You likely heard about the United Airlines leggings issue that popped up earlier this week. While it was unfortunate for the brand, especially given its reputation issues, it was entirely avoidable.
There are a variety of issues that sprung forth from the incident that tell us a great deal about ourselves as a society. But none more so than the continued affirmation that this is a post-factual age and brands need to update their thinking in order to survive it.
From the Trusted Media Brands Report: the vast majority (81%) of programmatic digital ad buyers agree that ensuring a “brand safe” environment for advertising is a high priority, and an equal proportion feel that in today’s fragmented digital landscape, using brand safe, trusted environments is more important than ever.
Google got itself into hot water with advertisers and programmatic ads need a safe space; Uber continues to lick its wounds but deny injury; the Senate votes against privacy; a new operating model for marketing; Walmart's innovation for the future of retail; liking a brand on social media doesn't change behavior; a paid version of Twitter; how Instagram stays one step ahead of the market; measuring corporate innovation programs; make way for bike sharing; the Trump administration has its head in the sand about automation; ethical questions around the right to privacy; the busier you are, the more you need quiet time; and more in the trust edition of The Full Monty. And don't forget to subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and check out where Brain+Trust is speaking this week (final section below).
Become a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.
The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.
Google has found itself in hot water with advertisers who are angry over the placement of online ads alongside offensive or extremist content. A number of major brands, including AT&T, Verizon, McDonald's, L'Oreal, Toyota, HSBC and Johnson & Johnsonare pulling advertising dollars from Google and YouTube.
But this isn't an issue that's specific to Google. In an analysis, the the Washington Post found that ads for big brands have been placed on politically extreme and derogatory content across the web, highlighting broader issues with programmatic advertising. This is what happens when the media buying process becomes too automated.
From the Trusted Media Brands Report: the vast majority (81%) of programmatic digital ad buyers agree that ensuring a “brand safe” environment for advertising is a high priority, and an equal proportion feel that in today’s fragmented digital landscape, using brand safe, trusted environments is more important than ever.
To drive revenue growth in the digital age, new data shows that marketing leaders are upgrading data-collection technology, collaborating closely with IT, and focusing on test-and-learn agility. From McKinsey: Meet Your New MOM (Marketing Operating Model). It's made up of three parts: integrated consumer data (the challenge being not the collection, but the integration; decision making; and distribution platforms.
And Walmart is poised to make more acquisitions following Moosejaw, Shoebuy and Modcloth. Evidently if your ecommerce company is a compound noun, you stand a good chance of being acquired by Walmart.
Want to know what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours?
Some of the results are going to really surprise you.
Platforms
Merely liking a brand on Facebook doesn’t change behavior or increase purchasing. According to research from MIT, endorsing a brand does not affect a customer’s behavior or lead to increased purchasing, nor does it spur purchasing by friends. Supporting endorsements with branded content, however, can have significant results. It makes sense that people who already patronize a brand would like it on social media.
An important takeaway: even if a brand decides not to spend money advertising, it can use its social media channels to gain intelligence from its most loyal customers.
Are we witnessing the great unbundling of Twitter? Amazon's Twitter-like livestreaming of Twitch and Reddit's new profile pages may be indicative of a wider trend.
When Instagram went from square-only images to rectangle-allowed, the move not only gave the company more confidence to change its app, but also inspired it to go much further in evolving the service. How Instagram Changed — Before It Had To. An essential lesson of getting ahead of your competition and not letting the market define you.
Many corporations have their own internal innovation programs to accomplish a number of intiatives, from partnering with start-ups to creating new business practices. But a critical factor in all of them is how they measure success.
Airbnb has launched in China and Chinese consumers hate its name so much, they're trying to come up with a new one. The company's name is Aibiying, which is Chinese for "welcome each other with love." The logo finally makes perfect sense.
Uber's latest corporate scandal: a visit to a Seoul escort-karaoke bar by a party of Uber execs in 2014 led to an HR complaint from a female employee — and the company applied pressure on the CEO's ex-girlfriend when the matter threatened to come to light.
Sources shed light on Uber's self-driving car mess: slow progress on tech, haphazard public demos, and a talent exodus triggered by its Otto acquisition.
Last week, U.S. Treasury SecretaryStephen Mnuchin opined that displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence and automation is "not even on my radar screen" because the technology is "50-100 more years" away. The tech community's response: we're dumbfounded. Tech community's first step: create AI that replaces the Treasury Secretary.
Meanwhile, 38% of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a new report by PwC. The reason is the higher focus on service-related functions that are easily replaced by machines (e.g. bank tellers and ATMs).
Apple CEO Tim Cook is betting on AR, which he believes will keep his company on top and may even supplant the iPhone. Sources shed light on Apple's augmented reality team, which is working on several products including AR glasses and AR camera features for the iPhone.
AUDIO
One of SoundCloud's first employees is leaving the company. Head of internal communications David Noël's departure puts into question the viability of the company's future. Nothing is certain; if you have files on SoundCloud, be sure to have them backed up or hosted elsewhere.
Program of the Week: I've just finished listening to the three-part 18-hour series "The Adventures of Alfred Hitchcock." It's part of the podcast The Secret History of Hollywood, branded as "podcasts for the classic movie lover." From gangsters to classic monster films, Adam Roche covers it all in a deeply researched documentary-like style. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts.
Mark Schaefer implores you to Stop Creating Random Acts of Content. Lack of a cohesive plan and direction for your company's content will result in underperformance and wasted efforts. Intentional topics and frequency will build loyalty.
Privacy / Security / Legal
The U.S. Senate voted to overturn consumer-friendly privacy rules, meaning that Internet providers will now be able to share your web browsing history. It now goes to the House of Representatives for a final vote. If this is something that concerns you, contact your Representative and ask them to vote against H.R. 86.
Starting March 15, 2015, more than 20,000 videos of classroom lectures and podcasts on UC Berkeley’s YouTube and iTunes channels became unavailable for public viewing, thanks to a lawsuit by two students, claiming that the Americans with Disabilities Act required all content to be captioned.
So, LBRY mirrored all of the videos and is hosting them on its own site. Enterprising individuals are always finding a way around restrictions.
Measurement / Metrics / Data
Modern marketing looks slightly different than what we've known. In particular is the focus on data activation and personalization, two concepts that go hand-in-hand. A quickly evolving industry standard is the Consumer Data Point (CDP) , which makes it possible for marketers to scale data-driven customer interactions in real time. At this point, we should be well beyond the "customers who bought this also bought that" rubric.
Are you a good boss? The combination of leadership and management skills can be tricky, especially when we have to inspire and motivate our teams while dealing with difficult people. Inc. has five things to consider as you make that journey.
Often the solution to being knocked off the top rung of a ladder isn't always to keep scrambling to regain your rung. It's to build a better ladder, via Tom Webster.
There’s plenty the British don’t speak of. But the death of the 90-year-old Queen might be one of the least spoken about—and best planned for—inevitabilities faced by an entire nation. Sam Knight delivers a minute-by-minute account of what could happen when Elizabeth II, who has outlasted twelve U.S. presidents, dies within the walls of Buckingham Palace. Code word: “London Bridge is down.”
Productivity is all the rage. So when people want more out of you and you continue to "multitask" (but not really), focusing becomes truly difficult. And yet, it's not a matter of lists, apps, or processes. Focusing is an art, not a science.
Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.
Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. Won't you consider supporting The Full Monty?
Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. And our decades of experience working for major brands means that we deeply understand the challenges you're facing. Let us know if we can help you.
The four human desires (acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity and love of power) were our topics the last time around. In this episode, we go a little further, diving into two key human conditions: fear and greed. In doing so, we pick apart the motivating factors behind using these as emotional drivers in marketing.
Erik Deckers contributed to this essay, adapting a post from his site ProBlogService.com. He is the author of Branding Yourself and No Bullsh*t Social Media and served as the writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. His wife Toni provides voice over work for this show.
The 2017 ranking of the world's most reputable companies is out, from the Reputation Institute. The most important driver of corporate reputation by far is perception of quality, followed by have a positive influence on society, behave ethically, and be fair in the way it does business.
Small businesses in the U.S. are moving more of their budget to digital, including mobile, social, video and search. According to the January 2017 study by Thrive Analytics, 40% of U.S. SMBs said they plan to increase spending on digital media.
New research reveals a surprising level of distrust from women. More than 80% of women claim to distrust the news media, citing “inadequate fact checking” and “political bias” as the primary causes. And brand marketing didn’t fare much better—when asked about their trust in advertising, the response was similarly distrustful: 80% of women say they don’t trust ads.
Credits
Theme song: "The Liberty Bell," by John Philip Sousa, performed by the United States Marine Band and shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Reputation matters, and what drives reputation should drive you; more digital budgets ahead; Facebook and Google continue their duopoly; age discrimination in tech; solving for expensive online subscriptions; the challenges and decisions related to digital transformation; Twitter is getting serious; marketers are skeptical of Snapchat; Uber's executive woes; Intel goes mobile; voice isn't all that; Pandora battles Spotify; who is rocking customer experience; a bad vibe about sensitive data; how drivers milked a company over a missing Oxford comma; and more in the broken bracket edition of The Full Monty. And don't forget to subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and check out where Brain+Trust is speaking this week (final section below).
Become a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.
The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.
The 2017 ranking of the world's most reputable companies is out, from the Reputation Institute. The most important driver of corporate reputation by far is perception of quality, followed by have a positive influence on society, behave ethically, and be fair in the way it does business. And in case you were wondering, the top 5 companies are: Rolex, LEGO, The Walt Disney Company, Canon, and Google.
Small businesses in the U.S. are moving more of their budget to digital, including mobile, social, video and search. According to the January 2017 study by Thrive Analytics, 40% of U.S. SMBs said they plan to increase spending on digital media.
Some key things to know about digital video: (1) digital video continues to outperform display ads; (2) U.S. digital video viewership will continue to grow through 2021; (3) social and messaging platforms want video ad dollars.
Viacom, Turner and Fox have joined forces to launch OpenAP, a web interface where marketers can crunch data from various sources for television ad targeting on all three companies’ networks. The TV giants understand that they need to offer something to compete with the precision offered in the digital space.
A discussion that emerged from SXSW: while there is much attention being paid to gender and racial diversity in tech, what about age discrimination? The unspoken rule of younger = better needs addressing, as the tech business is about more than just coding.
Discors has developed a low-priced subscription of curated news from across a number of publications. For $4.99 a month, subscribers get a limited selection of stories from The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, and more. They’re the latest trying to unlock the space between $0 and a full subscription.
New research reveals a surprising level of distrust from women. More than 80% of women claim to distrust the news media, citing “inadequate fact checking” and “political bias” as the primary causes. And brand marketing didn’t fare much better—when asked about their trust in advertising, the response was similarly distrustful: 80% of women say they don’t trust ads.
Want to know what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours?
Some of the results are going to really surprise you.
Platforms
TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE
Twitter is joining the NewFronts, replacing Yahoo. The social network has placed an emphasis on live streaming video deals over the last year, and it plans to showcase those efforts, as well as some original content offerings, during the presentation.
Analytics geeks, rejoice! Brands and agencies using Twitter’s Gnip application-programming interfacesfinally have access to data on likes via the Decahose, the social network’s stream that provides a 10 percent random sample of its full real-time Firehose.
Facebook's mysterious hardware group at Building 8 is hard at work on a few projects. One product involves cameras and augmented reality, another may involve a drone, and a big retail push complete with warehouse operations, different retail experiences, and a “global contact center footprint."
Which may partially explain why the 2017 advertising revenue forecast for Snapchat has been trimmed by $30 million, as well as due to higher than expected revenue sharing with its partners.
Google has responded to a growing number of brands suspending their advertising from its services after finding their ads were appearing next to inappropriate and extremist content, saying "we can do better."
Evidently, one of the major reasons that Microsoft acquired LinkedIn was its secret weapon: Reid Hoffman.
Collaborative / Autonomous / AI
TRANSPORTATION
The executive at the center of the Alphabet-Uber lawsuit who is accused of stealing proprietary information and taking it with him to Uber, evidently had a longer relationship with Uber than previously thought. Alphabet laid out a detailed timeline of Anthony Levandowski’s relationship with Uber executives, including CEO Travis Kalanick. According to Alphabet, that relationship dates back to the summer of 2015, approximately six months before Levandowski even left Alphabet. This is high stakes, as Google and Uber duke it out for autonomous supremacy.
Uber is losing another executive: Uber's president Jeff Jones has quit, saying his “beliefs and approach to leadership” were inconsistent with what he saw at Uber. Oops.
Uber's self-driving cars aren't ready to be called such. According to recent data, the cars only travelled an average of 0.8 miles before requiring human intervention. Fully autonomous vehicles all over the roads by the end of 2017? You're more likely to win your NCAA bracket this year.
AR technologies will be instrumental in closing the skill gap that is responsible for the shortage of skilled manufacturing workers. The technology will allow more workers to do high-skill jobs and improve their performance in this work. (Disclosure: GE is a Brain+Trust client)
Pandora's on-demand music service has finally arrived. It is taking on Spotify with sleek design and data science muscle. But can it compete this late in the game?
Influencer marketing continues to be a hot topic, but rather than focusing on big names or big followings, perhaps it's time to consider the rise of the micro influencer.
Here we have U.S. companies with the best and worst customer experience rating. Supermarkets continue to lead the way in customer experience, while health plans are again among the worst-rated, according to the 7th annual customer experience ratings from the Temkin Group.
Apple hired an iPhone security expert who writes "privacy is sacred." He provided technical assistance to the company during the FBI's queries of Apple amid the San Bernardino shooting last year.
The New Yorker has published "The I.O.U.," F. Scott Fitzgerald's spoof on the cravenness of the publishing industry. The story was written in 1920, when Fitzgerald was 23 and had just published “This Side of Paradise." Just five years before, while he was struggling to make a living in advertising in New York, Fitzgerald had received 122 rejection slips for stories.
Jimmy Breslin died over the weekend. He was sent to cover the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, and found an angle that eluded other reporters. Breslin’s story about Clifton Pollard, the man who dug the president’s grave is still one of the most talked about stories in journalism history, even used in J-school courses as a prime example of enterprise reporting.
Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.
Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. Won't you consider supporting The Full Monty?
Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. And our decades of experience working for major brands means that we deeply understand the challenges you're facing. Let us know if we can help you.
Try as we might, we can't escape from our past, from the visceral nature of what it means to be human. Advances in communication, technology, and living conditions may separate us from our ancestors, but deep down, we want the same things.
We look at the four human desires as outlined by Bertrand Russell in his acceptance speech for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, showing that while we can't overcome them, we can use them for good.
Edison Research and Triton Digital presented the 2017 Infinite Dial Study, containing the latest research around digital audio, social media, mobile, smart speakers, and podcast consumption. It is the definitive source in this space.
Conde Nast is joining NBC Universal and Vox Mediato sell ads across their combined digital properties. It's the latest move by publishers and TV conglomerates to better compete with digital advertising from the likes of Google and Facebook.
Two major surveys worth digesting this week: the CMO Survey and the Infinite Dial - one deals with ongoing changes in the marketing industry, the other with the latest data on digital audio, mobile social, etc.; IBM'sharsh move; the Wikileaks' CIA dump and what you need to know; how to succeed as a chief digital officer; Twitter's algorithm, explained; Facebook's commitment to social good; Google splits Hangouts; Anchor is Snapchat for audio; Uber is terrified of unions; Lyft for anyone; self-driving car testing without humans coming to California; sometimes text beats bots; SoundCloud needs help; the challenge of personal branding and why thought leadership is as essential as ever; getting people to read your Terms of Service; understanding time; and more in the SXSW edition of The Full Monty. And don't forget to subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and check out where Brain+Trust is speaking this week (final section below).
Become a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.
The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.
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Industry
There's lots to unpack from the latest CMO Survey from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the American Marketing Association and Deloitte. Some of the findings include:
Spending on marketing analytics—quantitative data about customer behavior and marketplace activities—is expected to leap from 4.6 percent to almost 22 percent of marketing budgets in the next three years.
Over the next 12 months, CMOs expect to increase their brand building spending by almost double digits (9.7%).
Netflix is making choose-your-own-adventure shows. New interactive storylines will give viewers control over how plots unfold. Is this more work that it's worth? Does it violate how people like to experience shows?
Fans of Fawlty Towers and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series rejoice! ITV and the BBC are joining forces with BritBox, which brings British TV shows to the U.S via a streaming service. Don't worry; you'll still be able to use IP-masking VPNs to view the current shows that aren't included.
How should companies react when consumers, employees, and the president are pushing them to take sides? Five strategies for the new era.
IBM demonstrated a tone-deaf approach to working arrangements, with what some are calling a "Marissa Mayer moment": Big Blue, which pioneered the concept of remote workers and telecommuting, ordered all of its staff to co-locate in one of six locations. The company is not reimbursing relocation expenses, nor are they offering a cost-of-living salary adjustment. So much for IBM's "Future of Work" practice.
Make no mistake: this is not a matter of new corporate culture; this is a head count reduction without calling it one. And it's a cost-effective one, as there's no need to pay out severance packages for employees who quit when they don't want to move.
Related: you can tell how happy employees are by looking at things like the office design or whether or not the kitchen is dirty. Or if they work at IBM.
Conde Nast is joining NBC Universal and Vox Mediato sell ads across their combined digital properties. It's the latest move by publishers and TV conglomerates to better compete with digital advertising from the likes of Google and Facebook.
Ten digital leaders at global pharmaceutical companies give their perspectives on how to succeed as a chief digital officer. While the executives hail from the pharma industry, the lessons are universal.
Want to know what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours?
Some of the results are going to really surprise you.
Platforms
Sidewire is a closed discussion system that shuts out the noise of Twitter's eggs and trolls and is betting on — gasp! — the value of government and media elites talking to one another. Is a civil, thoughtful platform just what we need at this point?
A glimpse into the workings (and continued evolution) of Twitter's algorithm for the first time since it was launched a year ago. The question now for Twitter is whether a service that doubles as a global news ticker and water cooler can seize this moment to regain its business footing.
A study at the University of Southern California revealed that there are 48 million Twitter bots, or roughly 15% of all Twitter accounts. Those bots are capable of interactions such as “likes,” “retweets” and “following.” [CLICK HERE to tweet this statistic]
FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP
In a talk at SXSW, Facebook policy chief Monika Bickert called for social networks to create ways to be proactive to counter extremism and hate speech with broad opposition rather than by simply deleting hateful posts. This continues on the theme in recent weeks of Facebook stepping up as a social force for good, due to its size and reach.
Facebook announced the launch of Messenger Day, the chat app’s version of Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories. Oh, snap.
Although it would seem that not everyone is a fan. To wit: intrusive preview tiles, bad content,and annoying pop-upshave ruined Facebook Messenger.
BBC journalists identified child porn on the site and promptly reported it to Facebook. Facebook's response? They reported the BBC to the police, because the Beeb transmitted them to Facebook. Question: shouldn't Facebook be reporting itself to the police?
Instagram launched geostickers in Instagram Stories, which allow users to put stickers on their images, based on location. Attack of the Clones continues...
Google split Hangouts into Chat, a Slack-like service available via Google's early access program, and Meet, for audio and video conferencing, available now. They're getting serious about enterprise chat and conferencing competition. Given Google's history and identity criss with a multitude of messaging apps, we'll wait to see how this works out.
Airbnb raised $1B at a $31B valuation, with no plans for an IPO anytime soon. The company was profitable in Q2 2016 and expects to be profitable in 2017.
"Before accepting rides on his Uber app each day, Seattle driver Fasil Teka must first choose whether to listen to company-run podcasts on voting rights, collective bargaining and city council hearings." — WSJ
Every day that negative issues continue to affect Uber, they don't just affect the company; the crisis affects all stakeholders. An important thought process to understand for any company dealing with crisis management.
You might think that Uber's PR stumbles are a benefit to Lyft; you would be wrong. The boosts are temporary, thanks in large part to brand awareness.
Capital One is skipping the Facebook Messenger bot thing and opting for text instead. With SMS, the company can reach a larger audience and faces fewer privacy hurdles, but gives up modern chatbot conveniences. Bots aren't all that.
The Quartz news app is bot that looks like texting. Here's an interview with Jon Keefe, a developer with Quartz's Bot Studio, whose focus is on how bots and artificial intelligence can help journalists do their jobs better and how news consumers can use them to access news and information.
Harvard economist and former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summersdoesn't agree with Bill Gates's idea to tax robots that replace human jobs. He says, “A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced.” Not to mention that the IRS might have trouble determining which robots are job-destroying versus job-creating.
MIT and Boston University have built a new robot that can read your thoughts. It blushes when you think it made a mistake. Even robots don't like to be wrong.
Facebook outlined the changes, which with the Facebook 360 app features four feeds available in the headset: Explore, Following, Saved, and Timeline.
AUDIO
Anchor has launched a major update, making it like Snapchat Stories for audio. In addition to the "stories" feature, there are new audio creation tools, including the ability to pull in music tracks from Apple Music or Spotify, external audio clips, and pre-made musical fillers. And distribution over voice-first platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, in addition to the usual places like iOS, Android and the web.
Spotify announced it has acquired audio detection and music discovery startup Sonalytic, that can identify songs, mixed content and audio clips, as well as track copyright-protected material, and aid in music discovery. As you'll see below, music discovery is an important aspect of streaming audio.
Edison Research and Triton Digital presented the 2017 Infinite Dial Study, containing the latest research around digital audio, social media, mobile, smart speakers, and podcast consumption. It is the definitive source in this space. We captured some of the highlights in a Twitter Moment, and here are some of the major takeaways:
81% of Americans 12+ own a smartphone
50% of Americans have access to a Netflix account
Online radio reaches new high of 61% of Americans 12+, an estimated 170 million
Spotify more than doubled its presence as a source of music discovery over last year
Social media use is beginning to consolidate around a few platforms
Program of the Week: If you're going to spend your time listening to one thing this week, make it the audio replay of The Infinite Dial, hosted by Tom Webster and John Rosso, which will walk you through the deck above. It's enlightening and surprisingly entertaining at the same time. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts.
The last click someone clicks before they buy something isn't the moment they made up their mind. Focus your efforts on the trail of breadcrumbs as well as the prize at the end.
Please, don't call it a newsletter. Why not? Because people have negative associations with newsletters. Except this one, right? RIGHT??
We've been hearing about "personal branding" for years, and it seems to have reached a fever pitch again.
With all of this focus on personal branding, some may be forgetting something: just do the work. It's one of the premises of Mark Schaefer's new book Known.
Jason Falls outlines some of the pitfalls and challenges for those who are doing the work and who also happen to have a personal brand. Some of it comes down to defining thought leadership vs. personal brand.
Satire: "It’s only by locking arms and defending the values of inclusivity, respect, and tolerance that we can get back to posting gym selfies and embarrassing #TBT pics." That's right, Donald Trump is Ruining My Personal Brand. His remains consistent, though.
As part of its reviews, Consumer Reports will be taking into account cyber security and privacy safeguards when rating products. As privacy and data security are the most important things with regard to consumers trusting brands, it was just a matter of time before CR made this move.
Of course, the big news of last week was Wikileaks' dump of "Vault-7" series, including 8,761 alleged CIA classified docs and files from 2013-2016 describing malware, zero-day exploits for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux
In a number of cases, the media took Wikileaks' statements at face value before investigating the documents in more detail. As a result, it was falsely reported that encryption apps like Signal, Confide, WhatsApp and others were compromised. However, there's no need to delete such encryption apps.
Amazon has turned over data files in a murder case in which Alexa is being called as a witness. Amazon's disclosure of 48 hours of recordings by the device sidesteps a potentially significant legal battle pitting users' privacy against law enforcement's needs to investigate major crimes.
Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.
Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. Won't you consider supporting The Full Monty?
Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. And our decades of experience working for major brands means that we deeply understand the challenges you're facing. Let us know if we can help you.
![Patroclus, by Jacques-Louis David [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJacques-Louis_David_Patrocle.jpg){kind=link}
