Digerati Magazine October 2016 Issue

Interview with the Founder of NewsJacking Branded VR & 360 Video #CatsNotAds Create Smiles of Awareness Why Does Twitter Struggle with Innovation?

The In’s & Out’s of Facebook Targeting China Internet Plus

GLASSHOLE 2.0

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CONTENTS

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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.

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Click here to suggest a topic or submit a question.

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14 FEATURE: Interview with the Founder

04 of NEWSJACKING

FEATURE: Branded VR & 360 Video,

08 Experiencing is Believing

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17 2

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20 ARTICLE: Evolving What a Brand Means

12 in a Digital World

ADVOCACY: #CATSNOTADS Creates

14 Smiles of Awareness

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MOBILE: Can Data Conquer the

16 Mobile Ad Blocking Global Trend?

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CRM: CRM Isn’t About Ease of Use

17 & Customer Service; It’s a Data Play

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EDITOR’S LETTER Don’t Fear the Vendor

SOCIAL FEATURE

Interview with the Founder of NewsJacking

WEARABLES

Snap Inc. Does What Google Couldn’t – Exemplifies Privacy By Design

VR

Branded VR& 360 Video

DATA

Consumers Don’t See Big Data.

They Experience Content.

DESIGN

Evolving What a Brand Means in a Digital World

CROWDFUNDING

#CatsNotAds Create Smiles of Awareness

VIDEO

Consumers Call for Improvements in Online Video Advertising

CRM

CRM Isn’t About Ease of Use & Customer Service

SOCIAL

Why Does Twitter Struggle with Innovation?

INSIGHT

The Benefits that a Psychologist Adds to Web Design

APPS

How to Identify ROI from a Mobile App Floyd

VIDEO

85% of Companies Realize Success with Video Marketing

SOCIAL

The In’s & Out’s of Facebook Targeting

AUTOMATION

High Performing Marketers Emphasize People Over Tech

MOBILE

Can Data Conquer the Mobile Ad Blocking Trend

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EVENTS

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AI

China Internet Plus

A.I., Machine Learning & Big Data

OPINION

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> EDITOR’S LETTER As I move closer to my 20th year in the digital sector I’ve come to realize two things. First, we work in an industry that’s young enough to still be exciting, yet just old enough to have developed some bad habits. Second, we have to outgrow some of our bad habits for our industry to evolve.

First example of this is ‘the new-new thing’. We work in a sector with circa 4,000 technologies that marketers can use to achieve their aims, whatever they may be. Some are purpose built for tracking insight across multiple channels (e.g. Hootsuite), whereas others are designed to achieve operational efficiencies, such as reducing staff time answering emails (e.g. chat bots).

What’s interesting about these two examples is that both technologies have a very specific purpose and a measurable ROI. Yet there are still countless marketers out there who still haven’t deployed social listening in their organization who wouldn’t even consider chat bots - but are enraptured with playing with the new-new thing, simply because its new. They’ve bought into the hype.

My point is that I firmly believe the majority of marketers need to fundamentally rethink the way they evaluate and onboard new technologies. It’s no surprise that technology chosen as a ‘hygiene factor’ is common, which makes sense from a competitive standpoint, but what’s surprising is that too many marketers have prioritized playing with new-new tech over deploying technology that meets an existing need, delivers a competitive advantage, and that has a measurable ROI.

will deliver value to the business at the point that is most important: the customer.

Which brings me to my second point.

Marketers have learned to fear vendors after a quarter-century long explosion in technology, after receiving countless pitches and invitations to try their new-new thing. So yes, there’s some merit to being wary of vendor overdose, but any wariness needs to be firmly offset by the fact that vendors are usually some of the smartest marketing technologists in the world.

Further, it’s the vendors who lead with the ‘why’- why their technology meets, or exceeds, customer expectations or needs – that will reshape the industry and make us all better marketers. So it’s my hope that this magazine helps you recognize the mainstream technologies that are available to you, whilst helping you understand the capabilities and applications of emerging tech.

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If just one article or case study helps you to market smarter, that’s great news to us.

Christopher Edwards Editor in Chief, Digerati Magazine

I’m absolutely certain that marketers should play with new tech. I’d even go so far as to say we should all be investing 5-10% of our time and budget toward playing with, evaluating, and learning from the new-new thing. But that’s all.

We need to remember that the other 90% must take priority. The 90% that has technology or service gaps that need to be filled, the 90% that

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REAL-TIME MARKETING

Interview with

founder David Meerman Scott

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ewjacking has been around for a while now, yet month after month we witness brands failing on a near epic scale as they try to leverage this technique to claim their 15mins of fame. This negative attention on newsjacking has caused many brands to write it off as nothing more than a cheap PR stunt, yet in doing so they’re missing the point of this proven marketing tactic, which if done well, adds value to the brand and end consumers.

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newsjacking to insert their brand into breaking news and online conversations.

Q

How did you come up with Newsjacking and turn it into what it is today?

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Coined by David Meerman Scott, newsjacking is ‘the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to generate tons of media coverage, get sales leads, and grow business’. In simplest terms, it’s the process of leveraging trending news to elevate brand messages.

I started my career on a bond trading desk in New York City and we used real time news sources from Dow Jones and Reuters in real time instantly to trade bonds. So, very early in my career, and this is before the web, I was exposed to the power of real time news. Later on in my career, I actually worked in the real time news industry and my job was to help build products around real time news that were used by corporate clients and in the financial markets.

Whilst some brands have excelled at newjacking – case in point, the too oft quoted Oreo Superbowl tweet - many are still figuring out the rules to “real-time marketing”. Digerati sat down with Newsjacking founder, marketing strategist, and bestselling author David Meerman Scott to discuss the right way vs. the wrong way for marketers to successfully employ

I had this incredible background around how real time content was being used, and then fast forward to about 5 or 6 years ago and Google changed their algorithm to allow blog posts to be updated in real time. Then, right around that time, Twitter started to take off as a medium that a lot of people were using, and of course both of those things meant that we had the ability

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to communicate in real-time.

Blog posts were being indexed instantly, if you sent a tweet it was visible instantly, if you used a hashtag people could find it. I realized that this allowed anybody to do the sorts of things that bond traders were doing and people using real time information were doing, which was essentially being able to create instant content and use that to generate attention around a breaking news story.

Q

How do you see brands and consumers benefiting from newsjacking?

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I created the concept around getting your expertise into the market at the moment that your expertise is useful – and that’s exactly what journalists have been doing for ages - and this allows anybody to become a real time journalist.

The initial concept is around somebody who has a particular idea or expertise or experiences, and then when there is a breaking news story, reporters are constantly looking for a new source to quote.

REAL-TIME MARKETING

People who might be interested in a product or service are constantly looking for people who might be able to help them and, getting your ideas - if you are an expert - into the market place at the precise moment makes absolute sense.

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Can you walk me through an example?

A friend of mine is a lawyer in California. He creates blog posts to provide expert commentary on the legal aspects of news stories, and that way, reporters and editors and people who have the same legal challenge – if they are doing a search - they can find my friend’s legal commentary. That’s a perfect example of the concept of

newsjacking, in that if there’s a story breaking that has legal ramifications in some way – he’s able to provide his commentary as a recognized expert. The media quote him and perhaps a new client will find him.

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That makes sense, so why all the fear of newsjacking?

Newsjacking took a strange turn after the outage that took place at the Super Bowl a number of years ago when Oreo tweeted “you can still dunk in the dark”. Now that was clearly newsjacking, in that there was news happening and they took advantage of it and sent out a tweet, and it was funny, and it was interesting and a lot of people picked up on it.

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The challenge, though, is that a lot of people who’d never heard of newsjacking all of sudden heard of it - whether they use my term or not and a lot of people then thought that newsjacking is more frivolous than it is, that it involves humor. People assumed they could exploit ANY news story and then got slammed in social media because they were doing silly things.

We saw marketers trying to leverage natural disasters, there was a whole bunch of ridiculousness around the death of Prince a couple of months ago, and all other sorts of tragedies. So, newsjacking has in some circles gotten a negative connotation and that’s just because people who don’t necessarily understand the concept have done silly things.

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We saw marketers trying to leverage natural disasters, there was a whole bunch of ridiculousness around the death of Prince a couple of months ago, and all other sorts of tragedies.

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REAL-TIME MARKETING

Q

Talk me through a ‘safe’ way for brands to start newsjacking…

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I think you need to focus on your expertise. That is the unique value that you can bring to the market. And I do think that anybody can. One immediate example that comes to mind is a hairdresser: you run a boutique hair salon and you clearly have expertise around how to make people’s hair look good.

So you watch events where people are focused on fashion like the Academy Awards - and then develop an approach where whenever there is an opportunity that people are tuned in and focused on fashion and hair you could comment on it using your skills on Twitter, or a blog, or a video and put it on your website. Then, when people are looking for a hairdresser, I’d be surprised if, after a couple of months, you didn’t appear at the top of the results when someone searches for a hairdresser in your area.

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Q

What are your tips for brands when their newsjacking backfires?

A

Before I even go there, I would say that we need to back up and consider a few other matters first to avoid a backfire. First of all, unless you have a very, very legitimate tie to a news story you should always avoid news stories that have a negative connotation.

So, if it involves death, destruction, loss of property, misery things like that - unless you have a legitimate reason and a legitimate tie, those stories should always be avoided.

Secondly, newsjacking works best when you have a way that you

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can tie your expertise to the story that is happening. So focusing on any old story in the news doesn’t work so well. What does work is that you wait, and it might only happen once a month, but you wait and when a story does appear that is clearly in your area of expertise, that is the time to create something quickly.

The first thing I would do is build your reputation and create content ahead of time.

The third thing is that you then think about how you create an environment within your team and organization that allows you to focus on real time engagement when the moment is right. And inevitably these sorts of things happen when you least expect it - on a weekend, on a holiday, a Sunday night - it won’t be at a convenient time when people are around waiting for something to happen. So, you need to have a culture in your organization that allows certain individuals to create the content that we will put out when there is an opportunity to respond to a particular story, and the relevant authorities are in place. So I think these three things are very important for people to concentrate on, especially avoiding stories with negative connotations.

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Q

What are the three things marketers need to know before they start newsjacking?

A

The first thing I would do is build your reputation and create content ahead of time. The more you do this, the more likely you are to be seen as a trusted resource when the time comes to do this type of marketing. You can’t create a brand new twitter feed and expect immediate results on your first attempt at newsjacking.

I recommend that people create a blog and create a twitter feed and just get started. Create content, build a following and get people interested so that when the time comes to newsjack, you will get noticed.

Secondly, create an infrastructure within the organization so that people understand this concept of newsjacking and how to use it, and then who has the authority to use newsjacking so that they don’t have to ask for permission when opportunities arise.

Thirdly, I would create a way of monitoring what is going on in the news that you could possibly take advantage of. And there are two forms of that: one form is monitoring keywords, or terms, or companies in your industry or geography for example with Google News or Google Alert, Twitter, Hootsuite etc., but I also strongly recommend that you have to be open to serendipity.

You have to be open to that happy accident news story that you never saw coming. If you are only looking at keywords, then by definition you are going to miss the story that you never saw coming. No one could have anticipated the black out at the Super Bowl, so you have to have an open mind.

WEARABLES

Snap Inc. Does What Google Couldn’t –

Exemplifies Privacy

by Design

by Christopher Edwards

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f there’s one thing to learn from Snapchat’s new camcorder sunglasses it’s that when products and services are designed from the ground up with the consumer in mind, they’ll have the best chance of succeeding.

Snapchat’s trendy new Specs are a fantastic example of this because they put the privacy of people on both ends of the lens front and center. It’s Privacy by Design.

For those who’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few days, Snap Inc. – formerly Snapchat – has announced the imminent release of a pair of sunglasses able to capture 30-second circular video clips with a 115-degree wide view lens. The Spec’s themselves are rather trendy, though only available in limited colors, yet the coolest part of the Specs isn’t what they look like, it’s how they show respect for privacy.

The moment you begin recording the world knows about it, via a light mounted in the frame of the specs that lets people know they’re being filmed.

Privacy by Design is an approach to systems engineering which takes privacy into account throughout the whole engineering process.

The concept is an example of value sensitive design, whereby product designers take human values into account in a well-defined manner throughout the whole design and

product development process.

Something Google didn’t do with Glass.

Let’s be honest, there was evident social stigma attached to being seen wearing Google Glass - resulting in the aptly coined term Glasshole - for the types of people who proudly chose to wear the offending $1,500 accessory designed for the dork about town. Snap Inc. have clearly worked hard to overcome the lingering cynicism for face-bound wearable-tech by developing a stylish and safe ‘must-have’ product for the dedicated life-casters out there.

In an era where consumers crave a measure of transparency from the brands they buy into – where transparent is the new black – Snap Inc. have developed a product that serves their own needs (giving

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people a handy tool to capture more video to share on their platform) whilst showing deep respect for user privacy, as well as the privacy of the person caught on camera.

Google Glass created an environment where people were subjected to the potential for “always on” recording. Living like this, with a constant fear of being caught on camera, alters how people behave.

Glass also gave prospective stalkers and creeps in general the ultimate tool for taking invasive photos of women in public without their knowledge.

Snap’s Specs have ducked this.

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The other privacy issue that Snap Inc. has gotten right from day one is how they treat video footage that’s captured.

Video is stored on the device – not automatically sent to the cloud - and can be wirelessly offloaded to a phone over Wifi or Bluetooth. All of the data captured by Glass - photos, videos, audio, location data etc. – is stored on Google’s cloud servers, where Google owns the data and has the ability to analyze it to develop profiles of individuals.

So irrespective of whether you’re a dedicated life-caster already salivating at the prospect of getting your own Specs, or you’re someone who wouldn’t put them on at any price, what no one can deny is this is the first real-world product spawned from a previously online only brand that has a real chance of changing the game. Time will tell if Specs go the way of Glass. I hope not.

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VIRTUAL REALITY

360videobal

Branded VR & 360 Video

‘Experiencing Is Believing’

by Ryan Bodger, Content Director / Founder at NowWeCollide.tv

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We used to say seeing is believing.

Now we have to say ‘experiencing is believing’.

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t seems about 1 in 5 briefs I work on at the moment have a VR component with an interest from brands and agencies looking to explore the possibilities of the immersive and engaging world of 360 video and virtual reality.

The next 18 months will be a telling time to see how audiences transition from standard video viewing to embrace VR and invest in a personal headset, closing themselves off from the real world to engage with the most immersive form of content.

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For anyone that has put on the Samsung Gear VR, Vive of Oculus, there is usually a wow moment when you realise just how immersive and engaging the VR world can be. One thing is for certain we are just at the beginning of where the technology will lead us and it will be exciting to see what other AR/VR players like Magic Leap, Sony and Microsoft can bring to the table. Let’s just see if Apple will make a move in 2017/18. Let’s hope so.

We know that premium publishers and tech giants are getting on board with big investments - USA

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Today, the New York Times, and AOL are making big VR plays. Google is working on a VR version of Chrome.

NBC and Samsung broadcasted the summer Olympics in VR. Hulu, Crackle, Jaunt, and Within already have dedicated apps, or “theaters,” where viewers can consume massive amounts of VR content.

Other media powerhouses and film studios including Live Nation, Vice Media, 21st Century Fox, and the Walt Disney Company are placing big bets on VR with large-scale investments.

VIRTUAL REALITY

The NBA (National Basketball Association) has also started creating longer form VR experiences with its mind blowing VR production ‘Follow My Lead’ which tells the story of the 2016 NBA finals, taking audiences behind the scenes for an experience like no other.

Now more than ever we are seeing significant brand dollars being spent on VR experiences that prove that content innovation can lead to commercial investment, leaving audiences feeling inspired by the bravery and courage of a brand to do something different in the VR space.

adults that found the majority of consumers—71 percent of them— feel that VR makes brands seem “forward-thinking and modern.”

However, there’s even better news for brands’ bottom lines: 53 percent of respondents said they’d be more likely to purchase from a brand that uses VR than from one that doesn’t.

“We’re seeing specific VR activities have unique emotional footprints, offering fascinating insights for those who are considering their VR strategies,” Steve Marshall, svp of research and consulting for Greenlight VR, said in

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experience. When people are in groups with one person viewing a VR experience the viewer doesn’t want to feel trapped inside for too long (4-5mins max) and will want to share or talk about their experience soon after. When a viewer is alone with VR, the sky’s the limit, a viewer will stay engaged for longer and want to stay immersed.

‘Virtual reality by definition intensifies the impression of reality.

All of the viewer’s senses are heightened including sight, sound, and motion; content that delivers fully immersive experiences will be in high demand.’

This potential for VR storytelling will take branded entertainment to a whole new level. Imagine Apple showcasing its VR capable Iphone 8 (yet to be released) where viewers can take part in a Mars landing and film the experience in first person using features on the Iphone 8.

Viewers could zoom into the phone to play with a realistic, 360-degree model of the device or even watch a video shot with that new device, thereby zooming into an entirely new storyline set on Mars.

Great example of a brand investing in VR https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aJmEkcJtUL8 One thing we know for sure, is that when you are inside a VR experience you are the most captive audience a brand can have and the experience you create needs to be compelling. There is no other form of media right now that is as immersive as a VR experience and brands need to take advantage.

The Numbers *Greenlight VR released results this week from its survey of 1,300

a statement announcing the findings.

Even those who have never experienced VR had good things to say about the technology, with 91 percent reporting positive feelings after watching an informational video about it. Among those who haven’t tried VR, 65 percent were interested, 32 percent were surprised at what it could do, 25 percent felt “happy” and 58 percent reported being “amazed.”

What is the perfect brand VR Experience?

It comes down to the brand objectives and how people will contextually be viewing the

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Production Value There are a number of aspects when considering the production value of producing VR or 360 video content.

VR is not the same as 360 Video.

While 360 video can be packaged up as a VR experience, there is a difference. 360 video is effectively filming a real world environment with a 360 camera, which can be produced in 2D using a whole range of cameras from consumer to prosumer or in stereoscopic 3D using more high-end professional grade equipment.

Once captured 360 video can have 3d, overlay graphic elements or

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VIRTUAL REALITY

interactive hotspots added to make the experience more engaging.

A great example of a mixed live action 360 video shoot and 3D environment can be seen here with Google Spotlight Story Help:

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=G-XZhKqQAHU 10

HELP uses a mix of studio, 3d and real world 360 video. This is of course a pretty amazing experience best viewed in VR and not desktop.

channels) within the phone’s limited resolution. Oculus CTO John Carmack explains, “People that are resolution-picky will probably prefer monoscopic videos, which can have twice the resolution of stereo

videos. The stereo effect may not be worth anything to you if you can’t get past the blurring.”

VR environments, games and stories that are completely virtual are created in 3D and compiled using software like Unity 3D or Unreal Engine.

2D vs 3D If done right, VR created as a 3D experience is always going to be more compelling, while 2D is a great way to create a high resolution experience and keep production costs down. Poorly implemented 3D x 360 video footage can cause a great deal of discomfort to the viewer including headaches, eye strain or nausea. With a 2D video, you’re getting more resolution out of the device because you’re not having to stack the left and right channels (or top and bottom

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How To Get Views?

Virtual reality viewing roughly falls into 3 categories. First is desktop and mobile video play with no headset (think Facebook or YouTube 360 native players). Next are expensive headsets tethered to a computer, aimed mostly at gamers, like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. Finally there are mobile viewing experiences that combine with a smartphone, like Samsung’s Gear VR or Google’s Cardboard.

Marketers need to think about how and when audiences will be viewing their content and ensure they are driving people to experience branded VR through a quality headset. This should be coupled with distribution of content to key VR publishers for optimal reach across platforms and devices. As with any type of video content distribution and seeding strategy is paramount.

BIG DATA

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Consumers Don’t See Big Data.

They Experience Content

by Simon Williams, Head of Global Media Partnerships

1. The larger the organisation, the bigger the challenge Measurement and attribution are still the hottest topics in our industry – but at what cost does this come to a client partner who actually chooses to buy media using multiple platforms?

Stitching together multiple data sources not only provides room for error, but a high cost and labour to tag all traffic of many client partners where the internal stakeholders all have a role to play, not only in implementation, but the ownership of their respective channels. The larger the organisation = the bigger the challenge.

Planning processes should consider your client partners’ consumer from a psychographic, behavioural, socioeconomic and mosaic profile. Whilst we are able to target an audience on paid search using creative, social media and display should be intrinsically aligned to these forms of targeting.

Unfortunately finding the skill set

that is able to think like a traditional media buyer in an online world is an even bigger challenge and something we must strive to educate and train.

Shutterstock

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ontent has been around since the spoken word, in fact there are cave drawings in Australia that go back seventy thousand years. My point being that content as a channel is not new but as an industry we are treating it with the same suspicion as dark matter. Channels shouldn’t be bought or planned in isolation but they should most certainly have their own emphasis whilst being dovetailed together with an overarching communication strategy.

2. The ‘mundane’ matters In search agencies, technology should do the ‘heavy lifting’, but with the rising buzz word of ‘big data’, is anything to be considered mundane?

I believe more in making the mundane 100% actionable whatever the technology we use. Leveraging conversion and analytics teams we can blend our reporting tools to create an agile process for optimising our data.

With so many ‘half baked’ products and technology in the industry fed by the application programming interfaces of an ever changing landscape, we crave the ability to take data and simply press a button to make it actionable.

3. Understanding – then explaining – the power of social We no longer buy keywords, we buy audiences.

We all need to begin our media strategy with more questions rather than answers, instead of jumping in the deep end with a channel selection guided by a client or a legacy of success. We want to know who are truly targeting, not who we ‘think’ may be the audience or simply follow suit that the TV audience is the same audience that is at home consuming on multiple screens or

moments in their journey.

Content sits at the heart of most strategies, we have heard it all said that ‘content is king’ – but ‘context is the crown.’

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Fundamentally where technology lets us all down is the ability to see the BIG picture of our media – sometimes our instinct backed up by the data we have is all we have to go with. My suggestion would be to not get so wrapped up in a linear conversion, avoid blending the lines between all the digital channels, avoid creating ‘divisions’ between above and below the line – instead, come together and focus on the integrated communications plan that puts the consumer first.

As media converges and the lines between digital disciplines are increasingly blurred, we must constantly make efficiencies in our technology and platforms. With the time saved, we can offer our clients better strategies and solutions to their actual business problems.

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DESIGN

Evolving What a Brand Means in

a Digital World Interview with Simon Hong,

Executive Creative Director at Hulsbosch

This evolution in thinking about what a brand is, and how a brand acts, has never been more important than today where consumers’ opinions of a brand hold as much sway as the brand itself. This evolution of what a brand is, and the loss of complete control of brand perception, is causing marketers to likewise evolve the way they remain relevant to consumers. >

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k toc ers

Where brand was once predominantly a visual, today, it’s as much the personality of the company behind the product as it is the multitude of ways that consumers interact with a brand, be that across the internet, over the counter, or via television, radio or direct mail.

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hat a brand is, how a brand acts, and what a brand means has evolved a very long way since the cigarette smoking, Scotch drinking, Madison Avenue agency days. Today, brand is about much more than this.

One agency that’s famous for putting the consumer at the forefront of brand strategy is Australia’s leading brand agency, Hulsbosch. As the agency responsible for the development of many of Australia’s leading brand identities, including Virgin Australia, Qantas and Woolworths, Hulsbosch are globally renowned as customer centric brand specialists.

Digerati sat down with Hulsbosch’s creative powerhouse, Executive Creative Director Simon Hong, to better understand how they approach holistic brand programs that place the consumer front and center.

DESIGN

Q

Simon, let me start by asking, why is design important?

A

I see ‘design’ as a process of making things ‘work better’, rather than simply making artefacts. For example, you can ‘design’ a business as well as a product, and so sometimes the result isn’t ‘beautiful things’ that you look at.

Why is this important to us?

Because this is what branding is all about. It’s about making things work better for a business, that in turn creates a positive impact for everyone that engages with it. Of course, harnessing aesthetics and language is also part of the thinking that goes in to making things ‘work better’.

Q

What are the most important brand elements for brand identity? Why?

A

I would say purpose and experience. Often we place greater emphasis on the visual manifestation of the brand, however at the end of the day it’s all about curating experiences that are relevant and meaningful to people. And, of course, a brand expression does still play an important role in that.

Q

How has the process of developing a brand evolved with the advent of digital?

A

If I was to ask a 15-year-old the same ‘digital vs. analogue’ question, I would probably get a look of confusion; digital is ubiquitous, therefore

Digital technology allows brands to have a far richer dialogue with the audience than before.

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it’s something we must embrace.

Beyond understanding how technology can help us, it’s more important to understand how it impacts our way of life. For example, digital technology allows brands to have a far richer dialogue with the audience than before.

Technology has also given individuals a powerful voice; their opinions and thoughts matter greatly to organisations, and can carry great weight. Lastly, technology has democratised information, with vast amounts of knowledge now available at your fingertips.

We should consider brand touch points as nodes of a social network or meeting places. The aim is to invite audience participation and to have a conversation to discuss ‘where we are’.

What does all this mean to us as brand consultants? Well, I no longer see myself as a creator or a designer of brand expression, but rather as a curator of experiences that are useful, purposeful and have a positive impact on organisations and the public alike.

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We’re in exciting times as we break away from the previous rulebooks of consistency and uniformity, to expand the relevance, agility and adaptability of a brand’s expression.

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SOCIAL ADVOCACY

Social Advocacy Campaign

’ Ads t o N s ‘Cat

Creates Smiles of Awareness

A

nyone doubting the potential for crowdfunding platforms to be leveraged for the greater good need look no further than the recent ‘cats not ads’ campaign that blanketed a London tube station with billboards full of feline photos.

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The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS) campaign was the brainchild of London agency Glimpse, a self-described open and voluntary collective for creative people who want to use creativity for good.

According to the group’s founder, James Turner, the aim of the campaign was to help people think a bit differently about the world around them, and get inspired to change things for the better. The CATS campaign was funded from a successful Kickstarter project backed by 680 engaged citizens who raised $30,000 for a delightfully simple idea to make people smile.

And smile they did. Thousands of commuters were exposed to the CATS campaign over its two-week duration, and the world smiled too after several of the world’s largest media houses – including CNET, Mashable, CNN and HuffPost - took notice.

Equally as important, however, is the fact that the sixty-eight cats featured in the billboard photos at Clapham Common station were available for adoption from Cats Protection, the UK’s largest feline welfare charity. A deliberate goal of the campaign was for

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the cat photos to act as advertisements for a worthwhile cause, for whilst Cats Protection helps 200,000 cats and kittens each year, they still have many thousands of unwanted cats in desperate need of new homes.

James Turner said it was as far back as February when he challenged the Glimpse team with imagining a world where friends and experiences were more valuable than stuff you can buy.

Turner says the team began thinking about crowdfunding to replace tube adverts with something else. They considered beautiful forests and time

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spent with family as themes, but ultimately chose something they knew the internet would love. The rest, as they say, is internet history.

If there’s anything to be learned from the CATS campaign, it’s that campaigners now have an established suite of crowdfunding platforms at their disposal to shift projects from dream to reality. Every day, literally thousands of people use crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub, GoFundMe, Razoo and Crowdrise to achieve their particular goals.

SOCIAL ADVOCACY

And therein lies the essential crowdfunding challenge – there are literally thousands of people using crowdfunding to achieve their goals.

So whilst it’s important to understand that yours isn’t the only idea looking for funding, there are a few proven strategies that can be adopted to give your campaign the best possible chance of success.

videos raise four times as many funds as campaigns without. Plus, videos are a highly sharable social asset for your campaign. And you don’t need to be Scorsese to pull together a compelling video. A well-lit video, shot with no background noise, on an iPhone can do the job well enough as long as the person talking to camera is calm and making sense. Just remember to keep the video under 3 minutes and make best use of the first 30 seconds.

Second, the campaign needs to be pushed before you launch, all the way through the campaign, and even post-campaign. Prior to launching the campaign, you should seed the idea of the project and start building interest

You’re aiming to build a community around your project, then, once the community is engaged, it’s time to ask for money.

First, you need to be well prepared.

It’s essential to have a well-developed idea BEFORE you launch your campaign as you only get one shot at making a positive first impression.

This means you’ll need to have the project written up in detail, you’ll need a website with a media page for the press, and you’ll want to have some high-quality imagery to bring the campaign to life. Most important of all, you’ll need a pitch video. Video is essential for crowdfunding.

On average, crowdfunding pitch

and advocacy across whatever social networks you have access to. Building a solid fan base pre-launch can help build momentum before the campaign kicks off.

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engaged because excitement can fade just as quickly as it built up.

Third - and equally important - is The Ask. Much like you wouldn’t be too impressed if a stranger walked up to you in the street and asked for $20, don’t ask people for money right away.

Instead, encourage them to follow your cause on your crowdfunding platform, subscribe to your email database or like your Facebook page. You’re aiming to build a community around your project, then, once the community is engaged, it’s time to ask for money.

When you do ask, be crystal clear about what people are supporting and what they’ll be getting in return for their hard-earned cash. Set up a range of funding packages that are attractive and affordable, then start actively selling your project.

Regularly communicating the status of your project via your email and social following will keep your project top of mind, and as people see your project taking off they’ll have a natural inclination to support a cause that’s going to succeed.

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Crowdfunding is by its very nature a community activity, so remember that many hands make light work.

Assemble a team of friends or colleagues with complimentary skillsets who can lighten the load. Finally, it’s important to understand that this, and the above points, won’t guarantee your project gets fully funded, but it will give your campaign the best chance of succeeding.

With regards the style of communication, the best idea is to keep it real. Be yourself. Let people get to know you. Show your enthusiasm for your project because excitement can quickly become contagious. And remember to communicate as often as you can. You need to maintain momentum and keep everyone

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AD BLOCKING

Battling the Ad Blockers: Consumers Call for Improvement to Online Video Advertising

by Mark Blair, Vice President, EMEA at Brightcove

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he growing rise of the use of ad blocker technology among consumers continues to be a thorn in the side of publishers around the world. The latest PageFair report revealed that approximately 400 million people (22% of the world’s 1.9bn smartphone users) are blocking ads on the mobile web. But what is behind the continued surge in the popularity of the technology, and how can publishers move away from the current cat and mouse game to fight back over the longterm?

At its core, ad blocking is a response to negative advertising experiences. So to understand the problem better Brightcove recently commissioned research firm Vanson Bourne to examine consumers’ evolving relationship with online video advertising, asking 4,000 viewers across the UK, France, and Germany about their experiences, feelings and preferences.

essential reading for businesses that use, serve or host online video advertising.

Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the findings: Negative viewer experiences — Irrelevancy, volume, and poor delivery emerged as the key culprits behind today’s substandard advertising experiences. Almost three-quarters (73%) of respondents had experienced poor video ad delivery such as a failure of the ad load or repeated buffering, while a similar number (74%) had a negative experience with the content they

Exploring current opinions on the online video advertising experience, questioning the viability of alternative revenue models and trying to solve the riddle of ‘the perfect video ad’, the resulting report – The Ad-verse Consumer: European Video Advertising Tolerances in a Digital Age – and its findings make for

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had been served, whether that was because it was inappropriate or simply not relevant.

The reasons behind ad blocking — With one in two (51%) of the consumers we asked saying they have downloaded, used or are currently using an ad-blocker, the top reasons given for downloading were that ads are too long (56%), are not targeted or relevant (45%), and are not interactive (20%).

To pay or not to pay — Potentially discounting a paid-for model such as a subscription service as a viable alternative, 50% of consumers told us that they were not willing to pay for any form of online video content. Encouragingly, however, two-thirds (66%) said they understand and agree that it is fair for publishers to use online ads to fund free content.

Though the underlying message running through our results is that the present online ad user experience is not satisfying consumers, the silver lining for publishers is that the majority of consumers understand the ad-supported content model and just want improvements on their advertising experience.

CRM

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most valuable business content and intelligence that you have and can monetize (in the right way) is your customer metadata.

What is customer metadata?

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Customer metadata is where, how and who your customers have dealt with in the process of engaging with your brand, product or service.

This is the new frontier in real estate - not your listings content and not your company performance financials.

The new paradigm is ‘who has the relationship with the customer’.

Your metadata defines this. And this is what other third parties want to acquire from your business in order to invade your commission fees.

CRM Isn’t About Ease of Use and Customer Service,

Two new entrants in the industry demonstrate this: 1. Inspection apps (for managing buyers and tenants at inspections)

It’s a Data Play

2. Agent selection services (finding local agents for buyers)

Protecting your most valuable assets

by Travis Williams Founder and CEO at Box+Dice

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n 2016, many consultants and directors are continuing to discuss whether they should use a CRM or not? Driving this discussion are elements they perceive to be a hindrance, including: “We’re not very technical” “It’s extra work” “It takes time” “I am already successful and this may detract from me making sales” It’s very important to note that CRM and centralizing your customer data within your organization is not about whether it takes more time or

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is easy to complete. Implementing a CRM is everything to do with future proofing your business - whether you operate as a single agent or run an office with 200 consultants.

2016 presents a new challenge and it’s not about technology or web portals; it is indeed about you – the agent - collecting meaningful business content and intelligence.

What is business content and intelligence?

Initially you may think that this means listings content and company performance financials. Wrong. The

The value of metadata is that it encapsulates all the hours, hard work and relationships you’ve built up with your customers. So why hand it over?

The most important element of managing your metadata and using it to your benefit is to remember that it’s highly valuable in terms of insights into your customer’s preferences and needs.

Like anything, when in the hands of the wrong party this data may corrode your capacity to retain your full commission. Always protect your customer metadata and at the same time, your relationships.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Why Does Twitter Struggle with Innovation?

by Ben Shute, QBE

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nnovation in the social media space is hard. The sheer breadth and depth of social applications makes it hard for new players to find a function around which to build an audience and engagement.

Social has always been about storytelling, and the bigger players are recognising that growth comes through giving your audience the tools they need to tell their stories better.

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The recent launch of Instagram Stories, a virtual copy of Snapchat Stories (even Kevin Systrom agreed they deserved the credit) and arguably a much more accessible and usable tool, represents the latest effort of established platforms to iterate and grow their user base through tools.

Storification, if I can coin a new word, is the new black.

In the face of these new layers of storytelling capability, however, Twitter has chosen a different path.

Despite stalled user growth, they continue to struggle when it comes to innovation or even relevance to new users.

Back in July, Twitter introduced stickers to allow users to decorate their photos before sharing them, with these add-ons operating in a similar fashion to hashtags, in that you could tap on them to find other photos with similar stickers.

But is this a feature that will do

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anything to engage users further? Unlikely.

With more than 2/3 of their user base aged over 30, Stickers feels like a play designed to appear “cool� (it’s a prominent Snapchat feature) rather than useful.

Obviously there is an imperative to make money from the product, and Pepsi has been the first to roll out Sponsored Stickers.

As much as I love the platform, there is very little that has happened to make it sticky (pardon the pun) or relevant to new users. The Periscope integration into Twitter feeds back in January was probably the last good idea they had, and even then it was not market leading. The focus needs to be on relevance and ease of use.

There is still a lot of noise.

Moments represented a huge opportunity for Twitter to become

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Storification, if I can coin a new word, is the new black. part of the storytelling space that is currently the trend, but it has really failed to fire because the tool has been kept out of the hands of regular users. Twitter themselves is the taste maker in terms of the content, curating around themes and offering advertisers the ability to create sponsored stories.

Real engagement comes when you let the users create. Users were the people who made Twitter what it is, developing hashtags and RTs to make their experience better, only to be later adopted by the platform.

They need to start listening to what the users want.

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User Experience

UX & Psychology

The Benefits that a Psychologist adds to the Psychology of Web Design

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hy is it that psychologists work within UX teams?

In this article, we are going to explore some of the main reasons the user experience designer (UX) may be a psychologist, and the benefits.

The first is that psychologists are proficient at conducting both quantitative and qualitative research, from designing online surveys, to writing scripts for usability testing sessions, and focus group facilitations, etc. Knowing how to design robust research studies is crucial to understanding the user and delivering user-centered solutions.

Another reason has to do with

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by Chris McHugh

UX psychologists knowing that our memory is not always reliable. In the context of user testing this raises an important point: both testers and users are prone to forget things or to recall things incorrectly. In practice this means that users should not be overloaded with instructions during testing, and rather be presented with small amounts of information.

Users ought to be encouraged to talk through their approach and to verbalise their thoughts and feelings.

Psychologists spend a lot of time thinking about what motivates people and what drives behaviour.

They understand that we are the product of our past experiences and these govern how we react.

This is reflected in the way we

use websites. Our research efforts should be focused on exploring how users approach tasks in their own way, rather than leading them down a particular path.

Finally, when testing different aspects of a design or asking users to perform different tasks it’s important to avoid arriving at the wrong conclusions. One way to mitigate this is to change the order in which tasks are presented to users between different sessions. This is called “counter-balancing� and factors in that some users may be a bit nervous at the start of a session and may find a task more difficult, while others might solve tasks faster purely because they are more familiar with the interface.

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MOBILE

How to Identify the ROI from a Mobile App

by Andrew Floyd

store right at the very top, making it the least likely place to generate substantial revenue.

Measuring the ROI of your brand’s mobile app isn’t as visibly defined as when you measure the ROI of other products or services.

You must determine your baseline ROI by calculating your user acquisition cost, user retention rate, and the percent of new leads and purchases as a result of the app.

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D

eveloping a mobile app for your business has the potential to boost sales and increase brand awareness, however, a huge amount of investment is often required.

Therefore, it’s vital to identify the return on investment (ROI) you wish to obtain.

Immediate ROI

The majority of brand apps can be downloaded and used for free and are not intended to yield any kind of ROI. When developing branding applications, ROI can generally only be measured on the medium and long term.

So the number of paid-for apps on the market is plateauing as brands turn to other revenue models. And when you look at overall mobile revenue, non-app store revenue is substantially greater than app store revenue.

Instead, these apps will help improve brand perception and a rise in customers’ purchase intent.

In addition, your customer loyalty will be boosted at a time in which modernity and innovation is key for large businesses and brands.

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For an immediate ROI, brands can opt for pay-per-download model.

However, users will be reluctant to pay an initial fee for an app without being able to test it out first. There are other ways in which your brand can monetise an app, rather than making customers pay to download it.

The ROI Funnel App stores are no longer the primary source for monetisation.

Engagement and loyalty are the elements driving profit. It has become a funnel, with the app

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In order to increase users, you must understand your current user base. Tracking instillations isn’t enough, you must also analyse engagement.

Increasing users will increase your total potential ROI, but increasing your actual ROI comes back to increasing conversions. The strategy for doing this will depend on your specific business and what conversions mean in your app.

One reliable method is to give timesensitive discounts or offers regularly to mobile users that they could not get from other means. If you are not selling a product, make it possible for your service to complete tasks users couldn’t from a desktop-based web.

Apps hold an incredible opportunity for great return for your investment; however, you must value your strategy as much as any other marketing method. Remember to continuously track your app analytics so you can improve the necessity of your app to your users.

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MOBILE ADVERTISING

85% of Companies Realize Success with

the most effective. It concluded that demonstration and tutorial videos are almost twice as effective as they are difficult to create. Case studies or project reviews were found to be less effective than they are difficult to create.

Video Marketing

by Felicity Whelan, MD of Glue Content

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scend2 recently conducted a Video Marketing Strategy survey online which had 280 respondents all of whom are US and international marketing, business and sales professionals representing a variety of demographic channels, roles as well as company sizes. The study report suggested that the main objective of video marketing is to increase the awareness of a brand.

Other objectives include improving customer education, increasing online engagement and increasing leads generated.

The study report indicated that only 25% of companies have rated video marketing as being very successful at achieving the above objectives. An additional 60% of companies found video marketing strategy fairly successful. The total of companies that found value in

video marketing strategy is 85%. The remaining 15% are still struggling to realize success with video marketing.

This can be attributed to a variety of obstacles. The main obstacle with video marketing strategy according to Ascend2 is lack of an effective marketing strategy. This was backed by 48% of those who were surveyed.

Other obstacles include lack of production resources, inadequate video budget and lack of compelling content.

About 50% of the marketers who were surveyed consider demonstration videos, tutorial or explainer videos and customer testimonials the most effective type of video content used. However, when asked which type of video content is the most difficult to create, case studies/project reviews and customers topped the list.

The study compared the most difficult video content to create with

The good news is that the effectiveness of video marketing was found to be increasing for 87% of the respondents while 47% of them said that the increase was significant.

And while 67% of the respondents reported an increase in their video marketing budget, 57% of them said it is increasing marginally. Only 18% of the respondents say that it is increasing significantly.

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At the same time, Integral Ad Science found that the overall video view-ability was a low 37.2% this figure is even lower than the overall video view-ability which was found to be 44%. Both of the above figures are a clear indication that the view-ability rates have been slow to improve despite increased pressure from advertisers or the industry.

Given Integral’s ability to analyze the industry on a broad level, it’s hard to ignore these numbers. Point being, if video doesn’t rank highly in your marketing mix today, the numbers suggest it should take on a greater…and soon.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Understanding the Ins & Outs of

Facebook Targeting Interview with John Lawson

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acebook gives marketers the ability to target audiences using multiple ad formats and literally thousands of possible ad targeting parameters.

This presents both an opportunity and a challenge.

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Whilst at times it feels like Facebook knows us better than we know ourselves – try changing your relationship status and see how fast the ads change – it can be difficult to filter through all of Facebook’s targeting options to work out what works best for your particular campaign goal.

In the example above, there’s a potential brand risk in targeting people whose relationship status is listed as ‘single’ if your online dating site ad appears moments after they change their status from ‘married’.

Similarly, Digerati sat down with bestselling author and e-commerce expert John Lawson to discuss this.

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Q

Targeting has some negative connotations, what’s the risk consumers will view this invasive?

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I think most consumers are well aware they’re being tracked - from where and how they enter our sites, to their behaviors within our site – but I also know there’s a conversation going on right now about this tracking, about the Big Brother syndrome.

In my view, the conversation we

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need to be having is how to turn this situation from a Big Brother syndrome into a Big Mumma syndrome. The difference is that Big Brother is tracking you to ‘spy’, whereas your mother just wants to know everything that is going on in your life. She wants to know where you’re going, what time you’re going

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to be home, etc. from a place of love.

So the way I see it is there’s a thin line between doing something out of benefit to another, and doing something out of your own benefit.

Case in point - Google Maps. I use it all the time and it’s tracking exactly

SOCIAL MEDIA

where I am, but it’s also giving me the benefit of not getting lost. So now let’s flip that on its head and imagine Google Maps simply existed to trace my movements at any given moment - that would just be creepy.

But they aren’t. They’re giving me directions on how to get from point A to point B and I think that’s beneficial.

Q

OK, but isn’t life events targeting getting a little too personal?

A

People think that it’s technology that has brought this on, and that it’s new. It’s not new, and if you want examples of how it works in the real world outside of technology, then you only have to think about hardware stores here in the United States who get data from the United States Postal Service when people change address.

When they see that an address has changed, they recognize that a new person is moving into a neighborhood and so they send out mail that will have a sales circular in it with coupons for new residents in the neighborhood. Same thing with marriage licenses. Those too are on the public record, so you’ll start seeing sales circulars in your mail box regarding family planning, new housing and insurance. Again, if you can target this and make it beneficial

to the people because they’re going through a life change then it comes off as being a help verses something creepy.

Q

Walk us through how Facebook Customer Audiences work?

A

Facebook Customer Audiences are one of the best advertising options ever invented.

It’s advertising based on your own, first-party customer data, your CRM data. You use your customer data of the people you’ve already engaged with within Facebook to advertise to those people. It’s one of the most direct ways for you to leverage your data and target your own customer with ads.

You supply Facebook with one, or more, of the following data points: email address, phone number, install or usage of data from your mobile app. You can also use web customer audiences to target visitors to your web page or store with a Facebook ad by implementing a Facebook pixel on your website. Once you upload this data, Facebook matches that data with the data that it has on Facebook users, and if it finds a match, it will tell you that this person becomes a part of your custom audience. We’re seeing a match rate of between 40-60%, so you can then use this matching process for targeted advertising inside of the Facebook system.

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How does Facebook’s look-alike audience targeting work?

A look-a-like audience is a tailored audience that is similar to the one that you have already created in Facebook. These can be based on current customer lists, page likes or your website custom

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audiences, you can even create an audience based on people that have watched your video, although this is a new function.

Facebook goes through the list of people in that audience and then finds people within its ecosystem, and finds the ones with the most shared similarities to the people that are in your current group.

It will create an entire group for you up to 24 million people that are a look-a-like audience based on data you have collected from your CRM system, or even people who’ve interacted with some of your content on Facebook.

Q

Can you give me an example of using Facebook’s layered targeting options?

A

My suggestion for people when you’re creating a look-a-like audience is to layer other options on top of the custom audience so that you’re using layered targeting to get a more specific audience. For example, if I wanted to find men in the United States aged between 15 and 35 – and just reach out to that audience - then that is basic targeting. But you can become even more specific.

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You can say I want men, in the United States aged 15-35 who also use iPhones and own an iPhone 6.

You can see that now we’re really starting to find an audience that is hyper-targeted and a hyper focused group that we can speak to. And so, when we get an audience like that, the content that we can create will not only be hyper-focused, but will really speak to that audience. I’ve found over time that I can create one creative for a female audience and another creative for a male audience and that will get me better interaction on both sides.

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MARKETING AUTOMATION

High-Performing Marketers Emphasize People over Data, Technology, Strategy

by Scott Brinker

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edicine, law, business, engineering — these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life,” declares Robin Williams’ character, John Keating, in the movie Dead Poet’s Society. “But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for.”

on effective personalization by the CEB, I’d riff on that: Data, technology, strategy.

These are necessary elements to make personalization function. But people — the importance placed on developing and enabling talent in your marketing organization — they are what make personalization thrive and succeed.

With the latest data from a study

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That may not come as a surprise, as we’ve certainly heard that advice before. Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik stated it as his 10/90 Rule back in 2006: invest 10% of your budget in tools and vendors, but 90% in your people and their training.

But skeptics among us — or in the boardroom — might be prone to demand proof.

MARKETING AUTOMATION

comparable.

Fair enough. CEB now has some pretty compelling evidence for you.

In researching quantitative and qualitative aspects of how around 90 major brands — companies as diverse as Burberry, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Samsung, and Target — have adopted personalization technology, CEB divided them in two groups:

Personalization High-Performers vs.

Low-Performers

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Okay, enough feigned suspense, as the answer is in the graphic at the top of this post: above-median performers are 7X more likely to rank people as a top enabler of personalization than below-median performers.

People 11X More Important Than Technology in Marketing

More interestingly, above-median performers are 0.5X less likely to select “data” and 0.6X less likely to select “technology” as their top enabler.

In contrast, the below-median

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1. Below-median performers who were seeing little benefit from personalization.

result of personalization — 2.7X more than the below-median performers who averaged only a 6% boost.

2. Above-median performers who were reaping significant benefits from personalization.

Naturally, the question is: what do the above-median performers do differently?

Above-median performers saw, on average, a 15% improvement in click-through rates (CTR) on personalized email and display advertising — in contrast to belowmedian performers who averaged only a 5% improvement.

If your first guess is “they spend more money” — bzzzzt, sorry, wrong answer. According to Anna Bird at the CEB, there wasn’t a big difference in investment between above-median and below-median performers. On average, it’s around a 1% difference in budget allocation.

(The lowest performers actually had personalization have a negative impact on CTR. Ouch.)

The impact on revenue indicators was similar: above-median performers achieved an impressive 16% lift as a

Different marketing technologies? More marketing technologies? No, and no. On average, the marketing stacks of the aboves vs. the belows were

performers were more enamored with data and technology and put less emphasis on people.

Now, obviously, you can’t do personalization without data and technology. But the higher performing brands didn’t expect much from those raw materials on their own. Instead, they focused on developing organizational capital around technology and data.

While this research was specific to personalization, I think the pattern is broadly applicable to almost all every other marketing technology category. The magic isn’t in the technology. It’s in your people and what they do with it.

Carpe diem.

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MOBILE ADVERTISING

Can Data Conquer The Mobile Ad Blocking Global Trend?

Interview with Richard Knott, Regional Director, APAC at Celtra, Inc.

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t’s the first thing we see when we wake, and more often than not the last thing we see before we close our eyes each night; mobile phones have become so ubiquitous, in fact, that many people don’t even consider this type of behavior odd.

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Yet whilst mobile’s convenience and portability have converted a significant percentage of our planet’s population into ‘mobile-first’ users of the internet, it’s not surprising that large swathes of people are choosing to embrace ad blocking technology in response to the often disruptive and inconvenient ad experiences they’re being forced to deal with.

The latest Page Fair report revealed that approximately 400 million people (22% of the world’s 1.9bn smartphone users) are blocking ads on the mobile web, which is a significant number when you consider that mobile ad spend is about to accomplish a record result.

It’s expected that at some point this year mobile ad revenues will overtake desktop ad revenues for the first time ever. eMarketer believe that the global mobile advertising market will surpass $100 billion in spending this year, expecting it to account for more than 50%

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of all digital ad expenditure. So with ad revenues and ad blocking adoption both on the upswing, is there a potential middle ground that benefits both consumers and advertisers?

The team at data-driven creative technology agency Celtra believe there is: it’s data. Digerati sat down with Richard Knott, Regional Director, APAC at Celtra, to dig a little deeper into the core issue and find out what role data may play in stopping the blocking epidemic.

In fact, our research has illustrated that the two key drivers of disengagement are disruptive ads and irrelevant ads.

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Q

It feels like mobile is facing the desktop issues of the 90s, why is this?

A

I agree. The Ad Tech industry has traditionally been so focused on media, and data within media, that creative development has often been overlooked. The humble banner ad today still looks remarkably like the first one served in 1994! This neglect has seen ever reducing engagement rates, which some areas of the industry have tried to combat with disruptive ad formats that overlay content, push up, push out, etc.

This is entirely alien to the mobile UX so, unfortunately, the consumer is now rebelling against these with ad-blocking. In fact, our research has illustrated that the two key drivers of disengagement are disruptive ads and irrelevant ads.

Q

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So this is where you believe data becomes the solution?

Yes. Mobile marketing can take almost all of the data driven marketing benefits offered by traditional digital channels, and then layer on compelling catalysts

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MOBILE ADVERTISING

for engagement like location and context. Unlike other media, the mobile device is consumed everywhere and all day, and it is that omnipresence that enables you to apply really powerful contextual relevancy data triggers, e.g. time, location, weather, etc.

For example, it’s great to know a user is a frequent flyer who’s due a holiday, it’s another thing to then be able to target them with a dynamically relevant ad whilst they are checking their phone on the commute, in the rain, probably in a traffic jam. It’s this kind of dynamic content, or programmatic creative, when layered with traditional user targeting that is driving incredible increases in engagement when utilized well.

Q

Who’s using data well to dynamically shape creative and improve mobile ad campaigns?

A

This is a pretty new space globally, but as usual, it’s those

who have the best digital experiences in general that are garnering the benefits first. The entertainment industry, travel, automotive and CPG are the ones exploring this area and gathering the learnings first.

One consistent trend is emerging and it’s that before you start, you have no real knowledge of which data triggers will work best for you. If you’re currently running a traditional ‘one creative fits no-one’ approach, then any data trigger will see benefit, so start broad and subtle.

Such things as, time-of-day, relevant copy, weather relevant backgrounds and location driven call to actions, will drive increased engagements. Then, further down the track they can integrate DMPs through an API and get really sophisticated, but our advice would be start simple and gather those learnings and benefits first.

Q

What’s next for digital advertising as we move toward Web 3.0?

Despite the challenges and hiccups, the industry is moving in the right direction. 360 video ads are exciting, because it’s the first step into fully immersive AR & VR video where data and a user’s interactions - will define the experience.

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Programmatic creative is exciting as it’s the first step into AI based dynamic content. I see web 3.0 as the ‘really useful’ web. Web 1.0 was information based, Web 2.0 is interaction based, whereas Web 3.0 will be based around data and machine learning that provides real assistance to your life, and advertising within that will be no different.

Imagine if all you ever saw were ads for products and services you were interested in, or didn’t realize you were interested in, at times when you needed them most. The value exchange relationship between advertising and the consumer would change immensely and ad blockers would vanish. Dynamic or Programmatic Creative is the first step into that world.

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EVENTS

The Great Wall is Coming Down as China Embodies ‘Internet Plus’

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Equally impactful has been China’s “Internet Plus” initiative which has given big business the confidence to commit to putting digital at the very center of their business.

The government’s investment of

This nationwide appetite for digital has clearly boosted the confidence of many foreign companies and brands who are

At the same time as the larger digital brands race to enter the Chinese market there’s also an increased interest from China’s marketing community to understand western approaches to digital marketing. In September, the world’s leading digital events company, Comexposium, announced it will relaunch the ad:tech event in Shanghai in 2017 to ensure China’s smartest marketers are across the best of the west.

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Many Chinese companies have similarly embraced the digital age, and now lead the world in the use of digital channels to connect with consumers and access their wallets.

Brands like WeChat, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu are leading the world in making it easy for consumers to transact online through the use of seamless point of sale solutions like e-wallets, e-payment and touch-pay systems.

given Baidu dominates the search market, receiving tens of billions of queries every day.

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Chinese consumers are passionate, highly connected, digitally savvy and are fast becoming a mobile-first consumer.

They’ve been quick to adopt online as their preferred means of sourcing information, interacting with brands and shopping online, which is why it’s no surprise China now has the world’s largest e-commerce market with some of the worlds’ leading online retailers.

430-billion-yuan last year to upgrade the nationwide internet system, backed by its commitment to spent another 700-billion in coming years, will reshape China’s digital economy in a dramatic manner.

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hina’s digital economy is growing, and growing fast. In the past decade the internet penetration has exploded from single figures to almost 50%, taking the number of internet users from 100 million to over 650 million. Underpinning this dramatic growth is a deep respect and insatiable appetite for all things digital across every part of the economy, from consumers to private companies and government.

Taboola CEO, Adam Singolda believes there’s a significant opportunity in China as the country becomes more accessible and amenable to foreign ways of doing businesses. actively establishing strategic partnerships within China in what is set to be the largest digital landgrab in history. Last year, Chinese search giant Baidu invested millions in content discovery powerhouse Taboola to bring the New York company’s content recommendation technology into China, a savvy move

ISSUE 5, october 2016

Paul Lee, CEO Comexposium Asia Pacific, views a re-launch into China as one of the most significant evolutions of the ad:tech brand in its twenty year history. “Marketer’s worldwide are facing an incredible level of disruption and uncertainty as a result of the dramatic growth of digital in recent years, never more so in China. The country and its people are embracing the Internet Plus initiative with open arms, which is why we’re excited to re-launch ad:tech in 2017,” he said.

As one of the worlds previously most inaccessible markets, it’s remarkable to see how fast China has prioritized, legitimatized and embraced digital as a core part of its economic and cultural future. And as the market continues to open up it stands to reason that brands and companies on both sides of the Great Wall will benefit as East and West learn to work more closely together.

MACHINE LEARNING

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AI, Machine Learning and Big Data:

The New ‘Must-Have’ Technologies.

Interview with Cami Rosso

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arely a day goes by without a story taking the internet by storm on the surge in the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Machine Learning and Big Data, and how these technologies will impact marketing, advertising agencies and nearly every type of company and industry. What’s lesser discussed, is why these technologies are gaining so much traction and global interest.

Digerati sat down with technology observer Cami Rosso to get insight into the how’s and why’s.

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What do you think is driving the sudden interest in AI, Big Data and Machine Leaning?

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One aspect of this demand is that machine learning has quickly become the new ‘musthave’ capability for forward-thinking software providers, principally because Machine Learning, a subset of A.I., enables computers to learn without hard-coding.

A.I. is the branch of computer science that aims to emulate human intelligence. It’s a field heavily reliant on huge amounts of Big Data, which in simplest terms is any large data sets that exceed the processing capabilities of traditional desktop statistical software and relational database management systems. The increased adoption of cloud computing is enabling Big Data analytics and is, in turn, helping fuel the surge in Machine Learning for business use.

Q

Where do you see AI, Big Data and Machine Leaning evolving over the next few years?

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In 3-5 years, expect an increase in machine learning software functionality from both new start-up companies and traditional enterprise software companies (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) providers.

Enterprise and mid-size companies are rapidly adopting a hybrid IT approach where part of their computing systems are being hosted in the cloud. This provides revenuegeneration opportunities for large system integrators (SI) and strategic management consulting companies to integrate machine learning programs in the cloud.

The overall demand for A.I. and Machine Learning knowledge workers will increase significantly within the next 5 years. This demand will cause traditional bricks and mortar universities, as well as open online courses, to increase learning content and teaching resources in the areas of A.I., informatics, Machine Learning and data science.

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Do you envision these technologies moving from being ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’?

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Absolutely. John Nosta, President and Founder, NOSTALAB puts this into context nicely…

“Big data and its companion A.I. offer the third fundamental window into humanity. The first was the telescope that gave us a vast view of the world beyond and the second was the microscope that looked at the world within. The third will be big data that shows us profound interconnectivity’s in activities and lives that will actually

advance human evolution” This is why ERP and CRM providers are already rapidly acquiring A.I. start-ups to integrate sophisticated marketing capabilities into their software. The key to competitive advantage and rapid market adoption for these companies will be in providing an intuitive Machine Learning interface that’s easy enough for a marketing professional with no data science background to use.

As such, I’d also expect an overall increase of venture capital investment in A.I. software providers, especially cloud-first start-ups, in areas of CRM, customer analytics, business intelligence (BI), and 3rd party big data consolidators to act as middleware between internal information technology (IT) departments and external data sources. We’re already seeing the larger end of town snapping up start-ups, like A.I. provider SwiftKey being acquired by Microsoft, MinHash

by Salesforce and Orbeus by Amazon.

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Q

Isn’t this tech start-up feeding frenzy simply going to be shortlived, as usually happens?

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I don’t expect so. Large multinationals, enterprise and mid-market companies are creating a pull-demand for marketing capabilities that harness AI, Machine Learning and Big Data. In response, we’re seeing ERP vendors, CRM providers, SI, management consulting and start-up companies investing heavily to maintain the momentum in what I’d argue is the next wave in digital marketing. https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvardcami

ISSUE 5, october 2016

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