? It would take a purple cow. That’s the basic premise of Godin’s seminal book on transforming your business, and your advertising, into something remarkable. Stand out, be amazing, or blend in and go unnoticed.

Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, Relate

By Bernd H. Schmitt Moving beyond traditional “features-andbenefits” marketing, Schmitt presents a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and information age. Schmitt shows how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns.

By Joseph Sugarman Great copy is the heart and soul of the advertising business. In this practical guide, legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman provides proven guidelines and expert advice on what it takes to write copy that will entice, motivate, and move customers to buy.

Unleashing the Ideavirus: Stop Marketing AT People! Turn Your Ideas into Epidemics by Helping Your Customers Do the Marketing thing for You.

By Seth Godin Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer.

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Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions

How to Write a Good Advertisement

By Carmen Simon

How to Write a Good Advertisement gets you quickly up to speed with examples of powerful profitable headlines (with explanations of why those headlines work so well), and quick lesson reviews that help you turn what you’ve read into skills you own. Schwab provides us shortcuts without sacrificing long-term understanding.

Fifty years after publication this book is still the standard bearer, sought after by a new generation of copy-writers and businesspeople.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Carmen Simon, PhD, reveals how to avoid the hazards of random recall and deliver just the right amount of content.

No more redundant meetings, rambling e-mails, or anemic presentations. In Impossible to Ignore, she shows you how to execute a proven three-step plan for persuasion

Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an “Always on” World Kindle Edition

By Mark McGuinness Productivity for Creative People, is a collection of insights, tips, and techniques to help you carve out time for your most important work - while managing your other commitments. All the solutions he shares have been tested with real people in real situations.

Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption

By Jeff Rosenblum, Jordan Berg

By Victor O. Schwab

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

By Cal Newport Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.

A NEW Marketer: How to Inspire b2b Sales Acceleration with Insight Marketing Kindle Edition

Friction argues that brands don’t simply need clever messages or new, shiny technologies. They need a fundamental change in strategy. Friction provides a system for embracing transparency, engaging audiences, creating evangelists, and unleashing unprecedented growth. The authors of Friction have worked on some of the industry’s most innovative assignments for the world’s most successful brands.

By Maneesh Sah

The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change Kindle Edition

Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior Kindle Edition

By Bharat Anand

By Nick Kolenda

Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

Using principles from cognitive psychology, Nick Kolenda developed a unique way to influence people’s thoughts. He developed a “mind reading” stage show depicting that phenomenon, and his demonstrations have been seen by over a million people across the globe.

Methods of Persuasion reveals that secret for the first time. You’ll learn how to use those principles to influence people’s thoughts in your own life.

It’s no secret we live in a world of intense competition to win new business, retain clients and grow revenues. Because of this cutthroat environment, a new shift in the world of marketing is happening right now. Built on the “3I” Framework, this book teaches you a simple system for adapting to this New Shift in marketing so you can reach more people, build new raving fans and explode your bottom line.