BrandKnew September 2018

Branding matters. Because branding matters.

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Dear Friends: Fall should be round the corner(hopefully) though the heat is still very much on. What you would definitely fall for is the content this September issue has packed. Tom Asacker talks to us about the Business of Belief - you would want to soak in every word of what the champion author, consultant, speaker has to share. When you do things day in and day out, creative burnout is a natural fallout- in this edition we feature 10 Tips that can prevent the inevitable. Creating your army of influencers for a brand is not as difficult as it seems- we show you how in this issue.The brand identity (or commonly referred to as the logo) seems to be over rated- the practical unimportance of a logo is dismantled here(much to a lot of people’s surprise I dare say!). Going forward, the way paradigms and business models are shifting, we question if the Digital Creative Agency has a Future at all! There seems to be a serious disconnect between what brands post on social media and what consumers want to actually see- we take a deep dive and articulate further. Voice(Search) will force marketers to change their voice- discover further in this edition. There is bagfuls more in this issue and I let you discover that for yourself.

Till the next...

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Suresh Dinakaran @ISDGlobalDubai

@Brandknewmag

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Managing Editor: Suresh Dinakaran Creative Head/Director Operations: Pravin Ahir Magazine Concept & Design/ New Media Specialist: Mufaddal Joher Business Development Director: Rishi Mohan Senior Hustler-Digital Marketing & Brand Development: Nikhil Thekkumkoottathil Creator: Brand Stories: Salindu Sadishan Brand Research & Creative Engagement Specialist: Anushka Kartha Country Head, Australia: Norbert D’Souza Country Head, UK: Sagar Patil Regional Director: Krishna Chugh Country Manager, India: Vinit Chugh Business Development Director, India: Kenneth Extross Video Content Specialist: Mikhaela Cena Content Development Specialist: Abijith Pradeep

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CONTENTS

How Emotional Marketing Can Drive Business Growth Tips to Build Community Around your Brand No one cares about your logo In conversation with the czar of belief!

Does the digital creative agency have a future?

Creative burnout is inevitable. Here are 10 ways to beat it How brands can create everyday influencers The Inner Workings of Advertising on Amazon [Infographic] How Brands Can Be More Authentic Using Social Media Video Augmented and virtual reality mean business: Everything you need to know What Brands Post on Social vs. What Consumers Want to See Voice Control Forces Marketers to Think Differently Mark Ritson: How ‘influencers’ made my arse a work of art Book, Line & Sinker

How Emotional Marketing Can Drive Business Growth FORMER NIKE DESIGNER D’WAYNE EDWARDS SAYS BRUCE LEE HAS IMPACTED HIS CAREER AND DESIGN.

By Jon Feagain

An image of an elegant Vermicular-brand Japanese rice cooker flashed on the screen at the Wharton Customer Analytics Conference. The speaker, Ridhima Raina, asked the audience how much they thought it cost.

After several guesses were ventured — most around a couple of hundred dollars — Raina said, “I checked this on Ebay this morning and it was $1,000.”

A leader in customer strategy and marketing practice at Bain & Company, Raina asserted that the main reason Vermicular can charge so much for its rice cooker compared to other brands is that the product spikes on what she called “Elements of Value.” It performs strongly on some elements such as design and aesthetics, attractiveness.

Bain’s research has identified 30 Elements of Value — fundamental attributes in their most essential and discrete forms across four categories: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact. The research has shown that delivering on more elements leads to a higher net promoter score (NPS), a measure of customer experience, and drives revenue growth.

There might be additional value-based reasons for someone to pay top dollar for a rice cooker, Raina said. Investing that much money could be a motivation to prepare meals at home more often and to eat healthier. The product could provide a sense of well-being.

Identifying and putting numbers around how customers perceive the value of products is an ongoing project at Bain, said Raina. “Understanding value is hard,” she noted.

Although the science of pricing has progressed greatly, our grasp of value hasn’t caught up, she said. While firms certainly are aware that customers have feelings and opinions about their products, there’s no established way to translate those often hard-to-define attitudes into what customers will be willing to pay, and ultimately into business success.

Toward that end, Raina and colleague Ilker Carikcioglu, a senior manager of global advanced analytics, presented their company’s “B2C Elements of Value” pyramid. They explained that the chart, based on a 2015 Bain study with about

10,000 consumers in more than 50 companies, identifies 30 universal elements that meet fundamental human needs.

According to the speakers, when a Bain partner, Eric Almquist began to identify and classify different types of value he found an emerging similarity to the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human necessities. Maslow described physiological or basic human needs like food, water, and shelter and higher order needs such as creativity, fulfillment and self-transcendence.

While firms certainly are aware that customers have feelings and opinions about their products, there’s no established way to translate those often hard-to-define attitudes into what customers will be willing to pay, and ultimately into business success.

In the Bain schematic, the base of the pyramid contains “Functional” elements of value, which refers to what a product does for the customer. For example, it might reduce effort, save time, make money or help them connect. On the second level one finds “Emotional” elements. Does the product reduce anxiety, give a sense of wellness or nostalgia, have pleasing design aesthetics, reward or entertain the user?

The third level up reflects “Life-changing” elements such as providing hope, self-actualization, affiliation and belonging or motivation. Or the product might serve as an heirloom for future generations, such as a Rolex watch, Raina said.

Topping the pyramid are “Social Impact” elements which convey the sense of doing good for others. Raina gave the example of buying Warby Parker glasses knowing that the company will donate a corresponding pair to someone in need.

Carikcioglu noted that when he and his team had analyzed

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the original data to look for relationships between the elements of value, NPS, and growth, it quickly became clear that whether or not a brand delivered on multiple elements made a big difference. He presented data showing that if a brand had only one element of value, it correlated with an NPS of only 17 and revenue growth of 3%. But brands possessing four or more elements were associated with superior results: an NPS of 58 and revenue growth of 13%.

iPhones and Amazon Carikcioglu cited smartphones as products that “absolutely crush” the elements of value. “When you think about it, our entire lives revolve around these little devices,” he said. He pointed out that they connect us to the world, motivate us, inform us and help us get organized, among other things.

They can also serve as a status symbol — for example, if you possess an iPhone in a country where they are uncommon.

The value of smartphones spans three levels of the Elements of Value pyramid: functional, emotional, and life-changing, he said. In Bain’s assessment of specific companies, Apple delivered on 11 elements, Samsung on 9, and LG on 5.

Emotional Beats Functional Raina and Carikcioglu asserted that not all elements of value are equal. The upper levels of the pyramid actually pack more of a punch. Emotional elements are twice as powerful as functional elements in predicting NPS, so companies should think about how they can focus on those factors.

They noted that today, insurgent companies are tending to deploy emotional messaging whereas incumbents lean toward emphasizing functional value. “Just look at RxBars,” said Raina, referring to the advertising slogan of the trendy insurgent protein bars: “Real. Delicious. No B.S.” “They’re doing spot-on marketing, and that really shows.”

She also talked about Harry’s Razors, the shaving subscription service founded in 2013 that competes with veteran brands like Schick and Gillette. The company’s advertising messaging focuses on value levels above the functional.

“We see insurgent razors perform better across the board on elements of value and have significantly higher NPS — five times higher.”

The success of Amazon can also be understood in terms of elements of value, said Raina. Although one can point to Amazon’s strategy, leadership and M&A, she said, “I would argue that it’s because they deliver more value and more elements of value to their customers than their competitors do … [and] most of their traditional competitors for sure.”

Raina also pointed out that when it comes to perceptions of quality, the incumbent brands do well, but not as well as some of the insurgents. There may be a halo effect going on. “Being relevant and emotional is pulling [the insurgents] up on a lot of the functional elements, in terms of perceived value.”

She said Amazon is extremely successful on seven functional elements: The company saves time, simplifies lives, reduces effort, avoids hassles, reduces cost, provides quality and offers variety. On the emotional level, Amazon “provides access.” Raina noted that Bain is currently refreshing its Elements of Value data and expects to see Amazon wielding even more elements going forward.

According to Raina and Carikcioglu, the message for companies boils down to this: Deliver multiple elements of value and try to appeal to customers beyond the functional level. Make sure that information is reflected in your advertising. “Do you know your value proposition and what customers really value?” she said. “Articulate it in a way that people get it.”

Raina and Carikcioglu discussed T-Mobile as a company that has been beefing up its elements of value over the past few years, with profitable results. “They decided, ‘Look, network quality is a commodity now, so what else can we do? Let’s listen to the customers,’” said Carikcioglu.

The B2C Elements of Value pyramid can be applied at a variety of stages, the speakers said, including strategy, design and go-to-market planning, and execution. They noted that it could also be useful in investing, when evaluating a company from the private equity or venture capital side. Raina said the pyramid could help predict a fledgling company’s future NPS and revenue growth.

He noted that a Bain study performed six months ago revealed that T-Mobile had managed to increase its elements of value from three (“connects, provides quality, provides access”) to 10. It had added qualities such as variety (for example, Netflix) and appealing design and aesthetics.

Reducing cost, saving time and providing information also came into the picture: “Their pricing is transparent; taxes and fees included.”

As a result, the speakers said, T-Mobile has gained market share from its competitors. Moreover, between 2013 and 2016, its NPS leaped to 22 from -1 and its market cap to $48 billion from $14 billion.

Raina and Carikcioglu asserted that not all elements of value are equal.

The upper levels of the pyramid actually pack more of a punch.

The speakers were asked if they thought that marketing products on an emotional level would reach a saturation point. Would customers eventually get tired of it and just want companies to excel on function?

Raina didn’t think so. She pointed out that even Amazon, which “crushes it” on functional elements, possesses aspects from higher up in the pyramid and seems likely to acquire more in the future. She also noted that the Elements of Value pyramid is based on insights from psychology, and “as people, [emotions are] what makes us tick.”

Carikcioglu agreed, saying that according to consumer behavior and behavioral economics studies, human beings are fundamentally “irrational, emotional and impulsive.”

That doesn’t promise to change anytime soon, he said, so we can assume the emotional appeal of products and services will continue to be a potent selling tool.

Tips to Build Community Around your Brand

By Scott Steinberg

Call it a target market, tribe or online community: In all cases, building an audience for your tech products, services or solutions is key to maintaining a competitive edge. With the amount of time that audiences spend online increasing, even as attention spans are declining, tech leaders must find clever ways to engage users. A few simple tips can help you create and nurture a successful community around your brand.

To begin, consider that online communities fill a unique space in the tech business world. Finding ways to differentiate and add value by providing thought leadership, demonstrating unique or novel ways to use your solutions, or helping shoppers save time, money and effort, is crucial to stand out.

Learning to scale is also key. Platforms only grow when enough people routinely use them. How do you create enough of a critical mass to attract a crowd and spark usergenerated growth? Incentivize early adopters into becoming evangelists by featuring both these individuals and their insights or creations (in the form of online videos, photo galleries, or highlighted profiles for example), and offering rewards, prizes, and special deals or discounts for community membership.

It also helps to grow an online community around a tech brand by encouraging interaction such as live events and programming. A key to successful community management is proactively cultivating grassroots connections.Social Media as a Tool Encourage people to interact with your brand by sharing news, opinions and feedback on the latest trends, fostering discussion, crowdsourcing feedback, ideas or audiovisual content, and asking questions or conducting

surveys. However, someone must monitor both community and social media platforms to respond to breaking developments. Customer expectations when it comes to response times are sky high. Be prepared to stay connected and leverage processes, platforms and people that can help you quickly respond to your community.

One important step with an online community is to identify some simple objectives that can help define success. Your goal could be to get customers to galvanize around virtually any topic, from creating better photos and videos to coaxing the best performance from home security or AV systems. Or key metrics used to determine success might include the number of users active in your community, the amount of time they spend online, or the length of their average engagement. In any event, all goals should be measurable and objective and set in the form of numerical hypotheses (get X many users, drive Y number of new leads) that you can test.

To define your vision, ask exploratory questions such as: • How do you define engagement?

• How quickly do you hope to increase engagement?

• What level of engagement is a success?

Defining a clear vision, creating a profile of audience members you want to attract, and adhering to meaningful metrics will keep you focused as you build your online platform. However, the more you can incentivize people to take part in a community around your brand – whether by sharing their thoughts, asking questions, uploading videos or connecting with thought leaders – the more your community will grow.

No one cares about your logo LET’S TAKE SOME PRESSURE OFF LOGOS–THEY REALLY DON’T NEED TO WORK SO HARD. HERE’S WHAT DRIVES YOUR BRAND INSTEAD.

By JON HOLLAMBY

Somehow companies have gotten into the mind-set that a logo–this thing that does nothing more than identify us–is incredibly important.

So if my logo isn’t my brand, what is?

We build our brands around them and when we get bored or when shit hits the fan, we redesign them. We manipulate them until they look better, sharper, cooler–anything to try to tell people, “Hey, this is who we are,” or, “Look! We’ve changed. Please forget about that sex scandal thing.”

Take a look at most of the brand guidelines floating around, and they probably look something like this:

But logos on their own make people aware of and recognition, they really are, or what you meaning into them.

actually say nothing. While they can your brand and help with discovery can’t tell your customers who you actually care about unless you build

Your logo is not your brand. Your brand is the experience your customers have and then tell their friends about. All the design craft in the world can’t make a logo that can convince someone your product or service is great if it isn’t. That’s a job for advertising.

Don’t get me wrong: We still need logos, but it’s nonsense to make a logo the foundation of your brand.

So let’s take some pressure off them, they really don’t need to work so hard. They can put their feet up for a while while we dig into what makes for a great brand.

A CLOSER LOOK AT EXPERIENTIAL IDENTITY

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Our Amazing Logo™

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Logo Dos and Don’ts

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Our Font

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Our Pretty Colors

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Our Visual Language

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Flashy examples of our brand on a poster, a tote bag, business cards, and other things that will never get produced.

This is all important of course, but it’s surface level. It’s your visual identity system, what your customer will see.

But what about the non-visual identity, your experiential identity? You know, what your customers will feel and experience? Why are you in business, what do you believe in, what are the values that drive you, what’s the experience you want your customers to have? Those are much rarer inclusions in brand guidelines and yet so much more important.

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Great brands are built from the inside out; they are built around a strong belief system and are driven by values.

What your customers experience every time they interact with your company is the brand, not the visual identity. No one cares that your airline logo has been crafted out of unicorn tears and your visual language is AI-generated if their flight keeps getting cancelled or they get involuntarily de-boarded because you overbooked the flight.

same direction. The last, most critical–and probably most contentious–step to making a great brand is decentralizing it.

Here’s the current state of play: Marketing has traditionally been the custodian of branding. Generically speaking, they tend to shoulder all the responsibility, while other teams passively contribute.

So instead of fretting over typefaces and clever negative space logo executions, ask yourself this one question: “Why do I get out of bed every morning and go to work?”

HR, customer service, product, technology, finance–all of these departments have a huge impact on the brand, but it so often appears that marketing people are the only ones who really care. Why is that?

That’s what your brand should be built around. That is what you want your customers to remember and tell their friends about; not your logo.

Put it this way: If only one department owns and controls a company’s brand, then other departments simply don’t think about it because they have no attachment to it.

Take a quick look at Nike. Phil Knight had a vision that if everyone went for a run once a day, the world would be a better place. He believed in that vision so much that he only hired people who shared it. Why? Because if you have a purpose that people can believe in, then you have a product that the people building the brand will advocate for, and you can bet they’ll do a good job of it. The swoosh is just a swoosh; any emotional connection you have to it has nothing to do with the logo itself and everything to do with Knight’s original vision.

Now think about the impact they could have if they were aligned with the same purpose and journey as everyone else.

Think about how they could behave in a way that backs up the brand purpose.

If your brand doesn’t have a purpose, then stop everything and find it. Once you do, you’ll see that everything’s a hell of a lot easier.

AVOIDING PARTIAL BUY-IN The bottom line is, customer experience is more than the product or service and more than the brand. It is every single interaction and touchpoint people have with you, from the person in the call center to the app error message they receive.

I had a conversation with a marketer recently who told me this: “I don’t believe in brand by committee. Brand is a function of marketing. Marketing should come up with the brand platform and values. We’ll give them to the team and they’ll work with that.”

Developing your brand in isolation and then launching it to your unsuspecting staff is a recipe for disaster–as if they’ll just accept this new world order and immediately fall into line. The more likely result is partial buy-in, which ultimately results in a sporadic customer experience that does not reflect the behaviors or the vision that your brand is advocating.

So bring them along for the ride, listen to and then work with them to develop a brand that is reflective of who you are and who you want to be. Staff engagement is built into the process, not an afterthought.

When your staff are on board, the task of delivering a customer experience that reflects your brand purpose is a much easier one.

DECENTRALIZING YOUR BRAND We’re almost there now. The logo is off its pedestal, you’ve got purpose, your staff is on board and pulling in the

How do you go about the challenge of decentralizing your brand so that it is shared and nurtured across your entire business? A good place to start is with a shared perspective.

As a whole, you need to agree that branding belongs to all of you; this is not about taking the brand away from any one department. It’s about each and every one of you sharing the load. This shared perspective will enable each department to take ownership of the brand in its own way. When branding becomes everyone’s responsibility, then everyone becomes customer-centric and your experiential identity will take care of itself.

THE LAST THING YOU DO This is a strange article for me to write. I’ve been a graphic designer for almost half my life now and have lovingly crafted all sorts of logos over the years (plenty of shit ones, too). The hidden arrow in the FedEx logo still makes me smile. Was it all a complete waste of time? No, I appreciate a well-crafted logo as much as the next person–I just don’t believe it’s that important anymore. I have come to believe in the power of a brand that is built on really solid experiential foundations, not just graphic design.

The logo is the last thing I do when designing a brand. I’ve repositioned it from the cornerstone of a company’s brand to just one image within a flexible visual system that works in conjunction with a non-visual system of beliefs, values, and purpose. Brands are multifaceted and shouldn’t be reliant on one element to be effective. Your visual identity is what you use to communicate the purpose, values, and ideas you have in your experiential identity.

Remove your logo from your product, your website, your app, and your ads, and your customers should still know it’s you. Give your logo a break and focus on delivering a great customer experience–that’s what will turn your customers into advocates.

Jon Hollamby is a product design manager at the Australian property app Domain. When he’s not designing thoughtful brand and product experiences, he’s busy trying to keep his toddler alive.

In conversation with the czar of belief!

By BrandKnew

Don’t let your beliefs limit your possibilities. Let your mind be on a roll and understand that the narrative that you have offered your mind and the foundation of beliefs it has formed over time might actually be a baggage and limiting your success in life. These are the views espoused by Tom Asacker, a high powered creative force, who articulates radical and game changing ideas and practices to ensure success in a fast changing and uncertain world. Tom is an acclaimed writer, sought after speaker and consultant and as an author published several best sellers including Sandbox Wisdom, Opportunity Screams, A Little Less Conversation, A Clear Eye for Branding, I Am Keats and The Business of Belief.

Here is a freewheeling conversation with Tom that lets you in on his thinking, his inspiration, his work and belief.

BK: Tell us a bit about yourself and what makes you go, “Wow, another day at work.”

TA: I’m a writer, a professional speaker and an advisor

to leaders at various organisations. I’m also working on a personal development program for individuals who feel stuck and are searching for a way out. Life is utterly fascinating to me, especially now, during these fluid, turbulent times. And so when I wake up each morning, “Wow!” is literally all I can see.

BK: What triggered your interest in Behavioural Psychology and Consumer Insight?

TA: I’ve always been compelled to understand the rationale behind people’s decisions, whether as consumers in the marketplace of products, services and ideas, or as employees or volunteers at various organisations. It probably originated when I was young and visited family members from very distinct cultures. I sensed, early on, that what motivated people’s choices and behaviours came primarily from their upbringing and conditioning. It was their unique perspectives, aesthetic sensibilities and identities that drove their decisionmaking.

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TA: Adam and I are both interested in improving the world through bold, innovative ideas. His book explores what it takes to be creative and champion those meaningful ideas.

My book pulls back the curtain on the workings of the mind and reveals the hidden logic to motivating others to believe in and adopt the idea. So I’d say they are perfect compliments for anyone interested in changing themselves, and the world.

BK: In an age of phenomenal and perennial distraction, how does one bring about focus? What have you touched upon on this aspect in your book?

BK: The business ecosystem has migrated from a “caveat emptor (buyer beware)” mode to “caveat venditor (seller beware).” What in your opinion is the cause and effect of such a shift?

TA:The cause is obvious. The Internet, and the rapid adoption of smartphones, has opened up a world of options to buyers.

They can now research and evaluate product and service offerings in almost any category in real-time, and choose (or change) brands with a few keystrokes. In the past, the buyer had to beware or “be aware” of their choices, since information and their options were limited and there were many barriers to change once their decisions were made.

Today, since there are an abundance of options, transparency of information, and ease of switching, it is up to sellers to beware. They must be highly aware of the value they are delivering relative to available offerings, as well as any problem that buyers may encounter with their offering, lest the fickle buyer leave them for something better.

BK: What was the big motivation for you to write a book like “The Business of Belief “? And what inspired you to be a writer?

TA: I wrote my first book, “Sandbox Wisdom,” in the late 90s out of pure frustration. I was a strategic brand advisor and I was exasperated with people who believed in Homo economicus; the idea the human beings are rational agents who make optimal decisions based on logical thought processes. That frustration persisted for years when, after watching a client fail at implementing change that they expressly acknowledged that they needed to do, I sat down and wrote “The Business of Belief.” It’s a small book, but with everything anyone really needs to understand why people believe and behave the way they do, and how you can influence that feelings-driven process. It may even help readers with their frustrations with others.

TA: Focus is driven by desire. We allow our perceptions—our present “reality”—to inform our instinctive, self-concerned mind, which drives our feelings, thoughts, beliefs and decisions. Today, more than ever before, we’re hooked on the visible—short-term stimulation that’s injected directly into our brains, especially via our phones. If you want to change your life or your organisation, you must reverse the order of that default-setting. Instead of being driven by your perceptions, be driven by a specific intention—in something bigger and better. Or, as Stephen Covey advised, “Begin with the end in mind.” You must make that decision first, and allow that choice to direct your thoughts, and inform your instincts, your feelings and perceptions. When you do, others will not be able to highjack your mind.

BK: At ISD Global we believe that in an increasingly commoditised world, the movement has shifted from USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to Unique Feelings Proposition (UFP). Do you reckon brands and organisations have to reckon with this new reality?

TA: Interestingly, I first described Unique Feelings Proposition in my first book, “Sandbox Wisdom.” And indeed, all brands and organisations will inevitably have to adopt this new mindset, as the Internet continues to enable new brands with meaningful value propositions to focus specifically on the identity and feelings of smaller, and smaller audiences. The lid is completely off of Pandora’s jar, and there is no going back.

BK: “Belief is a personal construct, an emotionally-coloured fusion of imperfect mental processes like perception and memory.” Would you like to elaborate on your quote?

TA: That’s a difficult question to answer in this context, but I’ll try with an example. So, let me present you with a particular concept. One referred to in the English language as “cow.”

Now, if I don’t know you—your knowledge and experiences (memories), your upbringing and religion, your dietary restrictions, your livelihood, etc.—then I have no idea what your beliefs and desires are regarding the concept called “cow.” Individuals infuse “cow” with their memories, cultural norms, preferences, and feelings. The same thing happens with every concept.

BK: Do you think a lack of “fearless creative leadership” is what fails organisations today? If so, why do you think it’s happening? Is it a lack of belief?

TA: Of course it’s a lack of belief, if you understand how beliefs are formed. A belief is driven by a desire. Therefore, people who believe in a new idea want that idea to happen.

So, when people at successful organisations are exposed to new ideas that may eventually cause them to change dramatically, their instinct is to dismiss that idea. They don’t “want” it to be true. They’ve become hypnotised by their hero story, and they don’t want to believe that they may have to become “students” again. Look, there is no such thing as “fearless” creative leadership. The fear will always exist, because you are betting on an unknown future. Instead, let’s call it “courageous” creative leadership, because you are conquering that fear and moving everyone into a better future, whether they want to or not.

BK: Your book “The Business of Belief” has received tremendous praise from seasoned stalwarts like Tom Peters, Seth Godin, etc. Were you expecting such deep impact when you were writing the book?

TA: I never have any expectations when I write a book. I write the “truth,” as I see it and at that particular time.

Obviously, it aligned with other’s “truth” as well, like Tomand Seth. And I am very appreciative since, to me, deep impact is acknowledgment from deep thinkers and impassioned doers.

BK: How important do you think is culture in an organisation especially in the context of imparting, embellishing the right kind of belief systems in its workforce?

TA: “Corporate culture” is a very interesting concept. The modern term “culture” comes from Ancient Rome. It was used as an agricultural metaphor for the psychological development of a human being. So, with regards to corporate culture, what exactly are we cultivating and caring for; a collective idea or a particular mindset and way of being amongst individuals? If you cultivate a particular idea, then it will be increasingly difficult to step out of that “story” and respond to a changing environment. You will be conditioned to defend that idea. However, if you foster a culture of compassion and creativity in service to customers, then you’ll stay curious and responsive to their changing desires.

BK: Do you think that “Belief” can be inculcated right at a very young age and that it should be part of the school curriculum (just like there is a call for diversity and tolerance to be made part of what we are growing up with)?

TA: Belief is inculcated at a very young age. That’s the problem.

Instead, we need to educate children to be skeptical of their beliefs; to hold them lightly and to be intellectually curious.

We want to raise people who are joyful and empathetic in their approach to the world, but rigorous in their pursuit of

knowledge… secure in who they are and willing to dance with complexity and challenge their own assumptions.

BK: Where do you stand in the debate between “The customer is always right” and “The customer is always late?”

TA: I’d say that there really is no debate. It’s both. The customer is always right with regards to their immediate problems and desires; however, they can’t predict the effect of something new on their future selves. So, make sure that your new idea is feeding an actual psychological hunger. But also understand that it will take time for that idea to be widely adopted.

BK: What do you enjoy doing most: consulting, writing, or speaking?

TA: They are very different activities, which I enjoy equally.

But it’s the synergistic combination of the three that brings me the most joy. Writing is a solitary act, so I need interactions with others in the real world—through my speaking and consulting—to provide me with various insights and inspiration.

BK: Do you see brand extensions for “The Business of Belief” in the form of a podcast series, a TV show, or a book sequel?

TA: I’ve expanded upon my thinking since writing that book, and I’ve subsequently written a novel, a movie screenplay,

and a personal transformation book. You can learn more at www.iamkeats.com.

BK: Which are some books that have inspired you in your career thus far and which are the ones that you look forward to reading?

TA: I am a voracious reader and have discovered many insights in nonfiction and fiction books. However, very few books have inspired me. Instead, I find my inspiration in the real world of human problems and suffering. That said, I am looking forward to reading “The Ten Types of Human: A New Understanding of Who We Are, and Who We Can Be”

by Dexter Dias.

BK: What does Tom Asacker do in his spare time?

TA: I don’t really differentiate my work from my life. I view my life as a work in progress and so I am always studying, and trying to understand and improve myself and the human condition. But I do enjoy a cold beer on a hot day, lovingly prepared food, and stimulating conversation with family and friends.

Gamer to game developer?

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Does the digital creative agency have a future?

BLEAK TIME, BOLD MOVES: THE STATE OF THE DIGITAL NATION 2020

By Matt McCue

Jules Ehrhardt made waves in 2016 when he published State of the Digital Nation, a raw and honest look at the major forces threatening the digital consultancy industry. Two years later, the seasoned digital exec has done it again with State of the Digital Nation 2020, painting a bleak picture of the agency landscape, pointing out flaws in the model, and urging creatives to consider their options.

The new publication coincides with change in his own life.

After leaving his post as co-owner of ustwo, the digital product studio behind the wildly popular mobile game Monument Valley, Ehrhardt launched FCTRY in May. A “creative capital studio,” the company acts as an advisory for early-stage technology companies in return for equity.

In the interview below, Ehrhardt shares his views on why now is the time for new thinking in digital. So are we all doomed?

Nah. Amid change, there is always opportunity.

What led you to write a new State of the Digital Nation?

I wrote the first State of the Digital Nation in 2016. It was a point in which I was reflecting deeply on what I’d seen over the previous four years and where I saw things going. It was an expression about the journey to try to evolve the typical consultancy model, or try to build the future phase of the studio.

In 2017, I was closing a chapter in my life and starting a new chapter. I had the freedom to do what I wanted. The fundamental question that came to me was, “If you could start again, completely fresh without serving any legacy, what would you do?” State of the Digital Nation 2020 is basically me ripping apart my journey, closing a chapter and beginning

a new chapter and trying to organize all the thinking and inputs and outputs that would lead me to decide to build a new type of studio. So, that’s in a nutshell why I wrote it.

You say that the “death of the agency” drum is beating louder and louder. What went wrong and what’s happening now?

We’ve all been watching the epic battle between the consultancies and the ad holding groups. That’s led to a few issues. One is that design is being homogenized. If you look at how so many independent studios are being acquired and brought in to consultancies, you’re seeing what I think is a fundamental problem with how the ecosystem is designed.

To use a metaphor, if you mix all the vibrant colors of the rainbow together, you get a chromatic neutral. And that’s a concern to me. What does that trend do for our ecosystem?

Another issue is that, as more work goes in-house, and fewer agencies are fighting over the remainder of the work, they’re beginning to underbid and trying to reduce their cost to secure the work. Many agencies have moved to offshoring, and what you’re seeing is the agency ecosystem begin to cannibalize itself.

For me, that’s pushing everything to a quite logical conclusion that, for an agency, what was once double-digit profit is now going to be single-digit profit, or a sea of red.

Until the last decade or so, it made a lot of sense to open an agency. It was profitable, and you could do good work.

What we’d see was big brands nurturing a wider ecosystem than would provide healthy grounds and a system for new talent to emerge. But what you’re seeing, I think, is this kind

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of ecosystem collapse: there’s such a pressure on pricing and a procurement-department mindset that, actually, this ecosystem in which the next generation of talent should develop isn’t being sustained.

The fundamental challenge faced by the creative class is being paid for time. And that’s what’s leading to the consolidation, that’s what’s leading to the downward pricing, that’s what’s leading to the degraded environment in which we do our work.

Bleak. If that’s the case, what needs to happen?

The only way for us to escape and build a new prosperous place, a new happy place, is to basically break that model, break that bond which I call a form of “prison island” that we built ourselves decades ago—the “paid for time” client service model.

You say being paid for hourly work is at the core of the industry’s problems. Tell us more.

I believe that actual human creative output is limited to five hours a day, therefore keeping people late is creating unhealthy working conditions and is counterproductive.

I recently went to a conference with some very high-level design leaders in the tech space. I asked everyone “Look, how many hours of creativity do you think a human has in a day?” I counted down the hours from 10. No one put their hands up. When I got down to six and five that’s when the majority of the hands went up. Of course this is definitely not applicable to rote tasks like outputting a hundred variations of an image. But the real creativity tops out at five hours. I believe in building a working environment around that.

So what would you recommend? How can there be a better pay model, not necessarily related to hourly work?

As it’s happening is it’s going to get harder and harder to have an agency with healthy profits. I still think that there are studios that are great, that do really good work, and they’re going to prosper. Those people usually have a good process—they agree on high-level requirements based on ‘Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have’ (or “MoSCoW”) rather than fixed cost and scope arrangements.

They’re focused on product rather than marketing.

But for the agency structure—the only way we’re going to escape that is for the creative class to begin to define new models—new vessels within which we can do our work and prosper.

In your case, you decided that the best next step for you was to do venture-only work?

Yes, I guess the point is for me it doesn’t really matter what model you choose. For me, the path I chose was to explore venture where the model is funded. Funded models allow us to do the work we want to do. It doesn’t mean there’s no pressure. It just means it’s a different dynamic.

You say the talent drain is already well under way. Where are people going?

Agencies—and very good ones—are increasingly losing people to Google, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. I think that

trend is going to grow. It’s almost impossible for agencies to match a tech company’s packages and benefits. If you were working at an agency doing 70 hours a week on a campaign or for a bleach brand at 30 percent or 40 percent less salary than you’d get paid at Google or Facebook, then why on earth wouldn’t you leave? I’m not saying it’s easy working in a tech company, but to work fewer hours and have a better work-life balance and be working with a bit more purpose, at significantly better benefits? It’s something to think about.

You’ve put together a big proposal and shared it out in the open. Have you received comments from anybody who’s like “I completely disagree with this and here’s where I think you’re missing the mark?”

In the week since it went out, I’ve had overwhelmingly positive comments. I’ve also had people pull me aside and go, “I’ve tried this. It doesn’t work.” And that’s fine. The point for me is I don’t have as much care for the industry as I do for the creative class within it. So if you do read the piece, you’ll see a lot of it comes from a place of care for the creative class.

That has always been my mission. If you’re an individual in the creative class, there are some important questions we need to be asking ourselves. I believe that by having a more open-source mentality, by sharing what works and what doesn’t work, publishing contracts and as much information as we can, then we can get everyone to a better place. And a more healthy ecosystem for everyone is what I want. I am completely committed to that philosophy.

I remember starting the piece thinking, “We’re all doomed.”

And by the time I got to the end I felt surprisingly positive about everything because you had shared. Did you mean for it to be encouraging in that way?

Yes, the feedback I’ve had, especially from younger people in the industry, is that they’re really excited after the reading the piece. I was trying to give a systematic exploration of what I see, what’s wrong with it and what the new avenues are for the creative class. The beauty is you can really have an opinion and be forthright about it. I think the problem in our industry as a whole is that that the emperor has been naked for the last five to eight years. That’s how we got here.

If somebody is at an earlier point in their career and they haven’t committed to a path yet, what advice would you give to them in terms of the path they might consider?

I’m not really in the advice-giving game, but I think I’d definitely be weighing up which industries have longevity, which areas in the industry have too many people with a certain age and mindset who are more vested in the status quo than not. The way I like to phrase it at the moment is this: you’re either revolutionary, or you’re not. And I think that’s the moment we have to be in now. We have to be revolutionary because if we don’t know how to build these opportunities then we’ll go down with the ship.

Matt McCue is the senior writer for 99U. Previously, he contributed to Fast Company, Fortune and ESPN The Magazine. He lives in New York City, but he is willing to travel long distances for a good meal.

Creative burnout is inevitable.

Here are 10 ways to beat it TEN PROS SHARE THEIR TRICKS FOR STAYING ENGAGED WITH YOUR WORK.

By CO.DESIGN AND THE CREATIVE INDEPENDENT

Burnout can strike at unexpected moments, regardless of whether you’re your own boss or work with a team. We’re living in an era when round-the-clock communication is simply a fact of life, and the always-on culture of many workplaces can take an outsize toll on creatives, who need mental and physical energy to do their best work.

So, how do you avoid burnout? Co.Design collaborated with The Creative Independent, a resource for creative people with a deep archive of how-to guides and interviews, to bring you 10 takes from leading artists, designers, musicians, and chefs on what they do–or don’t do–to keep themselves sane, energized, and creatively fulfilled.

PLAN “SLOW-DOWNS” IN YOUR YEARLY CALENDAR “The burnout thing is real. I went hard for the last year and a half. I ran a great Kickstarter, and had my first proper book come out, and then took it on a book tour, and traveled all over the place, and was gone constantly. It was lots of adventure, but also lots of hectic stuff, and that definitely took a toll. I psychologically told myself that I would stop, and somehow, it took me [many months of] pumping the brakes to actually feel like I was slowing down. I think as a freelancer, you fall into the trap of thinking that your time and your schedule is very flexible, and I’ve started to come to

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grips with the fact that it’s not. I have to set time aside a year in advance, and hold it sacred.”

Illustrator and cartoonist Lucy Bellwood on the pros and cons of being an independent creator

TREAT YOUR WORK LIKE A 9-TO-5 JOB, EVEN IF IT’S NOT “I schedule out hours to work. I know that if I’m working during those hours, then I can have that night to myself to exercise or watch a TV show or read a book or whatever.

That’s a difficult thing, because you want the record to do well and you have your management and your publicist and the label working to get you press opportunities, [so it can be hard to be like,] ‘I’m just not going to do this today.’ But, with the songwriting process, it’s really important because you don’t want to burn out. You don’t want to feel like you don’t enjoy playing music.”

Musician Alicia Bognanno on managing your creative time

FIND A TOTALLY UNRELATED CREATIVE OUTLET “The only time I was really on my way to burning out was when I was working at fancy restaurants doing only desserts.

That’s when I started playing music again after a few years of not doing that. Playing music helped me keep myself in check. I was able to do this other thing that balanced things out–something totally and completely different from my job.”

Chef, restaurateur, and musician Brooks Headley on how running a restaurant is like being in a band

TAKE A DAY OFF “I’m very lucky because I’m able to do what I love every day, [and] I always feel like there’s something that I can take from life and sublimate into fiction. Of course, I have many days that feel like pulling teeth—like the worst dentistry. Days where I delete everything and start over. Taking one day off a week is good, so is going to a museum, or the galleries in Chelsea, or an afternoon movie, or walking around New York if the weather is in a good mood.”

Novelist Katherine Faw on not multitasking

WORK IN SPURTS, AND KEEP A RHYTHM “I do very well under duress. My voice sounds better when I’m dehydrated and tired. So, burnout is actually okay when it happens. That’s why I live upstate; it’s a tank and a vacuum where I can go in for several weeks—get up at six, lunchtime, dinnertime, same time every day. Go to sleep at nine. An amazing amount can happen in three weeks, maybe a year’s worth of work.”

Artist and composer Sahra Motalebi on working without a map

PRACTICE SAYING “NO” “I was definitely burnt out this past fall and it was rough. I’m

learning the value of sleeping more. I’m learning the value of longevity and projects that take time. For me, something I’ve also been learning is how so many black women feel like we can’t say ‘no,’ or that we have to work extra just to prove our existence in a certain space. I’m trying to resist all of that.”

Curator Erin Christovale on curating

DON’T TREAT YOUR WORK LIKE SOMETHING YOU NEED TO ESCAPE FROM “Honestly, the only time that I feel things start to spin out is when I buy into the whole ‘work really hard and then just don’t work at all’ idea. It’s the retirement model. It’s the ‘I’m trying to do as little work as possible model,’ which is unfortunately what happens to a lot of touring musicians. You come off the intensity of being on the road and then you want to just be the king of pina coladas on the beach for the three months. For me, the only time when I actually feel like my creative drive starts to wane is if I fall for that bullshit. I only burn out when people try to convince me that somehow this is a job that I don’t want.”

Musician Emily Haines on commitment

WORK ON MULTIPLE THINGS AT ONCE “I think I avoid burnout by doing different things. Moving the headspace from one thing to another thing helps me keep moving. It becomes easier once you go away from something to go back into it. Like, with books. I’m not really a one-bookat-a-time person. Sometimes I’ll stop feeling like I’m enjoying a book, that I overall am enjoying, and I go look around somewhere else and then go back. I think that’s how I avoid the burnout. It more feels like coming back to something, and it’s different when I come back to it.”

Musician Greg Fox on doing things on your own

BE HONEST ABOUT WHEN YOU NEED A BREAK, AND THEN REALLY GIVE YOURSELF ONE “I think it’s important to keep a schedule, a ritual even.

Usually I can go long periods of time with a routine, then one day something will click and I’ll switch it up for a week. I think allowing for mistakes in your creative work is important.

You’re allowed to give yourself a break when you need it.

This will include for me: being in nature, being still in my own space, or writing ideas down instead of actually working on them.”

Visual artist and teacher Angela Pilgrim on creating work in your own voice

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF “You have to feed yourself creatively. I hate using the term ‘self-care’ but I think that’s a part of it. Even if it’s just going to bed early. I think those little things you do for yourself can help. I also think being realistic helps . . . Eventually you just find the part of what you do that is evergreen and true and you focus on that.”

How brands can create everyday influencers THE STORYTELLING POWER OF PEOPLE: HOW TO TREAT ALL CUSTOMERS LIKE INFLUENCERS

By Adam Hirsen

Whether it’s a sandwich shop with a graffiti wall, a gym with top-of-the-line custom equipment or a doctor’s office with gourmet snacks in the waiting room, businesses spend a lot of time, effort and capital crafting a unique and enjoyable brand experience within the four walls of their venue. Here’s the problem -- while regular customers appreciate the experience, that valuable piece of your brand’s message never travels beyond the front door. Potential customers miss out on the fun, and you miss out on an opportunity to attract them with what may be the most unique and exciting part of your business.

This is why user-generated content (UGC) is so important.

Thanks to smartphones and social media, businesses now have the opportunity to extend their in-venue branding much farther than the constraints of a brick-and-mortar location.

Here’s how harnessing UGC will help communicate your brand’s story to people who haven’t even ever walked through the door.

Emotion Each time a customer posts about your business, they are telling the singular story of their experience in a space. Since the human brain is built to be most receptive to information that follows a narrative structure, the emotions that the post carries become more salient and lasting than the emotions communicated by a brand. This salience is even more impactful if the post contains faces, as people are far likelier to respond to faces than other images.

Transparency In 2018, consumers are wary of marketing and demand transparency. When they see a post from a customer, however, they see a true story involving a real person, rather than something created to target their wallets. No matter how well intentioned your marketing efforts are, people will always meet UGC with more trust and more openness to buying into its message.

Variety A business only has so much money for marketing, which means it’s limited in the range of experiences and atmospheres it can broadcast to represent the brand. Customers, on the other hand, have unlimited power to share and promote

businesses by posting about them on social media -- and they represent every experience a business is capable of providing because they are the ones who have had those experiences. Additionally, this content not only communicates with your audience, but also the network of those who created the UGC. This results in frequent and diverse exposure of what your business has to offer -- as long as you keep your customers posting.

How To Encourage Posts Of course, UGC can only be effective if your customers are actively participating in it. If you’re struggling to gain traction with UGC, here are a few ways to encourage it: • Social TV. Give customers their 15 seconds of fame on the TVs within your venue by showcasing their social media posts in real time. This “jumbotron effect” makes customers so excited at the chance to see themselves on TV that it will become the reason more customers post on social media from within your venue than ever before.

• Contests. The chance to win is enough motivation for most to snap a quick photo. Each post counts as an entry to the sweepstakes. You can push this method to the max by using a contest platform that allows multiple entries for different types of social sharing.

• Incentives. A simple quid pro quo will always guarantee an increase in desired behavior. Offer a reward in exchange for posting on social media. The ROI in marketing value will be worthwhile, and your customers will feel like you’ve given them a great deal.

• Instagrammable Decor. If there is one thing people love, it’s a cool backdrop for their photos. Whether it’s a flashy sign, a brightly colored wall or a quirky piece of art, this will help you become a social media destination as customers flock in specifically to post about your business.

UGC is an incredible way to extend your business’s unique and valuable in-venue experience beyond four walls, transforming the venue itself into a valuable marketing asset. It’s simple, low cost and effective. That said, it doesn’t happen on its own. Try different strategies to find what works best for your customers, and don’t be afraid to get creative.

It will be #WorthIt.

The Inner Workings of Advertising on Amazon [Infographic]

By Laura Forer

Amazon is known to millions as a Whole Foods-acquiring, on-demand Cloud-providing, industry-disrupting juggernaut. And although it’s not as well known as an advertising platform right now, that’s changing fast.

Performance advertising software company Nanigans created an infographic that explains what Amazon’s various advertising services are and how brands are using them to serve ads both on Amazon properties and on the open Web. Amazon is “in a powerful position as an advertiser, ad network, and a marketplace all at once,” the infographic states, noting that it’s “on the path to being as ubiquitous as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads Manager.”

Advertising options include Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), Amazon Media Group (AMG), and Amazon Publisher Services (APS).

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Laura Forer is a freelance writer, email and content strategist, and crossword puzzle enthusiast. She’s an assistant editor at MarketingProfs, where she manages infographic submissions, among other things.

How Brands Can Be More Authentic Using Social Media Video

By Kate Talbot

As video has become ubiquitous across all social media platforms, brands are producing more video content to authentically connect with their community. Now more than ever, consumers are digesting mobile video content on-thego throughout their day. Studies show that consuming videos allows for more positive emotions to be elicited, to feel more connected to friends and family, and provides a shared common thread to talk about. With this universal ‘pivot to video’ happening across social media, there are many ways for brands to utilize social media video within their content strategy to further engage audiences. Here are three ways to do so.

Embrace Ephemeral Content Storytelling

completion rates that authentic content does. Brands need to use Instagram and Snapchat’s ephemeral content storytelling similar to how a friend would produce content so that it flows seamlessly throughout the user’s viewing experience. When doing so, the drop off rate lessons, because users are hooked to the story itself and they connect with the content because it doesn’t stand out as being overly polished. Brands can create more authentic content by having a diverse set of hosts talking to the audience and adding in native product features which can include: face lenses and filters, emojis, music, polls, questions, hashtags, GIFs, and much more By creating content that is more native to the platform itself, audience interactivity increases because users feel comfortable with the content, humanizing the brand.

Now that Instagram Stories has been a product feature for almost two years, brands and media are figuring out what type of storytelling converts. As ephemeral content only lasts for 24 hours on both Instagram and Snapchat Stories, social media storytelling for brands and media has shifted from a more produced look that would typically be seen in advertising campaigns to content that is produced more natively within the apps. In fact, brands and media are now finding that the polished look is not leading to the same

Elliot Friar, Brand Manager at Quip, revealed to me that they’ve seen great engagement with many different types of creative on Instagram Stories, “Natively-produced content has proven to produce high swipe up rates. Quip members tend to direct message us more with behind-the-scenes content like how we fulfill orders at our fulfillment center, FAQs with Quip dentists and reposted review content from other Quip members. Additionally, the vast majority of members who watch our stories don’t skip them after the first or second

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slide. In both paid and organic arenas, well thought out, but not overly produced content, has resonated with users on Instagram.”

Utilize Long-Form Content Long-form video content is necessary within your strategy.

It provides more in-depth storytelling than the typical 10-second story format. Currently, IGTV, Facebook Watch, and Facebook Live are being leveraged by media groups and brands to showcase events, educational content, interviews with thought leaders and executives, news stories, brand highlights and much more. These channels allow for more traditional content to be digestible in the social media space.

I spoke by phone with John Colucci, Director of Social Media at Sinclair Broadcast Group, to get his take, “We’re working with our newsrooms to find new ways to report local stories on IGTV. The format allows for multiple visual elements to be used simultaneously to help quickly convey lots of information on mobile screens. We’ve been using IGTV for breaking news and other hard news stories, where ‘classic’ Instagram or Instagram Stories have mostly focused on uplifting and conversational content.”

Highlight Your Community With UserGenerated Content Community is key to a brand’s success. By galvanizing your audience to engage in both online and offline activities, users can become brand advocates by sharing content across social channels. Take West Elm, the furniture and

home-decor company, which promotes artisans with their LOCAL initiative. For their expansion into new markets, they encouraged community members to create content utilizing the hashtag #WestElmLocal.

In doing so, there are now over 26,000 posts on Instagram with that hashtag including videos that showcase local artisans creating products alongside community members, happy attendees at pop-up shops, and even influencers promoting local attractions near West Elm stores. With this user-generated content approach, West Elm is then able to share those posts across their blog and social media channels to create a brand aesthetic with a focus on the makers, artisans, and creators within the West Elm community.

Putting Strategy Into Action As Millennials and Gen Z spend their time on social media video and crave authenticity, it’s important for brands to create a video strategy that encompasses these desires.

By promoting daily ephemeral content that is native to the platform on Instagram and Snapchat, long-form informational content, and user-generated content from community members, brands can have an incredible impact in customer relationships and purchasing decisions.

Kate Talbot, a freelance content marketer, author, and entrepreneur who helps brands engage millennials. She has been featured on the Nasdaq, NBC News, CNBC, Huffington Post, Salesforce, VentureBeat and named an Instagram Marketing Expert from Foundr Magazine and Social Media Examiner.

Augmented and virtual reality mean business: Everything you need to know AN EXECUTIVE GUIDE TO THE TECHNOLOGY AND MARKET DRIVERS BEHIND THE HYPE IN AR, VR, AND MR.

By Greg Nichols

Overhyped by some, drastically underestimated by others, few emerging technologies have generated the digital ink like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR).

Still lumbering through the novelty phase and roller coasterlike hype cycles, the technologies are only just beginning to show signs of real world usefulness with a new generation of hardware and software applications aimed at the enterprise and at end users like you.

On the line is what could grow to be a $108 billion AR/VR industry as soon as 2021. Here’s what you need to know.

What is virtual reality?

computer-generated worlds users could actually navigate.

By the 1990s, virtual reality was a mainstay of popular culture thanks to movies like The Lawnmower Man (1992) and early gaming headsets from Sega and Nintendo.

Today, commercially available virtual reality headsets incorporate features such as haptics, motion and location sensing, and high-res 3D graphical displays that come close to real-world visual fidelity. Major players like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are heavily invested in the technology.

What is augmented reality?

Virtual reality is a broad term for a multi-sensory computergenerated experience that allows users to both experience and interact with a simulated environment.

Unlike virtual reality, which seeks to immerse the user in a completely virtual environment, augmented reality enhances the real world using digitally produced perceptual overlays.

HISTORY

HISTORY

According to the Virtual Reality Society, the technology has thematic roots in the stereoscopic viewers of the 19th century.

Decades of research into immersive (albeit non-interactive) cinema gave way, in the 1960s, to early experiments in what were then called “artificial environments,” primitive

The first head-mounted AR display was created at Harvard in 1968, but it wasn’t until 2008 that AR saw its first commercial application in the form of a BMW magazine ad that allowed users to hold a printed page in front of a computer camera to produce an on-screen image.

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Since then, augmented reality has been a mainstay of marketers in the form of QR codes that unlock AR content.

Early AR applications for smartphones and personal computers targeted consumers by allowing them to do things like try on products. However, the technology’s first breakout consumer successes have come in gaming, starting with Pokemon Go. Though still early in the adoption phase, augmented reality is expected to have a massive impact on daily life through a variety of consumer and enterprise applications, with some predicting AR technologies will be more pervasive and important than the internet.

Use Case: augmented reality finds early adoption with field service technicians

What about mixed reality?

Mixed reality refers to a kind of augmented reality in which graphical visualizations are projected so as to appear they’re interacting with the real world. An oft-cited example is Magic Leap’s visualization of a 3D whale jumping out of a gymnasium floor, an effect made possible thanks to augmented reality headsets worn by the viewers.

THE HARDWARE There are many types of hardware used in AR, VR, and MR applications, including haptic suits and niche devices that allow the visually impaired to “see” with their tastebuds.

However, for most consumer and enterprise applications, the hardware for virtual reality typically constitutes a headset, such as the HTC VIVE, Oculus Go, or Sony PlayStationVR. For AR and MR applications, the hardware may be an ARenabled headset, a pair of AR glasses, a mobile device like a tablet, or a wearable like a smart watch. All major smartphone manufacturers are anticipating the growth of AR and many have begun equipping their latest models with components to support that growth, such as Snapdragon mobile processors and active depth sensing packages -- essentially mini-LiDAR. Apple and Google have jumped into the AR and MR race with dueling SDKs -- ARKit from Apple and ARCore from Google.

In the future, we’ll certainly see streamlined AR glasses, and likely contact lenses further down the line.

user’s full attention, which make the technology poorly suited to real-life social interaction outside a digital world. AR, on the other hand, has the potential to act as an on-call copilot to everyday life, seamlessly integrating into daily realworld interactions. This will become increasingly true with the development of the AR Cloud.

THE AR CLOUD Described by some as the world’s digital twin, the AR Cloud is essentially a digital copy of the real world that can be accessed by any user at any time.

For example, it won’t be long before whatever device I have on me at a given time (a smartphone or wearable, for example) will be equipped to tell me all I need to know about a building just by training a camera at it (GPS is operating as a poor-man’s AR Cloud at the moment).

What the internet is for textual information, the AR Cloud will be for the visible world. Whether it will be open source or controlled by a company like Google is a hotly contested issue.

Industries that will be affected by both AR and VR CONSTRUCTION The $10 trillion global construction industry has been operating with much the same technology for the past century. AR and VR are helping to change that with a variety of applications that allow project managers to track progress and builders to work through jobs and spot time and money drains before the foundation is ever poured.

The technology is still emerging, but some companies to watch in this arena are: OpenSpace, which gives project managers a Google Street View-like time machine to walk through projects at various stages of completeness; Skycatch, whose drones are being used to create on-site VR simulations of projects; and DAQRI, which makes a smart helmet that’s used in AR applications to deliver site-specific information to builders in real-time.

K-12 EDUCATION

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE HARDWARE USED BY ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS AND CONSUMER MARKET USERS?

Not long ago, futurists predicted that virtual reality would change the face of education. Adoption of VR in education has happened far slower than many hoped, and for the time being it looks like the hype was just that.

There are enterprise-only headsets from the likes of DAQRI, but more and more we’re seeing enterprise AR/VR applications running on consumer hardware. The same Microsoft HoloLens is being used by Honeywell to train technicians that’s used by gamers to complete crucial missions, for example.

Nevertheless, many K-12 programs are finding uses for headsets from Oculus and HTC, as well as cheaper Google Cardboard, such as sending students on virtual field trips, tours of the solar system, and walks through the Jurassic period.

Which will be bigger, AR, or VR?

The hype pendulum has now swung toward augmented reality in education. Text books are being printed on “clickable paper” and students in primary school are creating their own AR experiences with Metaverse. Augmented field trips can easily turn into scavenger hunts, and digital puzzle boxes are challenging students to problem solve their way out of prickly situations, all while sitting in the comfort of the classroom.

Augmented reality will have a bigger impact on the market and our daily lives than virtual reality -- and by a long shot. That’s the consensus of just about every informed commentator on the subject.

The reason is that VR environments by nature demand a

HEALTHCARE

MOBILE

From therapies for those with autism to restoring low vision, virtual reality is being used as an effective treatment in a wide variety of healthcare applications.

Headsets still haven’t taken off in a compelling way, which means smartphones will be the AR vehicle of choice for the next few years.

VR is also becoming an effective teaching tool in healthcare.

Students can now watch VR surgeries and dissect VR cadavers, for example.

That’s good news for smartphone manufacturers, which have seen life cycles for their products rise from 18 months to three years. As AR penetration grows, it’s kicking off a new arms race among suppliers to create better-equipped phones and inject new life into an industry that’s starting to plateau.

Healthcare is also primed for AR adoption precisely because its a field that requires individuals to make important decisions on the fly with available information. Just as surgeons have adopted robots to enhance the uncanny dexterity of humans, the industry is looking at novel uses of heads up displays and wearables to enhance the decision-making capabilities of people that are often under stress and under the gun.

A few big players are Microsoft, which is exploring applications for its HoloLens as an AR tool to help doctors visualize challenging procedures during surgeries, and AccuVein, which helps doctors and nurses locate patients’ veins more easily.

ENTERPRISE TRAINING The enterprise VR training market could be worth more than $6 billion by 2022. Pilots have been training on VR simulators for generations, but now workers in many high-risk fields, such as oil and gas and other utilities and heavy industries, are getting the chance to take their licks in the virtual world as opposed to on the job, where the risk of injury or costly mistakes is far higher.

Augmented reality is also making a splash in enterprise training, particularly in the realm of technical training.

Honeywell recently announced a mixed-reality simulation tool to train its industrial employees using Microsoft’s HoloLens, and it’s easy to envision workers in a wide variety of industries getting visual assistance as they learn the ropes on service calls, for instance.

Caterpillar and BP are two major companies embracing AR to train and guide technicians in the field.

REAL ESTATE The real estate industry, which relies so heavily on customers visualizing themselves in a new environment, seems particularly excited about the prospects of AR/VR technology.

It’s now possible to take a virtual tour of high-end properties in many parts of the country thanks to companies like Matterport. Sotheby’s now has an AR home staging app, which allows users to put the virtual furniture of their choice in properties they may be interested in.

Industries that will be most affected by AR AUTOMOTIVE Head-Up Displays (HUDs) were one of the first deployments of AR in the marketplace. HUDs now adorn models from BMW, Volvo, Chevy, Lexus, and many others. There’s also a thriving aftermarket offering HUDs that interface with a car’s OBD-II port to display vital information like speed and gas mileage without requiring drivers to take their eyes off the road.

Expect to start seeing these in economy cars, not just luxury models. If you prefer two wheels, you’ll be happy to know the concept has even made its way into motorcycle helmets.

GROCERY SHOPPING You’re about to be using your phone a lot more to buy food. A company called Dent Reality has been working on an app that allows customers to see real-time information about products in grocery stores. It uses computer vision and in-store tracking to help customers find food that fits their dietary needs.

It’s likely more of these apps are on the horizon. For manufacturers, that means new promotional opportunities and perhaps a new twist on the old game of big brands paying for shelf position.

ADVERTISING One of AR’s biggest deployments has been in advertising.

In April 2018, Facebook began letting developers build AR apps that contain location-triggered elements. Google has made a similar move.

There are lots of potential applications, but you can be sure the first and most prolific will involve marketing to users in the real world. (Facebook tested the concept in promotions for the movie Ready Player One.) It may not be long before every restaurant and shop we walk triggers a floating billboard or a sale offer.

ONLINE SHOPPING The Achilles’ heel of online retail has always been the inability to try things on. But what if you could virtually try on clothes before you buy?

That’s the promise of apps that act as virtual fitting rooms, allowing shoppers to try on clothing virtually before they buy it. The technology may soon solve a vexing problem with online shopping: How to ensure a good fit when you only have model photos to go on.

MARKET OUTLOOK According to IDC, AR and VR products and services will be worth $27 billion in 2018, which marks a roughly 90 percent increase over 2017. Broadly speaking, the enterprise market for AR and VR will be worth roughly $56 billion by 2022, while the consumer market could be worth $53 billion.

For the technologies to fulfill that lofty promise, developers will have to push AR and VR out of the novelty phase and past the hype. There’s enough action right now across a variety of industries to suggest we’re well on our way.

Greg Nichols covers robotics, AI, and AR/VR for ZDNet. A full-time journalist and author, he writes about tech, travel, crime, and the economy for global media outlets and reports from across the U.S., South America, and Asia.

What Brands Post on Social vs. What Consumers Want to See

By Ayaz Nanji

There is a significant disconnect between what marketers post to social media and what consumers want brands to post, according to recent research from Sprout Social.

The report was based on data from a survey conducted in April and May 2018 among 1,253 consumers and 2,060 social media marketers.

Consumers say the types of social content they value most from brands are posts about discounts/sales (72% say so) and posts that showcase new products/services (60%).

In contrast, marketers say the types of social content they share most are posts that teach something (61% say so) and posts that tell a story (58%).

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Consumers say they are most likely to both engage with and share posts that include discounts/sales.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted in April and May, 2018 among 1,253 consumers and 2,060 social media marketers.

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

Voice Control Forces Marketers to Think Differently SHIFT FOCUS FROM PROMOTIONAL MESSAGING TO TRUE UTILITY

By Victoria Petrock

a mobile phone, you’re presented with multiple choices or answers to your query,” said Allen Nance, CMO at Emarsys.

“But when you do voice, you’re pretty much getting whatever answer the device—or the company that owns the device— thinks is the right answer.”

What’s more, it’s not yet possible to buy sponsored ads or keywords to improve the chances of being that one result.

Instead, marketers must use trial and error to optimize content and try to organically appear in “position zero” (aka the “featured snippet” or “answer box” in a Google search).

According to Christopher Lundquist, vice president of strategy and consulting at SapientRazorfish, this “changes how marketers can work” and is further complicated by differences in how search engines like Google and Bing process queries, source information and prioritize results.

Voice devices also differ from other channels in that advertising is still very limited, and there are no ad networks or large-scale monetization models to work with. Even as brands clamor for more paid opportunities, voice platform companies—including Amazon and Google—are treading cautiously for fear of alienating users with invasive or inappropriate messaging.

Consumers are becoming more comfortable using voice assistants, smart speakers and other voice-activated devices for a variety of everyday tasks. Research conducted in the US by PwC in February 2018 found that searching for information, playing music, sending messages and shopping were among the activities conducted by large percentages of voice assistant users.

As this reliance on voice-first communications grows, so too does interest among brands. Companies in all industries are experimenting to figure out how these new communication channels can help them interact with their target audiences and build brand engagement in more personalized and frictionless ways.

Voice, however, is unlike anything that’s come before, which is forcing brands to think differently about how they design their campaigns. Rather than using traditional “push” messaging, they must work harder to make brand interactions useful and valuable—or they risk becoming irrelevant. While best practices for voice are still evolving, eMarketer’s latest report, “Marketing Beyond the Screen: Using Voice Technology to Boost Brand Engagement,” delves more deeply into these market dynamics and describes some concrete steps for getting started with voice control.

The biggest change is that voice-first technology requires marketers to design auditory interactions, without screens or keyboards. “When you do a visual search on a desktop or

In the absence of advertising, a growing number of brands are experimenting with thirdparty applications (called “skills” It’s now up to brands for Amazon Alexa, “actions” for Google Assistant and apps on and marketers to other platforms). These enable figure out what the users to do everything from utility is. Where are we creating grocery lists, finding recipes, and getting beauty tips, playing a role? How to listening to music, scheduling important can we be appointments, controlling smartin that day-to-day role home devices and meditating.

to where we become a

The most popular of these fit organically into daily routines, part of the habit and save time, and make people’s add the value that lives easier or more enjoyable. consumers are looking “Consumers are dying for use cases and utility that make their for? lives better. These devices aren’t DOUG ROBINSON, CEO OF FRESH DIGITAL only getting smarter, they’re able GROUP to add more value to people’s lives,” said Doug Robinson, CEO of Fresh Digital Group. “It’s now up to brands and marketers to figure out what the utility is. Where are we playing a role? How important can we be in that day-to-day role to where we become a part of the habit and add the value that consumers are looking for?

“From a discovery standpoint, consumers are still trying to figure out what to do with these devices, which offers an amazing opportunity for marketers to guide them to voice applications and provide utility value that they need every day,” Robinson added. “It’s really just a race to see who can take advantage of use cases that drive more consumer engagement with their brand.”

Mark Ritson: How ‘influencers’ made my arse a work of art INFLUENCER MARKETING SUFFERS NOT JUST FROM THE PROBLEMS OF FAKE FOLLOWERS AND VIEWABILITY, BUT FROM A LACK OF CREDIBILITY, AS I PROVED WHEN I PAID INFLUENCERS TO MAKE A PICTURE OF MY POSTERIOR GO VIRAL.

By Mark Ritson

It’s the middle of June and you know what that means. A certain location on the French Riviera orders in the rosé, sets up shop and any marketer with a pulse and an expense account heads to Cannes and the Festival of Creativity.

After much navel-gazing and flagellation over the past year, Cannes has re-emerged apparently unchanged and as powerful and pointless as ever. The presentations remain the same dreary combination of purpose, creativity and disruption – just with bigger fonts. The conjoined dismissal of and desire for awards is as schizophrenic as ever. And the attendees remain the same too. Not since Rommel invaded North Africa in 1941 have so many pasty old white men been exposed to so much sunshine, so suddenly.

Quite remarkably, however, something positive has actually emerged from this years Festival. We have Keith Weed,

Unilever’s CMO, to thank for a rare bit of practical sanity. He used the stage at Cannes on Monday to bemoan the current state of influencer marketing, which he believes is bedevilled by integrity and transparency issues. Weed called for a three-pronged approach to influencer marketing in which misleading engagement, dishonest practices and a lack of transparency need to be fixed. “We need to take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever,” he said.

Hmm. As usual, I find myself in violent agreement with Mr Weed while at the same time shaking my head at the abject unlikelihood that anything will come of it. Yes, Unilever does possess influence, but the idea that it can somehow police the world of influencer marketing into being more legitimate seems fundamentally flawed from the outset.

The whole premise of influencer marketing is, if you think

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about it, dodgy. I certainly think it might have a place in the tactical toolkit for many brands – dodginess has never been a disqualifier for marketing investment after all.

But let’s not pretend that influencer marketing has anywhere near enough legitimacy or transparency to defend itself against Weed’s criticisms. And let’s not point to ‘a few bad apples’ and pretend most influencer marketing is valid with a couple of cowboy operations letting the side down. The whole approach has that sneaky, sticky feeling of just not being quite right.

You’ve seen as many influencer marketing presentations as I have. Someone young, perky and sockless bounces onto stage with the kind of vigour only possible (trust me) from a pie-free existence. They then show a lot of photos of young, equally perky and similarly pieless people posing for selfies and wearing shades and looking at themselves in mirrors.

Next comes a big dump of entirely specious data points supporting the power and impact of influencer marketing that are plucked from completely bogus samples by companies that sell influencer marketing. You know the kind of stuff: 70% of millennials are influenced by influencers but only 5% are influenced by newspaper ads (Medium); 75% of marketers are using influencer marketing (AdWeek); 30% of pet owners follow famous animals on social media (Mars Petcare).

Clearly, all of these stats and the other 8,000 made-up figures about influencer marketing are a load of bollocks (source: Marketing Week), but that does not stop the perky presenter rattling them off as part of their presentation with the certainty of a modern-day Moses. So far, it’s all looking super-authentic and incredibly If we have learned transparent, what with the pictures of people smiling and anything about digital jumping up in the air and being it’s that evidence all aspirational and stuff.

of malpractice and fraud has absolutely zero influence on the prevailing levels of investment.

At some point the presenter throws some shade over ‘traditional’ methods like TV advertising (“boo”, shouts the audience) and newspapers (“fuckers”), and their old-fashioned commercial approach to promoting brands.

Then we get to the last bit, or the ‘money shot’, as I believe influence marketers refer to it. That’s the moment when our presenter drops the ‘organic’ façade and says: “You can hire as many of our influencers as you want and they will basically say what you want them to and then you pay us and here’s our website and you’re welcome. Call me.”

And big brands have certainly done just that over the last five years. While the whole idea of organic social media marketing has been exposed as almost total wank, influencer marketing has somehow dodged the credibility cull. Like the crocodile, soldiering on while the rest of the dinosaurs disappeared into dust, influencer marketing survived the noughties and continues to attract a host of brands to its quasi-authentic offer.

Perhaps brands want to keep buying into the myth of social media marketing? Maybe they just need to drive traffic to

their existing social infrastructure? Maybe they actually fall for the fake stats and perky presentations? Maybe it works?

Whatever the reason, the events at Cannes over the past few days suggest the game might be in for a bit of a shake-up.

Or perhaps not. It’s one thing for brands to work out that influencer marketing is mostly a scam but quite another to stop investing marketing budgets in it. If we have learned anything over the past decade about digital it’s that evidence of malpractice and fraud has absolutely zero influence on the prevailing levels of investment that a platform subsequently receives.

Keith Weed can ask for as much transparency as he wants; the problem with influencer marketing is axiomatic. Which is a $2,000 way of saying that its fucked from the outset but that this won’t stop brands spending money on it regardless.

Specifically, there are three contiguous, ever-decreasing circles of bullshit surrounding all influencer marketing. Let’s break them down one by one and reveal the fundamental issues that all brands should be aware of before they start paying Mr Sixpack and Ms Perky to start pumping their products.

The First Circle of Bullshit: Are the followers real?

It will come as no surprise to seasoned marketers that the first challenge of influencer marketing is working out just how many of your influencers’ circle of friends actually exist. In space, no one can hear you scream; in social media, no one knows if your audience is half a million receptive eyeballs or a mainframe north of Shenzhen run by a man with a limp called Abdul.

Whether your chosen influencer operates via Twitter, Instagram or any one of the many platforms susceptible to influence, there are always going to be questions about fake followers.

Of course, there has been a long and undistinguished history of people and brands buying and creating fake followers to pad out their social media metrics. Facebook is currently removing around 200 million fake profiles from its platform every month. That’s the population of the UK being deleted every ten days. That statistic is astonishing, but more incredible is the general acceptance from marketers that this is entirely normal and business as usual. But things take a distinctly more serious turn when an influencer buys fake followers and then sells their services on the basis of how many people follow them online.

There is a word for that kind of activity in digital media. It’s called fraud.

But that fact has clearly not prevented many influencers buying fake followers anyway. A recent survey from Hypetap of 10,000 influencers identified 16% of the total follower base to be fake. But that figure is almost certainly an underestimate.

One study from Points North in 2017 concluded that big brands such as P&G’s Pampers (32%), Unilever’s Magnum (20%), L’Occitane (39%) and the Ritz-Carlton hotel group (78%) were among the brands whose Instagram sponsored posts had the most fake followers.

Even these numbers might be undercooked. As Digiday reported last year, Instagram posts tagged with either #sponsored or #ad generated more than 50% of their engagement from fake profiles and of the 118,007 comments posted, 97,065 were generated by bots.

In my own research for this article, as you will see below, the influencers that did agree to take part in my experiment averaged 40% fake or lapsed followers. That’s a key caveat by the way – it’s not always fraud that inflates an influencer’s reach, it’s often followers simply moving on without shutting things down.

Either way, this is a significant proportion. Let’s take that number and assume that around 40% of the average influencer’s effort falls on fake ears or on those now long departed from the platform. That already knocks out almost half of a brand’s budget but, in fairness to influence marketers, that is a ratio most big brands should not only accept but feel pretty positive about.

With many marketers estimating that non-viewability rates for their Facebook video ads are as high as 70% and the Pew Research Centre claiming that two thirds of tweeted links to popular websites come from bots not beings, a fraud rate of 40% would be a high-water mark for digital media.

Something to be proud of.

Unfortunately, it’s only the first hurdle. We’ve lost 40% of our influence as we cross into the next Circle of Bullshit.

The Second Circle of Bullshit: Are influencers trusted?

I know what you are thinking: isn’t the ‘trusted’ circle the same as the ‘real’ circle? No. In social media land you have to first establish if someone is human and then, and this is the tricky bit, work out if their message is genuine enough to result in believability. The fact that an influencer is messaging a fellow human does not mean that their message is automatically perceived to be genuine. How many of the followers actually believe what their influencer is telling them about products and services?

This is a far trickier test than assessing the First Circle and its non-human traffic. Many of influence marketing’s claims centre on the authenticity of the message and the seamless manner in which content and advertising merge together to create audience trust. A much-used quote in the influencer marketing world is Seth Godin’s comment: “What are you most likely to pay attention to – the person or organisation you know and trust, or person or brand trying to sell you something?”

The insinuation is that rather than traditional advertising, with its overt attempt at selling, influencer marketing provides a more natural and subtle messaging platform. Unilever tells me in a TV ad that its new Magnum ice cream bar is amazing and I shrug. Supertaste451 posts a picture of herself eating it, looking fabulous and commenting “this is amazing”, and I am going to be impressed. Perhaps even influenced.

The personal, authentic power of influence marketing does make sense, provided, of course, that Supertaste451 is perceived to be genuine by her many followers. But if she has spent the last 12 months taking anyone’s silver to say pretty much anything about anything, while there is a significant chance that her audience might continue to follow her they won’t necessarily believe what she is telling them.

In a recent survey by social analytics firm Shareable, only 37% of adults aged 25 to 34 and 55% of those aged 18 to 24 agreed that they trusted what influencers on social media told them. A similar study that examined influencers found similar levels of distrust on the sender’s side too. Advertising agency Carmichael Lynch found that 23% of influencers admitted they did not feel authentic about the brand-sponsored content they were paid to post and 15% said they did not even like – let alone genuinely recommend – the brand doing they posted about.

Those are pretty drastic numbers and I wanted to test the degree to which influencers are capable of recommending or posting literally anything for money. I found a firm that sells influencer marketing called Shoutcart, based in Portland, Oregon. The online agency offers global access to micro-influencers (those operating with less than 100,000 followers).

Micro-influencers are held up as better value and more authentic by many influencer marketers, so they were an ideal

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sample to test. They are also a lot cheaper to hire and as I was playing with my own money this was a big advantage – a bit like running genetic experiments on fruit flies rather than marmosets.

Next, I selected my influencers from Shoutcart’s user-friendly list. I wanted broad reach but also a range of cost levels. So, in the end, I selected 30 suitably impressive influencers who each claimed between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. I was looking for the lowest possible form of influence – a single post on their Instagram accounts – and for that service, my influencers charged between $1 and $40 (£30).

That’s at the very low end of the scale. The average microinfluencer charges closer to £200 per sponsored message and big hitters with more than 500,000 followers can ask for up to £3,000 per post. Selena Gomez, the “queen of the influencers” is rumoured to ask in excess of £400,000.

Rosanna Pansino (me neither) demands millions apparently.

I gave my new influencer army a very tight deadline and asked for my post to occur within 12 hours. Not surprisingly, a significant number of my influencers – 12 of them – simply did not see my request in time. But that still left me with a (highly unrepresentative) sample of 18 influencers who did receive my request.

How many of these 18 influencers really had the source credibility to deliver messages that were authentic and in line with their audience interests and their own genuine outlook?

And how many were happy to post any old crap for money and had probably lost all audience trust months ago? For this I needed to find something so ridiculous, so esoteric, that only a total sell-out would take the dollar and post it to their followers.

Again, this is nowhere near the sample needed to make any enduring conclusions, but the results of my experiment and the fact that 45% of the sample refused to participate in it aligns with the bigger and broader studies of influencer trust. The survey of 1,200 American consumers last year by Shareable concluded that, in total, 38% of followers trusted what influencers told them.

I decided that the best option would be to take a picture of my arse (obviously) and ask my 18 newly recruited influencers to post it on their Instagram feeds with a complementary comment. I took the photo (shown above in all its glory) and then pixelated it using a graphics program from 1996. The resulting image was then titled ‘The Colour of Influence’ and I asked my new-found influencer army to proclaim it “amazing” or “my best work ever”.

Let’s take that number as our measure for the Second Circle of Bullshit and apply that 38% trust threshold across our messaging. We lost 40% of our audience in the First Circle, but of the 60% of human audience members remaining, only 38% will trust the messages emanating from our influencer.

How many of the influencers would lower themselves to that standard within the 12-hour time limit I set them? How many would refuse the commission and prove themselves trustworthy and credible? Would my bottom become a new social media sensation that would propel me to global arsedriven fame? A Kardashian, if you will, for the marketing industry. In just 12 hours’ time I would find out.

Having got this far, one might be forgiven for thinking influence is at hand. But just because the person following you is human and trusts you does not mean they will be influenced by you. To make that assumption would be to jettison a century’s worth of mass communications research, consumer behaviour studies and a significant bit of behavioural economics to boot. I might trust you but are you really able to influence my thinking and ultimately my behaviour?

In the end, of the 18 influencers who considered my proposal, 10 (56%) took the money and posted a giant picture of my arse to their Instagram followers while proclaiming it to be a work of staggering genius. The other eight (45%) rejected my indecent proposal. You can read this outcome either way. On the one hand it should be deeply troubling that a marketing medium that positions itself on authenticity and credibility is dominated by influencers who will literally post anything and say anything you ask of them. On the other, I am quietly impressed that 45% of the influencers rejected the proposal and preserved their digital dignity – and, one would assume, their influence too.

The Final Circle of Bullshit: Do they have influence?

My father, the inimitable Eric B Ritson, is certainly a real person (at least for the first two pints) and is a man I trust.

But I would say that approximately 96% of his attempts to influence my thinking during my adult life on topics as diverse as football, food, women, weather, Germans and pretty much every other topic known to humanity have ended in abject failure. Trust is not influence.

Which prompts the rather uncomfortable thought that influencer marketing might suffer from the not-insignificant

titular problem of being totally full of shit. Are any of these influencers actually influencing anyone? Read any the guff out there on influencer marketing from its industry’s biggest ‘experts’ and it’s clear that most of them continually, and perhaps deliberately, confuse sending messages with impact and influence.

assume an influencer claims 10,000 followers and charges £250 per post on Instagram. How do the numbers stack up?

For once – and I will make this brief – I side with Facebook; specifically, their rather splendid head of agencies in Asia Pacific, Neil Stewart.

Of those 6,000 remaining followers, we must now subtract something that has nothing to do with influencer marketing and everything to do with the platforms they utilise. Not every post sent is seen by its designated target. In fact, the majority are usually ignored. The best estimates for the average Instagram user in 2018 suggest that they see only around 30% of their posts, and it’s significantly less for Twitter.

He recently found himself on a conference stage in Singapore next to a much-touted influencer and made a brilliant request: “Can I just ask that we don’t keep using the word ‘influencer’? Because there’s an assumption that they have influence. To be an influencer,” Stewart continued, “you must have influenced something. I don’t necessarily think that’s true for a lot of influencers.

“There are plenty of influencers who have friends, followers; they have a blog and people who see their content. But until you can prove that they have influenced – so changed behaviour, an attitude or an action – I think we could almost sue them for using a false or misleading description.”

Challenged by the moderator of the session (herself an influencer of some note) to provide a replacement term, Stewart suggested, without even a pause, “Z-list celebrities”.

Just as my arse is clearly something, so is influencer marketing. It’s just not what it is cracked up to be.

He has a point, does he not?

Exposure, even from a trusted source is hardly behaviour change.

What proportion of these trusted messages actually result in impact? This is, perhaps, the most important and most difficult ratio to assess. While most influence marketers are quick to claim their title, almost all of them make the mistake of using follower numbers or views as a proxy for their influence.

Again, let’s be clear that getting a message seen by a target audience is no mean feat and its certainly something of value.

But calling it ‘influence’ and the person behind the message an ‘influencer’ is a bit like my earlier attempt to reframe my big, hairy, Cumbrian arse as some kind of work of art. Just as my arse is clearly something, so is influencer marketing. It’s just not what it is cracked up to be.

The best information we can use as a proxy to assess the impact of influence marketing is probably just good oldfashioned click-through rates (CTR). If an influencer posts a link to her followers, how many can she influence enough to actually click on the link? The answer from a number of studies, including the ones published by Hubspot, appears to be about 2%. The average influencer appears to be able to get 2% of their followers to do what they ask of them in any one situation. If we transpose that data to the real audience, we arrive at our final destination.

The centre of the Three Circles Bringing all these numbers together gives us a final measure of the influence that influencer marketing might have. Let us

First, we have to subtract the likely 4,000 followers from the First Circle of Bullshit who have stopped checking their Instagram account or never existed in the first place.

So of the 6,000 actual followers only 1,800 will see the post in question. Of course, our influencer could send multiple posts but we will be paying for that privilege so let’s keep it as a single post for this example.

Next, we need to apply the Second Circle of Bullshit and assume that only 38% of these posts are actually trusted enough to have any impact on the target consumer, taking us down to 684 received and believed messages.

And thanks to the Third Circle of Bullshit we can estimate that actual influence exists at the 2% level of received and trusted messages. That would deliver fourteen influenced people from the original 10,000 followers. A football team’s worth.

By the miserable standards of modern media, if someone charged me £250 to influence 10,000 followers and I ended up getting 14 of them to click on my promoted link or consider a new diet drink, I’d probably be very happy. Other marketers might disagree.

But the whole premise of influencer marketing still feels dodgy to me. Calling this ‘influence’ when 99.86% of the target market experience no such response is troubling for a start. Then there is the blatant and fraudulent buying of fake followers and passing off those fakes for financial gain, also clouding the reputation of influencer marketing. Keith Weed is right to call that out.

But most of all there is that sticky feeling that the whole influencer marketing thing is just a little bit too underhand, even by the already lower-than-low standards of contemporary marketing. Is influencer marketing editorial or promotion? Is it advocacy or advertising? Digital marketing or social media?

The lines that we have tried to keep dinstinct for all these decades seem so blurred they disappear almost completely.

Perhaps that is the strength of influencer marketing – and also what repels me.

I guess my perspective on all of this is also contingent on my own Three Circles of Bullshit being applied to this bit of content too. Are you, dear reader, human? Did you actually see this column and make it to the end? Do you trust me? And does my case, built from flimsy data and a giant pixellated image of my bottom, influence your way of thinking?

Or have I just made a massive arse of myself?

Book,

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By David J Green If you are looking to learn more about Instagram, whether it is for personal or business use, this book will definitely provide you with everything you need to know.

How to Style Your Brand: Everything You Need to Know to Create a Distinctive Brand Identity

By Fiona Humberstone In How to Style Your Brand, Fiona shares with you the secrets behind using colour to create an emotive connection; how to use pattern and illustrations to add character and personality and how to carefully select typefaces that add a distinctive and intentional edge to your designs.

Make a Killing With Content: Turn content into profits with a strategy for blogging and content marketing. Kindle Edition

By Lacy Boggs The goal of this book is to give readers the confidence to put together their own content marketing strategy for their business that starts with a blog and ends with a sale. It’s something any business owner can do provided she has the right knowledge and framework to put together a plan and then execute it!

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The Four Step Marketing Blueprint: The Marketing Guide Your Competition Hopes You’ll Never Find Kindle Edition

By Matt Law,‎FSMC Community This short book outlines the four critical components of every successful marketing strategy. As you read, you’ll suddenly realize there are businesses all around you applying these principles. They’re quietly dominating their industries and are expanding at breakneck speed.

KNOWN: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age Kindle Edition

By Mark Schaefer In this path-finding book, author Mark Schaefer provides a step-by-step plan followed by the most successful people in diverse careers like banking, education, real estate, construction, fashion, and more. With amazing case studies, dozens of exercises, and inspiring stories, KNOWN is the first book its kind, providing a path to personal business success in the digital age.

The Story Engine: An entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing Kindle Edition

By Kyle Gray, Tom Morkes (Foreword) The Story Engine provides you with a clear, concise, and actionable strategy to reap the benefits of inbound marketing. This book also includes easy-to-use content marketing templates to help you take action right away and to get the results you want.

500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More!

By Andrew Macarthy Struggling with social media marketing business? No likes, comments and clicks, matter what you try? Feeling overwhelmed or don’t even know where to begin? This book help.

for no just will

Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users And Losing $78 Million: Ultimate Startup Playbook In Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Online Marketing, Leadership & PR Kindle Edition

By Cliff Lerner

The One Hour Content Plan: The Solopreneur’s Guide to a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas in 60 Minutes and Creating Content That Hooks and Sells Kindle Edition

By Meera Kothand Unlock Countless Content Ideas.

Sell Your Products And Services With Ease. Get Your Content to Work Harder For You.

Creating a Brand Identity: A Guide for Designers

By Catharine Slade-Brooking Creating A Brand Identity is a complex challenge for the graphic designer. It requires practical design skills and creative drive as well as an understanding of marketing and consumer behaviour. This practical handbook is a comprehensive introduction to this creative process. Filled with tips and tricks on research, design and testing, this is essential reading for students, graduates and working designers exploring this area for the first time.

Branding: In Five and a Half Steps

By Michael Johnson In Branding, Johnson strips everyday brands down to their basic components, with case studies that enable us to understand why we select one product or service over another and allow us to comprehend how seemingly subtle influences can affect key life decisions. The first part of the book shows how the birth of a brand begins not with finding a solution but rather with identifying the correct question - the missing gap in the market to which an answer is needed. Johnson proceeds to unveil hidden elements...