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Dear Friends: Its time to bid au revoir to the year 2018. Frenetic, disruptive, game changing- these are some of the expressions that come to mind when you want to describe what the branding and marketing industry witnessed in the year. We wanted to end this year on a high and hence added more actionable content this issue. Whats App is opening upto advertisers- will brands buy into it? Read it in this issue. We also take a look at and bust some email marketing myths. The recent Papa Johns Pizza threw up some key Marketing and Leadership Lessons. Read it here. Artificial Intelligence is making some serious headway in all aspects of marketing and branding. The feature May A.I help you? There is many a marketing lesson to learn from Pop icon Kendrick Lamar. Understand all of it here. The smart brand owners are leveraging Digital Tools to enhance the CeX(Customer Experience). You can do that as well. Read the article to know more. Programmatic has had its share of nay sayers. Here is a realistic look at how advertisers can achieve programmatic success. There is ample more to soak in and action in your everyday scheme of things, so I leave you all to that and wish all your near and dear ones the very best that 2019 is sure to bring. And as ever, thank you so much to all of you for your support, feedback and engagement. Till the next‌ Best
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CONTENTS
How Consumer Brands are Leveraging AI How Digital Tools Support Hyper-personalized Customer Experiences Here’s why loyalty needs to break the rules 5 Things Marketers Should Give Thanks For Listen to Your Customers: Turn to Data to Discover Their Truth Next-Level Marketing Lessons From Kendrick Lamar Customer Journey Maps: The North Star to Digital Transformation How Businesses Can Stay a Step Ahead of Copycats Marketers Push Agencies to Shoulder More Liability for Data Breaches What Papa John’s can teach all businesses about marketing & leadership The 6 Biggest Email Marketing Myths Busted Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers? WhatsApp ads are coming: Will advertisers start buying? May A.I. Help You? A creative’s guide to starting a new business How advertisers can achieve programmatic success Transparency In Influencer Marketing: Are We There Yet? 5 Steps to Grow Your YouTube Channel in 2019 Book, Line & Sinker
How Consumer Brands are Leveraging AI AI CAN HELP PREDICT THE BEST WAY TO REACH CUSTOMERS. By Ellen Lee
The consumer goods market is changing quickly—and digitally native brands are rapidly winning market share. “If you want to survive, you need to invest in connecting and directly engaging with customers,” said Salesforce’s Sophie Verwater, speaking at Dreamforce 2018. Businesses must learn to move quickly, testing and learning what works and what doesn’t. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help.
The new marketplace offers new opportunities to tap into AI to get ahead. The pressure is on, but the shakeup in the marketplace also offers businesses an opportunity: Businesses that can collect and connect their data, making data the heart of their business, will be able to adapt and thrive in today’s market. Businesses can: • connect their distribution channels for smarter planning and execution • connect their operations so that their headquarters are linked with manufacturers and suppliers • connect their employees to attract and retain top staff • connect their customers to build brand loyalty
If you want to survive, you need to invest in connecting and directly engaging with customers.
AI allows businesses to tap into that data to uncover trends and insights that they can then act on. For instance, a large beverage company used a mobile app and AI to photograph and audit grocery store shelves carrying its beverages. It could assess which products sold and needed to be —Sophie Verwater, Salesforce replenished, coupling that data with, for instance, the weather, to predict the best sales opportunities.
AI can predict the best ways to promote consumer goods. In another case, said Salesforce’s Reinier van Leuken, AI could be used to help a business figure out how best to promote, say, their potato chips: When should the brand promote the chips? How long should the promotion run? Should the promotion run in grocery stores in the city or in the suburbs? During what kind of weather? Businesses could use AI to examine past sales and past consumer buyer behavior across more than supermarkets
and across the many flavors and brands of chips sold. It could see the average number of bags sold per week, per store, for a particular brand, comparing and analyzing that data against other factors such as weather and location. The AI program could then predict ways for the business to improve its promotions to sell more chips.
For Anheuser-Busch, implementing AI meant getting the team on board. For Anheuser-Busch, AI has helped the company find ways to save costs, be more efficient and drive revenue tenfold, said Gabriel Gaspar, global director of innovation for Anheuser-Busch InBev. The company began by testing AI with one project, then building up to additional projects. The biggest challenge, said Gaspar, was engaging employees, developing internal knowledge and fine-tuning the process. “People need to understand why [the program] says what it is saying,” Gaspar said. It takes time. Anheuser-Busch is using AI to translate images into data: To get a 65 percent accuracy rate, Anheuser-Busch first had to feed more than 100,000 images into the program. But from there, the program has evolved quickly and grown.
Hard work comes first, said MARS. For MARS, the challenge with AI was the work it took to get there. In superhero movies, says Amit Apte, digital foundations integration director for MARS, there is always a prequel. “How did the superhero get their power?” he said. The answer for businesses using AI? It’s all about the work the companies must do to unlock the data and make the data accessible so that the company can use AI to analyze it. The colorful sales charts, sales forecasts and market predictions— none of it is possible until a company figures out how to feed the data into the system.
But companies shouldn’t treat the project as solely about AI. Indeed, said Colin Gelfer, co-founder of Atrium, a Salesforce consulting partner, the most successful companies spend the time to “build the pipes” so that data can continue to be added and used. The other challenge? Changing the company’s mindset, Gelfer said. It’s not so much an AI project as it simply is a way for a business to drive the outcome it wants. The business outcome—and not the technology—should fuel what the business is doing.
How Digital Tools Support Hyperpersonalized Customer Experiences By Knowledge@Wharton
Digital technologies are transforming every aspect of our lives – at home and at work – and how we interact with others. As customers, we are now empowered as never before. These technologies have put enormous power in our hands, and our expectations from companies are skyrocketing. What does this mean for businesses? Simply this: They need to keep the customer at the center of everything that they do and offer a superior experience. Customers will choose companies that offer them hyper-personalized and differentiated experiences, says Seeta Hariharan, general manager and group head at the digital software and solutions group at Tata Consultancy Services. In a conversation with Knowledge@Wharton, Hariharan explains why it is imperative that companies understand their customers’ needs and offer them the right products and services at the right time and in the right context. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge@Wharton: We hear a lot about digital transformation these days. What are your thoughts on the state of the digital economy globally? Seeta Hariharan: Digital tools, technologies and platforms have seen an unprecedented rate and pace of adoption in the last three years. They have changed how we live, how we work, and how we interact with each other, and most importantly, how we interact with companies that we do business with. Let’s look at some statistics. The world population is approximately 7.6 billion. We have around 4 billion active internet users, 5.1 billion unique mobile users and 3.2 billion social media accounts. What is even more interesting is that we added nearly a billion to 1.5 billion users in each of these categories in just the last three years, between 2015 and 2018. Now add Internet of Things (IoT) to this mix. In 2018, we will have nearly 28 billion Internet of Things [devices]. Think about it — 28 billion. Everything from cars
to doorbells to bracelets to cameras to appliances at home, and even garbage cans [will be connected]. My car today can accurately predict where I am headed based on the time of day and day of the week. My vacuum machine informs me when my house is clean, and my garbage can tells me when I need to clear it. This is an exciting time both for customers and businesses. Businesses need to figure out how to interact with their customers, how to deliver superior customer experiences. Knowledge@Wharton: What are some of the implications for which companies go on defining their customer’s experience or the customer’s journey? And even more interestingly, what do you think this means for the kinds of expectations that customers have of the way in which they will relate to companies that they deal with? Hariharan: Even just a couple of years ago, companies said that they need to be online if they have to survive in the digital world. They said, people are spending about a billion years on the internet every year and therefore they need to be able to provide their customers online access to their business. But that isn’t enough anymore because every business, even the mom-and-pop stores, have an online presence. So what more can businesses do? How do they ensure that the experiences that they provide to their customers are consistent across all of the channels? How do they differentiate between the experiences that they offer versus what some of their competitors are offering? These are some of the challenges that businesses across industries are grappling with today. “In this age of digital transformation, there is one thing that is constant, and that is the customer.” Knowledge@Wharton: How do you think companies should relate to their customers? More importantly, what has
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changed about the relationships between companies and the customers, and what has not changed? Hariharan: In this age of digital transformation, there is one thing that is constant, and that is the customer. Who could have described customer experience better than some of the entrepreneurs here in the U.S., as well as in Britain, right? Some of the names that come to mind are John Wanamaker, Marshall Field, Harry Gordon Selfridge. The catchy phrases that these guys came up with ring true even today. “Give the woman what she wants.” “The customer is king.” “The customer is always right.” What has changed with the digital technologies is that it has put more power in the hands of the customers. And businesses need to figure out how to interact with their customers better. Knowledge@Wharton: Could you give some specific examples? Hariharan: Let’s look at two insurance companies. The mission statement of the first insurance company is to offer health insurance policies to its customers. In the digital world, this company says that I am going to make sure that my service and products are accessible to my customers both online and in the physical world. They can interact with me any way they choose to, including on their mobile devices. The second insurance company, on the other hand, says my mission statement is to be a partner to my customers on their wellness journey. Consistent with its mission, this company not only sells health insurance policies, it also cares for its customers’ well-being. For instance, it connects its customers to the local gym. It encourages them to exercise regularly. It motivates them using gamification. It reminds its customers to get their annual physicals. This is an example of a company that cares for its customers. And healthy customers means that fewer insurance claims will be submitted. It also means that their insurance premiums could go down over a period of time. In this example, the first company has a transactional relationship with its customers. The second one, based on its stated mission as well as its behavior, is able to deliver connected customer experiences, thereby owning the journey of its customer. Knowledge@Wharton: Could you drill down a bit deeper into what you just said? What do you mean by a connected customer experience, or connected customer journey? Hariharan: Let’s take the example of a grocery store. I have always thought of grocery stores as someone that does mass marketing, or at best, demographic-based marketing. I have been frustrated that my grocery store just doesn’t understand me even though I have shopped with them for the last 20 years and I have their loyalty card. They still send me coupons by snail mail for products that I have never bought from them. Like meat, for example. I am a vegetarian. So I got really excited when a couple of months ago one of my customers, a grocery store, came to us and said they wanted to understand their customers better. They wanted to do behavior-based segmentation. They wanted to understand the personas of each and every one of their customers. What this means is that the store wants to understand where their customers live, where they work, what is their education level, what they consume, how they shop, why they shop, what motivates them to shop, what motivates them to come into
this store, and so on. And based on all of this information, which is the persona of an individual, they wanted to drive customized campaigns. “Persona-based segmentation is the key to understanding the customer and to delivering customized campaigns.” But what I explained to them got them even more excited. I painted a vision for them on how they can own the journey of their customer. Let us assume that you are one of their customers and they know that you are affluent, you work here at Knowledge@Wharton, you are highly educated, you shop with them regularly, and you shop on Saturdays with your wife. One Saturday, you walk into their store and you pick up a bottle of champagne because you have guests coming to your place. And as you are walking down the aisle, the store sends you a short video notification. You are curious and you open the video. You see people enjoying that bottle of champagne that you just picked up, along with some beet and cumin soup, and bread and cheese. As you are watching the video, the store sends you another notification asking you if you want to purchase some beetroot. You say yes. To your further surprise, a store attendant comes to you and hands over some beetroot and bread and cheese. This is a very simple example of connected customer experiences. Knowledge@Wharton: That is a great example. But to do something like this for a customer, at this level of elaboration and intricacy, would be quite an expensive exercise. So do you do it for every customer or only for some selective customers? If it is the latter, how do you choose whom to target with this level of service? Hariharan: This is where the persona-based segmentation comes into play. Personas help retailers understand what sort of a customer they are dealing with. For instance, some customers shop at a particular store based on sales, while other customers shop there on a regular basis and are extremely loyal. For these loyal customers, the store can offer differentiated experience such as the one we just spoke about. So persona-based segmentation is the key to understanding the customer and to delivering customized campaigns. What makes this easier today is that we have technologies to do this. Knowledge@Wharton: One example that came to mind as you were speaking about the grocery stores was Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods. When you go to any Whole Foods store they ask you if you are an Amazon Prime member. And if you are, then you immediately get some discounts. What I found very clever about this is that Amazon Prime already has very detailed information about customers and it would make it fairly easy for them to build such customer personas as you were describing by combining the online and offline experiences. Hariharan: Absolutely. Knowledge@Wharton: How can companies deal with a giant like Amazon? What should other retailers be doing to react to this? Hariharan: Like Google has become the de facto standard for searches, Amazon has become a de facto standard for product searches and product purchases. I believe that
customers will do business with companies that offer them differentiated experiences, memorable experiences. I was talking recently to a friend who has four dogs and he buys a lot of dog food from Amazon. I asked him what would make him go into a neighborhood pet store. He said Alexa reminds him when he needs to order dog food and the prices on Amazon are quite competitive. He simply orders them from the convenience of his home. He didn’t see any reason why he would change that behavior, why he would go into a neighborhood pet store. So I asked him whether he would go into that store if they offered to shampoo his dog. He immediately said yes. He added that he would go to the neighborhood pet store even if they offered to brush his dog’s teeth. So that is the motivation for him to change the behavior to go into a pet store.
go into an enterprise today and look at where the data is stored, you will see it is stored across various silos within the organization. The customer data exists within IT, within CRM [customer relationship management] systems, within operations, in marketing. And each of these silos has its own data strategy as well as its own data governance strategy. So enterprises are struggling to figure out how to get a handle on their customer data. I think any kind of privacy data regulation will force businesses to rethink their data strategy and their data governance strategy. The first step that they would need to take is to get a handle on their customer data. As we know, getting a handle on the data allows you to understand your customer, and that is key to delivering superior customer experiences. So there is a silver lining even for businesses when it comes to these regulations.
In order to change the behavior of a customer, businesses need to understand what motivates them. For this, they need to understand their customers as individuals. They need to understand the personas of the customers. Once the customer goes into the pet store, they can understand more about him. For instance, they can understand if he travels a lot and therefore if he needs pet sitters. They could then offer even those services and figure out how to secure his loyalty.
Knowledge@Wharton: A part of the challenge around data is that people are concerned about who has access to what data, and even more importantly, how that data is used. There have been some recent moves towards technology companies and social media companies wanting access, for example, to financial information. This is already going on in other parts of the world. What are your views on how this is likely to play out?
“Customers will do business with companies that offer them differentiated experiences, memorable experiences.”
Hariharan: Yes, we recently read about Facebook reaching out to many of the financial companies to see if they can get access to customers’ financial information, checking account information, saving accounts, their credit card transactions. In my opinion, delivering customer experiences start with transparency and understanding that customers own their data. As companies, we need to be transparent with our customers in how we plan to use the data.
Take my own example. I prefer to buy my appliances from Bed Bath & Beyond because when the appliances don’t work, even if it is beyond the warranty period, I can take them back to the store with no questions asked. And they give me a refund even if I don’t have the receipts. That is a differentiated experience that motivates me to buy products from Bed Bath & Beyond. So, in this age of Amazon, what is important is how do you understand your customer and how do you deliver memorable and differentiated experiences for them. Knowledge@Wharton: For companies to understand customer behavior at a deep level and work with not just their own business enterprises but across a network of companies to deliver unique experiences would require a tremendous understanding of data. And one of the biggest issues with data is privacy. What are your thoughts on some of the implications for companies and customers regarding how this is going to play out? Hariharan: The GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation], which is a European regulation for privacy, came into effect on May 25th this year. Companies have been working towards complying with those regulations. I am 100% certain that we will see some form of those regulations here in the U.S. as well. My view has always been that the privacy regulations, the data regulations, are a good thing for customers as well as for businesses. In the case of the customers, it makes it clear that customers own their data. Companies need to get explicit permission from the customers to use their data. They need to be transparent and explain to customers in a simple language that they can understand, instead of pages of legal documents, about how they plan to use the data. GDPR even goes a step further. It says that if there is a breach, you need to inform your customers within 72 hours, along with a timeline for action. So it is a good thing for customers. Your other question was what does it mean for businesses. I sincerely believe it is a good thing for businesses. If you
“The key to solving digital transformation is to keep the customer in the middle of everything that you do.” Knowledge@Wharton: In your role at TCS, you must be coming across a number of companies that are trying to figure out the best way to use technology and their systems to engage more deeply with their customers and build relationships rather than transactions. What are some of the challenges or mistakes that companies make and what could others learn from their experiences? Hariharan: One of the things I have seen in the last few years is that enterprises think that they must bring people who are focused on data or digital. So they fill their C-suite with chief data officers, chief digital officers, chief strategy officers. But while people are important to any organization, they aren’t going to solve the problem. What I have also seen, which is a little disappointing for me, is that there have been departures of these high level execs from the organizations. Another challenge with digital transformation is that the business teams have to work hand in hand with the IT teams. Traditionally, IT has made decisions on technology while the businesses have worked to attract customers or increase the basket size of revenue per customer. Now, IT and businesses are forced to work together. The key to solving digital transformation is to keep the customer in the middle of everything that you do. Have this unfailing commitment to listen to your customers, what they want, how they want to interact with you, and provide memorable and differentiated experiences to them. That, in my opinion, is key to solving the problem and challenges that enterprises face. Technology will certainly follow.
The New Now Next in Digital Marketing Transformation “Almost 85% of executives believe AI will allow their companies and brands to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage. But only about one in five companies has incorporated AI in some offerings or processes� - MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG, Reshaping Business with Artificial Intelligence
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Here’s why loyalty needs to break the rules By Evan Magliocca
Loyalty providers produce programs that are so cookie-cutter and permanently standardized that it’s nearly impossible to tailor these programs to individual brands. Marketers are following a misguided standard that has been left behind and no longer differentiates itself or resonates with members. We look over our shoulders, follow the leader and copy, instead of pioneering and focusing on areas to build unique programs that accomplish each brand’s specific needs and goals. The fact is, loyalty has no rules; it only has leaders and followers. And followers will always be two steps behind.
What does loyalty mean to you? The unfortunate consequence of loyalty’s success is that it’s now synonymous with points -- a tit-for-tat rewarding system designed to increase purchase behavior. It’s a good model, produced by the airline and hotel industries, that has had a profound and lucrative effect across many industries. But there is more to loyalty than just points. Every brand has unique elements and their programs should reflect those traits. Yes, rewards are always important, but they don’t need to be cut-and-dry, and the benefits don’t need to always be redeemable for a simple dollar certificate. Surprisingly, one of the leaders in point redemption is the credit card space. Chase’s Sapphire Reserve credit card is a prime example of a loyalty program providing many ways to redeem points.
It offers the standard point redemption for gift cards and airline points, but it also offers VIP access to events and unique experiences, access to luxury hotels around the world and a host of other benefits that simply help customers such as auto rental damage, emergency assistance services and trip cancellation protection, as well as a free credit for TSA Precheck. Many of those benefits seem eclectic and random, but from a Chase customer perspective, those additional benefits align to members’ penchants for travel. Chase knows what loyalty means for its brand and what will resonate with its customers.
Follow the data and understand your customer Surveys and focus groups are useful tools, but they’re often surrounded by pretense and leading questions, and they aren’t usually useful for taking confident action. That being said, there’s an extremely accurate method to identify what your customers think and want. Data analysis offers a clear and concise opportunity to understand your customer. Surveys will always say one thing: we want discounts! And that’s true -- most loyalty programs need a monetary benefit -- but when we look at a customer’s actions, we can understand that his or her behavior is far more nuanced than that. Just as every brand is unique, customers operate differently based on which brands they’re shopping. They behave differently as they interact with different brands’ cultures, products and lifestyles.
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We need to look at the data, identify how customers are shopping with us and develop benefits based on those interactions in conjunction with our brand images.
produced some amazing in-store experiences for members from courts to race tracks. Plus members also receive a 30day wear test, which might be the best benefit of all.
Here are two very different examples, but, in both cases, it’s clear these brands let the data tell a story and help them understand their customers’ wants and needs:
So, what do Amazon and Nike have in common? They both have an in-depth understanding of what their customers want and how those wants are unique to their brands. Secondly, they broke the rules of loyalty. Not a single one of those benefits are points-based, yet both of those programs are two of the most successful loyalty programs in the world.
Consider Amazon. It doesn’t really have a brand image. The first thing that probably comes to mind is “fast and convenient.” Well, that’s either the greatest branding in history, or the company is somewhat agnostic to branding based on its pragmatic approach to operational excellence. Even so, Amazon knows what its customers want -- Prime provides free, two-day shipping, which is Amazon’s version of a monetary benefit -- but it gives members so much more. Top-rated streaming video, music, cloud storage and a host of other benefits directed at highly segmented customers from parents to book lovers. Next, let’s take a look at the Nike Plus membership. Nike has heavily invested in new store models and Nike Plus is a large part of the brand’s methodology. Their clout in branding and lifestyle doesn’t allow them to simply offer discounts because their customers aren’t as price-elastic; they love Nike because it aligns to their personal image. So, Nike took a very hard look at its program and customers, and the result was a highly experiential program to take advantage of their new stores. Nike Plus members get truly unique guidance and advice from experts; the new Nike flagship store in New York has an entire floor dedicated just to Plus members. Nike has also
Follow your goals, not the market Marketing is a copy-cat industry. Marketers see someone doing something different and everyone immediately races to be second in line. It’s a disjointed approach that often causes so many loyalty programs to fail -- and the majority of programs do fail. Every industry is littered with the remnants of failed programs, trying to revive or revamp them with little success because today’s environment isn’t conducive to standardization. Customers have options and choices abound, and no brand is safe unless they provide real value to customers. Standard programs are built not to lose, but ironically, they usually fail. For brands to be successful, they need to take a long look at their goals, really dive in and understand their customers and be fearless enough to try new ideas that give their customers what they really want. Evan Magliocca is Brand Marketing Manager for Baesman Insights & Marketing, a full-service agency that partners with retailers to create highly-targeted, data-driven customer marketing, loyalty and CRM programs.
5
Things Marketers Should Give Thanks For
EVOLUTIONS, TACTICS AND TRENDS THAT IMPACTED THE FIELD IN 2018
By Michael Del Gigante
‘Tis the season to reflect and express gratitude. So, what should marketers be thankful for this year? Which evolutions, tactics, and trends impacted the field positively in 2018? There are countless options to choose from, but these five in particular stand out for both the scale of their influence this year and for their potential to continue to affect marketing for years to come.
1. The GDPR Data Regulation
ROI than any other marketing initiative.
At first glance, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seems like something marketers should lament, rather than be thankful for. This sweeping legislation, which went into effect in May, gave consumers much more control over their own data and required businesses to disclose their data collection practices as well as ask for explicit consent to utilize information. Although the regulation was enacted by the EU, it impacted firms of all sizes across the globe.
Why is ABM such a big deal? Because it’s an example of an approach maturing at the same time as the tools needed to execute it properly. Thanks to sophisticated marketing platforms, marketers and salespeople can now to highly tailor messaging, advertising, and content at scale. This means each target is delivered the most effective materials, resulting in higher engagement and revenue.
Why was this good for marketers? Because for years data had been collected, used, and stored sloppily: too many firms had embraced the power of data without accepting the necessary responsibility. This was leading to ever-increasing distrust and anger from consumers. Essentially, GDPR forced businesses to take much needed steps that had been avoided for far too long. While this brought some short-term pain, it made the long-term future of data-based marketing much more secure.
2. Voice Search and Natural Language Processing
4. Instagram What if there was a social network that was based on the visual content types audiences love (images, videos, ephemeral posts), that was adored by valuable audiences, that wasn’t tainted by scandal, and that had highly-effective advertising capabilities? There is: Instagram. The platform now has more than 1 billion active monthly users, is catching up to Snapchat in popularity with young consumers, and has avoided the controversies surrounding parent company Facebook while still utilizing its incredibly powerful advertising engine.
While search engine marketing and search engine optimization have been powerful tools for businesses, there has also been a largely unacknowledged flaw: the way search platforms are used and they way operate has not matched real-life behavior. Specifically, the keyword-based approach to search hasn’t been a good fit with how people naturally use language.
Basically, this was the year that Instagram became the Goldilocks network: just big enough, just popular enough, just trendy enough, and just sophisticated enough. In a time when audiences are increasingly wary of big social platforms, it has become a much-needed haven for marketers.
Two trends are changing this. First, thanks to the popularity of tools such as Siri and Google Assistant on smartphones and devices enabled with Alexa-like helpers, consumers are increasingly using voice to search instead of typing. Second, search engines like Google are utilizing approaches such as natural language processing (NLP) to better understand how humans communicate. Essentially, people are searching more conversationally and search systems are simultaneously getting better at deciphering conversational language.
Finally, this year marketers should be thankful for a demographic that has been much maligned: Millennials.
For marketers, this combination means that trying to anticipate stilted consumer queries is becoming increasingly less important. The major benefit of this is that efforts can be focused on targeting what people truly want — not the keywords they happen to use in a search engine.
The data, however, paints a different picture. As with all other groups, Millennials’ top concerns with products/services are cost and quality. Beyond that, this group doesn’t necessarily want companies to take stands: just 15% say they pay attention to brands’ political and ethical positions. Rather, what they care about are authenticy (97% value), trustworthiness (77%), loyalty (74%), and responsibility (73%).
3. Account-Based Marketing While new technologies usually get most of the buzz, sometimes changes in approaches can be just as transformational to marketing. One prime example is account-based marketing (ABM). This framework, which transitioned from a buzzword to a mainstream strategy this year, is used to market to firms or even individuals with specific messaging, rather than lumping them into segments. While this may not sound revolutionary, its impact is: some 97% of marketers say ABM has a higher
5. Millennials
For years, businesses have been struggling to understand this group, which is expected to overtake Boomers as the largest age cohort in the United States in 2019. Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been alarming: supposedly these younger consumers want firms to be hip and political by diving into cutting-edge technologies and controversial causes.
Fundamentally, Millennials are simply pushing brands to ditch artifice and focus on providing authentic messaging, high-quality service, and good value. That’s a positive shift that both consumers and marketers should be thankful for. Michael Del Gigante’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to establish MDG Advertising. His commitment to delivering concept-driven creative, the ability to mentor and inspire those he works with, and a strong sense of family have been instrumental in building a foundation for the collaborative culture at MDG.
Listen to Your Customers: Turn to Data to Discover Their Truth CONSUMERS AREN’T GREAT AT TELLING COMPANIES WHAT THEY WANT -- BUT THEIR DATA CAN BE. By Rashan Dixon
Consider the rise of customer success. Because 74 percent of consumers feel contacting customer service is a frustrating experience, few speak up until they’ve had a truly bad time. The trouble is, just one negative experience is all it takes to send more than half of consumers packing for a competitor. That’s why, instead of waiting for customers to call in, customer success managers monitor usage data like average session duration and login frequency. Although customers might hesitate to reach out about a page that won’t load, constant refreshing can signal that they’re struggling. Among U.S. adults, 87 percent want companies to proactively contact them before small issues turn into serious trouble. Customer success’s data-doesn’t-lie approach doesn’t just benefit users, either. A SaaS provider in the healthcare industry that implemented Gainsight, a popular customer success solution, reportedly cut its customer churn rate by 50 percent and boosted cross-sell leads by 10 percent. By capturing and consolidating user data streams, Gainsight’s 360 Customer View tool gives companies the full picture of what their customers actually want. But customer success isn’t the only area where leaders need to pay attention. By sleuthing out signals in audience data, entrepreneurs can identify unmet needs, root out unwanted functionalities, and discover new ways to monetize existing products.
All users aren’t created equal. With almost any product, highly engaged users make up a small percentage of total users. Among those talking about the product, however, engaged users tend to dominate the conversation. As a result, companies often assume that what engaged users want is what the user base as a whole wants. For example, when design and development firm Yeti built Tiny Eye, a freemium VR app reminiscent of “I Spy,” it tried to monetize Tiny Eye with a paid level pack. Although Yeti priced the paid levels at $1.99, a mere 1 percent of total users purchased them. Before sinking resources into a new monetization scheme, cross-reference user feedback and engagement metrics. If an app’s existing user base is large but unwilling to pay more, it may not make sense to listen to the diehard fans who want paid content. In-app advertisements may be a less time-consuming, more effective way to generate revenue. Other software companies try to boost profits by adding more
features. Apple’s iTunes, for instance, was once a lean and much-loved music player. In 2003, when it debuted, it did little other than store, play, and manage music. But as Apple expanded, iTunes did, too. The iPhone could play videos, so of course users needed a place to store them. It could run apps, so iTunes became a platform for purchasing and managing those, too. Spotify and Pandora helped users discover new music, so suddenly iTunes added Genius, a recommendation engine. At its high water mark, iTunes did at least 56 things for its users. By adding every feature its users could possibly ask for, Apple had created what Digital Music News called “a big, fat, bloated disaster of an app.” Although Apple has since started cutting features from iTunes, most recently removing the App Store itself, the damage had been done. As music lovers left, Apple pivoted iTunes to a television and movie platform. But iTunes has been bleeding film customers to Amazon and even Comcast, and Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine recently announced that Apple will shut down iTunes music downloads. In crashing iTunes, Apple learned a hard lesson: When in doubt, trust data over user requests.
In data we trust. At first, social media might seem a lot like the streaming music and video space: too crowded for new market entrants. But at least one entrepreneur saw an opportunity in data for a different sort of social network. Mappen co-founder Jared Allgood noticed back in 2014 that teens were ditching Facebook in droves for bite-sized social media like Instagram. A few years later, Allgood spotted a study that linked teen depression and suicide to screen time. Connecting the dots, he wondered: Could a new kind of social app -- one that actually brings teens together in the real world -- be what adolescents are actually looking for? Although Allgood interviewed audience members as part of his entrepreneurial diligence, he wasn’t phased by the fact that few, if any, asked for an app that would get them to put down their phones. He was driven by the data, which told him that, contrary to how much teens use social media, they do it because they crave human connection. User feedback is powerful, but it only goes so far. To deliver what consumers ultimately want, entrepreneurs can’t rely on words alone. In the court of business, it’s data that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Next-Level Marketing Lessons From Kendrick Lamar HERE’S HOW TO BUILD YOUR BRAND LIKE THE ICONIC HIP-HOP STAR. By Donovan Roche
He’s won 119 awards from 288 nominations, including 12 Grammy Awards. He was the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize (for his 2017 album DAMN.), which has always gone to a classical or jazz artist. And he’s taken home a Cannes Lion and three Clios for his music videos. But, for Kendrick Lamar, the passion he puts into his music has never been for the acknowledgment. The shrewd businessman has captured widespread acclaim -- and, more importantly, respect and admiration -- by taking calculated steps to establish his brand from the ground-up. He hasn’t left anything to chance. Others looking to put their brand on the map would be wise to borrow these next-level marketing lessons from the iconic hip-hop impresario:
1. Be authentic. When you’re first starting out, it’s easy to be swayed by public opinion. Whether you’re an artist looking to break into the music scene or an entrepreneur hoping to get your business off the ground, you’re bound to seek the advice of those in the know. Hear what they have to say, but don’t allow their thoughts to steer you away from being true to yourself. If Lamar is anything, it’s authentic. He writes (and raps) about poverty, violence and corruption -- the very things he experienced on the streets of Compton. Brands need to be equally steadfast, eschewing the desire to be all things to all people and focusing instead on that which sets them apart from the sea of sameness. Take, for example, Levi’s, which has built its 165-year-old brand on a platform of authenticity. Its promise of selling durable denim enabled the brand to become the clothing of choice among the working class and, ultimately, sub-cultures of young people throughout the decades.
2. When other go right, go left. Everybody tends to get into a groove and stick with it. This can be a recipe for failure. Artists who take risks, constantly reinvent themselves (Lady Gaga learned this from Madonna) and challenge themselves to do it differently each outing (Prince subscribed to this approach), are the ones who keep fans engaged and carve out staying power. In 2016, when Lamar released the surprise album untitled unmastered on iTunes and streaming platforms, he sold more than 178,000 copies the first week. While there’s nothing new about surprise albums, Lamar’s was unique in that it was comprised of raw material that didn’t make his preceding No. 1 album, To Pimp A Butterfly. Entrepreneurs would likely never push an “unfinished”
product into the consumer marketplace, but the lesson to be learned here is to be brave, challenge convention, and innovate. Just consider Blockbuster, which failed to innovate as upstart Netflix shipped DVDs to consumers’ homes. By resting on its laurels, Blockbuster dug its own grave, allowing Netflix to become the nearly $12 billion company it is today.
3. Be humble. Despite all of his success, Lamar remains humble and true to his origins. This quality of never forgetting where he came from and maintaining that genuine voice of the people is, in large part, what keeps him on top. And he encourages others to do the same in his popular song, “Be Humble.” Entrepreneurs who taste success should keep this to heart, for the minute they lose touch with where they came from and allow ego to take over, they will lose the audience that fell in love with their product or service to begin with.
4. Do well by doing good. In his song “Cut You Off (To Grow Closer),” Lamar professes, “If I speak the good into existence, that instant my dreams will unlock.” He recognized early on the power of karma and that what you put out in the world comes back to you. From his support of the Black Lives Matter movement and condemnation of racial violence (which his 2018 Grammys performance spotlighted) to donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Compton’s school programs to participating in the Global Citizen movement, aimed at ending extreme poverty by 2030, Lamar’s altruism reaches far and wide. And it has had great impact on people’s impressions of the man, not just his music. In the marketing world, you’d consider them brand fans. Companies like Toms Shoes and Warby Parker have shown that good business doesn’t have to just be about the bottom line. And, like Lamar, they have received respect and admiration in return. Lamar burst onto the music scene in 2010. In just eight short years, he has reached the pinnacle of his profession through a combination of authenticity, innovation, humility and philanthropy ... and he shows no signs of stopping there. While entrepreneurs may be singing a different tune, following the same principles can put them on a similar path to greatness.
Donovan Roche, Vice President, Growth at Havas Formula
Customer Journey Maps: The North Star to Digital Transformation DIVING RIGHT INTO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CAN TEMPT ANY LEADER, BUT A LACK OF ARCHITECTURE MIGHT MEAN FAILURE. HERE’S THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP TO TAKE BEFORE STARTING OUT. By Jon Feagain
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Sometimes, blazing your own trail is the easiest way to get lost -- just ask Shyp. Though the startup aimed to disrupt the shipping industry, its low price point would eventually mean death. Shyp’s service was popular with customers looking for easy shipping solutions, but its financial model was unsustainable. The founders remained committed to their original business model instead of adjusting, and that Shyp quickly sunk. The startup’s mistake -- overestimating how often people actually ship things -- is a specific example of a common problem. Companies can now access large amounts of data thanks to digital touchpoints, but they continuously struggle to understand customer motivations and influences. Customer journey maps are perhaps the best solution for this, as they teach businesses how to build relationships with customers using their needs as connection points. Research from Aberdeen Group shows that customer journey maps improve marketing return on investment by 24 percent and shrink sales cycles by 16 percent. The business case is clear, but even when businesses do map out the customer journey, they often depend on small sample sizes and shallow inquiries or create multiple maps that go in different directions. Biases and emotions can also cloud interpretation. A great customer journey map should articulate an ideal experience. According to Adobe and Econsultancy, companies with a focused, customer-first approach are more than twice as likely than peers to rise above competitors. That advantage increases when you consider how customer journey maps can guide digital transformation -- or the ways in which businesses can leverage technology to boost performance.
Walking confidently into the unknown. Companies are eager to complete their digital transformation, but the scope of this effort is overwhelming. It requires a top-down transformation rather than just a few tweaks or additions. Getting lost in the creation process is easy, but customer journey maps can lead you toward success. These maps clarify how organizations can become more customer-centric. In doing so, they also create alignment across teams, projects and departments. In other words, journey maps allow companies to coordinate customer efforts while also reworking their approach from the inside out. Digital transformation involves the same kind of effort. Almost every modern customer experience involves a digital component -- this highlights the overlap between customer journey and digital transformation. In fact, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania identified customer journey maps as the most important prerequisite for digital transformation. This is because maps facilitate crossfunctional collaboration and foster a neutral perspective, both of which are essential for breaking down data silos and creating truly integrated organizations.
Plotting a map that others can follow. Just having a customer journey map is important, but the more detail it includes, the more straightforward it will be to implement. Follow these three tactics to customize your own
map and start your digital transformation on the right foot:
1.) See customers as individuals. According to Capgemini, 75 percent of companies consider themselves to be customer-centric, but only 30 percent of customers agree. This unfortunate gap exists because companies engage with customers on a shallow level and view them as replaceable. The better approach is to talk with and observe consumers -- ideally face to face -- to truly explore their physical and emotional needs. These conversations identify where, when and how your company can deliver the most value and cultivate maximum loyalty while reducing business biases that might accidentally divert teams away from customer needs. Those touchpoints are especially important to address during digital transformations, and companies should find ways to upgrade customer experience through technology without pivoting away from what people actually want.
2.) Turn strangers into partners. Creating a customer journey map for just one experience or department can make things disjointed. It’s important to create cross-functional teams to ensure consistency throughout the entire customer journey. Using one map across your organization synthesizes and streamlines everyone’s efforts so you can keep everything in alignment. Teams speak in the same vernacular and have a clearer understanding of each other’s intentions. Toyota Motor Corporation, for example, has prioritized crossfunctionality since the 1990s and aims to integrate efforts both within and across projects. It’s clear that alignment and shared focus are mandatory for carrying out digital transformations.
3.) Get critical and focus on what matters. A customer journey map is not a static document. First, it should guide decision-making. After that, the results of those decisions should be used to evaluate and revise the map for even better results in the future. Identifying the key performance indicators that define success and drive decision-making also helps you establish a critical framework for the map. As a rule of thumb, KPIs should incorporate both product and business performance and can indicate when and how plans should be stopped or revised. Make sure you’re measuring what you need to: For example, research from Ensono and the Cloud Industry Forum found that although 51 percent of companies use cost savings as a KPI, 70 percent consider it to be a key driver. Critical analysis helps locate disparities and make meaningful changes, and these skills are crucial to have before making major investments in digital transformation. Today, all companies are in the business of customer experience -- and the best customer journey maps illuminate the who, what and why. As long as the map is kept current, it will always indicate where to go next, like a compass. The customer journey map is invaluable in the era of digital transformation and disruption.
How Businesses Can Stay a Step Ahead of Copycats By Knowledge@Wharton
The threat of copycats is constant in business. Despite intellectual property laws, patent filings and market dominance, competitors will find ways to offer cheaper versions of a product. Rapidly advancing technology has served to accelerate the pace of replication, making it even harder for a company to maintain the top spot in any sector. Howard Yu, management and innovation professor at the IMD business school in Switzerland, offers some helpful insights in his new book, Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on Sirius XM to discuss his book. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge@Wharton: Copycats have long been a problem for business, but has the replication ramped up even more because of technology? Howard Yu: That’s right. One of the biggest complaints that I’ve heard from executives in my education program is that they find any type of innovation they put out in the
marketplace gets easily copied overnight. While they’re seeing their cost structure continue to ramp up, the lifespan of the new product easily gets copied. As a result, the ability to capture value and revenue continues to decrease. This is really the main thrust that made me write this book and explore these issues. Knowledge@Wharton: In some cases, the first iteration of a product isn’t successful. Other companies may be able to do it better and more cheaply. Yu: There’s this so-called first-mover advantage, meaning you move into a market and secure a dominant position. But what my research has revealed is that’s often not the case, particularly when the underlying knowledge is commonplace and people can learn from you. Then there is almost this latecomer advantage, that the copycat can produce something similar or good enough with a much lower price point. As a result, they surpass the early incumbent or pioneering companies.
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In most of the paradigms, what we see is there is almost this tendency of incumbents being disrupted by copycats. In any kind of industry — from personal computers to mobile phones to wind turbines to solar panels — oftentimes it’s the latecomer, particularly from Asia, who dominates those markets. I have also been observing industries where, despite the risks of being copied, the early incumbent continues to prosper and survive and makes a lot of money over a long period of time. One example is very close to where I teach in Switzerland. It’s the pharmaceutical industry. Novartis, Roche — “There is almost these big pharmaceutical this tendency of firms continue to command leading position on a incumbents being aworldwide basis. I thought I should look deeper into it disrupted by copycats.” and extract some of the key lessons learned; perhaps we could apply these to other industry settings. Knowledge@Wharton: You say there are some core principles that companies should rely on to be successful in these situations. What are they? Yu: There are around five principles that I try to explore in the book. First, for a business leader to be effective, they have to understand what kind of world they’re living in. In many ways, they have to do a very honest assessment in terms of the maturity of the fundamental knowledge that built the enterprise. For example, if your company is making heavy machinery, let’s look at the fundamental knowledge around mechanical engineering. The more mature that knowledge, the more widely disseminated across a few, the more at risk you become. The second principle is: Let’s look forward. Let’s not just look at the past, but look forward. What I found was a seismic shift happening around the landscape, so you as a company can leverage those seismic shifts to reinvent yourself. This is why when people are talking about data analytics, it’s key. People talking about artificial intelligence is key. The creativity of human beings is absolutely critical for reinvention over the long haul. Knowledge@Wharton: You also mentioned that there is a historical element to copying that goes back a couple of centuries, correct? Yu: I’m a history buff, so I like to look at industrial history beyond just pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes my audience would ask, “This is great, but what if my industry is mundane, low tech. Does that mean that I’m going to always get copied?” That is why in part of the book I explore the mundane categories of laundry detergent, disposable diapers, consumer goods. Procter & Gamble started off in Cincinnati over 150 years ago. Now, personal computers, green cars, all these high-tech sectors are getting disrupted by the Chinese. By conventional logic, P&G has no chance. Yet if you look across their global footprint, they are still continuing to command a leading position in these categories…. [There] are ways that you could tap into new knowledge disciplines and reinvent yourself. The key is how do you balance the
short-term goal as well as the long-term reinvention? Knowledge@Wharton: Are the approaches different for different sectors? Yu: Yes, there are certain sector or industry specifics. But there are certain elements that, regardless of what sector you’re in, you have to think about. For example, the rise of smart machines. Artificial intelligence truly is the steam engine for the second half of the 21st century. If you are making a tractor for farmers for harvesting, you’ve got to tell the farmers how to embrace precision farming as a way to increase farm yield. If you are providing legal services, you’ve got to think about how to automate the narrowly defined knowledge of lawyers so that you get your cost correct. If you’re a logistics organization, nobody’s caring about how big your ship is but about getting things from point A to point B. Across all the factors I have investigated, there are uniform seismic “You can no longer shifts that you simply have to embrace. This is great just be an app from because you can then draw Silicon Valley and roll on inspiration from other sectors to inform your out across the globe.” strategic choices going forward. Knowledge@Wharton: You give the example of what occurred long ago between Steinway and Yamaha. Can you tell us about that? Yu: That is an interesting story precisely because executive managers sometimes push back on my argument and say, “I don’t care about copycats. As long as I can provide the best product in the world, I will be all right.” So, I explored Steinway & Sons. They make the best concert piano, no doubt. Yet if we’re looking at the historical financial return of the company, it is a disaster. The company was listed, went private again, was listed again and was forced to go private again. They went from a peak of 6,000 pianos sold per year down to 2,000. Today, they are reduced to one single factory. They still make the best piano. Their workers are passionate, and yet they were disrupted by Japan’s Yamaha. A note to this story is there is no change of technology. It’s not like digital photography destroying Kodak. A piano is still a piano — it’s a hammer striking a string. But if the knowledge is stagnating; no matter how good you are, the latecomer can come in and leverage the scale of the economy, automation and lower cost structure, disassembling your product and reverse engineering. Over time, they would surpass the industry pioneer. I thought it was a cautionary tale: Try to avoid getting trapped in a golden cage. Knowledge@Wharton: How does artificial intelligence change this path of needing to leap for some companies? Yu: Right now, what we see in terms of artificial intelligence is still quite nascent, so most of the focus is really on reduction of cost — either automate certain human jobs, or one person can do more jobs guided by AI. This is still the early phase. Going forward, what it means to have AI is that it will augment human decision-making. Now your staff members no longer need to make the mundane
decisions about logistics, supply, coordination, email and all the scheduling. Then you could task them to do something much more creative — things that involve human empathy, human judgment, relationship building, networking, coaching, things that machines are still not very good at but humans have a commanding advantage. Those should be the areas where managers should really focus. Automate as much as possible the mundane tasks, then redeploy your human resources to take your innovation and your customer relationship to the next level. Knowledge@Wharton: How do you take this philosophy into the world of social media? You have so many entities out there trying to do the same thing. Yu: One of the key discoveries for me right now is that on the older consumer space, such as Google and Facebook and Twitter, you always have just one company dominating that sector. But what we’ve seen comes from the example of Uber. They were forced to exit from China and from Southeast Asia [due to competition] by Grab, and in the Middle East by Careem. As the internet continues to evolve, it’s no longer just a provision of digital information and digital entertainment. A lot of the new business models emerging right now are really the blending between digital “Executives really need content and the physical to accept the fact that delivery.
the organizational structure is no longer static.”
Here’s the good news: Whenever a new business model requires some sort of physical delivery, the understanding of the local market from culture to regulation to infrastructure becomes more important. You can no longer just be an app from Silicon Valley and roll out across the globe. In fact, local players or the historic industry incumbent would have an exceeding amount of competitor advantage, because you know how your customer behaves in your local market. If you can blend in some Silicon Valley agility, then you become unstoppable. Knowledge@Wharton: You also talk about WeChat, which is China’s dominant social media. Here in the United States, we don’t necessarily think about WeChat a lot. Yu: You are quite right. This is the biggest paradox because Tencent, the parent company that owns WeChat, is the fifth most valuable company on the face of the planet. We simply don’t pay enough attention. You know, in China the internet is pretty closed off. There’s the Great Firewall, so there’s no Google, Facebook or YouTube. But in this space, you have this copycat in the beginning. WeChat really started off as a copycat of WhatsApp. But fairly rapidly, it evolved into a monster app that you couldn’t really survive in China without. You could spend a day in Shenzhen, in the southern part of China, without a credit card, without cash, just with your mobile phone because you can call your Uber, which is called Didi China, through WeChat. You can check your banking account through WeChat. You can order your instant noodles from the mom-and-pop store next door and pay using WeChat. I was walking in Shanghai, and in People’s Park there were homeless people asking for money and so on. Instead of
asking for cash, they were holding up a VR code and asked me to scan a QR code to pay digitally. It is in this quirky space that we see WeChat is able to pioneer an alternative business model [to one based] on advertisement that we are so familiar with in Facebook and Instagram and so on. What they do is provide real services and charge a fee much more akin to a subscription model or transaction model, which builds consumer trust. Knowledge@Wharton: Do company structures need to change in order to adapt to these seismic shifts you alluded to? Yu: Yes, I think executives really need to accept the fact that the organizational structure is no longer static. It’s going to be much, much more fluid. That deployment of human resources is going to be much more task force-driven so that whenever there’s a need or a real complex problem arises, you pull together, solve that problem and then disband again. I was in Hangzhou, the home of Alibaba. Under Alibaba, there’s the finance subsidiary Ant Financial, which is worth more than Goldman Sachs today. The executive told me with this runaway success of Ant Financial, with revenue doubling every five years, they do not need to hire any additional personnel simply because they constantly automate what they know and redeploy their staff to new roles. This is a startup setup. It’s an eye-opener to me that employees and employers alike need to treat jobs no longer as a destination but simply a temporary task, that people would congeal together and solve an issue and then move on to the next phase. It’s almost like a modular organization, if you will.
“Try to avoid getting trapped in a golden cage.”
Knowledge@Wharton: You focus on big business, but do the principles in the book apply for the entrepreneur and smaller business owner as well? Yu: Absolutely, because in the area from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, a small company can really leverage on this seismic shift as long as you pay attention to what’s going on. We talked a little bit about WeChat and so on. One of the major services that they provide for small and medium-sized companies is to [facilitate] their own digital strategy. Imagine you’re a bakery that makes Chinese mooncakes, and you have no experience in doing programming. What WeChat has done is to enable the small-time entrepreneur to build a digital app without knowing programming. Overnight, you can launch your own app within WeChat. Now, some people are early adopters. Some companies stay with their family tradition. Depending on how active you are in paying attention to the changing schemes, you can leverage these technologies to gain a competitive advantage. I think a lot of these principles, as much as they are applicable to large firms in terms of transformation, for small and medium-sized companies they are even more important. You can tap into a huge market.
Marketers Push Agencies to Shoulder More Liability for Data Breaches THE RISK OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN FINES ADDS A NEW FLASHPOINT TO BRANDS’ RELATIONS WITH SHOPS By Alexandra Bruell
New data privacy rules are pushing marketers to unload millions of dollars in liability on the agencies that help them buy their media, forcing the shops to take on new levels of financial risks and adding a layer of tension in client-agency relationships. At one large global brand, a marketing executive limited a review for its account to agencies that agreed to pay more than $15 million in fines if they were involved in a data breach or violation. The mandate was less about avoiding potential fines than making sure the brand’s agency took data privacy seriously, the executive said. The focus on data privacy has heated up following the arrival of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which in many cases requires publishers and advertisers to obtain consumers’ explicit consent before using their information to tailor advertisements. A violation of the regulation, which applies globally to companies that deal with the personal data of people located in the EU, could lead to a fine of up to 4% of a company’s revenue for the prior year. While risk-averse advertisers want to avoid such fines, a number of brands are more concerned about the impact of a privacy violation on their brand reputation. They hope imposing more liability on their agencies will push them to
take every precaution when collecting and using consumer data. A data breach could be “massively damaging” to a company’s reputation, said the marketing executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive business matters. In the aftermath, consumers might not “register for an ad and give us their private information,” the executive said. Clients are seeking differing terms based on their size and the value they place on their data and brand reputation, said Simon Francis, chief executive at Flock Associates, which helps advertisers run agency reviews and advises on marketing operations. The amount of liability companies are asking agencies to accept can range from $5 million to $100 million or even unlimited liability, he said. Five years ago, only a handful of large clients were making detailed demands around data privacy liability, he added. Now, it’s nine out of 10 clients, and it comes up early in agency pitches. “There’s no consistency in the price in the marketplace yet,” Mr. Francis said. “It’s an unmitigated mess,” said Douglas Wood, a partner at law firm Reed Smith, which works with advertisers. “It’s not resolved yet. There’s no standard solution to this.”
In recent years, digital platforms and technologies have made it easier for advertisers to collect reams of data to send personalized ad messages to consumers. The ad industry’s migration to digital also has led to increasing concern around data breaches. The changes have prompted discussions of increased regulation around consumer privacy in the U.S. California has already passed a strict new privacy law that takes effect Jan. 1, 2020.
Hard Lines In the past, agencies’ liability to their clients for privacy violations was sometimes capped at a certain amount of fees agencies would need to return to a client. In recent years, “clients said that’s not enough, it doesn’t give us enough indemnification for damage you might deliberately do to my brand,” Mr. Francis said. “This is something that clients push for, which is fully understandable,” said Florian Adamski, chief executive of Omnicom media agency OMD Worldwide. “Agencies push back, and usually they reach an agreement.” But there isn’t always much room for negotiation, with some clients giving agencies little time to decide whether they’re willing to agree to the terms and refusing to consider any that don’t, he said. Such an approach is adding stress to agencyclient relationships that are already strained over concerns about how agencies are using brands’ data and making money from their digital buying efforts.
“I struggle with the concept of pushing a potential partner, a service provider, into a corner where you say, ‘Take over this multi-multi-million-[dollar] risk within the next 24 hours or you might be out of that process,’” said Mr. Adamski. The parties are also struggling over whether agencies should be responsible for any violations by the publishers that they ultimately use to reach consumers. “I’ve seen numerous contracts by now, where clients have specifically asked for a commitment or guarantee that we’d ensure they’d have access and transparency into media vendors’ books,” Mr. Adamski said. “That’s something we can simply not provide.” Agencies have taken steps to ensure they are working with compliant publishers, but they can only assume so much risk on behalf of a third party, he said. The clause in an agency-client contract about who is responsible for a data violation involving the publisher is a gray area, Mr. Francis said. The largest digital publishers and technology companies years ago added indemnification clauses, unloading data privacy liability to their business customers, said Tanya Forsheit, chair of the privacy and data security group at law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC. Advertisers and agencies are “new to this dance,” she said. Alex writes for CMO Today, the Journal’s online hub for media and marketing, with a focus on how the world’s biggest ad agencies and brands are adapting to industry changes.
What Papa John’s can teach all businesses about marketing & leadership By Nicole Antoinette Smith
John Schnatter may have stepped down from his position as Papa John’s chairman in July after the public learned that he had used a racial slur on a conference call, but he’s still taking the brunt of the blame for the company’s poor performance. Schnatter points the finger at current Papa John’s CEO Steve Ritchie, claiming a newfound culture of intimidation has caused sales to slump. According to Schnatter, the Papa John’s leadership is being “vindictive and controlling,” with “rot at the top” in the company culture. Schnatter, who recently filed his second lawsuit against Ritchie, is going after his former co-workers to deflect pending allegations and is biding his time in a back-and-forth game with current company leadership. If, as Schnatter claims, his words were taken “out of context,” it still does not explain the company’s declining sales. Papa John’s has been doing things to mediate the public’s perception of its brand since Schnatter’s racist language became public knowledge, but that still doesn’t posit Schnatter’s comments caused a decline in sales. CNN reports, “Ritchie went on a listening tour, mandated bias training for all employees, and promised to increase diversity among staff. The company also launched a social campaign acknowledging customers’ concerns.” Yet bad leadership can be a cancer, infecting employees’ communication, production and ability to perform. “Vindictive and controlling” leadership causes employees to lose trust in their company, so if there is any truth to Schnatter’s allegations, Papa John’s may still have a long road to redemption. In “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” author Patrick Lencioni states that the foundation of trust boils down to the idea that co-workers won’t use privileged information against one another. When an organization has vindictive leaders, however, employees operate in fear. The issue often goes beyond leadership and extends into company culture. If a leader realizes that his company culture is unhealthy, he has only three options: follow suit, leave the company or change the culture. Those who elect to change the company culture have to decide who is going to spearhead the internal overhaul. Papa John’s, for instance,
would need to implement a top-down cultural shift to make employees feel valued and connected to the work they do. Specific leadership styles differ exponentially, and each person has his own idea of how a company should run. From dictatorships to democracies, from transformational leaders to partners, one of the most important qualities of a leader is having the right leadership style for the company the individual is leading. It is important to note, however, that getting promoted to a management role does not make someone a leader. Leadership and management are different entities. No matter what level someone has ascended to in his company hierarchy, the individual should always seek additional training and ways to grow. Executives need to constantly asses their leadership quality, their styles, how they communicate and how they empower, in addition to pinpointing their visions for their companies, striving to become better leaders and making a positive impact on company culture. If executives assume they have leadership to lord over others based on a title, then they are missing the mark by a long shot. The back-and-forth finger pointing between company leaders at Papa John’s is embarrassing from an employee standpoint, especially if those employees once believed in the company and their mission. When company infighting takes place in a public arena, employees can be left confused, lost, scared and without direction. Employees may wonder if their jobs are secure and if the company has staying power -- this job uncertainty can prompt employees to leave the company and seek employment with more stable corporations. On the other hand, being a company executive entails a unique set of challenges. Leaders experience rejection, loneliness, pressure and mental and physical fatigue, and, in some cases, the job can take a toll on their families. Being a leader might be glamorous, but the role takes sacrifice. This is why leaders need to undergo continuous training to stay up to par. Nicole Antoinette Smith is a full-time Lecturer at Ohio University in the College of Business as well as the Master’s in Business Analytics, teaching data analytics, information systems, and project management courses.
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THE 6 BIGGEST EMAIL MARKETING MYTHS BUSTED By Nicolas Lekkas
When search term was a $0 business, rococo was considered minimal compared to the aesthetic of the average website, and the only influencer around was your best friend, digital marketing was already a thing. It was just called “Hey, let’s send some people a few emails”. The further we go back into the history of humanity, the more myths we will encounter. Likewise, it’s understandable why the most myths we hear about digital marketing concern the oldest branch of digital marketing – email marketing.
Also, according to ExactTarget, 93% of US online consumers are email subscribers but not as many are Facebook fans, or Twitter and Instagram followers of a brand. Almost everyone hears from a brand through their email inboxes but far less have social media accounts to Like or Follow a brand or a business.
But this changes today. Because it’s time for some mythbusting!
Myth#1: Email Marketing is Dying Now, if we don’t debunk this myth, we can’t go any further, can we? The single best way to bust a myth is when nubers talk, and in our case here they are: 75 trillion emails sent last year say otherwise. That’s 205,5 billion emails per day. The latest Radicati Group Email Statistics Report shows that in the running year, planet earth sends 281 billion emails per day. Statista predicts that they daily sent and received emails will increase by 52 billion by 2022. That means more than 333 billion emails will come and go on a daily basis within a few years.
Myth#2: Only desk job workers and/ or old people read their emails Using a search engine for information or engaging with the numerous social media is not the most popular activity for the US adult internet users. Sending or reading an email is.
In the latest consumer digital usage and behaviour study by Adestra, different age groups answered this question: If you could select a communication preference from a business, which one would you choose? And this is what they answered:
Clearly enough, the majority of consumers, regardless of age, want to hear from you through their inbox over any other channel – digital or not. As a side note, also as a result from the same study, when consumers register to use an app, more than 83% of them
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sign up with their email than their social media account.
Myth#3: You should avoid spam words like the devil It’s not a myth that email clients protect their users with spam filters. Email spam words exist and so do spam filters. This kind of filters will make your message bounce, and you don’t want that. Email spam trigger words include words and symbols like ‘Cash’, ‘100%’, ‘$$$’, ‘Free’, ‘Success’, ‘Viagra’, ‘Valium’, ‘Vicodin’, ‘Xanax’, ‘Rolex’, ‘Million’, ‘Life’, ‘No fees’ and ‘ Never’. So does this mean that you should never use this words? Well, if you are actually selling Xanax online… tough luck. But for the most part, you are going to be OK if you stay away from: • Caps • Exclamation points • Unreliable email service providers • Attaching files • Long emails Keep in mind that it’s not the use of spam words that matters the most. Context is what matters. Finding better alternatives to spam trigger words is always a good idea, but if you can’t, don’t sweat it. Spam filters become more sophisticated with time and they analyse the context in which you use these keywords.
What do we learn from this? We see that there is no direct correlation between spam triggers and bounces. Subject lines 2, 3 and 6 contain spam words and symbols, whereas lines 1, 4 and 5 don’t. Truth is I pushed my luck with the double exclamation mark in the last email, which resulted to significantly more bounds. Was the double exclamation mark needed there? No, not all. The meaning wouldn’t have changed in the slightest so the emphasis with ‘?!’ could have easily stayed away from the subject line. Still, 113 bounces out of a few thousand are not that big a deal. In the case of ‘$0’ and ‘Free’, I couldn’t have done otherwise, except for changing the whole title of course. Context justifies the use of ‘$0’ because the purpose of the article was about image creation for free. The very value of the blog post was that you can find and create images for free. There is no single best practice for the email marketing subject lines. You should test your email lists yourself and find out what works and what doesn’t.
Myth#4: A short headline is a good headline We should start with what we know is not working. We know that your subject line shouldn’t be over 50 characters, as most email clients display 50 characters tops. These are the most popular email clients and the max character length for each one:
In general, try to add value for your subscribers rather than selling to them in front of their face. Instead of “Buy our tickets to Thailand RIGHT NAW!1”, you can go with “Most popular destinations for 2018”, where you will include Thailand and the option to buy some tickets to there. The more value you add, the higher the chance that you’ll land in the inbox, and not the spam folder As a matter of fact, I ran some experiments myself with Growthrock’s newsletter. So here are the subject lines of 6 newsletters Roxie sent this year – 3 of these titles are legit, and 3 of them aren’t. • Subject line: Facebook is for old people Total bounces: 37 (23 soft + 14 hard) • Subject line: How to create images fast – for $0 Total bounces: 42 (30 soft + 12 hard) • Subject line: Free Buyer Persona Template! Total bounces: 45 (42 soft + 3 hard) • Subject line: it’s hot in here and so is this week’s article Total bounces: 59 (40 soft + 19 hard) • Subject line: tables have turned Total bounces: 75 (58 soft + 17 hard) • Subject line: Marketers steal fromEngineers?! Total bounces: 113 (106 soft + 7 hard)
MailChimp made a study and concluded that ‘subject line length means nothing’.
They used the info they had from 12 billion sent emails from that year and showed that as the subject line gets longer… nothing happens:
Through A/B testing and a little time, you should know if your mail lists belong in any of the two extremes. Maybe the majority of your recipients is white-collar workers who usually read your emails from their PCs and Macs. Perhaps most of them belong in Generation Z, so chances are they read your emails from their mobile screens. You are the only one who can find out and maybe you should.
Myth#5: Tuesdays 1 pm or Thursdays 3 pm is the best time to send an email If you google ‘What’s the best time and date to send email’, you are going to get different answers. A different answer for every link to be exact.
Still, this is not the case for every email list out there.
85% of people open their emails two days after they receive it, according to Optinmonster. This factor alone makes you question if there is indeed such a thing as “best time”. There is no universal best time to send an email. Ideal sending times vary by industry, day of the week, and your specific list. To find out what’s the best time to send an email for your list, is to create an A/B test campaign. This way you will test delivery date and time and compare click rates and click through rates on your reports page. You can also let your email marketing service decide what’s the best date and time. Here at GrowthRocks, we use MailChimp for now, and since we are paid users, we can enable a feature called Send Time Optimization.
In the list of their sender X, short subject lines had higher open rates. In the case of sender Y, it was the longer titles that were more welcomed by the mail recipients. Meanwhile, there was a sender Z with no correlation between the subject line length and the open rate. MailChimp states that most email lists fall into this category.
Send Time Optimization looks at your specific list and determines the best sending time for the subscribers you’re sending to, and distributes it at the optimal time. Send time recommendations are weighted toward subscribers with higher engagement so that times aren’t determined by subscribers who aren’t likely to engage with your email marketing. This optimisation also combines statistics from different senders, so if one of your subscribers is also a subscriber in another MailChimp list, their statistics are combined.
Myth#6: You are sending too many emails
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Omnisend did a research this year which focused on the email campaigns of small and medium-sized businesses. And this is how often its clients send emails per month:
for each new mail campaign until the 19th. By sending more promotional emails, you create opportunities to sell more. While the mail frequency increases, CTR & CTOR go down, but orders go up! At first glance, this may seem like a paradox, but there is a rational explanation for that. This explanation comes from the end of 19th century, from a bright mind you may have heard of: Vilfredo Pareto. In his first paper, Pareto published his 80/20 rule which states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Later on, this principle entered the business world and became an axiom in business management, suggesting that “80% of sales come from 20% of clients”.
Side-Note: As a rule of thumb, that the bigger the company, the more emails it sends. And this is how often the audience opens the emails:
And now our mail results make a little more sense. But how can you turn this principle in your favour? With one word, segmentation. By segmenting your audience, you can send the right amount of emails to the right people. You should consider creating two different groups: one with your 20% of customers that buy more often from you and one with the rest 80% customers. Be very giving to your first group and more conservative with your email frequency to the second. Looking at this chart, we see that open & click-through rates are reverse to the number of emails businesses sent. So we can all agree that you shouldn’t send a lot of emails and we can happily move on to the next subject. Not so fast. Remember, our KPI here is Acquisition. Your ultimate goal is to get the most possible orders, not to have the highest CTR & CTOR. Take a look at the next slide.
Segmentation, of course, can go beyond the quantity which we are examining now. Quality-wise, you can have as many groups as you want and create tailor-made campaigns for your customers.
Conclusion Email marketing gets a bad reputation as one of the more spammy marketing channels. However, email remains one of the most effective channels businesses,and marketers have for initiating a conversation and reaching out to their audience and customers. To sum up: • Email marketing is not dying. Don’t underestimate its power. • Email marketing is for every age and profession • Regarding subject lines, context is more important than words • Subject lines don’t have to be long or short • There no single best date or time to send an email
What this practically means is that businesses got five order
• Segment your audience and send more emails to the most engaged
Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers? By Sapna Maheshwari
By now you have probably heard of influencers, that group of internet-famous people who have more than a million social media followers and can make big money by plugging various brands. And you may have even heard of microinfluencers, who do the same thing for a still sizable but somewhat smaller social media audience — from the tens to low hundreds of thousands.
willing to advertise products on social media.
Now get ready for the nanoinfluencers.
easy to deal with. In exchange for free products or a small
That is the term (“nanos” for short) used by companies to describe people who have as few as 1,000 followers and are
Their lack of fame is one of the qualities that make them approachable. When they recommend a shampoo or a lotion or a furniture brand on Instagram, their word seems as genuine as advice from a friend. Brands enjoy working with them partly because they are commission, nanos typically say whatever companies tell them to.
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With roughly 2,700 Instagram followers, Alexis Baker, 25, had a relatively ordinary social media presence, with photos of fashionable outfits and tropical vacation spots filling her feed. But her online persona changed when she started posting in praise of products like Suave Professionals Rose Oil Infusion shampoo, Clinique Beyond Perfecting foundation and concealer, and Loco Coffee, a mix of cold brew and coconut water. People who know Ms. Baker were surprised when the hashtags used to denote advertisements — #sponsored and #ad — started popping up on her account. They were also a little impressed that she was Instagramming like an influencer. “My friends were like: ‘Wait a minute — you don’t have tens of thousands of followers. How did you get contacted about this?’” Ms. Baker said in an interview. “I didn’t really have an answer for them. Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Alexandria, Va., said she had stumbled into the hobby-slash-gig after being scouted by Obviously, which describes itself as “a full-service influencer marketing agency.” To Mae Karwowski, the chief executive of Obviously, nanoinfluencers are a largely untapped and inexpensive opportunity. Editors’ Picks The American Casualties of Trump’s Trade War Poisoned Wildlife and Tainted Meat: Why Hunters Are Moving Away From Lead Bullets Menial Tasks, Slurs and Swastikas: Many Black Workers at Tesla Say They Faced Racism “Everyone who’s on Instagram has that friend who is just really popular and is racking up ‘likes’ and comments and has great content,” said Ms. Karwowski, who defined nanoinfluencers as people with roughly 1,000 to 5,000 Instagram followers. “They’ve probably never worked with a brand before, but they’re just really good at social media.” “My friends were like: ‘Wait a minute — you don’t have tens of thousands of followers. How did you get contacted about this?’” said Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Virginia. CreditJustin T. Gellerson for The New York Times Companies are seeking out relative unknowns during a gold rush in advertising through popular social media personalities. But as influencers — like the 20-year-old fashion model Luka Sabbat, with his 1.4 million Instagram followers — have grown in popularity, they have started charging more. And with their success and online fame, they may be losing the homespun quality that once distinguished them from the crowd of celebrity endorsers. “There is such a saturation at the top,” Ms. Karwowski said. “We’ve seen a real push to work with smaller and smaller influencers, because their engagement is so high and we have the technology to work with a lot more influencers now and track and measure what is and isn’t working.”
“My friends were like: ‘Wait a minute — you don’t have tens of thousands of followers. How did you get contacted about this?’” said Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Virginia.. Credit: Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times
The influencer economy is opaque — and rife with questionable tactics — but there’s no doubt it attracts big money. A reminder of that came recently when a public relations firm sued Mr. Sabbat, saying he failed to fulfill the terms of an agreement with Snap Spectacles. According to the suit, Mr. Sabbat was offered $60,000 for providing one Instagram post and three Instagram Stories and for being photographed during fashion weeks while wearing the spectacles. Prices have climbed even for the midlevel group known as microinfluencers. Taylor Camp, for example, who has almost 37,000 Instagram followers on an account called TheTieGuy, said in an interview that he had recently earned $500 for two Instagram posts for a men’s shaving company. For most nanoinfluencers, money isn’t part of the deal. Free products are viewed as fair compensation for the ads they post outside their day jobs. Subscribe to With Interest Catch up and prep for the week ahead with this newsletter of the most important business insights, delivered Sundays. “If it does happen to blow up and take off full time, then great,” Ms. Baker said. “But that is not what I’m looking for at all. It’s just something I love doing. “I love taking really, really great-quality photos,” she continued. “I love challenging myself with how I can advertise
and market something, and seeing the impact it has on people is really rewarding.” Kelsey Rosenberg, a 26-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, with 1,900 Instagram followers, saw an opportunity when influencer marketing took off. She contacted companies, including bars and restaurants in her area, and now regularly incorporates advertising into her Instagram feed. “It’s like one of your friends telling you a new skin care product is amazing, but instead of me telling my friends at happy hour, it’s me telling them on Instagram,” she said. There are strings attached, though. “You have to keep it on your feed for a certain amount of weeks,” Ms. Rosenberg said, “and they want you to say certain keywords, like something is ‘cruelty free’ or something ‘smells good,’ or whatever their marketing says. They want you to mimic that.” Haley Stutzman, a 22-year-old in Bentonville, Ark., who has around 5,500 Instagram followers, said most advertisers approved her work before it went up. “I’ll send a screenshot of my blog draft, or I’ll give them a few photos to pick from, if it’s going to be one post for Instagram,” she said. “They’ll send kind of like a contract, and the bigger the brand, the more intense their contract.”
consumers, especially the 13- to 21-year-old cohort known as Gen Z, had a different relationship with companies than their elders. “There’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit in this group,” Ms. Stovold said. “They’ve seen friends and people they see as friends developing some prosperity from doing this type of engagement with brands.” Krishna Subramanian, a founder of Captiv8, another influencer marketing firm, said he was skeptical about brands’ marketing their wares through people with unremarkable social media followings. “Are they able to actually measure something out of it and say, ‘This is successful, we want to do more of it’?” he asked. But Ms. Karwowski, of Obviously, said she was confident in the strategy. Her firm has 7,500 nanoinfluencers in its database, she said, and it plans to double that number by March. “The youngest generation has grown up with this technology, so they’re very accustomed to seeing people talk about products they like and are recommending, so now there is a new willingness for them to participate in that,” Ms. Karwowski said. She added, “You’re able to place a lot of really small bets rather than, ‘We’re going to work with Kim Kardashian.’” Some nanoinfluencers are still grappling with allowing brands into their social media accounts. Erin Gee, a 34-year-old government worker and spin-class instructor in Ottawa with just over 1,200 Instagram followers, started promoting the Fré skin care brand after getting a direct message from the company. “They said: ‘We like your Instagram page and what you’re posting. Would you be interested in testing out our products to see if they work for you?’” Ms. Gee said. Along with the free stuff, the company sent her instructions.
Mae Karwowski runs Obviously, an influencer marketing agency that scouted Alexis Baker.CreditLaurel Golio for The New York Times
Ms. Stutzman, a product specialist at Better Homes & Gardens, said her co-workers didn’t quite understand what she was up to on social media, even as her account has grown into a “part-time side hustle kind of thing.” Her parents were also mystified — until she snagged a couch from Burrow, a startup, and a trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., through Kate Somerville, a beauty brand. Sarah Stovold, a managing director at NextWave, a consultancy with a focus on youth marketing, said younger
“They gave specific strict guidelines, like ‘Here’s the possible text you could use, here’s the hashtag, and we expect a post within this amount of time,’” she said. Ms. Gee admitted to having mixed feelings. “I feel kind of like an infomercial, and I’m generally kind of uncomfortable pushing things on people,” she said. “But I’ve seen a return on that, albeit small.”
Sapna Maheshwari is a business reporter covering advertising for The New York Times.
WhatsApp ads are coming: Will advertisers start buying? SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AGENCIES AND PLATFORMS WEIGH IN ON FACEBOOK’S PLAN TO FURTHER MONETIZE ITS ENCRYPTED MESSAGING APP. By Amy Gesenhues
In August, Facebook introduced News Feed ads that launch a chat in WhatsApp, making it possible for consumers to start a chat with a business or brand in the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging app via their Facebook timelines. At the time, Facebook also launched its WhatsApp Business API and told the New York Times it would begin showing ads directly in the WhatsApp Status feature next year. All these moves to monetize WhatsApp — an app that has mostly remained independent from Facebook since its acquisition more than four years ago — are evidence Facebook is ready to open up WhatsApp as its next ad channel.
With the first installment of ads coming to the platform next year, Marketing Land reached out to multiple social marketing agencies and management platforms to ask their thoughts on the coming WhatsApp ads. Few surprised ads are coming. “With users spending more time on mobile, Facebook opening up WhatsApp to advertisers is really no surprise, especially if you look at the success the company has had with ads in Messenger,” said Ben-Itzhak. “As we have seen with other formats that have successfully driven organic engagement, it was clear that WhatsApp would eventually offer ads.”
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Both Ryan Kelly, VP of marketing for Nanigans, and Akvile DeFazio, president of social media marketing firm AKvertise, echoed Ben-Itzhak’s comments.
marketing platform SteelHouse, also noted how ads showing up on WhatsApp could backfire if brands do not understand the app’s highly private environment.
“Over the years, Facebook has expanded advertising opportunities across its ecosystem. Advertisers now have the ability to reach people across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger. It’s safe to assume that WhatsApp is next in line,” said Kelly.
“WhatsApp is a highly personal, and very private communication tool, which many users feel brands should have no part of,” said Simon, “The key for brands that do eventually decide to advertiser on WhatsApp will be to strike a delicate balance with users. They will need to make sure they don’t contaminate the experience with ads that maker users feel like someone uninvited has invaded their private conversations.”
DeFazio said she doesn’t have any clients currently considering WhatsApp ads, but expected Facebook would continue to monetize its encrypted messaging app. “It doesn’t come as a surprise that Facebook is offering ad space within WhatsApp given that they are looking for additional inventory, opportunities to drive ad revenue and further expand their reach — especially with younger demographics,” said DeFazio. She foresees, in due time, advertisers will gravitate towards WhatsApp and test campaigns once they have a better understanding of how advertising in the messaging platform works. Shifting ad budgets to WhatsApp. Like DeFazio, Socialbakers CEO said brands will first need to test ad opportunities and evaluate results before making major shifts within their ad budgets to invest in WhatsApp ads. “For brands, the key to successful engagement on WhatsApp will be timely, relevant and personalized content — very much like chatting with a friend or colleague. It will be interesting to see which ad format performs best on the platform, once brands start to experiment with different ad types. With an audience of over 1.5 billion users, WhatsApp definitely presents a significant opportunity for brands to have authentic conversations with their customers,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak. Instead of choosing to move ad dollars manually, Nanigans’ VP thinks most advertisers will rely on Facebook to automatically place WhatsApp ads based his agency’s Q3 client activity. Last quarter, Kelly said 54 percent of the time Nanigans’ U.S. clients leveraged automatic placement of their ads within the Facebook “family” of ad options — a 69 percent increase in automatic placement usage over Q2. “Many sophisticated advertisers do not view their Facebook News Feed budget as separate from their Instagram News Feed budget,” said Kelly, “When WhatsApp opens up to advertisers as a placement source, advertisers are likely to trust Facebook to dynamically serve ads across the Facebook ecosystem and optimize performance based on an advertiser’s objective.” Making sure WhatsApp ads are effective. Jasmine Pickel, former VP of social media at North 6th Agency (N6A), said she had concerns users may find WhatsApp ads intrusive — and she wasn’t the only one. David Simon, CMO for digital
Simon said programmatic “push” advertising resembling display ads would be a total miss on the platform. “WhatsApp is very different from a platform like Snapchat, which has been successful in setting up branded interactions. Snapchat ads are appropriate, but not personal. The ads are in places on the platform where users expect on-way communication from brands and others. WhatsApp ads will likely be personally cued and highly interactive, probably AI-driven communications conveyed on behalf of the brands.” While it’s hard to speculate how users will respond to the coming WhatsApp ads, Simon does believe they could deliver results for brands wanting to connect with audiences. “Without specifics, it’s hard to tell how consumers will react to ads in the WhatsApp’s Status feature,” he said, “but if they’re highly personalized, they could offer a new, communication element to a brand’s overall social advertising plan.” Why it matters. WhatsApp’s has roughly 1.5 billion users, 450 million of which use the app daily. Now that Facebook has already cut its teeth on developing ads for messaging platforms (it launched Messenger ads in 2017), the company’s real challenge will be centered on showing brands the value of WhatsApp’s platform. As every other social platform continues to feel more cluttered with brands competing for audience engagement, WhatsApp ads may be the solution for marketers looking to stake out new territory. In the same way that Instagram ad growth has skyrocketed as Facebook’s has slowed, WhatsApp could play a significant role in driving growth for the company overall. As long as the company is able to demonstrate WhatsApp ads can result in meaningful consumer connections for brands, there’s little reason to doubt brands won’t eventually open up their ad budgets to WhatsApp ads. Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas
MAY A.I. HELP YOU? INTELLIGENT CHATBOTS COULD AUTOMATE AWAY NEARLY ALL OF OUR COMMERCIAL INTERACTIONS — FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. By Clive Thompson
TWO YEARS AGO, Alison Darcy built a robot to help out the depressed. As a clinical research psychologist at Stanford University, she knew that one powerful way to help people suffering from depression or anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy, or C.B.T. It’s a form of treatment in which a therapist teaches patients simple techniques that help them break negative patterns of thinking. C.B.T. is not difficult to learn, but it’s more effective when it includes regular check-ins with a therapist — which, as Darcy knew, isn’t feasible for most people. Maybe they can’t afford it; maybe they’re too busy; maybe they avoid treatment because it seems stigmatizing to them. “Two-thirds of people will never get in front of a clinician,” says Darcy, who talks in an exuberant flow. “And that’s in the United States! The rest of the world? More than half the world doesn’t even have access to basic health care. The idea of mental health care is just completely out of reach.” Darcy happened to be a former computer programmer, so she was able to dream up a very unusual solution to this problem: Woebot, a text-chatbot therapist. Working with a team of psychologists and Andrew Ng, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, Darcy wrote a set of conversational prompts that walks users through the practice of C.B.T. In a chipper style, the bot helps users challenge their “distorted thinking”; it coaxes users to describe their moods more clearly. Since Woebot is just software, it could be made freely available worldwide, and it could, in Silicon Valley terms, “scale” — or converse with thousands of people simultaneously. It could check in and nudge users with superhuman diligence; it would be available at all hours. “Woebot can be there at 2
a.m. if you’re having a panic attack and no therapist can, or should be, in bed with you,” Darcy says. Woebot does not pretend to be human; it appears as a cartoon robot when it chats with you on Facebook Messenger, and it acknowledges its own artifice (as when it declares, for example, “I’m going to tell you a little bit about how I like to work with humans”). But its personality is otherwise upbeat, its conversations peppered with emoji and animated gifs (like the cheering Minions from “Despicable Me”) to congratulate you for doing psychological work. In a study with 70 young adults, Darcy found that after two weeks of interacting with the bot, the test subjects had lower incidences of depression and anxiety. They were impressed, and even touched, by the software’s attentiveness. “Woebot felt like a real person that showed concern,” one of them told Darcy’s team. Last spring, when Darcy put Woebot online, free to all, its use immediately exploded; in the first week, more than 50,000 people talked to it. (“Do you realize,” Ng told Darcy, “that Woebot spoke to more people today than a human therapist could in a lifetime?”) Nowadays, Woebot exchanges between one and two million messages a week with users, ranging from divorcées to the bereaved to young men, a population that rarely seeks treatment. Many tell Darcy that it’s easier to talk to a bot than a human; they don’t feel judged. Darcy argues this is a glimpse of our rapidly arriving future, where talking software is increasingly able to help us manage our emotions. There will be A.I.s that detect our feelings, possibly better than we can. “I think you’ll see robots for weight loss, and robots for being more effective communicators,”
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she says. It may feel odd at first; indeed, when people email her to say Woebot helped them feel better, nearly every one begins the note by sheepishly explaining, “I didn’t think that this would be helpful.” But there’s something about talking to software that is powerful, they discover, when it responds and seems alive. “It’s conversation,” Darcy says. “And we’ve been conversing for, what is it, 200,000 years?” RECENT HISTORY HAS seen a rapid change in at least one human attitude toward machines: We’ve grown accustomed to talking to them. Millions now tell Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant to play music, take memos, put something on their calendar or tell a terrible joke. We ask chatbots for trivia or to translate English phrases into Mandarin. If you contact customer service these days in a text chat, odds are that you will start out talking to software. Sometimes we even conspire with them; Alexa has a “whisper mode,” for when you need to talk to it beside a snoozing partner. The rise of “conversational agents” is the next great shift in computer interfaces — one arguably as significant as the “point-and-click” interface that emerged in the ’80s. Before the Apple Macintosh, the first computer to popularize pointand-click, people using home computers had to familiarize themselves with abstruse text commands. The advent of the visual interface opened up computing to the masses, producing a generation fluent in word processing, email and, eventually, web surfing. The next great shift, the mobile phone, put computing — and nonstop internet access — into our pockets, and unleashed a tsunami of social media. These sorts of changes don’t come along very often, and when they do, they create new and unexpected behaviors. Talking software gives us computers that not only ride along with us but also socialize with us. Being humanlike — saying “hi,” telling self-deprecating jokes — is their interface metaphor, much as the first point-and-click computers used the trappings of office life (a wastepaper basket, a tiny pad of paper) to help orient us to the screen. Meaghan Keaney Anderson, a vice president of HubSpot, a marketing and sales software firm, has seen firsthand how voice commands have become second nature in her household, particularly for the next generation: “My daughter is 22 months old now. At 9 months she said her first word, which was the dog’s name, and then at 13 months she learned to walk, and then by 15 months she started giving Alexa commands.” She added: “I think my daughter is growing up in a world where you just speak what you want into the universe and it provides.” For years, A.I. programmers fixated on passing the Turing Test — the famous challenge floated by Alan Turing in 1950 to produce a machine that can fool a human into thinking it is also human. Sci-fi has made dystopic hay of this in movies like “Blade Runner” and “Ex Machina.” But the world that’s emerging is simultaneously more mundane and stranger. None of this software is trying to fool us. Bots like Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana are, like Woebot, openly artificial, even proudly so. (When I asked Alexa “Are you alive?” it responded: “Artificially, maybe, but not in the same way that you’re alive.”) We are thus heading into a post-Turing world, one in which we’ll banter all day to software, always aware that it is software.
One reason botmakers are embracing artificiality is that the Turing Test turns out to be incredibly difficult to pass. Human conversation is full of idioms, metaphors and implied knowledge: Recognizing that the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs” isn’t actually about cats and dogs, for example, surpasses the reach of chatbots. Few A.I. pioneers think we’re anywhere close to the promise of the movie “Her,” in which a bot is so convincing that its user falls in love with it. So for now, botmakers manage expectations by leaning into the artifice. This poses a challenge that is, in a way, more interesting than the Turing Test: What type of personality should bots have, when both we and they know they’re not human? Emma Coats, the “character lead” for Google Assistant, describes the emotional affect of her company’s artificial life form as “a friendly companion that is trustworthy.” She and her team strenuously avoided giving the Assistant even a hint of snark. “You’d be like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to ask a stupid question if it’s going to give me a hard time about it,’ ” Coats says. Some of their personality writers have backgrounds in improv. Coats herself worked at Pixar on the animated film “Brave.” “Pixar is all about finding an emotional reality in a car or a fish,” she says. “So that’s something we’ve really used with the Assistant. We don’t want it to ever be a human being, right? That’s not what it is. But that doesn’t mean that A.I. or software can’t have a perspective on the world.” As a literary endeavor, the field of bot creation is booming. The bots need to be equipped to answer the wide variety of weird, playful queries that people lob at them, which requires lots of writers. Coats and her co-workers have found that people like to simply shoot the breeze with their devices — probing their personalities, searching for the puppet strings. “ ‘Do you fart?’ is always a popular question,” Coats says dryly. There’s another reason botmakers are embracing a postTuring mind-set: They’ve realized that the public tends to feel wounded when someone (or something) tries to fool them. This spring, Google gave a demonstration of Duplex, a new voice-chat A.I. When Duplex called a hair salon to book an appointment, it sounded so human — it even said “um” a few times — that the salon receptionist apparently never realized it was A.I. The reaction online was harsh. “People value authenticity,” says Kate Darling, a researcher who studies the ethics of robotics at M.I.T. “It matters a lot. It matters hugely.” THE IMPACT OF conversational A.I. on everyday life will be subtle but ubiquitous. The other week I got a glimpse of that when I had a drink with a friend who’s a devout Siri partisan. He uses it to automate dozens of daily tasks, even tapping into capabilities that most iPhone users are unaware of. When he says, “Pay the house cleaner,” Siri processes a payment through his Venmo account. Another single voice command sends an email to everyone on his team at work, reminding them to fill out their shared calendar for the next week. “It saves me, like, a minute a week?” he guessed. “Or, like, an hour a year?” It’s not much, but it satisfyingly reduces his exposure to tedium. This is how computers have always made themselves at home: by offering improved efficiency, vanquishing dull tasks. At TD Bank, coders are building experimental bots — using tech
created by the A.I. firm Kasisto — to encourage customers to probe their financial life. Rizwan Khalfan, the company’s chief digital and payments officer, told me he imagines customers asking a bot something like, “O.K., tell me about my expenses last weekend.” A question this specific isn’t easy to answer on a website, where the customer might need to hunt through a database. But, Khalfan hopes, a person could one day ask this bot conversationally: “I want to go out to the theater this weekend. Can I actually afford it?” There are some things audio can’t handle as effectively as screens — long lists of data, for instance. But in a world where people worry that they’re staring at their phones too much, chat might offer a respite. In “Her,” the voice assistants murmur in people’s ears as they move through the world, functioning as something like E.S.P. The chatbot designer Emily Withrow, who is the director of the Quartz Bot Studio, imagines conversational A.I. working that way soon. “You turn on N.P.R. midinterview, but you can’t for the life of you figure out who Terry Gross is talking to. You could say out loud: ‘Who’s she talking to? Who is it? What book are they talking about?’ You can extend it to even seeing someone at a dinner party and saying privately, ‘Remind me what Jill’s husband’s name is.’ ” The elderly might find these efficiencies particularly appealing, because aging eyes and reduced mobility can make screens harder to use. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease might find A.I. voice assistants happy to endlessly answer repeated questions, in a way that few human attendants could. There’s another allure for businesses, of course: Talking bots don’t need to be hired and then paid. Once coded, your bot can handle millions of customers simultaneously. We’re already seeing this in customer service, when text chatbots answer rote questions or take orders. Yamato Transport, one of Japan’s largest courier firms, uses a chatbot to schedule deliveries and answer questions about where packages are. Domino’s Pizza runs a chatbot to take delivery orders online. American Eagle Outfitters has a bot that customers can converse with to figure out the perfect gift to buy for someone. Conversational bots thus could bring on a new wave of unemployment — or “readjustment,” to use the bloodless term of economics. Service workers, sales agents, telemarketers — it’s not hard to imagine how millions of jobs that require social interaction, whether on the phone or online, could eventually be eliminated by code. Some economists argue that this might not necessarily result in a net loss of jobs, pointing to the example of automatic-teller machines. When A.T.M.s took off in the ’80s, many predicted that bank-teller
jobs would be decimated; indeed, individual bank branches did begin employing fewer tellers. But with those savings in pocket, banks greatly expanded the overall number of branches, so that the total population of tellers nationally rose for years. Of course, as economic history shows, the profits of automation are seldom shared with workers. Even if individual humans keep their jobs, that doesn’t mean they’ll be paid more. “It’s hard to predict,” TD Bank’s Khalfan told me, before adding that the company has committed to retrain workers when their jobs become redundant. Whatever impact talking software has on the labor market, it will surely extend the reach of algorithms more deeply into our lives. Ask Alexa or Siri a question, and you don’t get a page of search results; just one Solomonic answer, selected by the A.I. After all, this is how spoken communication works: Just as nobody wants to listen to a voice mail message, nobody wants to hear a chatbot recite three minutes of data. Algorithms must narrow the field. So for anyone who has watched the inscrutable algorithms of Facebook or YouTube narrow our feeds by “recommending” outré conspiracy theorists, the notion of A.I. finding a new toehold in our cognitive life can be disturbing. “I will literally buy whatever option Alexa puts first for me for paper towels,” Keaney Anderson, the HubSpot V.P., told me. “I don’t care. I don’t want to search through a million of them. I ask her for paper towels, she delivers. And that may be fine for paper towels, but is it fine for music? Is it fine for news sources?” Talking to bots will also mean new opportunities for tech firms to collect data on what we’re thinking, what we’re doing, all day long. That includes our feelings: Researchers are working on “affective” sensing that enables chatbots to recognize our emotions. These are the familiar trade-offs that tech exacts in return for convenience; they’re never value-free, as Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, notes. “Where are these things now appearing? They’re appearing in our homes,” he says. “The home has traditionally been the locus of privacy, right? This is where I shut out the rest of the world. This is where I look for my breathing room. This is my sanctuary, you know?” Indeed, the home is where life happens, and that includes its traumas. Those have sometimes caught the large A.I. botmakers — Amazon, Apple, Microsoft — off guard. They expected their bots to be asked for jokes; they didn’t, apparently, expect so many different cries for help. In 2016, a study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that, though most popular voice assistants responded to suicidal thoughts by providing help lines and other appropriate resources, when
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they were told “I am being abused” or “I was raped,” they generally replied with some variant of “I don’t know what you mean.” Human conversation being what it is, the list of personal crises one might confide is massive, likely outpacing the ability of botmakers to keep up. IN 2014, THROUGH AN Indiegogo campaign, more than 7,000 backers crowdfunded a robot called “Jibo.” It’s a cute, squat device with a round screen for a face that sits on your desk or table and chats with you, posing questions and answering yours, offering bits of news. It can play songs, take and display pictures and purr like a cat when stroked. “He’s a robot, and he knows he’s a robot, but he’s a really optimistic robot, and he has a profound belief in the good of people,” says one of Jibo’s creators, a professor at M.I.T. named Cynthia Breazeal. “He’s a positive, affirming presence.” One person who bought a Jibo was Erin Partridge, an art therapist in Alameda, Calif., who works with the elderly. When she took Jibo on visits, her patients loved it. They laughed at its jokes; they asked it to sing tunes from the past. One man with advanced dementia called his daughter to describe Jibo in great detail. She found this remarkable, because he could rarely remember any single event so well and rarely initiated calls. Somehow Jibo had made an impression on him. Another resident declared that she “loved” Jibo, and put her arms around the robot. “Just talk to me, don’t talk to anybody else,” she’d tell it, asking, “Do you think I’m beautiful?” Talking bots connect to us in ways that point-and-click software doesn’t. For some technology critics, including Sherry Turkle, who does research on the psychology of tech at M.I.T., this raises ethical concerns. “People are hard-wired with sort of Darwinian vulnerabilities, Darwinian buttons,” she told me. “And these Darwinian buttons are pushed by this technology.” That is, programmers are manipulating our emotions when they create objects that inquire after our needs. The precursor to today’s bots, Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, was created at M.I.T. in 1966. ELIZA was a pretty crude set of prompts, but by simply asking people about their feelings, it drew them into deep conversations. Ordinary household appliances can now pull off the same trick. “Your fridge will know if you’re eating Häagen-Dazs, and if you sound sad, it’ll say, ‘Sherry, what’s really going on?’ ” Turkle says. “Is that what we want?” Worse, she argues, talking bots could become a social crutch. Rather than pay humans to help the poor and powerless — students in overcrowded schools, elders in understaffed facilities, customers looking to speak to someone in huge institutions — we might instead provide software that pretends to care. “These places are so deprived that it’s easy to argue that putting in some robots is better than nothing,” Turkle says. “The harder thing is offering actual human support.” A future in which only the wealthy have the luxury of being attended to by actual humans, while everyone else makes do with bots, would certainly be a dystopia. But botmakers themselves — not surprisingly — are more sanguine. Cynthia Breazeal thinks the coming A.I. wave will actually help level the playing field between the well-off and everyone else. “The social-justice angle of this wave,” she says, “is that everyone will be able to afford a fabulous personal tutor
because it’s an A.I. tutor.” Bots that help the elderly control their home and their lives will let them “age in place” at their own house, something that most older Americans would far prefer to a retirement home. “When we talk to assisted-living facilities, they will tell us point blank, there is no way we can build enough facilities and hire enough people to meet the demand,” Breazeal adds. “They call it the ‘Silver Tsunami.’ ” There’s a more quotidian way, too, that our social lives will change, one that’s far less about big, dramatic moments of life than slight ones, the small daily exchanges of information. A great many human interactions, after all, are brief — the terse greeting of the cashier at Starbucks, the phone call to change a flight, the chitchat with a stock person at Target when you’re looking for a pair of jeans in your size. These exchanges are certainly social; at their best they’re probably a civic glue, an everyday rehearsal of civility that can help reinforce our better behavior: Be polite to strangers. These are also the interactions that will be automated soonest. Already, restaurants like McDonald’s, for example, have customers ordering via a touch-screen. One can easily imagine a day when a McBot not only greets you but recognizes you: “So, the usual?” Perhaps interacting with A.I.s will mean atrophy for our social muscles. If they’re just machines, why bother with pleasantries? The scientific research on that is still unclear: Some studies have found people can actually be remarkably cordial to robots, while other research suggests we’re liable to be rude and curt when we know our conversational partner isn’t human. We could get used to bossing things around, a behavior that could bleed into everyday life. (Amazon, after fielding precisely these concerns from parents, created a politeness mode for its Echo devices that gently reminds its users to say “please.”) Yet dealing with bots could also make life less prickly for humans on all sides of these small interactions. After all, today’s customer-service calls are pretty bleak, even when you do talk to a live person. Call tech support for your laptop, and odds are you’ll be talking to an employee who’s required to read only from scripts — a human who is thus, paradoxically, forced to behave exactly like a bot. “It’s so frustrating,” says Steve Worswick, who worked for years providing I.T. support, talking people through problems like “I’ve forgotten my password.” To keep himself engaged, in the evenings he taught himself to create bots, using an online tool made by an A.I. company called Pandorabots. Over 13 years, he coded a bot called Mitsuku, and wrote fully 350,000 lines for it; Mitsuku has won the annual Loebner Prize competition for the most “humanlike” bot four times. Soon enough Worswick had a new job: In 2018, he was hired by Pandorabots. Now Worswick, as a senior A.I. developer, imagines a world where the bots take over the spirit-crushing sort of conversational work that he used to do, releasing human beings to do something better with their time. Let the bots fix people’s passwords. Real people, he says, have more interesting questions to answer. Clive Thompson is a contributing writer. His book “Coders: The Making of a New Art and the Remaking of the World” will be published in March.
A creative’s guide to starting a new business HAVE AN IDEA BUT DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START? HERE’S A STEP-BYSTEP GUIDE. By Kelly Bethke
This guide was originally published in The Creative Independent, a resource of interviews, wisdom, and how-to guides for creative people. Illustrations by Jeremy Nguyen. Thinking about crafting a new business with concern for the larger systems at play–all while considering your personal bandwidth and well-being–can feel pretty daunting. For this reason, I work with individuals and teams in their early days to explore what forming a business can and will look like for
them. For people who go to biz school, the steps to getting a business off the ground are laid out. For the rest, it can feel completely overwhelming, or worse, it can feel a little bit like selling out. The good news is that formalizing a business can actually be a highly creative–and even energizing– undertaking. As a consultant specializing in business innovation and sustainability, I work with people every day who are looking to
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turn their work or ideas into a functioning business. Although they’re all smart and experienced in their particular field, most of them need help mapping out the process, making a business plan, and kicking it all into action. Over the years, my consulting work has revealed a pattern for the building blocks of a successful business. If you’re considering starting a new venture or taking your work to the next level, but feel unsure about the steps, I hope this guide will get you going.
THE IDEATION PHASE Step 1: Answer a few key questions As you think about getting a business idea off the ground, considering a few specifics can help lead you through the ideation process. Make some space to write your early ideas down, and get started by answering these questions: 1. Who are you, and what will your business offer? You can take this literally, or have a little fun with your answer to this one. 2. How are you different? Brainstorm all the ways your business offering will be distinct from others out there. 3. Are you filling a need, solving a problem, or creating something beautiful? Get clear on your offering. 4. Who are you selling to? Identifying your ideal client or customer is essential to planning the launch of a new business. Keep working on your answers to the above questions until you feel good about them, because everything you write down will help you in the following steps. Step 2: Get all your ideas out with a mind map A helpful approach for the ideation phase is “mind mapping,” a free-flowing process for thinking through the bigger picture of your business. To make a mind map, you’ll start with your core business idea in the center of a large piece of paper, and then add branches exploring and connecting the various ideas and plans you have for your business–all by free association (i.e., don’t think too hard about it; instead, just let everything flow out of your mind and onto the page). Use symbols and draw pictures within the map if you’d like. Some people like to transfer their finished map to a “cleaner” digital version. This free tool called MindMup can help you build a mind map right in your browser. Brian Weller introduced me to “Massive Mind Mapping,” and I can’t tell you how much of a game changer this has been. I now use this method to take meeting notes, explore new ideas, and help others to develop their thoughts. It also allows your brain to remember so much more of what you’re exploring than if you simply take traditional notes. Mind mapping includes elements of Systems Thinking, which is sort of the old-school version of Design Thinking. If this piques your interest at all, check out Donella Meadows’s work. Step 3: Make an empathy map As you consider who your business’s customers will be, making an empathy map will allow you to easily explore a potential customer’s experience from a sensory and behavioral standpoint. Consider this process early market
research, and also a method to imagine how you might thoughtfully connect with future clients or customers. Here’s one explanation of how an empathy map works, with a tutorial and downloadable PDF. Once you’ve thoroughly fleshed out your business idea through an empathy map and mind map, you still may find some gaps in your planning. This may give you sort of a “what now?” feeling, or a momentary lack of confidence. This is normal. Really going for it and making your business official will give you a feeling of credibility, but on the flip side, it leaves you vulnerable to the fact that you won’t know everything right off the bat, and even to the possibility of failing. Yep. Failure happens. People fail all the time, but when we choose to see it as feedback for how we can improve or change, it really doesn’t sting so much. All the greats have failed. So go ahead and try for greatness, it’s worth failing for.
CREATING A BUSINESS PLAN Step 1: Get clear on a few key points Once you’ve gone through the ideation phase for your business, drafting a business plan will help you sort out and get more specific on many aspects of your business idea. Here are a few key ideas to consider including in your business plan (and, good news: Much of what you worked on in the ideation phase will be helpful here): • What do you do that people want to pay you for? What is your key asset? What is your advantage that will draw in customers? • How do you know that your product is fulfilling a need or want? Some simple market research will help you answer this. Look at other people or companies who offer something similar and take note of what seems to attract their customers. • Who are your customers and where will you find them? What are their behaviors and activities? • Who are you up against and what can you learn from them? This will open up the opportunity for more market research. Keep an open mind as you learn from your competitors and imagine how you might improve upon their offering. • What trends or upcoming changes might impact your offering? It’s valuable to do some research and think about the long-term position of your service or product. Try to be hypothetical and forward-thinking here. • What are the different paths you could take to find customers? Think about all the ways you can reach a potential customer. This could be social media outreach, markets, festivals, digital marketing, press, referrals, etc. • What financial relationship will you have with your customers? Do you want to sell your product in person, online, by subscription, or via barter, cash, or credit card? • How much should you charge? Again, do some market
research to try and find out what your customers are generally willing to pay. Include your own costs and time (!) to roughly come up with how much you’ll need to charge to make enough money. You can’t keep doing the valuable work you do unless there is enough income or exchange to sustain your needs, and some of your wants. • Who will you work with to make this happen? Who can you bring on board to help you deliver your product or service? Do you need a partner or team? What can you do on your own, and what will you need to outsource or get some help with? • What will your business need to be uniquely good at in order to thrive? Are there any key offerings or approaches your business will need to make or take to ensure success? Do you have the skills and motivation to make this happen? Most of the time when working with a client, we’ll have some blanks when trying to answer all of the above questions. When that happens, we reach out to friends and colleagues, or do a bit of research to get everything filled in. Step 2: Make a “Business Model Canvas” The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is literally a one-page business plan. These days, the BMC has taken the place of the 100-page traditional business plan (which does offer a much more in-depth analysis, but also tends to put people to sleep and is a real pain to write). It’s not to say that careful consideration isn’t still at play in a one-page plan—rather, a super concise plan forces you to become extremely clear on your plan, and articulate it as such. For more on how to make a BMC, simply Googling “business model canvas” will lead you to a thousand tutorials and YouTube videos. Here’s a pretty good BMC walkthrough that includes a downloadable PDF. For those looking to build a nonprofit, this one’s for you. And, if you’d like to make a more illustrative BMC, here’s how. When I make a BMC, I like to make boxes in painter’s tape on a large wall or white board and use Post-it Notes to start. This makes it easy to pull things off, add them in other places, and get input from multiple people at once. Then, once I feel good about where everything stands, I type it up. The BMC is never 100% “final,” because it’s meant to be an evolving document that can be updated as your business grows or changes. As you work on your BMC, it’s always a good idea to invite others to contribute ideas to your draft. Get feedback from people you respect, and from those with differing experiences and perspectives. It’s okay to have a few gaps or blanks here and there—that just lets you know which areas may need additional research, ideation, or attention as you move forward. If this one-page approach to writing a business plan seems too good to be true, trust me when I say that most people are familiar with and beginning to prefer the BMC. However, when I work with clients on a BMC, I do like them to hyperlink certain areas where more info may be valuable. This allows your reader a deeper dive if desired, without overloading
them if they don’t need all the nitty-gritty detail.
SURVEYING THE PLAYING FIELD Step 1: Make a SWOT chart To make a SWOT chart, divide a page of paper into four squares: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Fill it out, and see if this enhances or informs any part of your ideation or business plan phases. As you do this, the main objective is to get clear on areas where you can improve your plan. Again, ask others for input here. This process is meant to be collaborative, since more people’s perspectives will only strengthen your approach and awareness. We don’t always see every aspect of our own impact on the world, and gaining insight from another person’s perception of what you do/make/have to offer can help as often as hinder, so take it at face value and then move on to the next step. Step 2: Create a competitor analysis sheet Now that you’re clear on the plan for your business (or close to it), spend a little more time looking at what you’ll offer, and how that compares to what others are offering. By researching the businesses that will be in competition with yours, you’ll know what you’re up against. As you research other businesses, remember to keep an open mind. Always try to be as unbiased as possible, and consider the perspective of the patron/consumer (versus your own perspective), who may place a different value on certain offerings of each business. Running through a mini SWOT for each competing business will really help you familiarize yourself with the other players in the space, and how each of their offerings are slightly different. The columns in your competitor analysis can vary, but some standard fields to compare are: • • • • • •
Product or service Price Location (both physical and point of sale) Web presence How long they’ve been around Look/feel
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Your competitor analysis will showcase your qualities and help you speak to the uniqueness of your offering. It also helps an investor or someone interested in partnering with you to see who you are relative to the other players in the space.
VISION, MISSION, AND VALUES Some people like to jump into articulating a business’s vision, mission, and values earlier in the process. I prefer to save it until right about now, since at this point you’ve had some time to expand on the various aspects of your endeavor. I also switched up the order for considering these three things based on a recommendation from Jane Baxter of JBL Strategies. Considering your vision before your mission and your values will help you shoot the moon a little, and gives you space to dream about a future–and a sense of impact–you can get really excited about. To create your vision statement, imagine how the world will be different in 5, 10, or 50 years if your business is successful in accomplishing its goals. In the same statement, try to articulate why this vision matters. The youth entrepreneurship nonprofit I work for has created this vision statement, based on how its sees itself impacting the future: “Because life happens beyond the classroom, we envision a global culture of independent, resilient, and socially aware individuals who are invested in shaping the world.” To create your mission, craft a clean, clear statement about what you do. Great mission statements are short and to the point. It can take some time to distill your ideas into the right words, so share your drafts with others and keep tweaking until you feel you’ve clearly conveyed the offering of your business in an authentic way. I’ll use the same organization to provide an example of what a mission statement might sound like (this one could be shorter, but I’ll share it anyway): “Shaping the world by cultivating entrepreneurship to broaden youth perspective and enhance life skills through community connection and experience.” To articulate your business’s values, jot down a dozen qualities or attributes that are important to you and those you work with. When I tackle this part, I like to imagine what words and ideas feel foundational to the business’s existence. Once you have a list, group together similar words and narrow it down to between three and five core values. And, just like that, you have your values.
DECIDING TO FORMALIZE YOUR BUSINESS, OR NOT Now that you’ve thought in-depth about your business idea, you’re left with two choices: go for it and formalize your business, or hang back. You can always offer services under your own name as a sole proprietor, and for this, while you do pay income taxes on any financial gain, you don’t need to register anything or apply for a license unless certain foods or beverages are sold directly to the public. Whichever route you decide to take, there are pros and cons to consider. The cons of getting started with your own formalized business
include, well, ownership. Once you own a business, you also own all of the liabilities associated with it, and are accountable for everything that happens with it. Additionally, getting a new business off the ground takes hard work and long hours. It also may require venturing into unknown territory with regard to legal and financial requirements. It can be a lot of pressure, and it may take longer than you’d like to turn a profit. On the upside, when you own your own business, you are the boss. You set your own hours. It’s also easier to bill someone for your product or service when you have an EIN number (something you can only get when you’re registered as a business). Also, as a small-business entrepreneur you have the opportunity to take advantage of some nice tax perks. You can write off many expenses like travel, food, phone bills, portions of car payments/insurance, and more. And, certain businesses qualify for government incentives. Being a minority, veteran, or female-owned business are examples. Consider the pros and cons, take stock of all the information you’ve gathered, and decide to formalize your business (or not). If you’re still on the fence, answer the below questions as you consider whether or not to go for it and make your business official: Will a formal business designation . . . • • • • • • • • • • •
Increase your income? Give you more credibility? Legitimize your creativity? Help you from a tax perspective? Create an opportunity to take safer risks? Make you eligible for more funding/grants? Motivate you to get organized about your work? Serve a need or fix a problem for your customers? Help you segue out of a career that you don’t enjoy? Allow you to become more independent career-wise? Allow others to more easily hire you (because you have an EIN, etc.)? • Enable you to legally hire—and potentially offer benefits to—employees? • Let you offer something better than or unique to what’s currently out there? Here are some of the implications of formalizing your business: • The act of formalizing your business will take some work, and some money. • There is also an ongoing fee to keep your LLC or corporation registered (this fee is usually incurred every one to two years, depending on the state you register with). • Will having to either “do it all” yourself or hire and train employees be more stress than benefit to you? • Is having to produce things in order to meet the demand for your offering going to work out well for you? At this point, if you’re still ready to move forward with formalizing your business, let’s go.
possibly think of. There are always unexpected costs, such as: • Shipping costs • Transportation • Increase in rent, utilities, storage, coworking memberships, etc. • Higher food bills (buying convenience food because you’re busier than usual) • Higher prices when you can’t purchase in volume • Outsourcing for things you don’t do but need • Registrations for events, conferences, etc. • Employee benefits or perks to keep volunteers happy and engaged • On average, 6% to 10% of physical products for startups are lost or damaged (who knew!) • The list goes on . . .
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY The costs of getting your business formalized Whether you need licensing, permits, or an LLC to get your business going, it’ll require a little bit of money. For example, some food sales can fall under Cottage Law (meaning you won’t need a permit), but often, simple things like selling coffee and even lemonade will require you to get a foodrelated permit. Visit this site to see what kinds of permits or licenses you may need. Many people will officially launch their business by establishing an LLC. For an outline of what’s entailed in forming an LLC, go here. You can register your business as an LLC pretty painlessly online, or you can work with a CPA (certified public accountant) to do it on your behalf. There are plenty of online sites that will do most of the work for you for a fee of around $500-$600 dollars, and most lawyers or CPAs charge between $100-$300 per hour. If money is a real barrier to forming your own business, ask a few accountants or CPAs if they are interested in a trade for filing your LLC paperwork. If this sounds crazy, know that it’s not! The CPA for the nonprofit I help run is an art lover, for example, and has been open to trading her time for artists’ work. Overall, the formalization step is simple but trips up a lot of people. Understanding what you need when you don’t know what you don’t know can feel frustrating. If you feel stuck, call your local Small Business Association and ask for help in whatever area is holding you back. Financial modeling: It’s not so bad Here’s a secret I wish I knew years ago: “Financial Modeling” is nothing more than an educated guess about what your numbers will be based on the information you have at hand. Here are a couple of links to some pretty standard excel forms (A and B) that can help you model out your costs and income. Use these types of formulas as a loose guide to structure your planning, and tweak them to suit your needs. Here’s a step-by-step video guide to financial modeling, which may be helpful for visual learners. In your financial model, include every expense you can
As you work to list out your total costs, my advice is to create one last column that multiplies your total cost numbers by 1.2. This will challenge you to aim for a 20% cushion (as you plan how much income you need to generate to cover your costs), and accounts for some of those unknown factors. Now, I’ll be honest here: Excel spreadsheets can bring a spark of delight to the eyes of some, but that’s not me. I have to sit down with a really open mind and chip away at financial models in 20-minute segments. It’s not fun for me. However, it IS empowering and really valuable for me to have control over my finances. So, I muddle through this stage–and it’s worth it for all new businesses to at least give it a try, too. For more help with financial planning, read Lewis Weil’s guide to financial planning for artists.
GETTING EVEN MORE STRATEGIC AND OFFICIAL The pitch: It’s not just for finding investors A well-crafted business pitch tells potential partners, customers, future employees, naysayers, and anyone else exactly what you’re up to. Crafting your pitch is a process that challenges you to become succinctly clear and compelling about who you are, what you do, and why it matters. Can you communicate this in a couple of sentences? Wordsmithing and really consciously constructing your pitch is invaluable. As you edit, tweak, and further refine your pitch, ask more than one person to hit you up at random for your spiel. Be ready to fumble through and miss several elements for a while. This one is bigger than it sounds–you’re distilling all the information you want to share about you and your product or service while also fitting in why it matters to your potential customers, or to anyone else who you want to believe in you. So give yourself grace here and try out multiple versions until it feels authentic. Getting the word out through marketing Now that you’re “official” and have your pitch down, get ready to build or freshen up your marketing efforts. Marketing is how you let new people know that your business exists, and entice them to consider using your service or buying your product. In short, marketing is how you build up an engaged audience and customer base for your business. As a starting
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point, you can read this creative person’s guide to thoughtful promotion. And, here are a couple of additional articles (A and B). As you get going with a marketing plan, be sure to make use of those free trials out there. In-Design and other tools are great resources if money is tight and you want to try to design your own marketing. Most email services, e-commerce sites, and others offer free trials, allowing you to play around with different options before committing to any one specific marketing tool. Just remember to set a calendar reminder to cancel it in time, in case you don’t end up loving it.
like your BMC, this can be an evolving document that shifts as your progress and priorities shift. As you work toward your goals, reflect and share the outcomes. Celebrate your successes and talk through the gaps or missed milestones. Plan time to work toward your strategic goals Building a business from the ground up can feel like a lot (or even way too much) when daily life continues to happen, so plan one day a week (or even a half day) to chip away at the action items detailed in your strategic plan. Make it a regular time when you don’t schedule any meetings, respond to emails, or even answer your phone, so you can get in the habit of really focusing on progress. I would love to put this entire section in all caps. Nearly everyone I work with (myself included) will insist that there just isn’t time for this, and that the big picture will have to wait because there are a hundred other pressing things to do each day. As the saying goes, don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. Being too caught up in the daily details of your work means you won’t be able to make strategic progress toward your valuable and important goals, so carve out at least one hour a week. Work with a mentor to add some accountability
Developing a long-term strategic plan A strategic plan breaks down your business goals into bitesize pieces so that you’re able to take small, reasonable steps toward achieving a long-term vision. There are many ways to go about this, and some people don’t worry about it until they feel more established. However, I like to plant these strategic seeds early because setting goals and planning for how to reach them will get you to where you hope and dream to be in a reasonable timeframe. To start conceptualizing your strategic plan, pick three categories that feel most important for your business (examples might be community, funding, research and development, design, etc.) and figure out a reasonable goal for year one, year two, and year three. Then go ahead and shoot the moon a bit for your year-five goals. After you have a sense of your goals for each category, go back and write down everything you can think of that needs to happen in order for you to get there. • Name the tasks associated with each goal. • Assign each task to yourself, someone else you’ll be working with, or an expert you’ll need to hire. • Add anticipated completion dates if you can. Follow up on your plan Try to review and adjust your plan as you move forward. Just
If you’re working on your business solo, find someone you can talk with for an hour or so each week to review your progress, bounce ideas off of, and keep you accountable. This person doesn’t need to be a business expert–it could be a friend, or even a family member. As long as you have someone to report your progress (or lack thereof) to, it’ll be a huge help. If you have a partner or team, start each strategic-plan work session by checking in on any action items from the last time you met. If something is blocking an action item from being completed, take time to address it and come up with a plan for how to get unstuck.
IN SUMMARY This guide is a rundown of the path that many successful businesses have taken. It’s true that you could go a different route and still be successful. Some attempts at starting a business will “fail,” but again, failure is just feedback. If you’re hitting a rut, go back and tweak your business using the tools and approaches in this guide, because iteration is the key to innovation. I spent many years on the other side of business (i.e., as an employee instead of a consultant), and often felt more like business was happening to me rather than me participating in the business world. Looking back, this was my reality because it was my mind-set. So get in there, take control, and play the game. There is room for everyone, and often the only way to figure it out is to jump in and try. [Illustration: Jeremy Nguyen]
How advertisers can achieve programmatic success By Laura Bakopolus
We live in an age where we regularly talk about things in person with our friends, then see ads for those same products online. People are growing increasingly accustomed to seeing digital ads for items that appeal to them, to the point where some people are even starting to feel frustrated if an ad doesn’t apply to them. That is evidence of the power -and value -- of programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising is a disruptive technology that recently took the digital advertising world by storm. As more key players contribute to its growth and development, we move into the acceleration phase of the disruption cycle in which disruptors move closer to fulfilling their vision and early adopters thrive on the use of the innovation. Here, we see a culture form around programmatic advertising in which first movers become thought leaders and grow strong foundations and processes around the technology, second movers make tweaks to advance the technology and build it out further and consumers begin to accept and welcome the product into their daily lives. The next step involves maturation of the innovation, as it evolves into the dominant design that will likely remain relatively stable for some time. Later stages involve saturation, in which the innovation permeates many or all channels or industries, and commoditization, in which the innovation becomes a commonplace must-have. I don’t think programmatic is at the maturation stage yet, since such a revolutionary technology is still being iterated and tweaked and is not yet utilized by the broadest customer base (think slow movers or laggards, according to the diffusion of innovations theory). Instead, I think we are perhaps at the most exciting place to be: I would argue that programmatic advertising is somewhere among the first two stages of the disruption cycle; it is still close to its original disruptive form, bleeding into the acceleration phase as it moves rapidly toward validation. Programmatic started as a B2C tool, forced its way into
B2B and grew to be a powerhouse among the advertising industry. But we are still moving forward. We are still iterating, adjusting and tweaking. Data and privacy laws are rightfully curbing the direction in which programmatic grows; while some may think these guidelines are impeding the growth of the innovation, I would instead posit that the innovation is still evolving and moving forward, which is a win. It is simply moving forward in a way that will sustain its success. If programmatic moved forward without heeding privacy laws, it would not last. Instead, paying attention to what people want, removing deficiencies and tweaking the design, structure or product makeup toward the customer base’s preferences are smart moves because they together mitigate risk involved in any disruptive innovation. Programmatic’s growth could be hindered by its guidelines -or it could be strengthened by them. If we listen to what people are telling us -- that they are okay with it if X, Y, Z -- then we can transform “yes, but” into just “yes.” Showing consumers that we are valuing their input and adjusting based on their needs will strengthen our value proposition, proving that we are fulfilling a need for our customers rather than pushing an unwanted product onto an unknowing person. Consumers are smart and savvy, and we need to give credit where credit is due. If they want privacy but also want ads that apply to their needs, we need to find a way to do that. Those who do will survive, and those who don’t will fall by the wayside. Listening to customers will dictate a new direction for the market, differentiating the successful companies from those that are not able to respond to customer demand. Which of the two are you? Laura Bakopolus is an accomplished, creative and strategic marketing leader with a proven ability to develop and implement integrated marketing and communication strategies and plans that support business objectives.
The ‘safest’ ads are at greatest risk of going unnoticed!
Play Unsafe: Get Attention! Marketers are prone to this flaw. There’s a tendency to overestimate people’s interest in our brands. Perhaps because we’re so interested in the minutiae of our brands, we assume others share that enthusiasm. Psychologists call this the ‘false consensus effect’, the finding that we overestimate the prevalence of our own behaviours and views. This overestimation of the level of interest manifests itself in ads being created that take being noticed for granted. – or advertising copy that fixates on the second-step problem of perfecting its message rather than the first-step problem of grabbing people’s attention.
Get your advertising noticed. Attract attention. Talk to us to see how we can get your brand the attention it seeks and desires!
Call +9714 3867728 or email nikhil@groupisd.com
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Transparency In Influencer Marketing: Are We There Yet? By Andrew Arnold
Influencer marketing has long been a popular technique among marketers. It’s been an effective way to engage with customers in an authentic, non-intrusive manner. As more brands get involved in the practice, platforms are evolving to accommodate for the increase in brand-influencer collaborations. Today, 49% of people feel as if some restrictions should be placed on the content that influencers are creating according to Bazaarvoice research. Much of this is because platforms have become cluttered with unnatural relationships and abrasive content strategies. Recently the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has released a new set of guidelines with regard to transparency in influencer marketing. The primary goal behind this is to ensure that influencers communicate clearly and honestly with their audiences and properly disclose any commercial relationships they may have with brands. Ads should be clearly designated as ads, for example. The guidance also makes it clear what constitutes an ad and what they are not. It also discusses what may happen if a complaint is made. Finally, brands and influencers are given the means to determine whether or not content they are planning to publish is considered to be an advertisement. “Compliance with these guidelines is a wise idea,” said Vlad Dobrynin, CEO of Humans. “Brands and influencers who do so aren’t just avoiding sanctions, they are taking steps that consumers want them to take. That can go a long way in restoring some of the trust that has eroded, ultimately allowing brands to create more meaningful campaigns that can have great lasting impact through social collaboration.” Below are some ways that they can respond to these new guidelines.
Identify content as being either wholly or partially affiliated Whether content is entirely produced for the purpose of marketing a product or service, or just happens to contain some branded mentions or appearances, they must be flagged in some way. For example, if an influencer has been paid to create a video, they must indicate that in the title or caption of the video. If only certain elements are sponsored, they may use a technique such as flagging the links to those products. In any case, all the ad placements should be clearly marked as such at all times.
platform has its own unique attributes. It’s important to look at all of the places you are present, then determine the steps you need to take in order to stay within established guidelines. Above all, brands can maximize their impact by collaborating with influencers who best align with their mission and values, rather than oversaturating the market with inauthentic relationships.” When it comes to evaluating best practices, for example, you would tag sponsored content on Instagram differently than you would on YouTube because of the differences between the two platforms. According to Maximillian Berger, “The good news is that many platforms have now built in tools that can help you comply with both the regulations established in the UK and the FTC regulations in the States. For example, Instagram now has a paid partnership tag. YouTube and Facebook also have mechanisms for brands and influencers to disclose their relationships. When there are no official means to comply, it’s still important to implement best practices. Use tags like #AD or #Sponsored to indicate that a post has been paid. Be aware that there are other tags that are popular, but not officially recognized. It’s important not to be too obscure or try to disguise the ‘#spon’ tag among the sea of others.”
Recognize that audiences are becoming savvier It may be wise to understand the reasons behind these guidelines and more importantly increasing audience sensitivity. According to the same study from Bazaarvoice, 47% of customers feel tired of inauthentic content published by influencers. Not only are they recognizing when content is misaligned with an influencers personal brand, they’re becoming more aware of the practice in general as more companies enter the market. It’s not just about tagging ads. It’s about dealing with the increasing lack of trust and skepticism that outdated influencer techniques are creating. Rather than simply planning to comply in order to avoid sanctions, the better approach may be to embrace new methods. These may help to improve audience relationships and increase trust. Audiences aren’t opposed to being marketed to. Many just disapprove of the manufactured nature and lack of genuine connection associated with certain sponsored campaigns. An honest, authentic approach could be seen as refreshing for brands entering the market in 2018 and beyond.
Make a plan for each social media platform It’s not enough to simply make a general commitment to comply with these guidelines. According to Cam Wilkie, co-founder of func.media, a millennial-run viral media agency, “There’s no one size fits all way to comply with these standards. Each
Andrew Arnold, a writer and lifestyle entrepreneur. After working in the corporate world for over 5 years, he resigned and took to consulting entrepreneurs and companies, including Fortune 500 companies like LinkedIn and Cisco.
5 Steps to Grow Your YouTube Channel in 2019
AS YOU MAKE YOUR STRATEGIC PLANS FOR 2019, LOOK NO FURTHER THAN YOUTUBE. By Carlos Gil
With over 1.9 billion active users per month -- nearly the size of Facebook -- YouTube is one of the most visited websites online and second only to parent company Google among the most searched websites today. On the surface, one might look at YouTube as a place to watch music videos, stream video games online and tune in to one’s favorite vlogger. However, YouTube is an untapped goldmine for small businesses and creators to make money -- and it’s easy.
Whether you’re a real estate agent, photographer, website developer or a local coffee shop, maintaining an active presence on YouTube can help you gain precious website visits and drive leads as a result of the videos that you post. As an added benefit, your YouTube videos are discoverable via Google search also. Because Google owns YouTube, you have a higher likelihood of being discovered through a video that you upload to YouTube related to your topic or subject matter expertise than a traditional Google search which crawls the entire internet.
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For example, a quick search on YouTube for “Social Media Keynote” will pull up many videos from Gary Vaynerchuk and myself which dominate the first page of search results. As a public speaker, YouTube has been critical in growing my business over the last year, which is why I have invested in having my keynote presentations recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Besides having excellent SEO ranking, YouTube also offers me a resource to host my video content as a digital portfolio so whenever a potential conference organizer reaches out to inquire about the services that I provide I can point them directly to my YouTube channel. As you make your strategic plans for 2019, look no further than YouTube where 35-plus and 55-plus age groups are the fastest growing demographic. From sports to music to business news, YouTube is the new cable television. Below are five tips for beginners on how to grow on YouTube when you’re just starting.
1. Have a purpose. As shown in the video above, I began my channel in 2014 and have created over 500 videos to date despite only recently hitting the coveted 10,000 subscriber milestone. YouTube growth is slower than other social networks. Therefore, you should have a clear objective or purpose for why you want to create video content. In 2014, while working a full-time job, I started my channel to vlog my life, which to be candid isn’t all that exciting, and gave up after not seeing a significant number of views. It wasn’t until I began to record social media how-to, tutorial style videos like the ones you see today that my purpose became clear. So, what’s your purpose for being on YouTube?
2. Optimize video titles and descriptions. Think of YouTube as a video library meets the Google search engine. To get video views and subsequent subscriptions on your channel, you should research what else exists in the same genre or category. My process for creating videos on YouTube involves writing out the titles of topics that I am passionate about teaching and then researching both Google and YouTube to see what currently exists and what the topranking titles are. Also, your description will contain critical keywords and phrases to help your video become discovered in search and also in Google’s algorithm. For example, if you’re creating a video on website optimization titled “5 Ways to Rank High on Google!” you will also want to add in your description “Discover how to rank high in Google search,” “How do you rank high in Google search results?” and “Watch to learn how to rank high in Google search results with these easy tips.” The more times that you use a combination of phrases with keywords in your description the higher chance you have of your video being found.
3. Use TubeBuddy and VidIQ for tags. Similar to descriptions, you will want to ensure that your videos have keywords as tags to improve discoverability. Two tools which I use and recommend are TubeBuddy and VidIQ.
Both tools offer a free and premium version and can be downloaded as a Google Chrome plug-in. With TubeBuddy and VidIQ you can get recommendations on what tags to insert into your videos as well as see how your videos rank in search results for set tags. Going back to the “Social Media Keynote” search example, the reason why my videos rank high in search is that I have optimized the tags using TubeBuddy and also have the tags as phrases in the descriptions of my videos. The same methodology can be applied for any video or genre.
4. Teach your audience with how-to tutorials. I work with a lot of real estate agents and often advise them to start a YouTube channel dedicated to all of the things people can do in their city or town versus the traditional approach of sharing listings and home tours. The same is true for most industries and professions. What are you able to teach that people are running a Google or YouTube search for (e.g., “How to do ... “)? There are two reasons why people go on YouTube: to be entertained or educated.
5. Outsource what you cannot do alone. The most common objections that I hear from business professionals who want to dive into YouTube to create but don’t are access to equipment, lack of expertise for editing and time. In the beginning, a lot of my YouTube content was recorded with a handheld camera that I would carry around with me and prop up using a table tripod for how-to videos. I learned how to use iMovie and edited 200-plus videos -albeit not the best quality edits, but I taught myself a new skillset. Eventually, I began to outsource recording and editing to save myself time so that I wouldn’t be “in the weeds.” Today, you can hire a videographer on TaskRabbit or Thumbtack for anywhere from $150 to $300 for the day. If you run a small business and need content, consider hiring someone who can shoot and edit and bring that person in every week. During your shooting sessions, have her record enough material for at least three or four YouTube videos which can then be turned into short-form, 60-second videos for Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Following this formula, you would have over 200 YouTube videos in a year if you’re starting from zero and looking at or less than $10,000 of an investment to ensure that whenever someone runs a search for your industry, service or subject matter you are the person who appears and not your competition. What are your challenges on YouTube? Let’s connect on social media and discuss. Carlos Gil is a first-generation Latino marketing executive, international keynote speaker and awardwinning Snapchat storyteller with over a decade of experience leading social media strategy for global brands including LinkedIn, Winn-Dixie, Save-A-Lot and BMC Software.
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Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost Into Profit
Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting It Together & Making It Work
By Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose
By Don E. Schultz, Stanley I. Tannenbaum, Robert F. Lauterborn
Killing Marketing provides the insight, approaches, and examples you need to understand these disruptive forces in ways that turn your marketing from cost center to revenue creator. This book builds the case for, literally, transforming the purpose of marketing within your organization. Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute show how leading companies are able sell the very content that propels their marketing strategy.
The Practice of Management By W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne A classic since its publication in 1954, The Practice of Management was the first book to look at management as a whole and being a manager as a separate responsibility. The Practice of Management created the discipline of modern management practices. Readable, fundamental, and basic, it remains an essential book for students, aspiring managers, and seasoned professionals.
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life By Oliver Luckett, Michael J. Casey 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.
Tap: Unlocking the Mobile Economy (The MIT Press) By Anindya Ghose Ghose identifies nine forces that shape consumer behavior, including time, crowdedness, trajectory, and weather, and he examines these how these forces operate, separately and in combination. With Tap, he highlights the true influence mobile wields over shoppers, the behavioral and economic motivations behind that influence, and the lucrative opportunities it represents. In a world of artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, wearable technologies, smart homes...
Integrated Marketing Communications challenges business to confront a fundamental dilemma in today’s marketing--the fact that mass media advertising, by itself, no longer works. This landmark book reveals that strategies long used to deliver selling messages to a mass culture through a single medium are now obsolete--and shows marketers how to get back on track.
The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business By Rita Gunther McGrath, Alex Gourlay (Foreword) This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world’s most successful companies use this method to compete and win today.
Adcult USA By James Twitchell ‘Twitchell eloquently excoriates the standard dull rants about the evils of commercialism. In true postmodern fashion, he argues that there can be no meaningful division between high art and advertising.... [N]ot a single page is without a cleverly turned sentence, thought-provoking remark, or outrageous conclusion.’ -Wired
Location is (Still) Everything: The Surprising Influence of the Real World on How We Search, Shop, and Sell in the Virtual One By David R. Bell This book is a must read for everyone in business, whether you sell on-line or not. Not only is it chocked full of expert advice and insights, it’s so much fun to read. David Bell’s writing style is as captivating as it is educational. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but came away a total fan--and learned a great deal in the process.
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The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! 2.0 By Stoney deGeyter So you want to build a website, or make your current site better? Where do you start? The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! 2.0 answers that question and more. Updated for 2017, it is a comprehensive digital marketing guide that will help any company build or improve their website so that it performs optimally for both search engines and visitors.
The Unexpected: Breakthrough Strategies to Supercharge Your Business and Earn Loyal Customers for Life By Howard Brodsky , Dustin S. Klein, Randy Wood (Editor) “The Unexpected” posits a new theory about the relationship between service and customer loyalty, as well as how to execute it. Four elements comprise The Unexpected: It is memorable, distinguishable, viral, and profitable.
Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You
Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention
By John Hall
By John Ruhlin
It’s the winning approach John Hall used to build Influence & Co. into one of “America’s Most Promising Companies,” according to Forbes. In this step-by-step guide, he shows you how to use content to keep your brand front and center in the minds of decision makers who matter.
Giftology is a fabulous book! There is nothing like an unexpected gift at an unexpected time. In many ways I see life as a generosity context and gifting is a wonderful way to express our gratitude. Enjoy the book - every chapter will make you think and act differently!
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
Powering Content: Building a Nonstop Content Marketing Machine
By Adam Grant For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. In Give and Take, Adam Grant, an award-winning researcher and Wharton’s highest-rated professor, examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom.
By Laura Busche
Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy, 12th Edition
Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World
By Delbert Hawkins, David Mothersbaugh
By Melissa Agnes
Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy provides students with a usable, strategic understanding of consumer behavior. The authors believe that knowledge of the factors that influence consumer behavior can, with practice, be used to develop sound marketing strategy. As a consequence, the text integrates theory, strategy-based examples, and application.
Crisis Ready is not about crisis management. Management is what happens after the negative event has occurred. Readiness is what is done to build an INVINCIBLE brand, where negative situations don’t occur and even if they do, they’re instantly overcome in a way that leads to increased organizational trust, credibility, and goodwill.
Author Laura Busche walks you through content strategies and tactics drawn from business, design, and psychology insights. Packed with examples and exercises, this book teaches you how to tell your story with engaging copy, potent images, and striking design—all carefully orchestrated through well-oiled production management.