Tuesday, December 19, 2017

The Full Monty: Enough Already — December 18, 2017


Devices are eating our brains and it's time to take them back; artificial intelligence predictions for 2018; unpredictable side effects to ride-hailing and smart maps; non-financial uses of blockchain; going D2C in place of channels; where digital succeeded in 2017; social splitting from media; Best Buy and Target are still not out; a plum job at Walmart; threaded tweets for more tweetstorms; Fox gets eaten by Mouse; T-Mobile moves into TV; global audiobook trends; the repeal of Net Neutrality; Uber goes even lower; VR for Airbnb previews; accountability in marketing for 2018; improving your productivity and ability to solve crossword puzzles; and more in the  edition of The Full Monty for the week of December 11, 2017.



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The Full Monty exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Links are below with commentary in italics. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please click send your colleagues to this page to sign up as well.

We've got all of these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — in The Full Monty Magazine on Flipboard. And a special note about Flipboard: please take a look at the new layout for The Full Monty. We've separated stories into mini-magazines that follow the same sections as below. Feel free to follow the magazines that matter to you.


Programming note: this is the final edition of The Full Monty for 2017. We'll resume on January 8. 



Top Stories

Our devices are ubiquitous. For many, they are in our hands from nearly the moment we awake. They follow us to the bathroom, keep us entertained while we dine alone, hold our attention while we're in a queue, and put us in constant contact with our friends and family. And much of that is on social media.

But we've reached a point where we may be over saturated, and where we (including our children) might be spending too much time in front of a screen, either in our hands or in our laps. Perhaps it's time to dial back — to rethink our priorities. This time of year naturally lends itself to being reflective, so perhaps it's the perfect opportunity in which to determine the ways we might reduce the amount of time we spend in front of screens small and large, and spend more time on front of our families, friends and coworkers, giving them our undivided attention.

And consider this: even in those quiet times when you might instinctively reach for your phone to while away the time because you're bored or socially awkward, use that as a way to push yourself into an uncomfortable situation, a moment of self-reflection (one that doesn't require a New Year), or quiet observation of the world around you. You just might be amazed at what you've been missing.
The structure of these posts is usually the same. Step one: identify some ill in society. Step two: admit that people think technology, and Facebook, might be contributing to that ill. Step three: assert that more Facebook, not less, is the cure for said ill.




Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

The latest in AI, machine learning, bots, and blockchain, mobility, and autonomous everything.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / MACHINE LEARNING

    AUTONOMOUS / MOBILITY

     

    BLOCKCHAIN / BITCOIN




    BUY THIS BOOK

    Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords: How World's Fairs and Trade Expos Changed the World by Charles Pappas looks at how many of the industry-changing innovations that we take for granted today originated at some sort of trade show. With CES coming up, this should put you in the proper mindset.




    Want to see your book featured here? Please let us know.

    Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

    Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.

    STRATEGY / MARKETING / CONTENT


    JOURNALISM / COMMUNICATIONS 

    • The future of social media means abandoning the quest to respond to every confused man on Twitter and instead DMing with groups of people who matter. In the future, Social and Media Will Split from Nieman Labs.
    • Bloomberg's Twitter news network Tic Toc went live yesterday
    • Storify is shutting down. The aggregation service was once the hot tool used by journalists, but with functionality built into many platforms now, it became outmoded.

    As we prepare for 2018, here are some key digital trends to watch.




    Retail Apocalypse

    Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is  is undergoing a historical metamorphosis. 

    Source: youtu.be/qalujiU7txs



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    Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

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    Platforms 

    News to know about relevant social, virtual, and augmented reality platforms that may affect your business.

    TWITTER / PERISCOPE

    FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

    SNAP




        Media

        The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them.

        VIDEO


        AUDIO




        Regulatory / Security 

        Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.

        SECURITY / HACKING

          ON-DEMAND ECONOMY




          Measurement / Analytics / Data

          The future is not in plastics, but in data. Those who know how to measure and analyze it will rule the world.



          Mental Nourishment

          Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.




          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.


          patreon.com/scottmonty

          Wow! You made it this far. That took a lot of work. Can you imagine how much work it took to write this? If you can appreciate the effort and this publication provides any kind of value to you, maybe you'll consider joining as a patron.



          Upcoming Speaking Engagements

          • The 2017 speaking circuit is now closed. We're open for 2018 gigs.
          Can we speak for your organization or event? Drop us a line.





          Top image credit: The Burning of Sodom (formerly "The Destruction of Sodom") (1857) by Camille Corot, public domain 

          -- 

          Monday, December 11, 2017

          The Full Monty: Track Changes — December 11, 2017


          Traditional companies put innovation to work and the CIO's role is changing; women should lead A.I.; bots are stealing your Christmas presents; how autonomous vehicles will create jobs; Ford's trends to watch for 2018; why Bitcoin is rising; key takeaways from the CMO Spend Survey; how the New York Times is focused on growing its audiences; better personalization is needed in retail; social media has become weaponized; YouTube is raising its ad prices to account for something it should have been doing; Disney may be getting Fox assets; listen up: Apple is buying Shazam; how Microsoft Word caught someone in an editing lie; the C-suite needs to get comfortable with data; what David Rockefeller's Rolodex tells us about networking; and more in the Track Changes edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust Partners for the week of December 11, 2017.



          Please support this newsletter by becoming patron. We'll let you decide how much. 


          You know you want to

          You're not a patron yet? It's the holiday season. What kind of a heartless freeloader are you?  



          The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Links are below with commentary in italics. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please click send your colleagues to this page to sign up as well.

          We've got all of these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — in The Full Monty Magazine on Flipboard. And a special note about Flipboard: please take a look at the new layout for The Full Monty. We've separated stories into mini-magazines that follow the same sections as below. Feel free to follow the magazines that matter to you.



          Top Stories

          Silicon Valley gets all the hype when it comes to technology innovation and disruption. Yet the latest app, while entertaining and distracting, isn't necessarily what moves the world forward. Certainly, behemoths like Uber and Airbnb have made significant disruptive changes to the travel and hospitality industries — largely due to not owning any fleets or real estate. But the companies to watch are those that take technological developments and deploy them across their existing infrastructure, making massive and scalable changes that result in innovation, collaboration, and even new business models. Risk-taking executives recognize that the status quo is not forever and understand that sometimes disruption happens from within.




          Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

          The latest in AI, machine learning, bots, and blockchain, mobility, and autonomous everything.

          ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / MACHINE LEARNING

            AUTONOMOUS / MOBILITY


            BLOCKCHAIN / BITCOIN




            BUY THIS BOOK

            One of the break-out books for 2017 and now a New York Times bestseller is The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway, professor at NYU Stern School of Business and CEO of L2.




            Want to see your book featured here? Please let us know.

            Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

            Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.

            STRATEGY / MARKETING / CONTENT

            JOURNALISM / COMMUNICATIONS 




            Retail Apocalypse

            Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is  is undergoing a historical metamorphosis. 




            SPONSOR

            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?

            Don't miss this FREE 16 page report, full of information, insight and guidance on how to best approach prospects based on the findings.

            Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

            If you're seeing this, maybe you'd like to see your company's name here too. Let us know.


            Platforms 

            News to know about relevant social, virtual, and augmented reality platforms that may affect your business.

            TWITTER / PERISCOPE

            FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

            • Facebook is offering free music and sound effects for video creators. Obviously in a self-serving attempt to generate more video creation.
            • Instagram is testing Direct, a messaging app, and may remove DMs from the main app. The Facebook family seems to be diversifying within its apps; different audiences may prefer different functionalities. The company will be able to test and determine which app requires particular features.

            ALPHABET / GOOGLE




              Media

              The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them.

              VIDEO

              AUDIO

              • Apple is reportedly buying Shazam for $400 millionWhy would Apple want Shazam? Possibly to improve music search to compete with Spotify. Or perhaps to have better voice/sound integration to make music predictions for you.
              • YouTube will introduce a paid, on-demand streaming music service in March; Warner has signed on, talks continue with Sony, Universal, and Merlin.
              • Program of the Week: And as our recommendation this week, we have Unthinkable. Host Jay Acunzo explores how some ideas become rules and meets the people who dare to question them — not by using some "best practice," but by trusting their intuition. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet:  smonty.co/yourpodcasts.  



              Regulatory / Security 

              Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.

              SECURITY / HACKING

                ON-DEMAND ECONOMY




                Measurement / Analytics / Data

                The future is not in plastics, but in data. Those who know how to measure and analyze it will rule the world.



                Mental Nourishment

                Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.




                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.


                patreon.com/scottmonty

                Wow! You made it this far. That took a lot of work. Can you imagine how much work it took to write this? If you can appreciate the effort and this publication provides any kind of value to you, maybe you'll consider joining as a patron.



                Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

                • The 2017 speaking circuit is now closed. We're open for 2018 gigs.
                Can we speak for your organization or event? Drop us a line.



                Brain+Trust Partners helps smart, risk-taking executives discern the real from the hype. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, and streamlining processes, our focus is on digital business transformation that improves customer experience and drives efficiency for your company. 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.


                Top image credit: The Parthenon by Frederic Edwin Church (1871), public domain 

                -- 

                Wednesday, December 6, 2017

                The Full Monty: Brave New World — December 4, 2017


                Big changes are afoot in a number of industries that will alter our experience with services; prepare your AI now, before it's too late; Detroit is becoming the Mobility City; seven questions answered about bitcoin; is content marketing sustainable?; mobile shopping increases; the Amazon-Walmart war wages on; the Chinese platform that surpassed Facebook; pay TV subscribers shrunk in Q3; podcasting for middle America; the lying, cheating ways of Uber; getting data visualization right; tranquility from Seneca; plus, what to listen to, what to watch and what to read; and more in the  edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust Partners for the week of December 4, 2017.



                Please support this newsletter by becoming patron. We'll let you decide how much. 


                You know you want to

                Thank you for doing your part to keep this publication going.  



                The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Links are below with commentary in italics. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please click send your colleagues to this page to sign up as well.

                We've got all of these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — in The Full Monty Magazine on Flipboard. And a special note about Flipboard: please take a look at the new layout for The Full Monty. We've separated stories into mini-magazines that follow the same sections as below. Feel free to follow the magazines that matter to you.



                Top Stories

                The great modern philosopher Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. So too is it with changes we're seeing in a number of industries around us — many of which we chronicle here. Automotive and retail are at the top of the list in that respect. But in the last few days, there have been changes both sudden and gradual that should have us thinking about how the world we've become accustomed to will be changing in the near future.
                • CVS is buying Aetna in a deal that is set to change the landscape of healthcare, as insurance meets drugstore. While the combination makes sense in reducing some administration between the entities that pay for and dispense your drugs, it's also largely seen as a defensive move against Amazon. We've gotten to a place where an Amazon head-fake can move markets, and now entire industries are rethinking their positioning as the online retail giant potentially threatens their previously solid ground.
                • Digital media has lived and died with advertising, but now it’s mostly just dying. So expect lots of paid-content experiments, many taking the form of paywalls, where there’ll be everything from apps to merchandise to live events.
                • The New York Times halved the number of articles available to non-subscribers to five, in order to grow subscriptions. This marks the first change to its paywall since 2012, reflecting growing demand. So much for the "failing New York Times."
                • Publishers need to look beyond advertising for revenue. Subscriptions are a solution for some. But commerce, services, events and getting more narrow vs wide are other coping strategies. Reporter "personalities"play a role too. 
                • Case in point: the $399/year The Information has introduced $199 and $749 options that reflect budgets for Millennials and those interested in events, respectively. 




                Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

                The latest in AI, machine learning, bots, and blockchain, mobility, and autonomous everything.

                ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / MACHINE LEARNING

                  AUTONOMOUS / MOBILITY

                  BLOCKCHAIN / BITCOIN

                  • With everything that's been happening in the bitcoin market lately, you probably have a few questions. Here's the beginner's guide to bitcoin.
                  • Don't hate the Winkelvoss twins because they rowed for Harvard, are impossibly tall, have square jaws, or because they won a $65 million lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg. Hate them because they're now bitcoin billionaires



                  BUY THIS BOOK

                  Unbranding: 100 Branding Lessons for the Age of Disruption is Scott and Alison Stratten's fifth book and it's already been voted the 2017 Sales and Marketing Book of the Year by 800 CEO-READ.

                  Image result for unbranding

                  Affiliate link. We earn a small commission at no cost to you if you make a purchase.

                  Want to see your book featured here? Please let us know.

                  Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

                  Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.

                  COMMUNICATIONS / MARKETING / STRATEGY 



                  Retail Apocalypse

                  Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is  is undergoing a historical metamorphosis. 



                  SPONSOR

                  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?

                  Don't miss this FREE 16 page report, full of information, insight and guidance on how to best approach prospects based on the findings.

                  Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

                  If you're seeing this, maybe you'd like to see your company's name here too. Let us know.


                  Platforms 

                  News to know about relevant social, virtual, and augmented reality platforms that may affect your business.
                  • Tencent has surpassed Facebook as the world’s fifth most valuable company. Why? Simple: because Tencent’s messaging app WeChat is virtually ubiquitous in China among mobile users, with a global adoption rate nearing a billion monthly active users. And this is why Facebook purhcased WhatsApp a few years ago.

                  TWITTER / PERISCOPE

                  FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

                  ALPHABET / GOOGLE

                    SNAP




                    Media

                    The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them.

                    VIDEO

                    • Pay-TV subscriber losses widen as the country’s largest pay-TV providers shed more than 400,000 subscribers during Q3, according to the Leichtman Research Group, leaving them with slightly more than 92 million subscribers at the end of the quarter.
                    • If you're in the mood for a documentary, check out Deep Web, an Amazon original documentary on some of the biggest digital crimes of the last three decades.

                    AUDIO




                    Regulatory / Security 

                    Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.

                    SECURITY / HACKING

                      ON-DEMAND ECONOMY




                      Measurement / Analytics / Data

                      The future is not in plastics, but in data. Those who know how to measure and analyze it will rule the world.



                      Mental Nourishment

                      Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.




                      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.


                      patreon.com/scottmonty

                      Wow! You made it this far. That took a lot of work. Can you imagine how much work it took to write this? If you can appreciate the effort and this publication provides any kind of value to you, maybe you'll consider joining as a patron.



                      Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

                      • Brain+Trust is officially launching DealerAlchemy in Austin this week, to reduce friction within dealerships (for dealers) and to make transactions more frictionless for customers.
                      • SocialFresh in Orlando December 8-9, 2017 (Christopher and Tim)
                      Can we speak for your organization? Drop us a line.



                      Brain+Trust Partners helps smart, risk-taking executives discern the real from the hype. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, and streamlining processes, our focus is on digital business transformation that improves customer experience and drives efficiency for your company. 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.


                      Top image credit: First Voyage, Departure for the New World, August 3, 1492 by L. Prang & Co. (1893), public domain 

                      -- 

                      Learn from the Past to Inform Your Future

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