The Full Monty — March 13, 2017

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's harsh 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).

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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%).

The CMO Survey Highlights and Insights February 2017

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.
Walmart is introducing in-store screens that will allow you to buy products online. Brain+Trust saw the "endless aisle" during a recent visit to Walmart in Bentonville (client). It was impressive.

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.
IBM has figured out how to store data and information on a single atom. But they haven't figured out how to announce a major staffing change. Sounds familiar.

Conde Nast is joining NBC Universal and Vox Media to 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.
Specialists might be hampering innovation in your organization's digital transformation efforts. Having a broader understanding of business strategy is critical.
How one small change got a video 14 million views on Facebook. It's a matter of overcoming the classic case of second circle evaporation.

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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?
Amazon-owned Twitch debuted Pulse, a Twitter-like service where gaming broadcasters can share videos, images, and text with their friends and followers.

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

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.

Because turnover is so high at Twitter, Recode runs down Jack Dorsey’s top deputies in charge of everything from engineering to revenue.

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-ups have 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...
A report indicates that WhatsApp is testing chat tools to let businesses talk to customers as a source of revenue, conducting an early trial with a group of Y Combinator companies.

GOOGLE / ALPHABET

Google's new machine learning API will recognize objects in videos. Video is about to become the new search engine.

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.

YAHOO

Flickr has added "similarity search" to help you discover photos that are — you guessed it — similar. Remember Flickr?

Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

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.

TRANSPORTATION

Lyft opened its API to developers and now anyone can order a Lyft for someone else without a Lyft account.
Like this guy — the head of Uber's AI labs, who stepped down after just three months on the job and three months after Uber lost three members of its self-driving Advanced Technology Group.
Uber is terrified of unions: each day, the ride-hailing firm sends podcasts and messages through the app to persuade its drivers to remain as ‘partners’ as it tries to block a union from forming in Seattle:

"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.
It's really hard to become an Uber driver.

AUTONOMOUS

In a court filing related to stolen documents, Google's self-driving car unit Waymo asks a court to block Uber's autonomous vehicle efforts. This is largely due to the claim that Uber stole self-driving car technology from Google.
California plans to allow self-driving car testing without the presence of human backup drivers by the end of 2017.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

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.
Salesforce has opened its Einstein AI layer to all customers, and has introduced the Einstein Vision platform that will unlock insights within photos.
Harvard economist and former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers doesn'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.

Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

The latest update of Oculus has brought Facebook Live to the Samsung Gear VR headset.
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.
Someone needs to discover SoundCloud quickly: the music hosting site is in need of a fire sale, as it struggles to raise more money amid a dropping valuation.
Brain+Trust Partners' own Tim Hayden presented with Edison Research's Tom Webster at the Country Radio Seminar on the importance of reaching listeners through their mobile devices and suggested doing so through the apps and mobile websites they are already using.
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

The Infinite Dial 2017 from Edison Research

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.
And don't forget to subscribe to our show via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.

Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

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.
So Gini Dietrich asked the question: Is Thought Leadership Dead? No, but it might need an extreme makeover.
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.

Privacy / Security / Legal

There's a frighteningly effective Gmail scam going around right now. Don't fall for it.
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.
Card payments giant Verifone is investigating a breach of its internal networks that has affected a number of companies running its point-of-sale solutions.
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.
The document cache, which focuses on compromising devices and not apps, underscores the strength of Signal's and WhatsApp's encryption.
But you should pay attention when the FBI director says "There's no such thing as absolute privacy in America." Well of course not. We're all on Facebook.

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.
Have you ever tried to read the Moby-Dick-length Terms of Service of iTunes or similar apps? It doesn't go over well as text. That's why an artist turned the iTunes User Agreement into comic strips:

Originally on Tumblr

Measurement / Metrics / Data

There’s been no progress in CMOs’ use of marketing analytics, according to the latest edition of the biennial CMO Survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
What marketers should know about Facebook engagement in 2017: Facebook’s 2016 algorithm changes put user-generated content front and center in the News Feed, and brand-generated content on the back burner.
Google is acquiring Kaggle, a platform with ~500K data scientists, which hosts data science and machine learning competitions and has raised $12.75M.

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

The Roman philosopher Seneca noted that because we don't properly value time, we never end up with more. Herein are four examples of how we misunderstand time.
We focus too much of our time on acquiring better marketing skills. So spend some time reading about these four non-marketing skills that will help you become a better marketer.
While you're traveling, you have time on your hands and you want to make it productive. So take a look at this list of essential business travel apps for 2017.

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Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

Speaking at DMAWest Tech Summit in Salt Lake City, March 17, 2017. (Tim)
Speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2017 in San Diego, March 22-24, 2017. (Scott)
Keynote at Texas Society of Association Executives Tech Talks, March 30, 2017. (Tim)
Keynote at Ragan's PR and Media Relations Summit in New York, April 5-7, 2017. (Christopher)
Keynote at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017. (Scott)
Can we speak for your organization? Drop us a line.

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.

Top photo credit: Shwen Gwee

Monday, March 13, 2017