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Dear Friends: 2018 seems to have got off to a whirlwind start. Dow Jones is on the rampage, the WEF @ Davos seemed to have integrated mindsets, Brexit has come to terms with itself(and UK) and more. Keeping up with the pace is the content frenzy. We talk about how Branding is fuelling the Cryptocurrency craze. A throwback on Mastercard’s ‘priceless’ campaign over two decades and how you as a brand marketer can design a campaign that seems to be timeless. We also examine some really insightful Social Media Trends that will dominate 2018. In continuation of that, we also offer a bit of a deep five into the Top Advertising Business Questions for 2018. It was about time or so we thought: Coca Cola introduces its own brand typeface and Nevile Brody is the man behind it. AI has moved on from being just flavour of the month to being the new frontier for brand marketers. Yes, you heard it right. With Voice Search making rapid progress, Sonic branding gets more heard by brands and marketers. We could not avoid not looking at the potential impact that Brexit will have on the advertising industry. Loads more in this month of the Valentine’s that you will love. So, until the next, the very best…
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22 Suresh Dinakaran @sureshdinakaran
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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Digital Outreach & Engagement Specialist: Khaleef Mayowa Junaid Associate Brand Connect: Hasitha Fernando Creator: Brand Stories: Salindu Sadishan
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CONTENTS
Why AI Is the New Battleground for Brand Marketers How to Create a Campaign That Spans 2 Decades, Like Mastercard’s ‘Priceless’ The Top Advertising Business Questions for 2018 How Branding Is Fueling The Cryptocurrency Craze As Voice Continues Its Rise, Marketers Are Turning to Sonic Branding The Leadership Benefits of Performance and Storytelling The Future Of Social Media Marketing Is Here: Trends To Look For In 2018 6 ways ad agencies can thrive in an AI-first world How to Generate More Leads From Your Blog Neville Brody designs Coca-Cola’s first ever own-brand typeface The 10 Design Trends Of 2017 That Need To Die Don’t Blame Social Media for Celebrity Politicians. Blame Everyone. Brexit’s real impact on ad industry still ‘unknown’ Book, Line & Sinker
Why AI Is the New Battleground for Brand Marketers EMBRACING CONSISTENCY AND EFFECTIVE FREQUENCY By Ben Lamm
Most brand experiences will be delivered through AI by 2025. The only question is whether your brand will still exist.
environments. And when you deliver consistently, customers are happy and they keep coming back.
Some perspective: When Ray Kroc walked into the McDonald brothers’ restaurant in 1954, he was taken aback with the efficiency and replicability of the facility. That evening, “visions of McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through [his] brain.” McDonald’s lore never mentions what Kroc thought of the actual food, because he wasn’t selling food. He was selling consistency.
Effective frequency is the number of times someone needs to be exposed to an advertising message before he or she acts upon it. Traditionally, advertisers talked about the Rule of Seven—arguing the magic number for effective frequency was seven times. The Rule of Seven was based largely on research dating back to the late 1800s. More recent research studies have shown the number is on the rise.
Kroc eventually fulfilled this dream, launching a franchise operation that spread McDonald’s all over the country at the same time the Interstate Highway Act was being passed. Just when Americans were hitting the roads in droves, Kroc was there with a dining experience that was consistent whether you were in Sacramento, Calif., or Durham, N.C. Fast-forward to the present, and brand marketers have a similar opportunity. There has been a lot of talk about AI this year. Forget the nuts and bolts of the technology for a second. Pay attention to what your customers are doing. Today’s internet is a lot like American culture after the interstates were built: we’re scattering across a vast expanse of real estate and there are no discernible patterns in the chaos. AI brings order to this chaos. It creates brand consistency wherever digital volatility once maddened marketers. Just as marketers are growing weary, AI is bringing brand marketing back from the precipice of irrelevance. You may think I’m overstating the importance of AI to brand marketing, but you’re underestimating my claim. From now on, AI is brand marketing and brand marketing is AI.
Embrace consistency Every day there’s another article about AI and its power of personalization. They’re not wrong. As customers hand over more and more data and the technology to decipher that data improves, they expect brand interactions to be more personalized. But first you need to earn enough repeat business from a customer to get accurate data for personalization. Consistency transcends the bells and whistles allure of personalization. Consistency is elemental. In a world with more brands, channels and customer touch points than ever before, customers are inundated with the new and different. The more we flood them with change, the more they long for consistency. A recent Salesforce report on the “State of the Connected Customer” revealed that 81 percent of consumers expect the same level of service every time they interact with a company across different channels. AI helps you combat the challenges the digital revolution created; it creates consistency in even the most inhospitable
Effective frequency
In 2015, Martin Eisend and Susanne Schmidt pegged the new average number at 10. Depending on the market and the product, some studies suggest that effective frequency could be nearly as high as 30. There’s plenty of debate around effective frequency, but most marketers agree that the modern landscape is marked by a continuous battle for the consumer’s attention. There’s now a relentless push to diversify ad channels as marketers desperately seek to get their brand a new touch point with the customer. Just look at how the advertisers flooded into social—Facebook and Google now have almost complete ownership of online advertising. As the bar for effective frequency gets raised, the risk of inconsistent brand experiences multiplies. So how can a small team of marketers ever hope to deliver a consistent message across so many channels? That’s where AI is already starting to step up. We’re seeing new AI-powered tools for ad analytics that can predict the efficacy of ad buys on programmatic platforms and AI-fueled enhancements to ad targeting across all platforms. In short, AI has infiltrated both advertising and experiential marketing disciplines by creating consistency where instability previously reigned. The next big thing was yesterday. McDonald’s proved the value of repeatability and consistency. As time went on, McDonald’s veered off course with bloated product offerings that hurt the brand in an attempt to create more personalization, more choice, more variety. Eventually, the chain decided to pare down and get back to basics, creating a menu that mirrored customers’ expectations for the brand and increased replicability. What’s old is new again. If you believe your brand has to fight to be distinct and memorable in today’s landscape, you already believe you need AI. That’s why it is the new battleground for brand marketing.
Ben Lamm is co-founder & chairman of HyperGiant, cofounder and CEO of Conversable, and a member of the Adweek Advisory Board.
How to Create a Campaign That Spans 2 Decades, Like Mastercard’s ‘Priceless’
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5 LESSON’S THAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM ITS ENDURING SUCCESS By Raja Rajamannar
It is the rare campaign that lasts three years. Few continue to engage and inspire audiences after 10, and even fewer have spanned two full decades. So what’s the key to creating a sustainable, global, market-moving campaign?
a concert, buying the perfect holiday dress or going to dinner
When Mastercard put its account up for bid in 1997, they were committed to picking the agency whose creative idea would outperform all others. But while the “Priceless” campaign concept performed incredibly well qualitatively in focus groups around the globe, it continued to come up short against another campaign under consideration.
to be done in a consistent and authentic way. We do this by
Once you find your truth, the key is to adapt the manifestation appropriately to the current environment.
At the time, shifting focus from the tangible to the experiences money cannot buy was bold and contrarian for the category. And we were tapping into something so subtle, no quantitative measures could reflect then. In the end, marketing wisdom prevailed. Mastercard went with its gut and chose “Priceless.”
with family and friends. Our role in marketing is to be a force multiplier for our business and demonstrate how Mastercard can help make life experiences even more special. This has organizing our efforts around consumer passions including sports, music, travel and social good. This focused approach allows us to show up in areas that are important to people in a connected, authentic way.
Appreciate the value in legacy Many times marketers may get bored with their campaigns. But they shouldn’t be in a hurry to change. A campaign needs to sink into the hearts and minds of consumers to really endure. We used to have 168 marketing programs and spent money across all of them, but we recognized that our efforts would be more powerful by connecting them through a compelling set of pillars: Priceless Cities, Priceless Surprises, Priceless Causes and Priceless Specials. Today “Priceless” has run in 54 languages in 113 countries. Honing our focus has
When I came onboard four years ago, “Priceless” was still a strong campaign. However, the world has completely transformed since the time it was created. With digital technologies and social media, there are so many more ways to not only reach people, but, even more importantly, to engage, enable and inspire them to action. With this unprecedented opportunity, we decided to transform this now iconic advertising campaign into a more comprehensive marketing platform—one that went beyond celebrating moments to creating experiences. And so we began to move “Priceless” into people’s lives.
helped ensure the platform’s longevity and success.
The impact has been profound, and our brand metrics continue to strengthen. When I look at this two-decade campaign, I see many lessons that can be learned, but here are my top five takeaways:
Therefore, we must find additional ways to break through.
Find your truth
over social media.
The most compelling reason “Priceless” has endured so long is that it is tapping into a universal human truth: experiences matter more than things. This truth, in spite of tectonic changes in the consumer landscape, remains equally relevant today. Once you find your truth, the key is to adapt the manifestation appropriately to the current environment. With “Priceless,” we did not change our guiding truth. Rather, we evolved our execution, and started to enable real-life experiences for people. We refer to this as our transformation from storytelling to storymaking.
Align marketing KPIs to business objectives
Listen to the consumer Ad blockers and ad-free subscriptions have totally changed the game for marketers. More than 600 million devices now have preinstalled ad-blocks. Netflix has over 100 million subscribers. Consumers are clearly telling marketers they want uninterrupted experiences and view advertisements as an annoyance. They are telling us with their actions by actively installing ad blockers and even paying for ad-free content. For us, it’s delivering and enabling experiences through “Priceless” platforms, and now consumers are becoming our brand ambassadors by sharing their stories and moments
There are marketing KPIs and there are business metrics. The two cannot be mutually exclusive. Marketers need to clearly connect the dots and demonstrate how campaigns are contributing to business success. By consistently demonstrating this value, we’ve been able to secure continued investment, enabling the “Priceless” platform to continue year after year. I can’t wait to start the next 20.
Understand your brand purpose Our brand promise is to connect people to priceless possibilities. People don’t wake up thinking about making a payment transaction, but they do get excited about going to
Raja Rajamannar (@RajaRajamannar) is the chief marketing & communications officer at Mastercard.
The To p Adv ertisin Busin ess Qu g estion 2018 s for AND T HE EXE CUTIV FOR TH ES TO E ANS WATCH WERS
By Jon Feagain
It was a big year for advertising advancements and controversies, as agencies, media companies, and measurement and digital firms sought new ways to reach and track today’s elusive consumers. But questions remain for the top companies in the ad business as we head into 2018. Here are just a few of the biggest question marks—and the people who may hold the answers.
Will Amazon become an advertising powerhouse? Amazon has quietly been building up an ad business that includes search and banner ads on its e-commerce platform and ads around its streaming NFL games for Amazon Prime members. It even uses its prized data to help advertisers target audiences on other websites. But the ad business hasn’t been a top priority for Amazon…until now. Under Amazon’s vice president of global ad sales, Seth Dallaire, the company is more aggressively courting ad buyers. Those advertisers and
the holding companies that guard their billion-dollar budgets are taking note and working with Mr. Dallaire’s team to find new ways to spend with the coveted e-commerce giant. It may take years to pry a meaningful amount of spending from the so-called advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google, but his efforts are worth watching regardless.
What impact will Marcel have on Publicis’s business? Publicis this summer set off a shock wave in the ad industry when it announced it was pulling out of Cannes and other large events in 2018 to save money to invest in Marcel— an “artificial intelligence” platform to facilitate more collaboration and communication among its global offices. The technology may also help the agency use its resources more efficiently. It’s a bold bet by Arthur Sadoun, who took over as chief executive of Publicis in June, at a time when the business is grappling with client spending cuts and change
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13 brands and retailers, also has come under pressure due to the “challenging fast-moving consumer goods environment in the U.S.,” according to a recent earnings statement from Nielsen CEO Mitch Barns. In the year ahead, all eyes will be on Mr. Barns. Will he consider building out new digital measurement capabilities through acquisition or even spinning off parts of the business?
Will WPP continue to consolidate its shops or take more drastic measures? WPP has had one of the toughest financial years in its history, with few signs of a sustained turnaround in the new year. As the largest ad holding company in the world grapples with client cutbacks and changing consumer habits, WPP is rethinking its organizational structure to create more marketing integration, flexibility and cost efficiency for clients. WPP CEO Martin Sorrell has spent the past year combining various agency groups within the holding company. He moved digital agency Possible into Wunderman and reduced the company’s media agency portfolio by moving Maxus people and resources into MEC (which was renamed Wavemaker) and Essence. He also clumped together health-care and branding agencies. But there’s still more work to be done for WPP to get back on track. Will Mr. Sorrell continue to consolidate his shops or take more drastic measures, such as merging with a large consultancy or selling underperforming assets?
Will Accenture and other consulting firms start to be a real threat?
brought on by the shift to digital advertising. Madison Avenue will be keeping an eye on how Marcel helps evolve the challenged ad services business in ways humans can’t.
How will Nielsen evolve its business? Nielsen has long reigned over TV viewing measurement—the crucial metrics that underpin most networks’ advertising sales. But as viewing habits shift from traditional TV providers to a range of digital platforms, the company has had to scramble to find new ways to capture audiences across devices and services and then convince media buyers and sellers to adopt new metrics. Nielsen has made strides in cross-platform measurement, finding new ways to better measure viewing outside of the home, on Netflix and on other digital media platforms like YouTube. Still, in its “Watch” division, which houses the media measurement products, the company’s “Total Content Ratings” metric has been met with skepticism by some TV networks. And its “Buy” unit, which includes measurement and analytics products for packaged goods
Pierre Nanterme didn’t build a career on Madison Avenue. But the Accenture CEO is one to watch as the consulting firm continues to muscle its way into the marketing services business. To boost its Accenture Interactive group, the company has acquired numerous ad and marketing firms, including Matter, Rothco, Clearhead and Wire Stone in 2017 alone. Large consulting firms are no match for ad holding companies quite yet, but they’re certainly top of mind for ad executives gearing up for heightened competition. Perhaps 2018 will be the year Accenture—or its rivals—make a more aggressive acquisition play, or start to win more large and lengthy marketing assignments.
Will advertisers stick with Snap? It has been a bit of a rough year for Snap. In the months since its public offering, the company has seen its share price falter and user growth slow significantly amid heightened competition from much larger rival Facebook and its Instagram platform. But the company in recent months has focused its efforts on getting users to log on more frequently, starting with a redesign to simplify the Snapchat app and promote more relevant content. Snap also has been working to build out its ad sales operation under Viacom veteran Jeff Lucas. Still, it remains to be seen if the company can get its user growth back on track, and whether advertisers will continue to increase their spending with Snap or refocus their energies on another player that can reach younger consumers and potentially challenge the duopoly. Alexandra Bruell 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.
How Branding Is Fueling The Cryptocurrency Craze THE CREATORS OF MANY NEW CURRENCIES ARE SHREWDLY MARKETING THEIR COINS BY TYING THEM TO EVERYTHING FROM WEED AND PORN TO DONALD TRUMP. By Mark Wilson
Everyone’s heard of bitcoin, sure. But the ballooning cryptocurrency has over 1,000 competitors. There’s a coin for pot smokers called Kushcoin. A coin for betting on Fantasy Sports called No Limit Coin. A coin aimed at women called, yes, Women Coin. A coin promising to make America great again named TrumpCoin. And many, many coins for purchasing pornography, like Titcoin and Spankchain. There are ironic coins for people who are too cool to take cryptocurrency seriously, like Dogecoin or the now defunct Coinye (a completely and utterly unendorsed Kanye West coin). Heck, there’s even a coin called PonziCoin that essentially admits its coins are a scam–but buy them anyway!
[Source Image: adekvat/iStock]
Often dubbed altcoins, these competitors range from copy and pasted Bitcoin code to truly innovative, secure software platforms that might birth not just another way to buy groceries, but a whole new internet. Many believe cryptocurrencies will soon be a trillion-dollar industry, driven by speculative investments, futures traders, and so many server farms mining new coins and enabling transactions that they’re actually accelerating global warming.
At least some of their success must be attributed to the ethos that cryptocurrencies embody. For many, they represent a utopian second economy, where money is managed by people rather than banks. It seems like an egalitarian reboot of the global economy, a system that, not long ago, our tax dollars bailed out–and which has only come back more powerful and greedy than ever. But these altcoins are also a story of brilliant grassroots branding, through which the
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right website and a bit of witty clipart can rally redditors and create market caps in the tens of millions out of nothing but electricity. Most of these currencies will wither away as the market matures. Yet after talking to half a dozen people in every position across the industry, one thing is clear: Cryptocurrencies, through their names, websites, logos, and brands, resonate with people in ways far beyond getting rich quick. In a world where most of us feel helpless amidst big corporations and an indifferent government, we may define ourselves by the type of money we spend–and the special culture that our chosen coin represents (in that sense, altcoins may be less an escape from capitalism than its zenith). Today, identity defines not just what we buy, but the currency we use to buy it.
exist. “I think it’s the same thing with cryptocurrencies,” he continues. “And having seen a world where Bitcoin exists, and Ethereum exists, you have other digital currencies that have large market capitalizations, and branding around them, I think that’s created a bit of a trend where a lot of other people jump on board.” I decided to ask a branding guru–Randall Stone, who has led the identities of mega-corporations like Starbucks and Samsung–for an outside opinion of some of the quirkier coins. “They’re almost like bad, trendy startup kind of names. ‘No Limit Coin.’ ‘Zcash.’ A whole bunch of them,” he says, amused. “Some of the branding is just so juvenile and primitive, while others are really sophisticated. And some, you can tell the tech background of the designer because they look a little B2B-esque.” At the same time, “a lot of them felt like fly by night, here today, gone tomorrow. No real sense of legitimacy,” he says. Take Cagecoin, a coin branded around Nicholas Cage. On one hand, it appeals to certain corners of the internet. On the other, it undermines the legitimacy of cryptocurrency. “The same problem exists for Bitcoin, as it goes from this weird anomaly in the marketplace and becomes more mainstream, this sense of reassurance that this is legitimate needs to be better expressed,” Stone adds.
THE MEGA-BUSINESS OF CRYTOCURRENCIES In 2017, the story of cryptocurrencies was actually much larger than any one coin. It was bigger than Bitcoin, which ballooned from $1,000 per coin to around $14,000 by end of year; or Ethereum, which grew over 9,000%; or even Ripple, which bested every competitor with insane 36,000% growth. A whole new industry found itself flush with nearly unlimited investment. According to Coindesk, 300 different cryptocurrencies raised a total of just over $4 billion in ICOs– also known as “initial coin offerings”–selling their coins to new investors, a technique that outpaced venture capital in the space by significant margins. This digital gold rush was perfectly articulated by two old guard companies, Long Island Iced Tea and the parent company of Hooters, which each saw unusual market gains after promising to invest in white hot blockchain tech. The financial appeal of getting in early on these new cryptocurrencies is clear, though many–even most– might have no shot at gaining a real foothold in the market. Why settle for getting 5% or 10% back over a year on a stock, when you might get 3000% back in a year on a new coin?
[Screenshot: Woman Coin]
But how do you know which altcoin to buy into? For many, the name is the first step.
Stone was impressed by Women Coin, “the world’s first digital currency for women.” And in a world in which men dominate finance, why not? “It felt the most purposeful platform for women to trade,” says Stone. Then I pointed out that I’d thought the same thing, until I dug into the site a bit. Something about it seemed off to me. Was it the sexy lady boxer? Maybe. Or was it the shot of a business woman walking on a tarmac…from a somewhat low angle…that accentuated her legs? To me, there’s no way that Women Coin is made, or branded, by women (though I reached out to the currency to ask). When I point out my observation to Stone, he laughs, knowing he’d momentarily been had by the name. “I can see the Maxim connotation!”
“My view is, with many sets of coins, people are just trying to get attention. Much the same thing happens with apps in the App Store,” says Daniel Romero, general manager of Coinbase, the U.S.’s largest, and likely most legitimate, coinbuying platform. Coinbase only allows the purchase and trade of four different cryptocurrencies, though thousands
“It does look like, eventually, these altcoin sites, these could be part of your cyber identity. What coins do you pay with? It’s going to be an expression, whether it’s an overt expression, or an anonymous expression, of who you are,” says Stone. “There’s going to be a branding war. Who is going to own the customer? Are you going to be an Android or Apple person?”
BUT WHO ACTUALLY BUYS ALTCOINS? “I’m curious, who are the people who are buying those coins?” Romero muses as I talk about the popularity of altcoins built upon memes. “Because they’re not on Coinbase.” It’s a valid question. Trading of altcoins takes place on exchanges that look straight out of 1992 internet technologies. So I reached out to one such person to find out. On the message boards, some call him “___TR___.” Others, simply the BUN guy. ___TR___ and his friends played poker on Poker Shibes, a gaming website where you bet on games with Dogecoin, an irony-tinged altcoin featuring the visage of the famed Shiba Inu meme. With a market cap now exceeding $1 billion, Dogecoin can actually be valuable in aggregate, so the group was looking for a fun alternative for meaningless side bets during games. They came across Bunnycoin, or BUN, a coin named after bunnies.
Bitcoin alternatives today are far more ambitious than that– backed with startup-level funding, and promising technology that operates faster, more anonymously, or with more progammability than Bitcoin–altcoins just need the support of a single, zealous reddit thread to make their way onto the smaller coin exchanges. Or at least they did, in 2014, when many of them came to be. If one altcoin is really only as valid as another, the weight of adoption–to get people mining, and trading, and even cashbuying it–requires the same strategy that Procter & Gamble uses to sell you one of many indistinguishably different dish detergents. It can come down to a funny name, or slogan, or look. Bunnycoin caught the attention of the internet poker players because it was cheap, cute, and innocuous. However taped together a lot of these coins and their respective websites may be, their creators seem good at finding a niche.
“I’m not really sure of the origin and why they called it Bunnycoin other than the original dev was a Rabbit fan,” ___ TR___ tells me via email. Created in 2014 by the independent software studio Milo Solutions, it was quickly abandoned by its developer. But ___TR___ and others took it over unofficially, and began mining millions of coins. With a market cap of just a few thousand dollars, diluted across countless coins, “we promoted BUN as a fun coin that was cheap and you could give someone millions of for next to no cost,” says ___TR___. It was the internet equivalent to Monopoly money. [Source Image: bsd555/iStock]
CHOOSE YOUR COIN, CHOOSE YOUR IDENTITY It comes back to Stone’s observation that altcoins are not just functioning as currency, but as a token of identity. The same sentiment came up again and again in conversations I had with various coiners across the industry.
[Source Image: Hein Nouwens/iStock]
Bunnycoin was listed on a few coin exchanges, which generally helps woo investors, but it never caught on. Eventually ___TR___’s friends lost interest. By 2016, ___ TR___ was the only one left mining for bunnies. Yet in the early months of 2017, Bunnycoin would mysteriously balloon to over a million dollars in value almost overnight (___TR___ thinks the fact that its Twitter account followed several serious cryptocurrency traders may have had something to do with it). Someone on Bunnycoin’s original dev team reappeared and took control of the coin, liquidating proceeds that were earmarked for charity. “They created a really poor website, and claimed to sponsor some kids at a Mexican orphanage. I know nothing about this, and do not know if it is legit or not,” says ___TR___, who was able to walk away during this time, too, pocketing a considerable undisclosed profit. The story of Bunnycoin doesn’t seem to be rare in the world of altcoins. The simplest of altcoins can be coded now in less than a day, simply by copying the best bits of Bitcoin’s open source code. And while the 10 or so most valuable
“Where else is there a token you can hold that’s going to champion sex positivity and freedom of expression?” says Ameen Soleimani, CEO of Spankchain (trading symbol SPANK). “Simply holding it, it activates you as an agent to further that cause, because you can see yourself pushing this forward. And having a financial incentive to do so. It’s a really powerful mechanism.” Spank was first created by unknown entities, but Soleimani took it over to create a sort of PayPal for pornography. At first, funding was hard to find. Soleimani would literally give away coin to get people interested. But after his team of 10 improved the technology, they eventually raised 20,000 Ether (equivalent, at the time of writing this, to about $16,000,000). Built upon the Ethereum standard rather than Bitcoin, Spank is more complex than a standard altcoin. Ether is not a coin, but a digital contract between two people–a wrapper for your money, and also your identity. Soleimani sees his Spank as a new infrastructure for online pornography. Most performers must pay huge transactional fees to third parties (pushing 30%) because pornography is often purchased with fraudulent credit card, making its risk factor high. But Soleimani imagines a world where you have Spanks, and those Spanks might live in a wallet in your browser. Then, as
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you consume porn, you pay for it with a token spun off from Spank, called Booty. Simple to understand? As a replacement for the current cashbased economy, not at all. But practically speaking, what this means to the end user is that they never have to log in to a website, they never have to enter a credit card, they only pay for metered services they use, and performers can collect payments with no middleman involved. Spank is a contract. Booty just measures engagement. Soleimani is a believer in this model, and he might make you one, too. But it wasn’t until he corrected me the nuances of altcoin culture that I began to understand what unified so many people to buy, build, and create altcoins. “Identity is super important for this, but I think you’re coming across it as a ‘coin identity’ where there’s some shared cultural identity for everyone who has a coin. There’s more a ‘software identity,’ says Soleimani. “What I mean is, there’s this concept of selfsovereign identity that’s unlocked by blockchain.” Right now, as soon as you log onto a platform or website– whether it’s a pornography site or Facebook–the company owns you. It owns your persona. It owns your usage data. It owns the transaction if any money exchanging hands. It even owns the things you say. So Uber owns your trips. Airbnb owns your vacations. Amazon owns your shopping. In that sense, altcoins tap into the distrust many users feel about their personal data and privacy. They seem like a salve for some of the technological woes of 2017. “One of the really interesting things that happen when you start moving this data [to blockchain], then it’s the user’s discretion,” says Soleimani. “All of that is going to change how people interact with social networks and online services.” Think of the things you might say to a best friend or loved one in public, versus what you might say in the privacy of your own home. Cryptocurrencies could bring back private spaces to our increasingly internet-driven social lives. “It’s one of the interesting things I’m excited about, but it hasn’t captured the interest of the mainstream,” he concludes with a sigh.
“HOW MARC ANDREESSEN AND TIM BERNERS-LEE FELT IN 1993” Yet while entrepreneurs like Soleimani offer a tantalizing future promising an internet free of big corporations and big banks, the reality is that, in any economy, the actual headcount of people using a currency is the most crucial component to its overall stability and impact. “I think there are a handful of coins that have big developer communities– actual community interest at a sufficient enough scale–and an operating history that qualifies them as more legitimate,” says Romero. That short list would certainly include Ethereum, one of the biggest breakouts of 2017’s booming coin market. Ethereum is a tough concept to describe, even within the already complicated world of blockchain technology. While Bitcoin is essentially a digital dollar that operates without a bank, Ethereum is the aforementioned digital contract, offered in Ether. Ether can allow you to both pay for and
legally exchange an entire home. Yet it’s also capable of running its own apps, almost like a second internet, or an App Store that’s broken free of Apple. “When we started Ethereum, it was a tabula rasa, a tiny space, and we didn’t feel the need to draw attention or some slice of the population away from Bitcoin or Litecoin,” says Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. “Now there’s a mad scramble to differentiate yourself in some way that caused the hoards to recognize you, to pay attention, to put some money in your direction.” Ethereum is not the product of a highly paid branding consultant. It’s the brainchild of the Russian-Canadian software engineer Vitalik Buterin, who coded it and needed some name for this non-currency, new-internet thing. “He thought that the omnipresent medium, the ether, which is a philosophical, quasi-scientific concept from 100 something years ago. And he thought that medium for the transmission of lightwave or electromagnetic spectrum was a cool, nerdy, and pervasive image,” says Lubin. “He’s also a heavy World of Warcraft player, and I think there was something called ‘Ethereal’ in it, so I’m guessing that got lodged in his head.” Lubin admits that his brand may be far from perfect. People he talks to mix up the platform “Ethereum” with the buyable tokens “Ether” on a weekly basis. (I myself did on my phone call with him, too.) But then again, he doesn’t see Ethereum as a brand that needs to bear the weight of defining all cryptocurrencies on its back. It only needs to seem intriguing. When I ask if he’s frustrated that people don’t understand his product better, he’s quick with a well-studied retort. “It’s probably about as frustrating as how Marc Andreessen and Tim Berners-Lee felt in 1993 or ’94, which is not at all frustrating, because the technology is moving so fast, and interest is so overwhelming, we’re just struggling to keep up,” says Lubin. “We’re happy to put in the time, and it has been a few years already, and it will be several or many more years until the rest of the world gets a better understanding to the degree they understand how their automatic transmission or how the TCP/IP internet or world wide web works.” In other words, maybe it’s not all that important that these cryptocurrencies explain themselves to the masses at all. So long as they’re tempting enough to lure in investment and reach some level of scale, we’ll understand them when we actually turn our cash into Ether or Litecoin, or our bank processes a transaction in Ripple, or our 401k adds a Bitcoin option. We’ll grasp the technological intricacies of cryptocurrencies when we need to and only as much as we need to: If and when they actually change the world. Until then, there’s certainly a coin out there made just for you. Though keep in mind, it might not be worth anything tomorrow–beyond serving as a token of your own identity, and the world you’d like to create next. Mark Wilson is a writer who started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day. His work has also appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach.
As Voice Continues Its Rise, Marketers Are Turning to Sonic Branding WHY VISA, CALIFORNIA CLOSETS AND MORE ARE RETHINKING AUDIO By Katie Richards
Sound is a powerful tool that can trigger specific memories or emotions. It’s a staple for marketers who have used jingles (think, “I’m a Toys R Us Kid”) to connect emotionally with consumers, whether on TV or radio. But as technology like Amazon’s Echo or the Google Home Assistant become more embedded in our daily lives, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to create those same emotional connections without visuals, just sound. Cue sonic branding—the use of a sound, song or melody to help reinforce a brand’s identity. Visa found that sound could make consumers feel safe and secure in their transactions, and that 81 percent of shoppers would have a more positive reaction to Visa if it incorporated sound or animation into its marketing or shopping experience. With that in mind, the brand released a special sound in December. After using a Visa card, either in a digital or physical store, customers hear a chime of sorts, signifying a secure, speedy transaction. Eighty-three percent of respondents said Visa’s new sound sparked a positive perception of the brand. “As you think about payments becoming much more frictionless, potentially more embedded in experiences and new places, we started to think about how the Visa brand might manifest itself in formats that are quite different from a shop or a digital website,” said Lynne Biggar, Visa’s chief marketing and communications officer. That could be in your car, in your home, through your smart home devices or even a Fitbit, she explained. Visa isn’t alone in its decision to refocus on sonic branding, or the “use of sound to reinforce a brand identity,” as Audrey Arbeeny, founder and executive producer of sonic branding agency Audiobrain, described it. That sound could be a jingle (think “Nationwide Is on Your Side”) or a mnemonic (like HBO’s static or NBC’s chimes).
your brand is still a bit of an afterthought, and as we move more toward a voice-activated world, sound is becoming even more important.” California Closets has capitalized on an increase in podcast listeners and the rise of streaming by joining forces with Pandora to take some of its TV spots, “California Closet Stories,” and turn them into audio-driven work. At first it simply took the soundtrack for the TV ads and ran them on radio, but then Pandora helped the brand think about its entire identity in an audio setting. Pandora “added ambient sound, which made a huge difference in terms of understanding the story. I never really thought about that, but it really makes the stories come alive—someone is talking about having friends over and you hear the friends in the background,” Samara Toole, CMO at California Closets, said. When the brand runs these tailored audio campaigns on Pandora, Toole said California Closets sees a huge boost in web traffic, but could not disclose specific numbers. Toole noted that the brand is planning to develop an audio logo— something like Intel’s famous chimes or “I’m Lovin’ It,” courtesy of McDonald’s—in the coming months, too. Lauren McGuire, evp, managing director of strategic sound and music studio Man Made Music, has worked in the audio space for over a decade now and echoed that it is more important than ever for brands to consider sound in their marketing mixes. “If music creates emotion, what we see is brand favorability increases, brand consideration increases, metrics that really apply directly to ROI. When it comes to all experiences, brands are realizing that emotional connection is more important than ever,” said McGuire.
In recent months, streaming service Pandora has ramped up its work with brands—including Ziploc, Dawn, Cascade and California Closets—to develop audio-driven marketing campaigns with a specific focus on how brands think about the sonic identity. “We are now in a currency of language and sound, as opposed to screens,” said Lauren Nagel, group creative director at Pandora. “I think for a lot of folks the sound of
Katie Richards is a staff writer for Adweek.
The Leadership Benefits of Performance and Storytelling DRAMATIC STRATEGY MOVES AUDIENCES, EMPOWERS THEM TO PLAY A ROLE AND REALIGNS THEM WITH A HIGHER PURPOSE. By Edmund Chow
The scene is set in 2002 at the San Jose Convention Centre in California where software developers have gathered for the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
Mac OS 10, and thousands of applications – most of them legitimate. [laughter] Please join me in a moment of silence as we remember our old friend, Mac OS 9.”
On a darkened stage, the giant screen shows the interior of a cathedral while Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor echoes through the walls. Smoke glides across the floor. A white light overhead brightens the stage as a black coffin slowly rises from a secret trapdoor. As the music softens, the audience claps.
Jobs walks over to the casket, places his eulogy script inside, closes the lid and places a red rose on top of it. Some members of the audience laugh and clap, but Jobs stays solemn, purses his lips, walks a few steps backwards in silence with his left palm grasping his right wrist.
Steve Jobs, in his usual black turtleneck and blue jeans, walks to the casket and opens it. The audience laughs.
A few prolonged seconds later, he waves the casket goodbye.
From within, he pulls out an oversized box marked “Mac OS 9”. He props it against the opened lid – and the audience breaks into wild applause. Jobs walks away from the casket, closer to the pulpit, and reads from a piece of paper: “Mac OS 9 was a friend to us all. [audience laughs] He worked tirelessly on our behalf, always hosting our applications, never refusing a command, always at our beck and call, except occasionally when he forgot who he was and needed to be restarted. […] We are here today to mourn the passing of Mac OS 9. […] Mac OS 9 is survived by his next generation,
He waits.
Immediately, the audience claps and cheers as Jobs turns his back to the casket and walks over to the pulpit to deliver his keynote.
Why the dramaturgical model? The elements of storytelling and performance are key to Steve Jobs’ approach in communicating meaning. His method diverges from the classical communication models typically employed by leaders who see things in linear or transactional ways. Traditional presenters think of themselves as “sender”, the audience as “receiver”. They choose their “channel”, pick
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their message and anticipate the type of feedback they are likely to elicit. The dramaturgical model of communication, however, is neither about contagion, diffusion, nor agenda setting.
objects imbued with meaning. Charismatic leaders who know how to use symbols (for example, a clenched fist, a flag, a hand wave) can effectively signal power, evoke empathy or mobilise crowds instantaneously.
Firstly, the dramaturgical approach communicates meaning by enabling followers to become part of a larger narrative, or play a role. As you perform the story, your audience is naturally co-opted as fellow actors. Because the story has yet to be written, they become emotionally invested in change by participating mentally and emotionally in an emergent narrative. It is the same strategy when someone utters, “Once upon a time…”: We all naturally perk up, anticipating characters to come alive.
Performing: Finally, performing the story means enacting scripted behaviours and relationships. Amid some laughter and claps before the final goodbye to OS 9, Jobs fully remained in character, keeping a serious tone. This further bolstered his authenticity as a charismatic storyteller and a revolutionary thought leader.
Secondly, this communication approach galvanises its constituency towards a common goal – not through words, but imagination. When you perform a story vividly with the right combination of emotion and tonality, your audience stays with you – because they anticipate what will happen next. Not all stories end happily ever after, as the demise of Mac OS 9 shows, but the journey’s meanings can be cocreated by leader and followers as characters fighting for something: an obstacle to overcome or a victory to be won.
Staging it: Lights, camera, action! To employ the dramaturgical approach, there are some crucial considerations. First, the leader is required to “manufacture” meaning. William Gardner and Bruce Avolio identified four phases to help leaders do that: framing, scripting, staging and performing. Framing: To frame a vision, charismatic leaders need to use words that amplify values, stress the vision’s importance and, if necessary, disparage opposition. As an operating system, OS 9 did not have “protected memory”, which means that when an application hung, the whole system crashed, which could happen several times a day. The funeral marked the demise of an old system, and its corollary, the birth of a new one. Scripting: To start the scripting process, leaders need to assign protagonist and antagonist roles. IBM is the usual antagonist in the personal computer market, but here, OS 9 could have been seen as the enemy as it caused computers to crash frequently. Rather, Jobs describes OS 9 as an “old friend”. For the audience to identify as friends mourning the passing of someone they knew intimately, Jobs strategically use “we” in his speech. This also eliminates potential tensions between the software developers and Apple. Professor Yiannis Gabriel wrote in the The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse that “narratives require verbs denoting what characters did or what happened to them”. In the above example, OS 9 had passed on and was survived by the next generation, OS X. As such, the lineage of Apple’s operating systems continues with thousands of “children” and “grandchildren” applications. This also enrols app developers in the lineage of Apple. Staging: Next, staging a story requires logistics, settings and props. In this case, Jobs uses a coffin, smoke, music, a flower and the eulogy script. These are highly symbolic
It is important to emphasise here that narratives are enhanced when storytellers bring the audience into the present. While Jobs told a story about OS 9’s past, the funeral was set in the present moment. In written communications, the use of the present tense (e.g. “Jobs walks over to the casket, places his eulogy script inside, closes the lid and places a red rose on top of it”) brings the story in the present and fosters immediacy with the reader – just as I have done for an event that took place sixteen years ago when Steve Jobs was still alive. If I had written it in the past tense, its effect may have been lost.
The impact of storytelling Even though the presentation was devoid of statistics and data, Jobs created a psychological contract with his audience through intimate storytelling. This caused his audiences to reflect and take action. David Gratton, who was vice president of Totally Hip Software at the time of Jobs’ presentation, said: “This is important for us as a small developer, because presently we need to maintain development and support for both OS X and OS 9. Eventually dropping OS 9 from our product mix will help save us money, and improve development time.” With the dramatic impact of Jobs’ performance, it was clear to developers that the old operating system had to die before Apple could live on. In the same way, the developers had to move on and write new software using the new operating system. Jobs’ storytelling approach acknowledged the potential frustrations of developers and consoled them. Tim O’Reilly, president of O’Reilly Media (formerly O’Reilly and Associates), said: “They [Apple] are giving strong guidance to developers about where they want them to go and what kind of commitment they want them to make.” Because Jobs’ performance was intimately intertwined with identity, developers were empowered to move in the same direction. Storytelling gives every person a role (character), a purpose (motivation) and therefore an identity. Leadership can be embodied and performed, and Steve Jobs gave a clear example of such dramaturgical mastery, repositioning Apple into a world-class brand that truly thinks different. Edmund Chow is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow within the Leadership and Communication Research Group led by Professor Ian Woodward, in the Organisational Behaviour Area at INSEAD. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University.
THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS HERE: TRENDS TO LOOK FOR IN 2018 MARKETING EXPERTS GIVE US THEIR TAKES ON THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING, AND HOW YOU CAN BEST FOLLOW THE TRENDS FOR YOUR BUSINESS. By Geoff Williams
What if you had a way of knowing the future of social media marketing? Your business would probably be considered one of the coolest companies in existence. With that knowledge, you’d be able to wow your current and prospective customers and—with any luck—that would help boost your bottom line.
safe bet that you’ll want to keep an eye out on these social media trends in 2018.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t realize something has become an internet sensation until it’s on its way to being passe.
You’ve seen them.
So I’m going to get out my crystal ball (and talk to a few experts) to make a few guesses as to what will happen in the near future of social media marketing. Maybe you’ll want to try a few of these tactics. Granted, it’s risky to make predictions. Still, it seems like a
1. “Hire” more chatbots and leap into the future of social media marketing.
You go to a website, and almost immediately a person sends you a message asking if they can help you. But that person isn’t really a person; it’s a chatbot, programmed to interact with you. Chatbots are arguably a big part of the future of social media technology, according to Shana Haynie, co-founder and COO of Vulpine Interactive, a social media marketing
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company based out of San Diego. “If businesses aren’t jumping on this bandwagon, they should be,” Haynie says. She is particularly impressed with Facebook Messenger chatbots. “People can easily opt-in to your messenger list, where you can set up simple, or extremely intricate, workflows to guide your subscribers towards your desired results,” Hayne says.
The biggest social media trend overall is interactive media. Businesses that don’t make interactive content for their social media accounts will need to catch up. —RaShea Drake, B2B analyst, Verizon
She reels off a few more benefits: “You can send your list content, sell them products, survey them, let them know about upcoming sales, segment them into buckets based on their choices, whatever. You can even send transactional messages, like purchase confirmations if you have an e-commerce company, or set up customer service flows to take the pressure off your team and better serve the needs of your customers.”
She explains its increasing appeal this way: “In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people. Attention spans are shorter than ever so video will be used even more.”
3. Create more original content. Along those lines, Arnof-Fenn says that businesses should focus on quality over quantity. For instance, if you’re going to have a blog, it may be better to have one or two impressive posts a month instead of one or two shoddy efforts a week. If you’re going to shoot video, try to make sure it doesn’t look like you handed the video camera to your 2-year-old. When it comes to future social media trends, quality will continue to be important. “Original content is at a premium,” she says, “and consumers continue to trust online content more than ads. Show—don’t tell—for maximum impact. Rich content drives engagement online.”
Haynie says that from what she has seen, the best part of Facebook Messenger is that its open and click-through rates far exceed that of email. (In 2017, Hubspot conducted an experiment and found that their Messenger broadcasts had an open rate of 80 percent and a click-through rate of 13 percent, compared to email’s 13 and 2.1 percents.) “For now,” she stresses. “ That is why this is going to be a gamechanger. Only the fast est adopters are going to win before the tactic becomes the norm.”
2. Shoot more videoto help you enter the future of social media marketing. Matt Schroeder is th e owne r of Chattanooga, Tennesseebased online clothing company Shelly Cove, LLC. He is also one of the many industry experts who says more and more businesses are going to be churning out video in the next year. Video may be a significant part of the future of social media in business. “We do a ton of social media marketing, and we are seeing a massive increase in video marketing,” Schroeder says. “Video has become almost a necessity in marketing, with much better stats than just photos. Something in the 20- to 30-second range seems to work well for videos. “Watch competitors, see what they are up to and also think outside of the box,” he advises. Paige Arnof-Fenn, who owns global marketing and branding firm Mavens & Moguls in Cambridge, Massachusetts, echoes the same thinking.
4. Get real with augmented reality to take part in the future of social media marketing. If you’re not acquainted with augmented reality, you may want to start familiarizing yourself. Experts predict it will be huge in 2018. So what’s augmented reality? It’s essentially a computergenerated reality. Think of those virtual reality headsets you’ve probably seen advertised on TV. Or the Pokémon Go craze, where people would point their phones and use their camera and a GPS to capture Pokemons in... Oh, if you don’t remember this, it’s hardly worth explaining. The point is if your business is heavily invested in social media, augmented reality may be a trend you’ll want to get in on. It’s another likely landmark in the future of social media marketing. “The biggest social media trend overall is interactive media. Businesses that don’t make interactive content for their social media accounts will need to catch up. Augmented reality is a huge part of this,” says RaShea Drake, a B2B analyst
who works for Verizon. “If your customers can test the effect of your product or service freely and easily before buying, the consideration time will be lessened and conversions will happen faster.” Drake says that only 7 percent of marketers are using augmented reality. “That means the market isn’t saturated, but I’m betting we’ll see a big change in 2018,” she says.
5. Pick a side in the future of social media marketing. Avoiding anything controversial, like differences in religion or politics, has been a mindset that has pretty much been the attitude of etiquette experts and business owners over the course of time. After all, why tick off any large segment of your customer base and make them less likely to use your products or services? Yet that business mindset is changing, points out Joe Goldstein. Goldstein is the lead SEO and operations manager at Contractor Calls, a lead generation company based in Livermore, California. “One of the most interesting social media trends of 2017, and one of the most promising ones going forward, is brands [taking] stances on controversial issues for promotional reasons,” Goldstein says. “In 2018, the genuine adoption of social causes, more so than any one technology, could be the most effective social media strategy by a landslide.” This has been a huge change from just a few years ago, he points out. “Just a couple of years ago, it was the norm for branded social media accounts to avoid politics—or anything that could be misconstrued as controversial—whatsoever. Over time, this bland, inoffensive approach to social media started to sound a lot like elevator music,” he says. Will most companies pick a social cause that incites heated opinions? Probably not. Could taking a stand be a strategy in the future of social media marketing? It seems likely.
6. Pay attention to Generation Z. Wait, what? You’re forgiven if you’re a bit thrown. But if you haven’t noticed, Generation Z—the group after millennials or everyone born between 1996 and 2011—are coming. And Generation Z, maybe more than anyone, embodies the future of social media marketing. “Focusing on Generation Z is going to be key,” says Samantha Walls, a marketing manager with InTouch Marketing in Moreno Valley, California. “They are just about to start entering the workforce and will soon have the buying power. Social media strategies need to focus on getting their attention. You can do this by posting on the social media networks that are most viewed by Gen Z. These networks include Instagram and Snapchat.” On one hand, this isn’t anything new. Businesses always need to keep an eye on the younger people who could soon become loyal customers. Still, Generation Z isn’t simply a younger version of millennials (often considered people born in the early 1980s up to the mid-1990s). Generation Z, like the millennials, have been deeply affected by the Great Recession, which shaped a lot of people’s spending behavior. And not only have they never known a world without the internet, they really don’t know what it’s like to have a world without social media. Still, as much as social media is evolving, it is interesting how much marketing remains the same. The salespeople may not all be human, thanks to chatbots. There may be more video in marketing than it used to be. Brands may push the envelope more than they used to. But companies are still trying to connect with customers through meaningful, significant and sometimes subtle approaches. In many ways, the future of social media marketing will still look a lot like the media marketing of the past because of this.
Geoff Williams, Journalist, freelance writer
6 ways ad agencies can thrive in an AI-first world MACHINE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) WILL CHANGE THE WAY SEARCH MARKETERS DO BUSINESS. IN THE LATEST ARTICLE IN HIS MULTIPART SERIES ON PPC AND AI, COLUMNIST FREDERICK VALLAEYS SHARES HIS STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING YOUR AGENCY SUCCESSFUL IN A WORLD OF AI-FIRST PPC. By Frederick Vallaeys
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have long been part of PPC — so why are AI and machine learning all of a sudden such hot topics? It is, in part, because exponential advances have now brought technology to the point where it can legitimately compete with the performance and precision of human account managers. I recently covered the new roles humans should play in PPC as automation takes over. In this post, I’ll offer some ideas for what online marketing agencies should consider doing to remain successful in a world of AI-driven PPC management.
Be a master of process According to the authors of the book “The Second Machine Age,” chess master Garry Kasparov offered an interesting insight into how humans and computers should work together after he became the first chess champion to be defeated by a computer in 1997. In matches after his loss to Deep Blue, he noticed a few things: 1. A human player aided by a machine could beat a computer. 2. When two human players were both assisted by a computer, the weaker human player with a good process could beat the stronger player with an inferior process.
Do the most successful hotels employ staff who innately know how to make guests happy? No. In almost any scenario where humans are a big part of the experience, success is achieved by having a clear mission that is supported by a really strong process and tools to achieve the mission. Hence, I believe that in the world of PPC agencies, a primary focus should be on building an amazing process and equipping the team with tools that make that process easy to follow. So as AI takes over some of the tasks in your agency, make sure your staff knows and follows the process for leveraging the technology to deliver results.
Accept that your old value proposition is toast Consider how you convinced your existing clients to sign up with your agency. If your pitch included that you produce amazing results because you’re really good at bid management (something machines are getting really good at), you may need to tweak your positioning. You don’t want to make your main value proposition something that can be put on autopilot by anyone — and will hence become very difficult to price at a level that makes you successful.
The first point is covered in my previous post, and it is the foundation for why smart PPC managers will learn to collaborate with AI rather than compete against it.
That’s not to say that you should stop thinking about something like bid management altogether. Instead, you should offer skills that are complementary to the AI system rather than skills that compete against it.
The second point got me thinking about some other scenarios where the winners aren’t necessarily the most skilled. Does the world’s most successful coffee chain have the best baristas?
Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, gives the career advice to “become an indispensable complement to something that’s getting cheap and plentiful.” For example, become a
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data scientist because we’ll need more people to make sense of the data and to figure out how to turn new insights we get from more sophisticated AI into new strategies. In the context of an ad agency, this makes a lot of sense. You want to be able to say you have great data scientists who can make sense of what the automated systems are doing and make solid recommendations for the next thing to test.
Determine your new value proposition Do you know California’s largest agricultural export? I guessed wine, but the correct answer is almonds. How did this come to be? It turns out that almonds are easy to harvest mechanically; you basically have a machine that violently shakes the tree so the nuts fall down to be harvested. So farmers figured they could be more productive by using automation, and all of a sudden tomato fields across the state were turned into almond orchards. But people want more than just almonds on their plates, so despite how automation moved an entire state’s economy in a certain direction, it also created opportunities for farmers who didn’t automate. We can apply this analogy to paid search agencies. Thanks to advances in AI, it is a given that they will do a good job of managing bids, and it’s also assumed that this service will be cheap because technology has commoditized it. Agencies, like farmers, can supplement their highly automatable service offerings with something that commands a higher fee. So figure out what will be your niche in things that are harder to automate. And think about why a client would want to hire you if you’re just as good as the next agency at managing bids. Figure out what additional services you are really good at that are harder to automate (for now) and can be used to win new business.
Be the best at testing because testing leads to innovation Innovative agencies win awards, which makes it easier for them to land new clients and grow their business. But how can an agency be innovative in a world where a lot of the work is done by a handful of automated systems that produce similar results? I believe economist Martin Weitzman’s recombinant view of innovation offers a possibility. Recombinant Innovation describes innovation as a process through which new ideas emerge as the combination of existing ideas. Thanks to better prediction systems using machine learning, it is now possible for agencies to test new ideas faster and to iterate faster. Hence, an agency that leverages machine learning for testing and has a really strong process will be able to out-innovate its competitors. Innovation in an agency is to recombine ideas into valuable new ones. The problem with testing new ideas is that it used to take a lot of time. But thanks to technology, you can test more things more quickly, and the winning agencies will be those that are the fastest at finding new winners. And they can achieve this by prioritizing the most likely winners into the fastest process, with the best testing technology.
You need to monitor the tradeoffs between labor and technology Business is a big optimization problem. As an agency owner, you balance labor (headcount), and capital investment (technology) to achieve outcomes with a target level of speed, quality and cost. As technology takes hold in more aspects of PPC management, knowing how to optimize the equation becomes critical. What some advertisers fail to see is that there is no perfect technology (just as there is no perfect human employee), but if a technology gets you close enough to the desired result while freeing up your staff’s time to work on other things, that is a win. We all hire people for our companies, even when we know that ALL humans make mistakes. But we hire the best we can because it gets us closer to our goals, even if not 100 percent of the way. So why should it be any different when we think about capital investments? A former colleague of mine who is still at Google shared examples where advertisers told him that they would not use broad match because it resulted in some impressions for their ads on irrelevant queries. But when prodded further, they were unable to quantify the impact this had. In many cases, the additional clicks were negligible, while the time they could have saved by letting Google’s AI handle query exploration was significant. In my view, this is a poor optimization of that account manager’s time. In exchange for a small sacrifice in targeting precision, they could have freed up billable hours worth hundreds of dollars.
Hire one extraordinary (wo)man American philosopher Elbert Hubbard said that “one machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” And he was on to something. In engineering, a great engineer can do the work of 10 good engineers. So, as more of an agency’s work gets done by machines and you need fewer humans to do repetitive work, having the smartest possible person to work on the tasks that remain will be more important than ever.
Conclusion There’s never a boring day when working on PPC, mostly because Google pushes so many changes every year. But this year, AI is going to stir the pot and create some challenges unlike the ones we’ve been used to dealing with. Hopefully, some of the thoughts shared here will get you thinking about strategies for keeping your agency successful in a world of AI-first PPC. Frederick (“Fred”) Vallaeys was one of the first 500 employees at Google where he spent 10 years building AdWords and teaching advertisers how to get the most out of it as the Google AdWords Evangelist. Today he is the Cofounder of Optmyzr.
How to Generate More Leads From Your Blog By Sandra Clayton
#1: Review Multiple Platforms to Find Popular Topics To convert more customers through blogging, you need to write about topics that interest your audience. If you’re struggling with this step, several tools can help you discover topics that are frequently shared on social media and searched for via Google. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a powerful content research tool that will help you learn what has performed well on social media in any industry. Both paid and free versions are available.
You’ll see search results for your original keyword plus a list of related keywords. Click the Competition column to find low-competition keywords and then click the arrows next to the keywords to add them to your plan. After you add all of the keywords you want, click Review Plan. On the next screen, click the Keyword tab and use the Match Types option to make sure you see keywords that match exactly. In the top right, choose a 30-day date range. Also, enter a high bid ($100 or more) to make sure you see all of the results.
After you enter a keyword related to your industry in the search bar, you’ll see which content has the highest number of shares on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Now you can see the actual monthly search volume in the Impressions column, which correlates to the number of search queries for your keyword. Impressions will give you an accurate view of how many people are searching for your possible blog topic. Aim for topics with at least 1,500 searches.
Google Keyword Planner
Facebook Groups
Google Keyword Planner, a free tool, shows you terms people are searching for on Google that relate to a keyword. You can use these relevant terms to find topics for your blog posts.
In relevant Facebook groups, you can often discover interesting blog ideas from questions members ask. When you see a question that has been asked many times, you can add it to your worksheet as a potential blog topic.
To get started with Keyword Planner, enter your keyword. Then add your targeting and apply filters.
To find Facebook groups relevant to your blog, select Groups
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on the left-hand side of your Facebook dashboard. Then choose Discover at the top to see a list of suggested groups based on the pages, posts, and groups that you’ve already liked, shared, or joined. Or use the top search bar to find groups relevant to any keyword or niche. If you manage your own Facebook group, ask group members what they’re struggling with related to your niche. Then use their answers as inspiration for future blog posts. Quora Quora is a hub of questions and answers, and an excellent way to find out what questions people are asking about your niche. To get started with Quora, log in with your Google account. Enter terms or keywords related to your niche, and you’ll see discussions and questions appear in your feed. Note the questions where you can provide value, look at what others have answered, and make notes on how you can improve upon their answers.
#2: Rank Possible Topics to Determine Top Performers Based on your research, you can decide which blog post topics you’ll add to your editorial calendar. To help you decide, create a spreadsheet to track the topics and questions that seem to be popular. Pulling together the following details in your spreadsheet will help you identify which topics are a good fit for your blog:
#3: Write for Readability When writing a blog post, you might jump right in and start writing. However, with this approach, you risk rambling on and on and forgetting the original points you want to make. To write an easy-to-read post, start by planning and organizing your thoughts and then break the details into manageable chunks. Before you begin writing, create an outline to help you stay on track and give your post an easy-to-follow structure. As you develop your outline, focus on delivering value to your audience. Make sure your blog post shows people how to do something instead of telling people what to do. Dive deep and give people easy-to-follow, actionable steps. Include screenshots and other images to help your audience understand what you’re saying. Also, look through your notes and pinpoint how your blog post can deliver value that similar articles lack so your content stands out. For example, can your article be more visually descriptive? More detailed? Longer? How will you fill in the gaps in other people’s content? Be sure to aim for more than 1,000 words for each blog post.
• Original blog idea
When people read your blog post, you want them to be able to spot sections that interest them right away. As you write, divide your post into small chunks. Long paragraphs and blocks of text can make your post seem like hard work. Use small sections so readers can easily spot those that interest them. Use headings, bullets, short paragraphs, and short words (hard versus difficult).
• Target keyword
#4: Offer a Supplemental Content Upgrade
• Number of monthly shares
Now that you’ve set the foundation for your post, it’s time to build your audience and get more subscribers. Remember that your goal for blogging isn’t readers, but customers. You want your blog content to be the first step in someone’s journey toward becoming a customer. That’s where content upgrades come in.
• Number of repins and Facebook shares • Notes about the problem the topic solves for your audience • Notes about how the topic relates to one of your products. For example, a topic might lead to a sales funnel opt-in. At this stage, you want to narrow your ideas to those that are both popular with your audience and align with your business goals. There’s no shame in sharing something valuable that helps your readers and grows your business. In fact, that’s why you’re blogging in the first place! After you pick the winning topics, make additional notes about interesting content pieces so that you can start to frame an angle for your blog post. For each blog post topic, you might note the following: • Title or headline • Blog post URL • Why the topic is helpful and what you like about it • How you can improve upon content already available about this topic. For instance, do you see gaps that your blog post can fill?
A content upgrade is bonus content that your readers receive in exchange for their email address. Content upgrades are similar to lead magnets in that you encourage people to opt in. They’re powerful marketing tools because they’re relevant to both your article and the intent of your readers. To illustrate, this social media strategy blog post includes a button that readers can click to download a blueprint so they can put what they learn into action. A call-to-action (CTA) button encourages people to take the desired action of downloading your content upgrade. After a reader clicks the button, a box appears and asks them to opt in to receive the blueprint When done right, content upgrades can convert at amazingly high rates. As you write blog posts and create content upgrades for those posts, remember that visitors land on your blog post because they have a problem. Your post needs to educate visitors about the solution, and your content upgrade must help them take the next step.
Qualities of a Valuable Content Upgrade When you offer blog readers something that’s a perfect fit with the reason they visited your website, they’re much more likely to opt in. Here’s how to ensure your content upgrade fills the bill: • Speak to one specific audience, addressing their most pressing pain point. • Make the content upgrade relevant to your post. You’ll see the highest conversion rates when your content upgrade fulfills the intent your readers had when they came to your blog post. • Boil down the main points of your blog post into a checklist or organizer. Or give readers the option of saving a PDF of a long-form article for later if they’re too busy to read the whole post right now. My highestconverting content upgrades are one- to two-page cheat sheets and checklists that are easy to digest. • Provide easy-to-follow next steps that readers can implement to see results right away. • Inspire curiosity without giving away all you have to offer to create a path to future products. • Reward people who opted into your email list with something that casual readers don’t get. If your content upgrade is something that people would actually consider paying for, you’re on the right track.
Cheat sheets are like a shortcut to the finish line. They work well for detailed articles and give readers a high-level view of the milestones involved in getting from point A to point Z. Ebooks are ideal for blog posts that are part of a series or related to a theme that will take readers on a journey. You might have a three-part series in which you show readers how to accelerate their online business growth. Because the blog posts are related, each serves as a separate chapter and leads seamlessly to the next. Spreadsheets help people organize research, brainstorm, plan, or manage systems and processes. When you share a Google sheet that’s related to a blog post about planning and workflows, readers have something to refer back to and share with their team. Workbooks help your audience go beyond learning about a concept and start putting what they learn into action.
#5: Create a Content Upgrade in Canva You can create any type of content upgrade with Canva. The steps here use an ebook as an example. To get started, create an account with Canva. Next, use the Blog Graphic as a template. To resize the graphic to US Letter so the format is similar to a book, select Resize from the top menu and select a size. This first page is your ebook cover. To customize your cover design, select a background color from the left-hand menu or choose a free photo by selecting Elements and then Photos. You can also do a keyword search for images related to your niche or ebook topic. The free version of Canva offers everything you need to create and download your ebook. However, if you want access to premium images and vector elements at a discount, you need a Canva subscription, which start at $12.95 per month. To find free images specific to your industry or blog topic, enter a keyword into the search bar. Be prepared to scroll through dozens of premium images that you can purchase for $10 (free accounts) or $1 (paid accounts). Purchasing the image removes the Canva watermark.
Examples of Content Upgrades The first step in choosing the right type of offer is to identify a resource that will extend the value of your blog content. Different types of content upgrades work well with different blog post content. Checklists are usually one-pagers that are perfect for howto and long-form articles. You can outline specific steps people need to take to achieve something. For instance, search engine optimization has a lot of moving parts. To help readers keep track of routine SEO tasks for every blog post, you could offer a handy SEO checklist as a content upgrade. Templates provide a fill-in-the-blank structure that will save people time and help them take action quickly. They work well for planning, such as a business plan or a weekly schedule. For posts related to productivity, you could offer readers a time-blocking template they can use to schedule their week effectively.
You can also use the Uploads tab to upload stock photos or images from your own library. After you’ve selected your background image, drag a corner or edge to resize the image so it fills the canvas. Adding an overlay to the background helps the title text stand out. To add an overlay, select Elements and then Shapes. Click a shape to add it to your cover design, such as the square shown in this example. The shape is placed on top of your background image, but you can rearrange the order by clicking Arrange in the top menu. You can change the opacity of your shape so that it becomes transparent and your background image shows through the shape. To change the opacity, click the square pattern in the top right. Next, select the Text tool, add your title, and choose the styles you want to use.
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Finally, add your logo by selecting Uploads and then Logo. You can upload a PNG or JPG image file. (With a paid account, you have the option of saving brand elements, colors, and fonts, which streamlines the process of creating images.) When you’re happy with the cover, it’s time to populate your pages with copy. Add a new blank page, paste text into a text box, and customize the design of your interior page. When you’re happy with the design, duplicate the interior page to use it as a template for other pages. When you’re done designing and adding text, save your ebook and download it twice: once as a PDF and again as a PNG file.
#6: Add a CTA Button and Opt-In Form to Your Blog Post To prompt your blog post readers to download the content upgrade, you need a graphic button that grabs people’s attention and inspires them to click. You can create this button in Canva, too. To start, create a new design using any template and resize it as a Twitter post. Next, upload the PNG of your ebook cover and add it to the button. Including an image of your content upgrade reminds readers what they’ll receive when they click the button.
to your blog post. With your blog post open in WordPress, you add the leadbox code and point to your button image within that code. In the text editor, paste the leadbox code where you want your graphic button to appear. Then replace the image source (src=”=s0”) with the URL for your button image. To get the URL, select your button image in the Media Library, and copy the URL that appears in the top right, as shown in this example. Then in the leadbox code, paste the URL in between the quotation marks for the image source. When you’re done, people who click the button see the leadbox and can opt in. Ideally, you want to give readers several reminders to download your content upgrade. Place the button directly after your introduction, in the middle of your post, and again at the end of your post. You can even include different content upgrades to give people many different options, assuming that each free offer is relevant to your post. Tip: You can use the list of people who opted into your upgrade to create a custom audience of people you can market to on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. On Facebook, you can also use your email list to create a lookalike audience.
#7: Build a Free Resource Library From Past Content Upgrades
Next, change the background color so your graphic button will stand out in your blog post. Add lead-in copy and a square shape to use as the background for your CTA copy. In this example, that’s the turquoise rounded rectangle with the text, “Yes, Please Send!” Make sure both the lead-in and button copy compel readers to take action.
After you have 10 or more content upgrades, you can combine your upgrades into a resource library or welcome pack to give email subscribers an even bigger bonus. Subscribers benefit because a resource library provides all of your free content in one place. Accessing the library is much easier than downloading each free resource individually.
When you’re done designing the button, download it as a PNG file and upload the file to your WordPress Media Library.
Resource libraries are easier to create than you may think. You can use the WordPress Portfolio Plugin or a similar portfolio plugin to create your library. Make sure you password-protect your resource page so that only your most engaged readers have access to it.
In addition to the button, you also need an opt-in form. The opt-in form is what people see when they click your button. To create the form, you can use tools such as Sumo, Thrive Leads, or Leadpages. This example uses Leadpages to create a leadbox where blog users can enter their contact information to receive the content upgrade To start, log into Leadpages, select Leadbox, and add a name for your new leadbox. Next, replace the template image with the image of your ebook cover. Add a heading and customize the design of your text and button. To change the heading style, highlight the text and click in the blue bar to access the edit tools. The standard template includes a phone field, which you can easily remove by selecting the integration button in the left sidebar. While you’re there, make sure you integrate the form with your email marketing service and test that it’s working correctly. When you’re ready, publish your leadbox. In the publishing options, copy the script in the Image Link section, which is the code you need to add the leadbox to your blog post. After you set up the button and the form, you can add them
The free resource library is one of my highest-converting optins. I add a CTA button at the top of my homepage and blog pages, as well as at the end of every post.
Conclusion Creating high-converting content upgrades takes time and effort, but that time is well spent. Content upgrades are an exceptional tool for building your email list and should be seen as an investment in acquiring future customers. By following the tips in this article, you can create free content around topics popular with your audience, and the products and services you offer. You’ll also lead people to a sale through a natural, organic process because you’ll know that your audience truly wants your products. Sandra Clayton is an online marketing expert who loves teaching bloggers and entrepreneurs how to build an online business that they love. You can reach her at Conversion Minded.
Neville Brody designs Coca-Cola’s first ever own-brand typeface
Coca-Cola has revealed its new typeface designed by British graphic designer Neville Brody, marking the first time that the brand has had its own unique font in its 130-year history.
By Ali Morris
Named TCCC Unity – an acronym of The Coca-Cola Company – the typeface was unveiled last week at the Museum of Design Atlanta by Coca-Cola’s vice president of global design, James Sommerville, who told the audience that the typeface “encapsulates elements from Coca-Cola’s past and its American Modernist heritage.” The font, designed by Neville Brody’s eponymous typographic design agency Brody Associates, is the first own-brand typeface in the soda company’s 130-year history. Brody, known for his pioneering work in the late 80s and 90s as the designer behind influential magazine The Face, was asked to create a flexible typeface for Coca-Cola that would work across all scales and platforms. Using the brand’s extensive archive for inspiration, Brody worked with alongside the in-house team at Coca-Cola to develop a typeface that retained a level of familiarity. While Coca-Cola described the resulting TCCC Unity as a future-facing font, others were quick to point out that a new typeface will not be enough to rectify declining soda sales. In an article for Fast Company magazine, writer Mark Wilson called the typeface a “modern font for stone-aged thinking”, stating that “Coca-Cola continues to operate under the
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mindset that its sinking soda ship is a brand problem rather than a product problem.” He added: “...it’s time that Coca-Cola rethinks its core convictions, and what it can do with a global distribution network other than sell more soda. Commenting on Twitter, @FdK_Simon agreed: “Design can do a lot of things, but only if focused where it matters - not sure that investing in a new typeface is going to halt the decline of Coca-Cola. However, the post-rationale of relating it to the brand heritage is a triumph of marketing nonsense!”. Fellow Twitter user @arthuradesign weighed in with: “Design can help change a business problem but a product problem is not fixed with a typeface.”
Following TCCC Unity’s launch, Sommerville posted a presentation to his instagram account, in which the wide form font, with its open arcs and rounded counters, is showcased in a number of weights and styles. “Geometric flair and circularity drawn from the archive form the basis of the Latin script,” it read. “A large x-height ensures it works in physical and digital environments.” “Regular weights are used for text and headlines,” it continued, “with Condensed weights applied to information
text.” The introduction of the bespoke font sees Coca-Cola following in the footsteps of brands such as YouTube, the BBC, IBM, Nokia, Intel and Airbnb – all of which have launched their own typefaces. To mark the launch, Coca-Cola has also introduced a smartphone app that can be used by those with an interest in design and typography to discover more about the ethos behind TCCC Unity’s design. The app features interviews with the typeface’s creators in which they explain the design process and also detail TCCC Unity’s various styles, weights and specimens.
In recent years Neville Brody has created the new visual identity for UK broadcaster Channel 4 and the typeface for England 2014 football kit. He also reworked the Royal College of Art’s house font by Margaret Calvert as part of the London institution’s rebrand in 2012. Since becoming a dean of the Royal College of Art’s School of Communications, he has spoken out against government plans to remove creative subjects from the UK curriculum, and also suggested that the design industry in the UK should step in to plug the education funding gap.
The 10 Design Trends Of 2017 That Need To Die DO BETTER IN 2018–DO AWAY WITH THESE DESIGN CRIMES. By Diana Budds
algorithms? Algorithms are the silent puppeteers of our lives, deciding how we vote, what we read, how we dress, what we watch, how we’re policed, and more. We don’t know how these algorithms work. What’s even more troublesome is that the companies that are designing and using these algorithms often don’t either. One of Facebook’s algorithms, for example, created anti-Semitic categories for users, which violated the site’s standards. This needs to end–and help is on the way.
In many respects, 2017 was an incredible year for design. Brands such as Nike took a powerful stance on inclusion. Virtual reality enabled exciting new experiences. Inventors solved some of the longstanding problems mainstream design has ignored, like better breast pumps for nursing mothers. However, there were plenty of blunders, frustrations, and annoyances, too. Simply put, these 10 design trends need to die.
OPAQUE ALGORITHMS Has the moment of reckoning finally come for opaque
This year, the ACLU launched a new initiative to fight biased AI Ideo recently purchased a data science company to figure out ways to insert human-centeredness into algorithmic design. As my colleague Cliff Kuang wrote in the New York Times Magazine and on Co.Design, a new field of explainable artificial intelligence is emerging to help the problem as well. This is called X.A.I.–as artificial intelligence learns, it teaches humans what it’s doing and how it’s making decisions.
DESIGN FOR THE ATTENTION ECONOMY The old saying goes “time is money,” but today attention is the ultimate capital and companies are doing their damnedest to keep yours through UX. Apps bombard you with notifications
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to continually get you to open them and engage with their content. Websites deploy armadas of pop-up ads and flyin notifications. News feed algorithms continually serve up content it thinks you’ll like so you never leave. This is the design equivalent of a sugar rush–it’ll keep you hooked until you have too much and start to feel queasy. As GQ editor Kevin Nguyen pointed out on Twitter, this philosophy yields frustrating experiences:
the apps already have messaging capabilities. This is not in the best interest of the user. In the United States, smartphone users have an average of 90 apps and use about 30 of them on a regular monthly basis. Do our conversations and activities need to be spread across even more apps?
[Photo: Amazon]
MIDCENTURY MODERN DESIGN
Design should work in service of users–and actually respect us. For example, when my colleague Mark Wilson reviewed the Google Pixel 2 smartphone, he cited the subtle notification experience–a pale pink or blue dot versus the iPhone’s bright red alarms–as one of his favorite features. More of this in 2018, please.
Last year, the New York Times asked, “Why won’t midcentury design die?” When the paper of record finally gets around to a style trend piece, it usually signals the nail in the coffin. Not so with midcentury modernism and its myriad derivatives. This isn’t an assault on the classics themselves, which have rightly earned a place in the design canon. However, the style has been bastardized for contemporary consumption so many times over that the era’s true principles–good-quality, mass-produced, affordable design–have been lost. Take the Peggy Sofa from West Elm. It looked good, but it was such poor quality–legs routinely broke, upholstery buttons popped off–someone wrote an essay about it for the Awl. Additionally, retailers’ attempts to optimize a style to appeal to the widest audience possible has left us with a cookie-cutter aesthetic– you see the same look whether you’re shopping on Amazon, Target, West Elm, or Wayfair. The next furniture design trend shouldn’t attempt to be a simulacrum of midcentury style, but rather, embody the manufacturing principles that the era stood for. Sofa legs shouldn’t routinely break. Bookshelves should survive a move. The designers and manufacturers of midcentury furniture created products that still survive decades after they were made. And the pieces were so prolific that they’re still in stores across the country today. Today’s materials and manufacturing techniques are even more sophisticated than yesterday’s so there’s no excuse for manufacturers to keep on peddling subpar wares. It’s an opportunity to do better. One Ammunition designer’s side project proposes an alternative: a furniture line made from robust materials and, more importantly, robust fastenings and screws, enabling assembly and disassembly.
DIVORCING MESSAGING APPS FROM THEIR SOCIAL PLATFORMS Social media apps already let you send direct messages within them–a helpful way to organize your conversations based on the social circles you keep on various networks. Now, tech companies are developing more spin-off messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct, even though
“MILLENNIAL” BRANDING Look at brands that are targeting consumers in their 20s and 30s, and you’d think they’re all designed by someone who calls him or herself the millennial whisperer. The formula is simple: soft pink–or its close cousin, a dusty pastel peach–a clean typeface, probably some botanical motif, a curt name, and a minimal look. I call it “millenimalism” and you can see
Square, North Korea’s totalitarian buildings, Nazi architect Albert Speer. But this year we were reminded of architecture’s enduring power to be used as political propaganda thanks to Trump’s proposed border wall.
it on brands like Hims, Chobani, Glossier, Mansur Gavriel, Thinx, and dozens of others. Even Jay-Z–who is firmly a genXer–used the aesthetic on the cover of 4:44. his latest album. Brands–and the designers they hire–can do better than playing into the same tropes. Instead, how about branding that communicates what the brand is supposed to be in a way that stands out from the pack? Wolff Olins’s brand identity for Dotdot, a new open-source internet of things language from company Zigbee, for example, is drawn from a colon and two vertical lines. Anyone can type these symbols, which speaks the language’s accessible and universal aspirations.
IOT FOR KIDS Tech companies have been cramming connected devices down our throats for years, but this year they’ve targeted young consumers. Companies positioned connected dolls, stuffed animals, smartwatches, and AI baby monitors, among other kid-centric IoT-enabled devices, as helpful assistants for parents and delights for children. Turns out these products have major flaws that pose security and privacy risks. (Who would’ve guessed?) Mattel cancelled Aristotle–billed as an Amazon Alexa for kids that could also soothe tempestuous tots using AI–after privacy advocates and consumer watchdogs expressed concern over how much data it collected. Germany banned smartwatches for kids, calling them “prohibitive listening devices.” Even the FBI sounded an alarm when it issued a warning to parents about the dangers lurking in IoT toys. One investigation found that strangers could hack connected toys and talk to children. Creepiness unlocked. Meanwhile companies are launching social media apps for children. Facebook, which requires users to be 13 before opening an account, recently launched “Messenger Kids” for its younger users. Parents have to open the account and approve contacts. Lego, too, has launched an app for kids too young for Facebook. Lego Life is aimed at children ages 7 to 12, and the Danish toy maker says its aim is to get more kids playing with bricks in real life. As an alternative, how about analog communication and regular “dumb” toys? Just because something is marketed as “smart” doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. There are still plenty of ways to encourage STEM and creative play without a spy doll. Santa, take note.
ARCHITECTURE AS PROPAGANDA This isn’t a new phenomenon for 2017–see Tiananmen
[Photo: Mani Albrecht/DVIDS] Truthfully, calling Trump’s border wall “architecture” is a stretch. Architecture has a function. The border wall is stagecraft. It exists solely to fuel nationalism and xenophobia. During his campaign, Trump rhapsodized about his “big beautiful wall” that would snake across the entire 1,989mile U.S.-Mexico border. It sounded–and still sounds–like one of those campaign promises that politicians backpedal especially since Trump said the wall would be see-through and festooned with solar panels. He said Mexico would pay for it. Estimated costs are as high as $70 billion, and the legal process to obtain land and pass environmental review would surely be lengthy. The Department of Homeland Security’s request for proposals further underscored how absurd the wall is. In February, the agency issued the RFP’s guidelines and gave firms 10 days to submit their ideas for how to build it. Of course you can’t design a 2,000-foot-wall in a week and a half. But that didn’t stop DHS from shortlisting candidates, Congress from allocating $20 million for prototype construction, and six companies from erecting eight imposing mock-up slabs in San Diego. The wall’s power comes from talking about it. Talking about it makes it real. And as long as it’s discussed, it will do the job Trump intended it to do, which is to threaten people. Architecture, and architectural discourse, deserves better than this. Instead of wasting resources on a project that divides people, the monetary and intellectual resources should go to public works projects–the pipes that deliver clean water; the schools that teach future generations, the transportation networks that connect people to job opportunities; our crumbling roads and bridges; and the public spaces that connect us to everyone else.
RETAILERS APPROPRIATING THE LANGUAGE OF URBAN DESIGN
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“We don’t call them stores anymore, we call them town squares,” Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, proclaimed during the tech company’s September keynote. The retail landscape is shifting and with shoppers moving online, retailers are experimenting with new models for physical spaces. Stores are still important touch points for brands as they introduce customers to their products, sensibility, and philosophy. The latest gimmick to get you inside? Framing them like community centers and public space.
the men’s version–the so-called pink tax. It’s also dangerous, and it needs to end. For example, while women comprise 75% of healthcare workers–like nurses, home health aides, and doctors– medical instruments and tools are mostly designed by men and oftentimes for men. As a recent Co.Design story points out, surgeons’ tools are often sized for larger (male) hands and one-size-fits-all gowns are often too big (and therefore restrict movement), which could make completing delicate tasks more cumbersome. Designing more universally can help overcome some of these biases in the products and services we use and help pave the way for a more egalitarian society. Dressing young boys and young girls in the same outfits, as Target proposes in a new line, won’t erase centuries of social inequity, but it is taking a step toward eliminating the psychological barriers between genders that reinforce “otherness.”
[Image: Apple] Last year, Apple began appropriating the physical features of town squares by inserting trees and benches into its global flagship, in San Francisco, downplaying the products on display, and dedicating more space for people to gather. The same motif repeats in Apple’s newest marquee store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Nike recently announced plans to develop a new flagship in New York City and emphasized building community through all of the new features in the space: a members-only club, a sneaker bar for advice, lockers for pick-ups and returns. Retail is essentially becoming the new “third space.” While Starbucks was the initial chain to capitalize on this notion almost a decade ago, there’s a big difference when the product is a $2 coffee and $200 sneakers or a $2,000 computer. Co.Design‘s Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan summed up why stores can never really be town squares: “Without the budget or political support to create new public spaces in cities, it’s no surprise that corporations have stepped in,” she writes. “But the subtle shift in nomenclature matters. Stores will never be public spaces. They are regulated, surveilled, and designed by companies for specific purposes.” What I would like to see instead are actual town squares that are designed as thoughtfully–and with as much investment– as Apple stores. Considering the $47 billion tax break it’s about to receive, I think Apple should get into the business of constructing actual public space, not retail in public space’s clothing.
[Photo: Uniqlo]
NORMCORE FASHION Fashion–like branding and furniture design–is heading toward a more uniform aesthetic. Stores like H&M, Uniqlo, and Zara are global powerhouses in their global reaches. Social media is connecting more people to the same fashion trends so a style that might have developed and thrived in its own microcosm–like the wildly inventive and often bizarre outfits of Harajuku, Tokyo –probably couldn’t occur today. In fact, the photographer that brought the street fashion photography of Harajuku to the world through his magazine Fruits decided to shutter, citing a lack of material. But looking ahead, consumers will see more differentiation. Brands are trying to regain some uniqueness by tapping into local design communities and using fashion developed in specific cities to augment their collections. For example, Uniqlo opened up design studios in Paris and Los Angeles to help infuse their global offering of goods with more style. &Other Stories, an H&M sister brand, has ateliers in Paris, Los Angeles, and Stockholm to help keep its offerings unique and help shoppers express themselves through their clothing– instead of looking the same.
GENDERED DESIGN We already know that gender-specific design–or design that isn’t intended for all genders–excludes people, from the way toys reinforce binary gender stereotypes to making the women’s version of a product more expensive than it is for
Diana Budds is a New York–based writer covering design and the built environment.
DON’T BLAME SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CELEBRITY POLITICIANS. BLAME EVERYONE. By Alexis Sobel Fitts
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WITHIN HOURS OF Oprah Winfrey’s Golden Globes speech last week, the internet had somehow transformed the moment from the capstone of an exceptional career in entertainment to the launch of a new political ascendant: President Winfrey. #Oprah2020 surged on Twitter. Quinnipiac University tweaked their polls to pit Trump against Winfrey. Etsy sellers began rolling out Oprah campaign merch. It was on. Why not Oprah? Politicians have long used rousing speeches as a ticket to a national campaign; Obama’s 2004 DNC keynote address charted a path that led to the Oval Office. And for viewers, the presentation of the Cecil B. DeMille Award looked a lot like political convention, albeit a glitzier, more attractive audience (and a significantly more presidentialseeming speaker than the current holder of the office). Besides, as many love pointing out, the floodgates are open. While Donald Trump’s presidency may be an anomaly—the result of a strange confluence of events that landed a reality TV show star in America’s highest office— it may also be is a tipping point that, once breached, allows celebrities to become serious candidates for president. Certainly, the combination of a rabid 24-hour news cycle and social media has been a powerful tool for the aspiring self-appointed politician. If Trump could weaponize his social following into votes then why not, say, Selena Gomez, who boasts the largest following on Instagram? How long before President Kim Kardashian? What happens when Jake Paul’s fans turn 18 and can vote? The idea that leading a nation requires experience governing something other than a billion-dollar company and a Twitter empire no longer jibes with today’s true governing metric: social reach. But blaming social media misses the point: that’s only one small factor in the rise of the celebrity candidate. Name recognition has always been the biggest hurdle for politicians entering the national arena—a fact celebrities have capitalized on since long before the internet. Political dynasties hinge on it; George W. Bush, Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, were aided by their familiar last name. “Pappy” O’Daniel, a musician and radio host, used his show to allow Texas families intimate entre into his personality; this recognition landed him the Blaming social media governorship of Texas and a misses the point: it’s stint in the U.S. senate.
only one small factor in the rise of the celebrity candidate.
That name recognition is exactly why celebrity endorsements have been meaningful throughout modern electoral politics. John Kennedy called in the Rat Pack to stump for him, which may have helped him keep his narrow edge over the less glamorous Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan was an actor campaigning for Barry Goldwater, when an inspirational endorsement speech launched his own political career. (When Reagan campaigned for president later, he had his own team of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, boosting him on the trail.) And let’s not forget Oprah’s 2008 endorsement of Obama, which
social scientists at Northwestern estimated generated him an additional one million votes in the general election. Admittedly, Twitter enhanced the ability of the masses to nominate people for higher office at a whim. “Social media allows a new issue to take hold quickly,” says Joshua Tucker, the director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, who studies effects of social networks on political systems at New York University. “It’s a function of two characteristics: virality, and the sheer speed of the digital media.” According to Tucker, social networks allow a group of people to take hold of an idea quickly, which can spread through a community launching a speedy narrative. “A bunch of people tweet about it, then the media writes articles about someone running for president, and then WIRED writes an article about why everyone is writing about the potential candidate,” he says. “Then the cycle is complete.” Speaking of those articles: the media’s not innocent in this. Difficulty capturing readers attention propels outlets to post polarizing content that’s imminantly shareable, explains LisaMaria Neudert, a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Media, of course, would rather write a story about an unlikely candidate than something that’s going exactly as planned.” Above all, though, it’s the political system at large that leaves an opening for candidates—especially those who inspire divisive narratives—to break through. In America, trust in government sits at near historic lows, a reality that’s been fueled by the weakening of the political party system. Changes to campaign finance laws throughout the last decade have made it easier for candidates to raise money independently of the two-party system, which makes it easier for, an independent like Bernie Sanders, or an outsider Republican like Donald Trump, to best a party darling like Hillary Clinton. An insurgent candidate who is disconnected from the muddied political system seems like a fresh choice rather than an irresponsible one and a celebrity with billions at their disposal and a wide social reach (whether the cause or result of those billions) has all the tools necessary to make use of our political disdain. Yet none of that makes the Winfrey presidency anything more than a meme bubbling up across Twitter, until we make it more. David Karpf, who wrote The MoveOn Effect and studies how networks affect politics at George Washington University, believes that the Trump presidency is an anomaly; however, Trump’s mere existence in the Oval Office makes us more likely to identify prospective candidates who fit his profile. Those people aren’t likely to progress beyond social-media banter—but if they do, it’s a risky trend. “There’s a possibility if everyone just decides, ‘OK, you’re a celebrity and that’s the way things are gonna be now,’ then that’s the way it is,” says Karpf. And if that proves true, Twitter will be the perfect tool for selecting our next world leader.
Brexit’s real impact on ad industry still ‘unknown’ UK BUSINESSES TRYING TO NAVIGATE LIFE AFTER BREXIT REMAIN HAMSTRUNG BY THE “AMOUNT OF UNKNOWNS” THAT REMAIN, THE ADVERTISING ASSOCIATION’S CHAIRMAN JAMES MURPHY WARNED A PANEL OF SENIOR AD INDUSTRY FIGURES. By Simon Gwynn
Chairing the panel at Lead 2017, Advertising Association chairman and founding partner of Adam & Eve/DDB, James Murphy, spelled out the crux of the challenge for many businesses – the amount of unknowns that remain. “No one has bailed out like we’re about to before,” he said. “We don’t know what the impact will be because the government won’t share their impact statements.” He added that while there were other huge issues facing the industry – such as brand safety, and the regulation of food and gambling advertising – these were “things we can influence”, whereas “if we’re not careful, Brexit is something that will happen to us from the outside.”
Diversity of views Alex Mahon, chief executive of Channel 4, said the referendum had exposed “huge rifts” in Britain, such as between social groups, generations and regions – which had implications for the role of public service broadcasters. “We’re like a prism through which people reflect on the nation,” Mahon said. “Our job is to represent diversity. Historically, we’ve tended to think of that in terms of things like ethnicity and sexuality – now we have to think of it in terms of diversity of views.” Mahon argued that the changing relationship between the UK, the EU and the rest of the world, at the same time that Netflix, Amazon and others were changing the media landscape, made Channel 4’s contribution more vital than ever. “Their mission is entirely different to ours,” she said. “It’s global, to appeal to as may people as possible.” Netflix would never produce a show like Educating Greater Manchester, she said, because of the difficulty of making it appeal to audiences in other parts of the world. “If we continue with a world where only the biggest things are funded, that kind of talent will totally disappear,” she added. But she added that after a harsh 2017 for broadcasters, the ad market seemed to be picking up: “People are turning to TV as the most effective way to reach audiences in this tough environment.”
Innovation, creativity and speed Lindsay Pattison, chief transformation officer for WPP and Group M, discussed the impact of Brexit on staffing at the world’s biggest advertising company. While 7% of the UK labour force were EU nationals, she said, 15% of WPP’s 17,000 UK staff were from the other 27 members states – and in some of its high-tech focused agencies, this figure was up to 30%. Keeping access to this international workforce had to be a priority, Pattison said: “We all know diversity is good for business – specifically its very good for our business. We need that innovation, creativity and speed more than ever. And at a more prosaic level we work with global companies, and need people who speak different languages.” Pattison called on business to be mroe proactive in protecting their employees, citing data that said more than half (52%) of non-British workers in the UK had had either insufficient communication from their employer about Brexit, or none at all.
Social malaise In contrast, James Wildman, chief executive at Hearst UK, said Brexit was not especially disruptive to the publisher in terms of people, but did point to one less obvious consequence of the vote: “Our second biggest cost, after people, is paper.” Producing magazines had become more expensive, he said, because 70% of the paper used by Hearst was imported from other EU countries. He also pointed to the general impact on the image of the UK: “Our ad industry is a extraordinary advert for Britain, but the same probably can’t be said for Brexit itself. Brexit has contributed significantly to this anxiety currently felt by society at large.” Pattison agreed, saying: “I don’t think anyone is patting us on the back and saying well done for doing it.” Simon Gwynn is the brand reporter for Campaign UK. Simon joined Haymarket in March 2016, and covers the retail, FMCG, financial services and auto sectors.
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Thinking Outside The Box: A guide to personal branding (Discover Yourself)
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
By Hanani Dube
Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides readers with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services.
In this personal branding book, Hanani challenges readers to think outside the box when it comes to creating their personal brand professionally or for their business. Similаr to that if product branding, personal branding iѕ a way to enhance recognition. This guide will help you differentiate yourself and ѕtand out from competitors by helping you in identify what makeѕ you unique.
E-Commerce Branding By SendPoints (Editor)
By Donald Miller
Social Millions: Social Media, Marketing & Branding
An incredibly competitive arena where retention is key, e-commerce must concern itself first and foremost with user experience. Combining a cohesive visual identity with ease of use to create a space that consumers respond to. E-Commerce Branding provides an essential guideline from webpage design to brand image in both digital and print media. Includes pageby-page examples of wireframing for both classic and innovative layouts, theme discussions with international design studios...
By Erik Swanson
Badass Your Brand: The Impatient Entrepreneur’s Guide to Turning Expertise into Profit
Mass Persuasion Method : Activate the 8 Psychological Switches That Make People Open Their Hearts, Minds and Wallets for You (Without Knowing Why They are Doing It) Kindle Edition
By Pia Silva Forget everything you think you know about branding and “starting a business,” and throw out your “how to write a business plan” workbook. It’s never been easier to capitalize on the knowledge and expertise you already have, and with a few simple steps you can start making more doing what you love like the Badass that you are.
All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All By Seth Godin As Seth Godin has taught hundreds of thousands of marketers and students around the world, great marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story—a story we want to believe, whether it’s factual or not.
Meet Erik “Mr. Awesome” Swanson. Erik Swanson, or as many people refer to him as “Mr. Awesome”, is an award winning International Keynote Speaker and Success Coach as well as a Best-Selling Author. He travels the world assisting people to grow their businesses as well as their personal lives to new heights. This is his 4th book in his Habitude Warrior series (Other titles are: Secret Habitudes, Sales Habitudes, and Time Habitudes).
By Bushra Azhar
The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing Kindle Edition By Kasim Aslam The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing is an attempt at establishing a baseline for one of the most tumultuous and changeridden industries in existence. It takes a step back from the strategies and tactics that most digital marketing approaches start with and, instead, establishes a core and foundational structure from which all digital marketing initiatives can and should operate.
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Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions
How to Write a Good Advertisement
By Carmen Simon
How to Write a Good Advertisement gets you quickly up to speed with examples of powerful profitable headlines (with explanations of why those headlines work so well), and quick lesson reviews that help you turn what you’ve read into skills you own. Schwab provides us shortcuts without sacrificing long-term understanding. Fifty years after publication this book is still the standard bearer, sought after by a new generation of copy-writers and businesspeople.
Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Carmen Simon, PhD, reveals how to avoid the hazards of random recall and deliver just the right amount of content. No more redundant meetings, rambling e-mails, or anemic presentations. In Impossible to Ignore, she shows you how to execute a proven three-step plan for persuasion
Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an “Always on” World Kindle Edition By Mark McGuinness Productivity for Creative People, is a collection of insights, tips, and techniques to help you carve out time for your most important work - while managing your other commitments. All the solutions he shares have been tested with real people in real situations.
Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption By Jeff Rosenblum, Jordan Berg
By Victor O. Schwab
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World By Cal Newport Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.
A NEW Marketer: How to Inspire b2b Sales Acceleration with Insight Marketing Kindle Edition
Friction argues that brands don’t simply need clever messages or new, shiny technologies. They need a fundamental change in strategy. Friction provides a system for embracing transparency, engaging audiences, creating evangelists, and unleashing unprecedented growth. The authors of Friction have worked on some of the industry’s most innovative assignments for the world’s most successful brands.
By Maneesh Sah
Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies
Beyond Advertising: Creating Value Through All Customer Touchpoints
By Michael Farmer Madison Avenue Manslaughter outlines the hows and whys of steadily declining fees, increased workloads, diminishing industry morale, kickback scandals and opacity characterizing relationships among advertisers, holding companies, media buying companies and creative ad agencies.
It’s no secret we live in a world of intense competition to win new business, retain clients and grow revenues. Because of this cutthroat environment, a new shift in the world of marketing is happening right now. Built on the “3I” Framework, this book teaches you a simple system for adapting to this New Shift in marketing so you can reach more people, build new raving fans and explode your bottom line.
By Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Catharine Findiesen Hays This book offers a concrete set of principles, including The All Touchpoint Value Creation Model, designed to lift us out of reactive thinking and encourage the co-creation of a future better for business, better for people, and better for society.