Digerati Magazine August 2016 Issue

Pokémon’s Magic Leap Towards Augmented Reality Overload McDonald’s NZ Marketing Fail: Lessons in Managing UGC Campaigns The #1 Content Marketing Lesson from Melania Trump Ten Must Have Apps for Startup’s and Entrepreneurs Social Media Crisis Management Enough About Big Data, Let’s Focus on Small Data

weird science 3D Printing , Holograms, Virtual Reality and Brain Computer Interfaces

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CONTENTS

> CONTENTS Digerati is the world’s first ‘digital’ marketing magazine created specifically to provide a 360 degree view of the digital sector. Each issue covers digital innovation, content marketing, mobile, social, search, data and more.

Click here to suggest a topic or submit a question.

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AUGMENTED REALITY: Pokémon’s Magic Leap Towards AR Overload

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20 UGC: McDonald’s NZ Marketing Fail:

14 Lessons in Managing UGC Campaigns

CONTENT: The #1 Content Marketing

19 Lesson from Melania Trump

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26 START UP: Ten Must Have Apps for

20 Startup’s and Entrepreneurs

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SOCIAL MEDIA: Social Media Crisis

28 Management

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Weird Science: Brain Computer Interfaces, Holograms & 3D Printing

AUTOMATION

Scott Brinker on the Singularity, AI & Machine Learning

APP

Top Tips for App Marketing Success

AUGMENTED REALITY

Pokémon’s Magic Leap Towards AR Overload

UGC

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People, we ‘may’ have a slight problem…

FEATURE

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Weird Science: Brain Computer Interfaces, Holograms & 3D Printing

EDITOR’S LETTER:

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McDonald’s NZ Marketing Fail: Lessons in Managing UGC Campaigns

NATIVE

Native Ads: Only Part of the Puzzle for Publishers

CONTENT

The #1 Content Marketing Lesson from Melania Trump

STARTUP

Ten Must Have Apps for Startup’s and Entrepreneurs

BIG DATA

Enough About Big Data, Let’s Focus on Small Data

HONESTY IN ADVERTISING

Online Marketing & The Great Santa Lie…

MOBILE SEARCH

The Changing Landscape of Mobile Search

LOCATION

LBMA’s Final Layer of Their 3 Layer Location Cake

SOCIAL

Social Media Crisis Management

OPINION

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> EDITOR’S LETTER Welcome to our August issue.

When I began working in the digital sector in 2001 I’d only recently signed up for my first email address. Yes, I was a digital late bloomer.

So if you’d told me back then that I’d spend the next decade and a half working ‘on the line’ I would have laughed at you. Today, I write this article on a laptop, seated by a beach in Thailand because that’s the world we now live in. We’re borderless. Always on. Hyper-connected.

Yet the freedom we experience today - access to unlimited information plus the freedom to roam – are simply the glossy front end of an industry that’s still finding its feet. A little over a quarter century since our industry’s inception we’re facing some critical skills issues that will shape what happens next.

Deloitte Access Economics recently launched its 2016 “Australia’s Digital Pulse” report, revealing that whilst the digital economy will grow from 5% to 7% of GDP by 2020, new LinkedIn data highlights that a major skills shift is underway in Australia’s economy.

ACS President, Anthony Wong, who commissioned the report, said: “LinkedIn’s data highlights that a significant and rapid skills transformation is happening in our economy.

Responding to this challenge will require governments, employers and the education and training sector to work collaboratively and, importantly, to reassess current approaches to both training and recruitment. A clear message from the Report is that our economy now needs ICT specialists with creativity, entrepreneurship and strategic business skills whilst non ICT workers increasingly require a base level of digital competency.”

of digital technologies such as cloud computing, data analytics, and other such developments in all aspects of business by people traditionally considered non-ICT workers.”

Managing Director for LinkedIn in APAC, Clifford Rosenberg, said: “We are already seeing widespread digital disruption across key Australian industries which is leading to skill shifts. It is imperative that businesses train their employees with both tech skills and soft skills required for the digital economy. Analysis of the 25 hottest skills in Australia shows that 17 of the most sought-after are technology related as more mainstream businesses integrate technology into their core business.”

Whilst the Report is focused on Australia, I’d argue that this skills gap is a global issue. Digital has become embedded in almost every industry, and many roles now have some form of digital component within them. Accordingly, digital literacy has never been more important to any country’s economic success as it is right now, so it’s incumbent on all of us to continually update our own knowledge and skills, as well as take the time to help the next generation bridge the skills gap they’ll face as they enter the market.

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It’s my hope that Digerati Magazine plays some part in helping everyone market smarter…

Christopher Edwards Editor in Chief, Digerati Magazine

Deloitte Access Economics partner, John O’Mahony, said: “The contribution of digital technologies to Australia’s economy is forecast to grow by 75% to 2020 and, needless to say, there is going to be strong demand for a workforce equipped to support this growth, and the opportunities that will come with it. The biggest driver of digital growth will be the greater use ISSUE 3, AUGUST 2016

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Weird Science:

Brain Computer Interfaces, Holograms and Rapid Prototyping

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hen television went mainstream in the late 1950’s it provided marketers with an unprecedented means to be seen and achieve massive reach.

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Likewise, the advent of the internet in the mid-90s offered marketers a new way to be found by, and interact with, potential customers worldwide.

More recently, the emergence of The Internet of Things, the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, and the commercial viability of 3D printing technologies are creating exciting new opportunities for businesses and marketers worldwide. These nascent technologies will shape the world in ways we can hardly imagine.

Of all the technology on the fringe of the market, there are three key sectors that may offered marketers of ‘the future’ new ways to stand out and engage.

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MARKET RESEACH VIA BIOFEEDBACK Today’s consumer is savvy, jaded and highly aware of being marketed to, something which poses a significant challenge for market researchers.

People taking online surveys or participating in market research workshops often have a sense of what’s behind the survey questions being asked, and as such have the opportunity to exhibit a measure of bias.

But what if marketer researchers could bypass bias that often occurs in traditional Q&A research, and

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instead harness technology built upon the next generation of applied neuroscience to capture bio feedback before bias occurs?

It’s somewhat timely that just as some commentators suggest that computer-delivered surveys and data collection methodologies are on the way out, the research team at EMOTIV have invested heavily in developing a technology that returns the computers role to front and center.

EMOTIV’s revolutionary Brain Computer Interface headset has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way market research

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is conducted in the future. Digerati sat down with Erica Warp, EMOTIVs Principal Neuroscientist, to better understand this technology and its application.

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Erica, can you tell me a little about your award winning technology?

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Our EMOTIV EPOC+ and Insight are wearable electroencephalography (EEG) devices that measure the electrical activity of the brain from sensors on the scalp. They are revolutionary because, unlike traditional EEG devices used for medicine or research, they are affordable, portable and easy to use, but still accurately measure what is going on inside someone’s head.

They democratize access to high quality brain data which is enabling completely new use cases for this kind of technology.

Medical and research grade EEG devices are tethered to a computer and so EEG recordings have historically been confined to the lab or hospital setting. Our wireless devices allow you to record contextual brain activity while people are going about their daily lives - when they are at the supermarket, at work, watching TV at home, etc. And you don’t need to be a big research institution or company to get started.

You can set up your own EEG research program or start quantifying your own cognitive health for just a few hundred dollars.

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Walk me through the practical applications of EPOC’s capabilities

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Our devices are able to measure the small voltage fluctuations from the brain’s activity which we can

deliver in “raw” form, but this kind of data is hard to interpret. So a big part of our R&D has been developing software that provides a handful of out-of-the-box detections that you can put to use right away.

We have algorithms that pull out Performance Metrics such as engagement, interest, excitement, stress, relaxation and focus, so you can tell what a person is actually feeling in real time. We are able to do this because our devices’ sensors (14 channels for EPOC+ and 5 for Insight) are placed in key areas across the scalp, so we are able to get a full picture of what is going on in all the major lobes of the brain.

We are also able to detect Facial Expressions, like eye blinks, smiles and grimaces, since the devices pick up the electrical activity from the muscles as well. And we have developed software that enables the wearer to train Mental Commands to control machines like lights, wheelchairs or games just with the power of their own thoughts. The devices also have 9-axis inertial sensors in them, so you can measure head rotation as well. All these software features mean you don’t need to be a neuroscientist to start getting real value from brain monitoring right away.

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What progress have you made in getting EPOC into use globally?

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We have seen an explosion of applications being developed using our technology all across the world and have a community of over 70,000 researchers and developers in over 120 countries. We have worked closely with the scientific community in the development and validation of our products and are proud to say that EMOTIV devices have been cited in over 1,500 published research studies.

Our community SDK also means

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that any developer in the world can easily start building applications that integrate brain monitoring.

Having such a broad reach is really exciting from a research perspective too in terms of the massive bank of brain data that we are collecting from people of various backgrounds and demographics.

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So what does all the above actually mean? What will be the impact of your tech?

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The broad range of applications that this technology enables is really exciting and continues to grow. For example, as an individual, you can learn how your brain is responding as you go through your day and optimize your brain’s health and performance. Developers can create reactive and personalized experiences that mirror or change people’s mood in domains like gaming, music, and VR/AR. Those with disabilities can write or control a wheelchair using mental commands.

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Scientists are able to do new kinds of contextual neuroscience research, so we are building a fuller picture of the science of the human brain.

And this technology adds in a whole new level to market research and usability research, since companies can directly measure brain responses to products and experiences, without needing to buy an EEG rig for tens of thousands of dollars.

The ability to evaluate people’s emotions and motivations and understand what controls their behavior is now much more accessible.

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How easy is it for brands / marketers to put into use?

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Very easy. Ease of use has been one of our priorities from the start. Our devices are

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simple and quick to put on and neither require sticky gel for good contact. The EPOC+ uses saline, like contact solution, and can be set up in a few minutes. For our Insight, we developed hydrophilic polymer sensors that draw moisture from the environment so you can start collecting data with this device in less than a minute. In contrast, other EEGs can take an hour or more to set up.

We’ve thought a lot about what brands and marketers would want to monitor inside the brain and that is why we developed Performance Metrics like engagement, interest and excitement to make it easy.

The data we return is time series information for all these metrics. By cross referencing this information with what the subject was looking at or experiencing at different moments in time, you can quickly begin learning what parts of a game were most engaging, what products were most appealing or what drew people’s attention the most, for example.

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monitoring gets to the source of someone’s emotions, preferences and motivations and can help us make better predictions about human behavior.

We see a future where brain wearables will be as prevalent as smartphones are today. In this scenario you can imagine how much we will be able to learn about the human brain, especially when coupled with other advancing technologies like eye tracking and VR/AR - and not just brains in general, but individual brains. Access to this kind of information about what is going on inside our heads will raise the bar in the marketing field as it opens up tremendous possibilities for the development of more targeted products and effective campaigns. ­

converts digital content into a 3D hologram, effectively placing this technology directly into people’s lounge rooms.

Likewise, Holho Smart transforms every single mobile device into a hologramprojector.

Available in three versions (smartphone, 7” and 10” tablet) on an investment starting around $100, it’s an affordable, lightweight hologram generator.

From a marketer’s perspective, this level of hologram technology gives brands the power to engage with consumers via their mobile devices, bringing their brand to life in their consumers’ hands. The potential power of moving 3D images to deliver truly engaging experiences that surpass anything currently possible across the internet is breathtaking.

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How do you see market research evolving in light of this new way to capture insight?

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Being able to monitor brain activity will allow market researchers to better understand their customers and companies to make more informed product and strategic decisions. Techniques like questionnaires and focus groups can be valuable, but humans are surprisingly quite bad at selfreporting and avoiding groupthink.

Tracking other biometric data like heart rate or pupil dilation can provide some information about someone’s internal state, but results can be hard to interpret since different emotions like excitement and fear can elicit the same physiological response. Brain

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THE POWER OF MOVING 3D IMAGES: HOLOGRAMS Moving out of consumers heads, for a second, and into their lives and lounge rooms, we’re now seeing the emergence of something Star Wars fans have eagerly anticipated ever since R2-D2 projected Princess Leia’s ‘Help me, Obi-Wan!’ hologram way back in 1977.

Today, hologram technology has become a reality. The successful Kickstarter funded Holus Interactive Tabletop Holographic Display

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However, consumers playing with your brand on their devices is simply the beginning of the 3D moving image revolution. Microsoft has invested heavily into driving the future of hologram technology and standards. They’re looking at holograms at an entirely new level.

Image: what if you had access to devices with the ability to perceive the world, breaking down the barriers between virtual and physical reality? Imagine wearing a VR device and seeing your physical hands as you manipulate an object, working

EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

on the scanned 3D image of a real object, or bringing in a holographic representation of another person into your virtual world so you can collaborate. You’d feel like Tony Stark, A.K.A Iron Man! In this virtual world, devices can spatially map your environment.

Manipulating digital content is as easy and as natural as picking up a box or sitting at a table. And you can easily teleport into your next meeting or travel together as a team.

Microsoft estimates the market for VR devices is expected to be 80 million devices per year by 2020. Yet one limitation is that many of today’s devices and experiences do not work with each other, plus most virtual reality experiences can’t mix real people, objects, and environments into the virtual world, making creation and collaboration difficult.

Microsoft has a solution to these challenges. They recently launched their Windows Holographic concept that’s coming to devices of all shapes and sizes, from fully immersive virtual reality to fully untethered holographic computing. Take a look at their concept video to see what 2020 may look like…

creation of products, prototypes and large structural objects. Today’s 3D printers are capable of producing fully functional products built on everything from plastic to titanium and even human cartilage. As 3D technology continues to evolve we’ll quickly be able to build even larger components, far faster, with greater precision and at lower cost.

In recent years there’ve been some truly exciting examples that show what’s possible. In Amsterdam, MX3D are in the process of 3D printing a fully functional, intricate steel bridge over water in the center of Amsterdam. MX3D equips industrial multi-axis robots with 3D tools and develops the software to control them, which allows them to 3D print strong, complex and gracious structures out of sustainable material – from large bridges to small parts.

Last year, Wired reported on a

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Chinese company that 3D printed ten houses on the outskirts of Suzhou, a city in eastern China.

The applications of 3D printing appear almost endless. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station 3D printed spare parts for tools. And a veterinarian team in Brazil 3D printed a new shell for a tortoise after his original one was destroyed in a fire.

On a smaller scale - where the opportunity truly exists for marketers – there are brands such as Nike, New Balance and Adidas using 3D printing technology to give customers shoes that are custom made for them. Similarly, U.S. based 3DSystems has been working with Hasbro to create 3D printed toys, as well as Hershey to create a 3D chocolate printer.

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For inspiration on how 3D printing is being used globally, take a look at this video…

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INTERVIEW

Scott Brinker on

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igerati sat down with Scott Brinker, author of Hacking Marketing, to discuss how the next generation of marketing technology, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning (and the impending technology singularity) will reshape the world around us.

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As this is our Weird Science issue, what in your view are the exciting emerging technologies in the mar-tech space?

machines writing copy, selecting the right image for the right content, picking the right music in videos in product demos etc.

So there are all these things that we have thought are the domain of purely human creativity and intuition, yet we are now seeing that machine learning can get to a place where it is able to provide actual functionality.

We are just at the very beginning of this, but I think it is going to be incredibly disruptive to the entire marketing operations world.

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Technologies around A.I. and machine learning are the most exciting to me. They seem to have hit a tipping point where they have moved from being artificial lab experiments to increasingly now powering applications that are genuinely useful.

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If you look at the marketing technology landscape today, one example where we see this is with the predicative analytics companies- they are actually getting really good at what they do. Yes, they tend to be domain specific - e.g. identifying customers at risk for churn, priorities and score leads in the sales pipeline - but within those domains they are becoming very powerful.

Now you even start to see machine learning applications associated with what has always been very traditional human oriented marketing tasks like >

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We have all seen the explosion of content marketing, but now there’s a whole bunch of innovation around interactive content.

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Do you think these technologies will be meaningful and make sense to consumers?

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I think that is already happening. A number of these chat interfaces that you run into on websites are powered by machine learning. Most people don’t care if they’re talking to a

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human or not, but the interesting thing is that at the end of the day, for marketing, it is less about whether the artificial technology application passes as human and more a consideration of does the technology pass the test of delivering value to the target audience or providing a great customer experience.

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Not to sound obtuse, but isn’t there a need to be wary of machines thinking for themselves, or on our behalf?

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There is a great book called “The Second Machine Age” and one of the things it points out is that we are at a special time in human history where the rate of acceleration of what technology is capable of, in particular around machine learning and A.I., things are going to change really rapidly over the next several years. I think that the authors give an optimistic view of how this can be a great thing for humanity to harness.

But the other side of that, which I think is a fair caution, is that this is going to be incredibly disruptive to existing organizations and how work has been performed in the past. So, I think the one thing you wouldn’t want to do as a marketer is ignore it. It is happening, it is real and it is going to change your profession significantly over the next 5 years.

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You mention disruption and pace of change fairly regularly, is there a need for a term to replace “Moore’s Law”

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which has become outdated in the digital sector?

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I haven’t heard a specific alternative, but the other angle of this is Kerswell’s graph of how we are approaching the singularity. Just look at the accelerating rate by which subsequent waves of technological innovation keep happening faster and faster and faster. That curve of his crosses a line where at some point the technologies themselves are creating other technologiesthey are smarter than we are.

And so I think that is the other dynamic. I think we are a ways off from the singularity but the dynamic for businesses of having to understand and adapt to these

successive waves of technological innovation at a rate that is quite literally exponentially faster than it was last century- that is probably the biggest single management challenge in business today.

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You’ve mentioned chatbots and predictive analytics, but what other technology clusters do you see taking off?

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One I am personally interested in is the set of capabilities around interactive content. We have all seen the explosion of content marketing, but now there’s a whole bunch of innovation around interactive content- where marketers are no longer creating

things that their audience passively consume, but are creating things that are more along the lines of utilities or services on your website or mobile app, ranging from games to more serious things like assessments and configurators.

Marketers now have the tools to be able to create these things as marketing vehicles, whereas before these tools were reserved for those companies with development teams and it was typically part of a core product.

A lot of this new technology around interactive content is democratizing that capability to a much wider audience, and I think it’s really interesting to see the creativity that marketers are now bringing to that space.

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APP MARKETING

Top 5 Tips for

App Marketing Success

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by Nic Blair, Brus Media

here’s no denying the rapid growth in user adoption of mobile applications in recent years and the impact this has had on the way marketers look to interact with their audiences.

Globally, app marketing strategies have matured at a far faster rate than many other digital channels, which is due in part to the rapid adoption of apps by market leaders and the resultant ‘copycat’ activity of smaller brands hoping to emulate their success.

Like any new(ish) medium, it’s vitally important to be crystal clear about your marketing objectives before you start allocating budget, equally so, you must understand the underlying requirements for marketing success within each medium before you take action.

Accordingly, here are five key areas you need to consider to ensure you make the most of your app marketing.

Mobile tracking may seem like an overly basic recommendation in an era where most marketers are carefully watching their Google Analytics to monitor the success of their desktop footprint, but in reality mobile app tracking and analytics is a completely different ball game.

It’s crucial to integrate a mobile tracking SDK from a provider like WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

Basic App Store Optimisation Optimising your app store listing from the moment you launch is something you need to take into consideration in much the same way you would your website. It is important to take each of the following elements into account to gain a strong click to download rate and assist your app in ranking for relevant searches:

• NOTE: Your uninstall rate is also a metric worth measuring as it has been mentioned by Google as a Play Store ranking factor

Cost-per-install marketing is a great solution if you are trying to achieve large scale in national or international markets.

Launch Strategy

• Encourage a high volume of user reviews with a strong average rating

Once you are ready to track your campaigns, nailing your launch strategy is important, particularly with Google Play. There is a 30-day period from going live in the app store in which you can rank in the Top New apps list. Launching your marketing strategy immediately in order to gain fast download volume from day one will assist you in ranking higher. Using incentivised downloads (explained below) are a great way to assist this.

• Gain reviews and links from external websites to your app store listing

Cost-Per-Install Performance Marketing

• Maintain consistent growth in user downloads as this impacts your top list rankings

Performance-based marketing is the best way to stretch your initial

• App Icon – ensure it stands out to encourage a click from the search results • Select the most relevant app store category • Use relevant, targeted keywords in your title and app store description

Mobile Tracking

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Tune, Adjust or Kochava in order to correctly track your in-app analytics, marketing campaigns and goals.

Integrating this will allow you to track your installs, create and track campaign URL’s, understand user behaviour and measure in-app events and goals so that campaigns can be optimised for your best performing sources.

• Add images and video (if possible) to your listing

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APP MARKETING

budgets. This is similar to cost-perlead or cost-per-sale activity that is familiar to most digital marketers, yet adapted for the new app economy.

Depending on the goals of your app campaign, there are two main options for you to consider.

Incentivised cost-per-install campaigns reward users for downloading and opening your app.

While it is of a lower quality of user, it typically comes at a cheaper rate and is great for increasing download volume and influencing app store rankings.

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far the best way for you to market your app if you’re looking for a very specific audience. The only downside to these sources is that they only offer CPC and CPM pricing models.

Irrespective of what mix of the above strategies and channels you use, it is important to monitor and optimise your campaign so that you achieve the lowest cost-per-install you can at an acceptable volume.

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Freepik

Non-incentivised cost-per-install is when you pay only once a user downloads and opens your app.

Typically non-incentivised campaigns will run through various ad units such as display banners, interstitial ads, app walls and in-app video ads.

This is usually the best type of longterm campaign if you are looking for quality and engagement as it allows ongoing optimisation of sources.

Cost-per-install marketing is a great solution if you are trying to achieve large scale in national or international markets.

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‘s Magic Leap Towards Augmented Reality Overload >

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he Augmented Reality sector has never been as popular as it is right at this very moment thanks to Pokémon Go. The Nintendo-owned Pokémon which was a hit in the 1990’s recently resurfaced, grabbing attention worldwide, becoming the most downloaded mobile game in history and dividing the planet for several weeks.

One group gleefully took to the streets at 2am on the hunt for virtual critters, whilst the remaining portion of the populace lay comfortably in their beds cursing the strangers giggling in their backyards. Irrespective of what camp you align with, the ultimate lesson here for marketers and app developers worldwide is to pay close attention to the way Nintendo brought Pokémon back.

Nintendo’s success is clearly the result of a strategy built upon several smart choices that anyone involved in developing an app would do well to follow. First, they clearly demonstrated that they understood their customers’ needs.

Nintendo knew their fans had pondered the idea of what it would be like to interact with Pokémon characters in real world scenarios.

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than tomorrow’s version of todays ‘ad overload’ that we all face when cruising the WWW. A future with more ads surely isn’t any sane person’s choice, especially after watching Keiichi Matsuda’s astounding HyperReality short film that shows a world where AR has gone rogue.

Second, to deliver their fans dream outcome they made the decision to move beyond the limited reach of the gaming console. They clearly understood that augmented reality lives in the mobile apps channel, so rather than choosing to use cumbersome AR tech like Oculus Rift, they built their entire experience upon a pervasive technology with inbuilt GPS technology.

Third, they truly ‘augmented reality’ by forcing real world interaction in the game, thereby making the user experience both highly social, experiential and visible.

Finally, they made the game near irresistible to the world by making it available for free to download on Android and IoS.

funding from the likes of Google to develop an optical system that goes a long way beyond what the shortlived Google Glass was able to do.

Essentially, a user wears Magic Leap glasses which beam light into the eye- in a noninvasive manner - so when a user sees the outside world through the glass they’re also seeing virtual elements that are projected through the edge of the glass. Take a look at their video for a peek into how Magic Leap technology may augment our daily lives in the future.

Watching this it’s clear that there are ways in which their technology may add value, yet it’s equally clear that the experience may be disruptive, invasive, and little more

Augmented Reality remains a relatively nascent industry, at least from a consumer adoption standpoint, with countless challenges to overcome before it gains mainstream traction. Technologies like Google Glass and Oculus Rift keep the tech boffins hearts aflutter, yet the very reason they’ve failed to catch on is because they don’t truly put the customer first.

Whilst Google and Facebook focus on delivering tech toys for tech’s sake, Nintendo are making AR palatable by delivering real world, shareable human experiences. So if there’s anything to be learned from the Pokémon Go launch its that today’s app developers and marketers should be wary of tech for tech’s sake projects, and instead, build their AR strategies much the same way that Nintendo has. If this happens then we stand a very real chance of seeing AR in everyday use minus any unnecessary visual and sensory ad clutter that’s choking the Web.

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Nintendo’s success in showcasing a practical demonstration of how augmented reality can be harnessed for marketing is commendable, yet it arrives just weeks after Magic Leap released their futuristic Minority Report style video trailer that did little to show practical ways in which their AR technology would do little more than add to the visual clutter of our daily lives.

Magic Leap is the secretive U.S. based technology company who’ve unobtrusively raised over a billion in

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USER GENERATED CONTENT

Lessons in Managing UGC Campaigns:

The McDonald’s NZ #Marketing FAIL

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o-creation is every marketers dream.

Encouraging consumers to share their thoughts, which can then be fed into the company’s innovation pipeline, resulting in emergent products that meet existing market need is a wonderful idea. Many Fortune 500 companies around the world have co-creation firmly imbedded in their product and brand innovation pipelines; Starbucks, FedEx, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and GE are just a handful of brands who are leading the way in this field.

Sadly, their success tapping into existing brand sentiment from their customer base has encouraged other brands to leap before they look; trying their hand at co-creation before taking the time to think things through and develop a framework for how a campaign should best be governed.

One fantastic, and thankfully lighthearted, recent example of this was the British Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) online project to crowdsource the name for their latest boat. As has been widely reported, the public spoke, and in no time at all the leading contender for a name was Boaty McBoatface. Funny, but no harm, no foul.

More recently, McDonald’s New Zealand has faced criticism - and understandably offended countless people, religious or interest groups -following the launch of their online Create Your Taste burger design

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competition. McDonald’s gave consumers the opportunity to create a custom burger using any of the ingredients offered on their menu, but then made the mistake of simply sitting back and watching as a PR disaster unfurled.

to guide the campaign, (b) define processes for how the campaign will be monitored and managed, and then, (c) allocate resources (technical, human) to keep matters in check so that campaigns never get out of hand.

Whilst most entrants chose to submit names in good faith, a percentage of submissions - such as Crispy Jews, Cream of Sum Yung Guy, Jewish Feast by Adolf H and Bush Did Nine Eleven- were clearly in poor taste.

McDonald’s New Zealand eventually suspended the competition, but not before news of what had developed entered the social sphere. Sadly, too late, damage done.

2. Avoid becoming an ‘Indian Giver’

So for marketers interested in tapping into the potential of cocreative campaigns and emulating the success of GE, Coca-Cola and Starbucks – and avoiding the career ending chaos of McDonalds’ NZ recent debacle – there are four key things that should be considered first.

1. Start with a Crisis Management Plan By all means release the reigns and give over control to creators out there. But before you do, think long and hard first.

The best question to ask to guide the creation of a Crisis Management plan for any UGC campaign is to ask: what could possibly go wrong?

Knowing this will you help you (a) define tight rules and regulations

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Boaty Mc Boat face caught worldwide attention, albeit for the wrong reasons, but NERC ended up experiencing widespread backlash for reneging on their campaigns promise to name their vessel after the most popular vote.

The lesson here, be careful what you promise at the outset.

UGC campaigns can very quickly move in directions that may not have been intended or that you may not be happy with, so it’s important to factor this in from day one. NERC could very easily have stated from the start that humorous names ‘were welcome but would not be considered in the final vote’ thereby retaining their reputation when the campaign ended.

3. Actively encourage consumers to share the love When #1 and #2 are clearly mapped out, then it’s time to split your effort between monitoring / moderation and actively encouraging your entrants to share their submissions. One of the most powerful untapped elements of UGC campaigns is the buy-in entrants

USER GENERATED CONTENT

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McDonald’s gave consumers the opportunity to create a custom burger, but then made the mistake of simply sitting back and watching as a PR disaster unfurled. have to their own submissions, so reward, encourage even bribe them to share the love and push their submissions out to their own networks.

A few seconds spent per entrant can have monumental impact.

4. NEVER EVER take your eye of the ball

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It’s likely that the worst submissions NERC had to deal with were lighthearted ones like Not The Titanic and Ice Ice Baby, however McDonald’s should have known from the outset that they would be the recipients of vitriol from online trolls who abhorred the McDonald’s brand.

Their single biggest mistake with their Create Your Taste competition was that they took their eye off the ball. Had they immediately taken down all submissions that breached the intent and ethics of the campaign as they occurred – only to be outed for enabling this to occur in the first place by the handful of people who would have noticed it whilst it was live – they could have easily apologized and proven that it only took them X minutes to resolve the breach.

But they didn’t, and the rest is #MarketingFAIL history.

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NATIVE ADS

Native Ads: Only Part of the Puzzle for Publishers

by Tobi Elkin, Native Adverting Institute

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tephanie Losee is no stranger to the quickly evolving world of branded content. She’s a hybrid, too—she was a business journalist before she became a branded content strategist. As managing editor, she led Dell’s successful foray into branded content, did a stint launching Politico’s in-house content studio, and is now VISA’s head of content.

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Losee is active on the speaking circuit, and serves as an advisory board member of the Native Advertising Institute, a Copenhagenbased association dedicated to advancing best practices for native advertising and branded content. She also serves as a jury member for this Native Advertising Awards this year.

Having worked on both sides of the content fence—brand and publisher—and as a journalist who’s passionate about finding sustainable business models for media, she has a unique point of view. I spoke recently with Losee about what she’s learned.

Tobi Elkin: You’ve sat on both sides of the table now—the publisher side and the brand side—and you were in on the ground floor of native, when Dell was one of the first publishers on Forbes AdVoice (now called BrandVoice), and the inaugural brand for the launch of The New York Times’ Paid Posts. What role do you think native advertising will play in

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contributing to publishers’ bottom line?

Stephanie Losee: I used to think bespoke native would be the savior of traditional publishers that were trying to find new pay models in the post disintermediation-of-media era.

But I now recognize that it’s just a piece of the puzzle. It’s far too laborintensive on both the publisher side and the brand side; it simply doesn’t scale in the way a genuine solution to the problem needs to scale, and in the way traditional advertising used to support investigative journalism.

Elkin: There aren’t many publishers and other industry stakeholders who talk specifically about which pay models will save journalism, but I know you raise that point quite a bit in your talks. Why do you think that is?

Losee: It doesn’t make sense for brands or publishers to discuss it too much in those venues. The Fourth Estate has suffered a nearfatal series of blows in the last decade. I think we all have a stake in strengthening it, but brands simply don’t need traditional publishers in the way they used to. Publishers don’t own audiences as they did before the Internet scattered them to the winds.

Now brands can target their customers individually. And publishers can’t pitch native as a partial solution to the hole that’s been blown through their business

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model, because it’s a weak position to take when you’re selling. But as a former journalist and then former brand managing editor who was creating brand content for a publisher, it was hard for me not to point out that there was a higher purpose in the mix. I would sometimes get emotional about it.

Elkin: What have you concluded about the solution for publishers to thrive now?

Losee: I’d hate to think we need to return to the patronage model, but when I observe The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos, I wonder if that’s where we’re headed. Then again, what I’ve come to believe is that publishers need to adopt a digital startup mentality that invests rather than cuts its way to growth, and Bezos certainly brings that mindset.

I think publishers that can recognize the current visual, mobile, and experiential nature of information consumption and deliver audiences to advertisers’ offerings through news and entertainment will succeed. And those that can’t shift to a nimble Silicon Valley mindset— sorry to frame it that way, but as a former New Yorker and current San Franciscan, that’s how I see it—will lose their businesses to digitalfirst publishers like Vox and Vice, and fast-transforming traditional publishers like The New York Times.

If that hasn’t already happened.

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Mo s t a

fazizi

NATIVE ADS

Elkin: Apart from publishers’ business and revenue models and how native plays into them, what do you think are the most important issues or questions we’re not raising about native advertising?

Losee: Research tells us that consumers still don’t understand what publishers and brands are doing when they publish native content. Even when the content is clearly labeled, the non-standardized nomenclature confuses people. I hate to think that we need to impose standardized terms on publishers, because one of the favorites of regulators is “sponsored advertising content,” which I abhor, but I think we have to consider the possibility that it may be necessary in order to restore trust.

Elkin: Since you’ve been on both sides, what is your view about what brands bring to the table vs. publishers (and agencies) in terms of native content creation? What

strengths does each bring, and what inherent weaknesses does each have?

Losee: Brands understand their business and messaging goals best, and know which topics and approaches are most in line with the company’s values and previous projects. Publishers know what resonates most with their audiences and own the measurement.

The creative spark often comes from the publisher’s in-house content studio or the external agency that’s working with the publisher.

When the three entities bring their greatest strengths together in one content project, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. It’s better than the best advertising, in my view, because on sites with clear labeling that drives audiences to the content through an ad unit, every reader who engages with the content made the choice to click and then made the choice to stay. The experience was not imposed on them; they were not interrupted.

Elkin: What are the distribution challenges of brand marketers and publishers with respect to native?

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Losee: Effective distribution beyond simple posting on the publisher’s site requires a lot of cycles. For example, which component of the project will play best on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and so on? Which headline is performing best and on which channel, at which time of day?

Again, much of the process is laborintensive—the very opposite of the programmatic direction publishers and media buyers prefer to go in.

Elkin: Metrics and measurement continue to be a challenge for native advertising. What metrics do we have, and what metrics do you, as a brand marketer, want, but don’t have?

Losee: A big publisher that I admire offers brands Nielsen ratings at the end of each campaign, but I struggle with the notion that a

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NATIVE ADS

Adobev

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When I’ve done reader surveys for native campaigns, I’ve been really pleased with what I’ve learned. native advertising campaign can be credited with a rise in sentiment scores over the course of the engagement. How can you be sure?

I’d love to conduct reader surveys for every project so I can be sure what the content prompted audiences to think or do that they weren’t thinking or doing before the campaign began, but it’s not practical. It’s what I want, though, and when I’ve done reader surveys for native campaigns, I’ve been really pleased with what I’ve learned.

Video completion rates and time spent on page tell me that the content captured a reader’s attention, but at this point I’m still in the dark about how that interaction moved a particular customer’s needle. I know that lead generation and

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conversion rates are persuasive to a lot of marketers, and they should be, but those kinds of proof points are too much to ask of editorial-style, sponsored content pieces. Content marketing is substantially reputational in its impact, and individual pieces are like rain in a barrel, collecting drop by drop.

Elkin: What do you think needs to happen for the industry to be able to offer brands the metrics they’re looking for?

Losee: This is in the category of be careful what you wish for, because I think we’re on the verge of having it—and we might wish we could turn back time once we do. I think companies like Google that capture

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data about our behaviors will be able to tell a brand that after a person engaged with native content, he or she then conducted searches or took actions that demonstrated enhanced interest or a shift in belief—evidence far beyond clicks from a piece of content to the brand’s Web site or registrations for an app. I have no doubt the data exists now, but the knowledge is discomforting.

Elkin: Finally, whose branded content or native advertising do you admire, and why?

Losee: I recently served as a judge for the 2016 Native Creatives Awards, and it was a privilege. It wasn’t fair at all to choose a winner from each group of finalists—it was akin to choosing your favorite kind of bacon. They all achieved a level of excellence that humbled me. I can’t disclose the finalists, so you’ll have to wait until July 19 to find out who I’m talking about. Look at every single one—as a group, they’re a de facto master class on what to do and how to do it.

Editor’s note: The piece was slightly edited from the original article that appeared on MediaPost.

CONTENT

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The #1 Content Marketing Lesson from

Melania Trumps RNS Speech

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gaff earned her some well-deserved criticism, but it also cost her personal ‘brand’ dearly. Hours after her speech, Statista reported that even before the Republican National Convention, a Gallup poll found that Melania Trump’s public image is less popular than other presidential spouses.

Statista’s July 21 Chart of The Day

Businessinsider

elania Trump’s speech on the opening night of the Republican National Convention was a textbook example of just how fast it’s possible to be caught out for plagiarism in our hyper connected world. Her extremely public gaff was picked up within minutes, driven by the broad media coverage of her speech as well as the deeply entrenched habit we all have of turning to Google when we have questions or smell a rat.

All it took was a Google search by those viewers who noticed her strangely familiar phrasing for the beginning of the end. The rest, as they say, is history. But whilst her gaff may have only embarrassed her pumpkin hued husband, it’s potential longer term impact is up for debate. Irrespective of whatever happens next, Melania’s speech provides a timely lesson for anyone who engages in content marketing: content pirates are too easily caught out.

It’s a relatively common content marketing strategy to adopt a mixed approach to developing content; typically using existing ‘owned’ content, sourcing new content and or curating content whether owned or ‘found’. And whilst ‘found’ content – such as the content your competitor has published - is useful for inspiration or benchmarketing your own efforts, problems quickly surface when ‘found’ content undergoes purely superficial curation before reappearing as ‘owned’ content.

Melania Trump’s public plagiarism

revealed that 28% of American adults find the Slovenian-born supermodel favorable, with 32% percent viewing her unfavorably and 40% percent of people had not heard of her or held no opinion. How does this hurt her? It hurts her because it has the potential to directly impact her husband’s campaign to secure the Commander in Chiefs seat.

Melania doesn’t fare so well when compared to other potential first ladies throughout the years. Statista reports that when Bill Clinton ran for office in 1992, Hillary Clinton

was viewed favorably by 55% of Americans. Tipper Gore was even more popular in 2000 with 57%, and Cindy McCain and Ann Romney also enjoyed favorable images with the public in 2008 and 2012 respectively.

Current first lady Michelle Obama was viewed favorably by 53% of U.S. adults in 2008, whilst Melania Trump, potential heir apparent to the role of First Lady, has the least favorable ratings of any prospective first lady that Gallup has measured since 1992.

So it’s no great leap to surmise that her public error has the potential to cost her husband the Presidency if it negatively impacts his billion-dollar brand reputation, a devastating result that most marketers would avoid at all costs.

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Truth is, marketers engaging in content marketing are under near constant pressure to source and create a steady flow of engaging content, so it’s easy to understand the urge to cut corners when possible. But Copyright law isn’t something to be trifled with.

As such, a simple tool to use before you publish any content you haven’t directly created yourself - especially content curated or created by third parties – is Google. If in doubt, take the time to cut and paste a few choice phrases into Google before you hit publish. It will cost you less in time to check first than it will cost you in damage to brand reputation if you fail to check and end up outed by your customers.

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STARTUP SUCCESS

E

xperienced entrepreneurs know that it’s only possible to effectively focus their time and effort on a handful of priority areas. Accordingly, they typically focus on ensuring they never run out of money, on building (and growing) their team and brand, relentlessly pursing a path toward profitability, whilst at the same time finding the time to maintain a sense of self and equilibrium in the midst of one of the most challenging

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experiences life has to offer.

The life of an entrepreneur isn’t meant to be easy, which is why it’s so rewarding when it pays off.

The good news for today’s budding entrepreneur is that technology has made it just a little bit easier to deliver against each of their core priority areas. Technology that can be freely downloaded to a smartphone enables virtual teams to be spun up in a matter of hours

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rather than weeks. Similarly, apps can be used to build and grow a brand even as the founder sleeps.

Apps are empowering a new generation of entrepreneur to freely pursue a path to profitability - at low cost –thereby ensuring their money goes further, their stress of high staff overheads is lessened (if even mildly) which helps the entrepreneur stay grounded and sane.

Apps provide founders with access to global talent, usually at a fraction of the cost. This, combined with the freedom from the burden of the need of a fixed address, means they can remain lightweight, nimble and competitive in a manner never before available. Their only challenge is choosing which of the million+ apps out there to invest their time and energy in.

Must have Apps for Startup’s and

Gettyimages

Entrepreneurs

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STARTUP SUCCESS

Well, if your aim is to kick off your startup armed with a broad suite of tools that give it immediate capability at the lowest outlay possible, then these ten apps will have you up and running today.

COMMUNICATION / PRODUCTIVITY Gmail Apps for Work: Outlook is so yesterday. Google Apps for Work is a smoother experience that works smoothly with their cloud storage (Drive) whilst giving you the ultimate email follow up tool: Boomerang. Send an email with an automatic reminder that goes out to the recipient after a few days if they haven’t replied. Genius!

WhatsApp: Some comm’s don’t need to be chapter and verse, so WhatsApp makes for a stable, secure short format messenger platform that works equally well in the office and on the road.

Google Drive: As noted above, Drive is a stable and secure free file sharing platform built into Google’s environment. It’s great for sharing spreadsheets for distributed project management.

MARKETING / RESEARCH LinkedIn: Another no brainer.

LinkedIn ensures you’ll never walk into a meeting again without knowing who you’re sitting down across the table from. Equally important, having a well written profile and a credible network opens doors far easier than you can do on your own.

Twitter: Mark Zuckerberg may not agree, but Twitter – in conjunction

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Gmail Apps: Send an email with an automatic reminder that goes out to the recipient after a few days if they haven’t replied. Genius! with LinkedIn - appears to be a far more effective channel for building a brand and establishing credibility than Facebook. As microblogging platforms go, it’s a fast way to build a following.

Buffer: What better way to keep your brand out there than through the use of an automated social content sharing platform. Spend a few minutes queuing up content at the start of the week and then sit back and let Buffer push it out across all your social channels for you.

CREATIVE / RAPID PROTOTYPING Canva: Possibly the best free platform out there for creating compelling visual social content.

Canva gives you thousands of predesigned social templates that give you the capability to design social assets in minutes, as well as create presentations that truly stand out from the crowd.

Fiverr: This is a terrific platform for rapid prototyping and research, with most work typically under $10. If you need a quick logo, a letterhead, some SEO keyword research or

design work done then connect with a supplier you like the look of and check your inbox the next morning.

Upwork: For when you want to take the prototype to the next stage.

Post projects and have people bid for your work. Agree terms, place money in escrow and you’re off and running. Offering everything from copywriting, design, web design to research, Upwork can quickly become your virtual creative and development team.

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FINALLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: INSPIRATION This one’s key. No entrepreneur escapes the need to stop and regroup and unwind. The TED app gives you instant access to a wide range of entrepreneurs offering hundreds of hours of free advice or inspiration whenever and wherever you need it.

Likewise, very few things clear your head more than an hour jogging around Central Park in NY tracking your performance with MapMyRun. It’s a great free fitness app that lets you track your performance and participate in fitness challenges with other members.

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BIG DATA

Enough About Big Data; Let’s Focus on Small Data First

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Businesses today have access to a greater wealth of data than at any time previously in mankind’s history, which is a good thing because this data can be an organisational asset.

So why are so few businesses taking the steps to harness this asset to improve their bottom line?

With all that Big Data can do - and is doing for the top end of town - many mid-size organisations are yet to take steps toward achieving measurable, sustainable results from their binary asset. For all the conversation being had in boardrooms around the world about the benefits of Big Data, it feels like there’s a very different conversation going on within smaller organizations: yes, we have data, but this doesn’t mean it needs to be priority #1.

For many businesses, Big Data itself has become the problem. A critical factor that’s inhibiting many businesses from achieving measurable financial returns on their binary asset is the fact they’re often as overwhelmed by the confusion over where to start as they are by the voluminous amount of data at their disposal.

It’s the Paradox of Choice: too much choice incapacitates. So what do

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Image courtesy of Reprise Media

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hen marketers ponder the promise of Big Data they typically look to three of its core promises: greater access to more accurate information and insights to empower marketers to make better informed decisions; costs and risks will be better controlled by leveraging predictive analytics; both of which will result in a competitive advantage being achieved.

marketers do when they are paralysed by choice?

One simple solution is to forget about Big Data altogether. Remove this unproductive catch phrase from the corporate lexicon immediately, and instead, focus on Small Data.

This simple shift in thinking creates a vital mental shift that gives marketers the chance toprove that data can have immediate value ifit’s simply focused on achieving incremental quick wins with data analytics by working with clearly understood smaller data sets.

Now, exactly which more manageable data sets an organisation chooses to work with will depend on the end goal. As noted earlier, marketers have a surfeit of data at their disposal, yet the most common sources at hand are; • Sales data: what customers consume (e.g. CRM data) • Insights data: what customers think (e.g. Surveys) • Website data: what customers like (e.g. Google Analytics) • Social data: what is being talked about (e.g. Tweet’s) • Search data: what is being

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searched for (e.g.

Intent) Most marketers use most, if not all, of these data sets so it’s not a huge leap to start working out how to best pair these previously disparate data sets to achieve commonly agreed outcomes. One marketer may choose to combine their social and search data to better focus their programmatic marketing efforts, whilst another may choose to use CRM data with survey data to better target key consumer segments. Truth is, it sounds simple because it actually is.

The move away from Big Data towards Small Data is a deceptively simple shift in focus that can quickly move a business from being paralyzed by everything that it is possible to achieve with data (at some illdetermined point in the future) to being unshackled to achieve known out comes today and tomorrow.

Working with Big Data requires Data Scientists, but Small Data isn’t rocket surgery, it’s simply a matter off finding a handful of complimentary data sets to play with today that deliver end benefits that go some way to proving the merits of investing in Big Data projects in the future.

HONESTY IN ADVERTISING

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Online Marketing &

paralipsis stratagem employed

by Optus with its ‘yes’ campaign. It’s a wonderfully subversive ad hominem attack on Telstra, who by merit of this linguistic device must be a ‘no’. It’s essentially one telco asking the other ‘Do you still beat your wife?”

One common sin of commission is how marketers and advertisers wield words to promote their products by treading the dubious line between a term’s legal meaning and its regular one. Case in point: the use of terms like ‘sugar free’ or ‘low fat’ appended to products that contain equally harmful substitute ingredients (don’t even get me started on the term ‘satisfaction guaranteed’).

Janelle Barlow, author of Branded Customer Service, rightly states that consumers have learned from long hard experience to expect advertising and promotions to overstate, over promise, and frequently under deliver – which I don’t have to remind anyone isn’t a good thing at all.

A common sin of omission is how some choose to cherry-pick compelling data as evidence from less than robust studies (e.g. 93% of women surveyed say they prefer X Brand). Or how we’ve all come to accept that there’s no need to have a disclaimer when the advertised ‘happiness’ we experience as we consume Coca-Cola is simply a sugar rush (rather than existential gain), or how the burger we discover inside the box at McDonalds rarely looks like the one on the packaging.

My personal favorite is the subtle

ille ev ric

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he dilemma many parents face regarding whether to lie to their children about Santa Claus is essentially the very same dilemma many digital marketer’s face when deciding how best to advertise and market their wares to consumers. Fact is, irrespective of where you stand on the Santa Lie, one thing holds true for children and consumers - neither like being lied to.

p Yo

The Great Santa Lie…

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So my advice for marketers (and parents alike) is to do everyone a favor and avoid Santa Lie situations.

Sure, there are some little white lies we will put up with (a burger that looks like a boxer’s face inside a McDonald’s box) but be aware that there’s a fifth column forming of disgruntled consumers who are eschewing major brands en masse for knowingly trying to deceive them with gimmicks and lies.

Consumers have learned from long hard experience to expect advertising and promotions to overstate, over promise, and frequently under deliver.

My advice, try aiming higher.

Delight us, rather than consistently disappoint us, and see what happens…

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MOBILE SEARCH

Changing Landscape of Mobile Search

by Bridget Randolph

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he mobile search landscape is evolving, fast. Underpinning this rapid evolution in the mobile space are the superior user experience mobile delivers over desktop, the broad utility and interactivity of mobile applications such as photos, geolocation, contacts, and the simple convenience that mobile devices provide everyday users as they move about the world.

For many, mobile has become the primary device for accessing the web, and this ever expanding adoption of mobile as the ‘first screen’ is forcing changes in the mobile SEO landscape. In 2015 Google revealed that more than half their search traffic worldwide is from mobile devices, so it’s important to understand how they are responding to this growing adoption of mobile search.

factor there was a 4.7% increase in the number of mobile-friendly sites worldwide. Google recently released a new version.

Accelerated Mobile Pages Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) allows content creators to build versions of pages with stripped-back HTML. This enables pages to load far faster as they are cached by Google and served within the SERP, thereby enhancing the overall user experience.

Mobile Friendliness In 2015, Google rolled out ‘mobilefriendliness’ as a mobile search ranking factor, causing some sites to almost immediately lose up to 35% of their mobile rankings. In response to their announcement of mobile friendliness as a search ranking

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Example (r-l): primary URL, AMP version onsite, cached page on served in SERP.

Mobile-First Design Google have moved towards a mobile-first design for the SERP in two main ways.

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The card-style layout allows easier distribution of content for different screen sizes:

MOBILE SEARCH

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● Social connections ● Time of day ● Browser Technologies are also becoming increasingly advanced, with: ● wearables that monitor physical activity and health signals (like heart rate), ● beacons which can pinpoint which side of the street you’re standing on, and ● phones that know whether you’re walking, running, cycling or driving.

“Old” Google desktop SERP App indexation is possible when the same URL links to a desktop page, its mobile version, and the equivalent content inside your app (e.g. deep linking), allowing Google to serve the most relevant version by user.

“New” desktop SERP without sidebar ads 2. Getting rid of sidebar ads on desktop search mimics the mobile search layout.

Integrating Apps with Web Search Google know that mobile users tend to spend most of their time on mobile devices using apps, which bypasses Google’s discovery process because they sit on the device itself. Their response to this has been to index and serve app content in web search results.

Longer-term, Google are moving towards “app streaming”, where app content is “streamed” via Google’s search interface, regardless of whether the user has the app installed.

By combining these signals with the public index (what we currently view as the Google search index), the private index (your emails, photos, calendar, etc) and app content, Google can know as much about your day-to-day activities as any human PA. This could easily result in a single interface for all types of searches, which eventually could evolve into an intelligent personal assistant ‘who’ can anticipate your next question before you ask it.

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Example of app streaming in SERP

The Future Google’s stated goal is to build an intelligent personal assistant. Sergey Brin recently stated that his vision when he started Google...was that eventually, you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all. Considering the contextual information which Google can receive through a mobile device, this vision doesn’t seem that unrealistic: ● Search history ● Language/Location

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LOCATION MARKETING

LBMA’s 3 Layer Location Cake 26

Driving LocationBased Transactions

by Asif Khan, founder LBMA

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t’s been called a lot of things in retail: the “till,” the “cash box” the “cash register.” Irrespective of what name you give it, intoday’s digital age, the manual cash register of yesteryear has evolved into an electronic scanning POS (point-of-sale) s ystem.

The retail checkout system we have today is based upon the decades old store-design concept that had consumer’s visiting stores to choose goods from shelves, before passing through a checkout to pay for what they’d purchased. Perhaps the single greatest disruption to the retail store is the fact that consumers have literally become the “point of sale.” They control

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where they shop, how they shop, how they pay, and where they receive their purchases. So, why do stores even need checkout lanes with “registers”?

The third layer of LBMA’s location cake is focused on converting the compelling experience you’ve created with your customers into transactions and revenue. Here, technologies like Apple Pay, near field communications (NFC), RFID, and loyalty platforms are key to winning the proximity-based payment war.

The continuing retail rationale for POS registers and checkout lanes The retail store is under pressure

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from many sides. In these days of e-commerce, the store must be highly efficient in order to remain competitive on selection and prices.

One of the stalwarts of efficiency is the process of using checkout lanes with registers so the fewest number of “cashiers” can process payments from as many consumers as possible.

Today’s consumers have in fact become their own POS Today’s consumer does NOT need a store to shop or make a purchase.

They literally have become their own “point of sale” through the use of their preferred device. Whether shopping from a computer at home or

LOCATION MARKETING

via their smartphone, the consumer can independently decide where to purchase, how much they’re willing to pay, how to pay, and whether they’d like you to ship to their home or rather to pick up in-store.

The consumer is now the point of sale — not the retail store or website!

Today’s “cash register” is literally a mobile device and an app. Cash transactions are now digital.

Consumer as the POS already in practice — Apple stores Removing the cash register and checkout lanes isn’t some wild theory.

It’s alive and thriving in Apple stores today. It has been for several years.

Associates are equipped with iPhones with card readers, giving them the power to enable consumers as a POS sale as they’re making purchase decisions right where they’re standing in store.

In Apple stores, consumers don’t queue up; the POS follows them around the store!

Apple, of course, isn’t the only retailer focused on the consumer as POS. John Lewis is another great example of an omni-channel retailer enabling consumer mobile shopping and the ability to purchase anywhere in a store. Many of the major department stores in the U.S. also are heavily focused on enabling mobile POS,

even though they retain their legacy “registers” and checkout stations.

Greatest predictor for store survival might be absence of checkout lanes One could make the argument that removing POS registers and checkout lanes won’t work in a store like Wal-Mart. Really? Why not? With the introduction of RFID tags, there would no longer be a need to scan individual items at checkout –RFID tags allow the entire cart to be scanned at once, as well as establish an added layer of theft prevention and security.

Retail store survival WON’T depend upon controlling costs. It WILL depend upon providing an experience that is consumer-centric and adds value to the customer first and foremost. The best place to start redesigning the profitable store of the future will be to remove the registers and checkout lanes.

The Impact Of Customer Engagement Fact is, it’s all about delivering authentic customer experiences.

Customers are getting savvier and they’re well aware of the difference between when retailers are actually connecting and when they’re simply promoting a brand. A recent survey states that 54% of consumers expect brands to understand them as people, and for their communications to be tailored to their values and preferences.

Interestingly, it showed also that a majority (55%) of consumers know that retailers are tracking their behavior without their permission,

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yet many didn’t seem to be bothered by that fact. The survey concluded that consumers are willing to share information and connect with retailers as long as they are able to reciprocate with tailored deals and rewards that the customer actually cares about.

What retailers haven’t yet realized is that it will NOT be their choice to make — it will be today’s empowered omni-channel consumer who will decide.

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Having Your Cake And Eating It Too The bottom line is that if retailers want to remain relevant it’s about understanding at all times “where” the target customer is, deciding which marketing media is available in that place that can be used to influence them, and then driving the impression to a transaction.

It’s about the integration of people, places and media.

Retailers must stop the one-off pilots in location technology, and instead embrace a full fledged strategy that spans all 3 layers of the cake focused on driving traffic, creating engagement and converting to revenue!

ISSUE 3, AUGUST 2016

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SOCIAL MEDIA

How to Handle

a Social Media Crisis 28

in 5 Steps

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f course, we hope it will never happen to your brand. But the truth is, since the outburst of social media there have been thousands of businesses, both small and gigantic, that have suffered from a social media crisis. Some handled it well, some made it so much worse, some ruined their brand forever. So it doesn’t happen to you, here’s a quick list for what to do before the possible crisis and when/if the dark hour comes.

1

Have a plan.

You know everyone says that. Don’t cure — prevent.

Have a plan. Be prepared. In reality, it’s hard. The very definition of a crisis implies that you were not prepared for it to happen. But it doesn’t hurt to go through at least some preparation. The relatively quick and easy bits at least.

Take a moment to gather PR, HR, legal, marketing, and other relevant teams (people) to set up some rules. Discuss: • Legal or moral issues that might lead to a crisis (e.g., having an online conversation about an alcohol brand with an underaged) • Use of profanity or hate language (sexism, racism, etc.)

• Use of any other questionable language (discuss the use

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ISSUE 3, AUGUST 2016

by Alina Gorbatch of Awario

of appropriate humour, sarcasm, etc.)

• Response times Answer questions, such as: • Who will handle your social media accounts in case of a crisis?

• What will that person be authorised to write on social media?

• Will they need approval for every post?

Besides, make sure that all passwords to your social media accounts are readily accessible to the ones responsible for handling a crisis.

2

Monitor your brand.

This is the first and most important thing you should be doing. Before you burn me on a stick for being too promotional, listen: you can’t possibly handle a crisis you are not aware of. It can happen on every relatively big social media site. Not only Twitter and Facebook, not only the sites you are marketing on. Moreover, the flame can appear on someone’s blog, on some local news site – anywhere. And if you only find out about the crisis when it has been re-posted on Twitter/Facebook – you are too late.

That’s why tool’s like Awario monitor everything.

3

SOCIAL MEDIA

Know what is and isn’t a crisis.

There are three characteristics of a social media crisis.

a. Information asymmetry – when the public knows more about what’s going on than you do. b. A decisive change from the norm. Many brands are criticised harshly, but routinely: McDonald’s for increasing the world’s obesity, Apple for labour practices, Victoria’s Secret for employing borderline anorexic models. This is all horrible, but not critical. The second sign of the crises means a different, unexpected line of criticism.

c. A potentially material impact on the company overall. It is the scale of the problem that constitutes the third sign of a crisis. Forgetting to get a table at a restaurant reserved for your client isn’t a crisis. Horse meat in your burgers is.

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7. If possible, respond directly to anyone directly affected by the crisis immediately. However, avoid “stock” responses – they irritate the public more than they help.

8.

Social media crises are harsh, overwhelming, and hard to handle. Thousands of hateful comments, just and unjust, may hit you like a hurricane. It is extremely important not to fight back. Don’t be defensive, don’t justify your actions, don’t hide from criticism. Instead, your tone should be polite and humble.

9. Pause all scheduled posts. They might come out as insensitive and irrelevant. Or indeed hilarious, like when this Tesco’s scheduled tweet came out right after the huge “Tesco’s burgers contain horse meat” scandal.

After you’ve decided you are facing a crisis, monitor how it develops. Is the issue getting more visible or less? Are there any people with a large influence involved?

4

Respond.

This is understandably the hardest part of the process. Keeping in mind all legal issues related to your brand, your main course of actions should be as follows: 1. Inform all employees about the crisis and let them know that they should not intervene (except for the “crisis” team, of course) 2. Respond fast. Responding in more than 24 hours after the breakdown may cause serious damage to your company.

3. Acknowledge the crisis. Let people know you are aware it has happened.

4.

If you don’t have enough information to reassure the public, let them know you are looking into the matter.

Update them with every new piece of information.

5.

If the crisis has been caused internally, the CEO should take full responsibility for the issue in a public statement. A statement must show compassion and their full commitment to the issue. It should be posted on the original platform (where the crisis broke down), and then re-posted to others.

6. If the crisis has been caused by an offensive online post/ comment, make sure to delete it. However, don’t delete (and that is crucial) any of the public comments, nor any re-posts of the original statement. By deleting your company’s offensive post you are showing respect and understanding, not trying to hide the fact.

P.S. Not everyone found this coincidence funny and thought Tesco was just careless.

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10. If the crisis is particularly serious, set up a crisis FAQ website. It should include:

• Acknowledgement of the crisis;

• Details about the occurrence;

• Specific actions taken in response;

• Real or potential effects;

• Steps taken to prevent future occurrence;

• Contact information for real people at the company.

5

Evaluate.

As any other major event, a social media crisis should be evaluated. Evaluate positive and negative aspects of dealing with the experience. Discuss:

• How fast was the crisis team alerted;

• Did everyone know what they were supposed to do;

• What kind of crisis was it (external or internal);

• How was the public informed;

• How did the public react and why;

• Could the crisis have been avoided.

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