Monday, April 24, 2017

The Full Monty — April 24, 2017


The United issue shows there may be more at stake in concentrated industries; sports-free bundles may encourage cable subscriptions; This Week in Retail finds Walmart experimenting with a discount formula and looks at what's causing the retail meltdown; the request for Twitter to sell itself - to users; announcements from Facebook's f8 conference; publishers are unsatisfied with Instant Articles; how Facebook pummels the competition; Yahoo's demise is a harbinger; Uber really has some ethical issues (again!); AR is the future of Facebook; The Podcast Consumer 2017 report; the FTC needs to crack down on sponsored posts; success factors for CEOs and managers; and more in the post-vacation edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust is speaking (final section below).


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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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Edition notes: I'm back from vacation this week, but have to attend my father-in-law's funeral. Next week may be a bit light.

Industry





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Platforms 

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

    • Twitter is going hard at video: brands can now run in-stream video ads to align with videos from Amplify partners, including top TV networks, major sports leagues, major publishing houses and magazines and professional news outlets. Twitter also highlights that these are "brand-safe" placements, pitting itself against the issues YouTube has recently been dealing with.
    • Did Twitter delete some tweets that were negative toward United Airlines?
    • Twitter's annual shareholder meeting will include a proposal generated via a petition that recommends that Twitter sell itself to some of its more fervent fans.
    • There's a serious problem at Twitter that needs to be addressed: disinformation is being spread by fully automated bots as well as semi-automated spam and trolling accounts that make up a sizeable part of Twitter's active user base. Just look at any @realDonaldTrump tweet seconds after it's been sent it's been liked and retweeted hundreds, if not thousands of times.

    FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

    SNAP

    ALPHABET / GOOGLE

    YAHOO / VERIZON / AOL

    • Yahoo’s demise is a signal that web-native companies are next. If you run a business that relies on digital-advertising revenue for an outsized portion of your funding, you need to find new streams of revenue. Now.


    Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

    LODGING

    • The lodging industry’s plan against Airbnb shows “the hotel cartel is intent on short-sheeting the middle class so they can keep price-gouging consumers,” according to Airbnb. Is this another instance of taxi companies vs. ride-hailing upstarts? Or does the hotel industry have a workable solution? If the plan is just more legislation and regulation, rather than updating their business model, it may be a long, slow decline for traditional hoteliers.

    TRANSPORTATION

    • New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission is proposing that car services that only accept credit cards should be required to offer tipping as part of their user experience. Yeah, they're looking at you, Uber. Lyft already offers a tipping option.
    • Uber has extended its internal investigation on sexual harassment and workplace culture. With hundreds of current and former employees lining up, it could be quite revealing.
    • The culture there must be fairly toxic, as Rachel Whetstone, Uber's head of communications, stepped down. Who can blame her? She had a job that was about as enviable as Sean Spicer's.
    • Uber program “Hellcreated fake Lyft rider accounts to track Lyft driver locations, and identified individual drivers using Lyft vulnerability. Add this to the laundry list of questionable business practices by Uber. Why are you still using the app?
    • Uber secretly identified and tagged iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a practice that could have resulted in the app being booted from the App Store. This New York Times article Uber C.E.O. Plays With Fire sums up his behavior and the company's business model succinctly: "In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered." He'll push boundaries and copy competitors, like Facebook; in that, he's like Mark Zuckerberg — but without a conscience. 
     AUTONOMOUS 

    ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN



    Virtual Reality / Audio

    VR/AR

    AUDIO

    • IHeartMedia, the parent company of IHeartRadio, warned that its current debt position indicate that it may not survive another year.
    • Have a podcast? Here are the seven best podcast promotion tactics.
    • The Podcast Consumer 2017, the latest in Edison Research’s annual study of the medium, contains all new data on podcast users in America. Highlights:
      • Podcasting continues to rise, with Monthly listeners growing from 21% to 24% year over year.
      • The Podcast listener remains an affluent, educated consumer— and one that is becoming increasingly more likely to gravitate to ad-free or ad-light subscription experiences.
      • Subscribers tend to have been podcast consumers for longer than non-subscribers, consume more podcasts, and are more likely to use their smartphone as their primary podcast player.
      • While Home continues to be the most often named location for podcast listening, the vehicle is a strong second.
    • Program of the Week: Gabbing Geek is three friends doing a weekly podcast about movies, comic books, TV, science fiction, books, board games, video games, and all other things geeky. Suggested by Ryan Garcia. 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 iTunesGoogle PlayStitcher,  Spreaker or SoundCloud.



    Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing



    Privacy / Security / Legal

    • How Russian hacking evolved: simple credit card schemes in the '90s, takeover by organized crime in the '00s, and now joint criminal and government hacker teams. Important to understand, from the standpoint of corporate security, communications and society.
    • InterContinental Hotel Group initially announced a data breach of 12 locations. It turns out it's a little bigger: 1,200 IHG hotels were affected by the data breach. IHG is neither the first nor the last big organization that will suffer a data breach. Your company should be planning for how you'll respond if/when it happens to you  across the whole organization, from IT to communications to customer care to legal and beyond.
    • Instagram celebrities (yes, that's a thing) keep sneaking in sponsored posts, according to the Federal Trade Commission. What? Influencers and celebrities not disclosing a material relationship with brands? No! 


    Measurement / Analytics / Data




    Essential Watching / Listening / Reading




    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.


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    Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

    • Keynote at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017. (Scott)
    • Keynote at Health Further in Nashville, August 23-25, 2017 (Frank and 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: Belisarious Begging for Alms, by Jacques-Louis David (Wikipedia)

    --

    Monday, April 10, 2017

    The Full Monty — April 10, 2017


    Take the Oath. No, please — take it. Video is huge and it's all over the place; what ails the ad industry; the ethics around corporate social responsibility; Twitter Lite addresses a concern; stories are everywhere; why Google is so lit; disruption follows a predictable pattern; what dogs and manufacturing have in common; Uber continues its ethical death spiral; why Detroit leads Silicon Valley in one area; the ideal length of a podcast is...; the web's UX needs help; marketing reporting 101; forced friendliness may be our downfall; and more in the oath-laden ethical edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust  is speaking (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.

    If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.



    Programming note: we'll be off next week.

    Industry

    • This Week in Video: there's no question that TV/video/moving pictures, whether they're on a mobile device or a device attached to your wall, are still a hot medium. And the sands are shifting under our feet, including the (perhaps) surprising news that live TV is still a thing:

    • This Week in Fake News:
      • Fake news publishers are still earning money from major ad networks, despite the crackdown on fake news. In this long but essential read, one publisher notes that the only thing that matters is eyeballs, not the quality or veracity of the content. Bottom line: if you are responsible for media buying in your organization, you or your team might want to make note of some of these ad networks and decide how you'll handle the ethics of doing business with them.
      • Google is including fact checks with all of its searches globally. Google hopes special callouts for fact-checking articles will help searchers get the right answers or better make their own decisions. That is, if ultra-partisan netizens from the left and right can get it through their skulls that Snopes and FactCheck.org are fact-based organizations (i.e., neutral)
    • From Digiday's "Confessions" series, an advertising veteran notes that lack of intellectual curiosity and rigor around shiny object syndrome is ruining the ad industry. Thanks for that, chief.





    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, please inquire about getting your company or product here.

    Platforms

    TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

      FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

      SNAP

      • Snapchat is changing how users find stories, making the search feature function across stories as well as across accounts. Finally — a feature of Facebook that Snapchat copies.
      • How do users like Snapchat ads? Fifty-one percent of Americans who use Snapchat don't engage with branded filters or lenses, JPMorgan Chase reports, and 73% don't swipe on ads. Additionally, 68% never watch video ads. Roughly 28% of teen and millennial users said they “hated” the ads seen on Snapchat, while 20% said the same about Instagram ads.
      • When it comes to influencers, Snapchat and Instagram are not the same; Instagram seems to be the preferred platform.

      ALPHABET / GOOGLE

      • Google commissioned a survey to study what teens think is cool, and surprise! They like Google. According to Google.
        • The study: It's Lit: a Guide to What Teens Think is Cool.
        • Males are much more into video games than females; they're also more likely to be influenced by fads and friends while females are influenced by how something makes them feel.
        • Of the brands they're most aware of, the most cool are: YouTube, Netflix and Google; and least cool are: Yahoo, Sprint and McDonalds.
      • YouTube is requiring channels to have at least 10,000 views before they're allowed to run ads. This is in an effort to crack down on unlicensed re-uploads of popular videos, a process commonly referred to as "freebooting."

      YAHOO / VERIZON / AOL

      MICROSOFT / LINKEDIN



      Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

      • Regardless of the industry, disruption follows the same five stages: the Kodak moment, Internet infrastructure, disruptive business models, IoT and artificial intelligence, and the adoption curve.
      • On demand manufacturing is a way to utilize machine downtime and reduce expensive equipment purchasing and leasing. Uber for manufacturing.
      • Dog sharing is another hot new thing in the collaborative economy. Uberman pinscher?

      LODGING

      TRANSPORTATION

       AUTONOMOUS 

      ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN



      Virtual Reality / Audio

      VR/AR

      AUDIO




      Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing



      Privacy / Security / Legal



      Measurement / Analytics / Data




      Essential Watching / Listening / Reading




      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?



      Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements



      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: The Oath of the Horatii, by Jacques-Louis David (Wikipedia)

      --

      Thursday, April 6, 2017

      Episode 28: Just Do the Right Thing


      Every day, we're presented with opportunities. Choices between doing what's merely expedient and doing what's right. Lawmakers pass bills to ensure that companies don't overstep the boundaries of decency, and try to protect the citizenry.

      But it doesn't always take legal action to ensure we do the right things. It's necessary to have an understanding of corporate social responsibility and its impact beyond the surface level of marketing, communications and reputation management. Which means making ethical decisions rather than legal decisions in the face of challenges.

      What Pepsi did wrong and what other companies are choosing to do in the wake of President Trump's executive orders on climate policy and Internet privacy.

      Download now (8.0 MB, 17:12)


      Links

      Be sure to check out other major stories from the April 3rd edition of The Full Monty:

        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.

        Incidental music: "One More Stripper" by APAMusic, royalty-free license from Pond5.com.

        Voice over: Toni Deckers

        Subscribe on iTunes - and leave us a review. Also on Google PlayStitcherSpreakerSoundCloud  and I Heart Radio.

        If you find this program valuable, please consider supporting it on Patreon. It covers the cost of hosting, email, music and more.

        Monday, April 3, 2017

        The Full Monty — April 3, 2017


        Modern marketers have some tech-savvy CMOs to emulate; take a survey on marketing, service and trust; limiting display ads doesn't change cost or visibility; this week in fake news; resurrecting a brand reputation via advertising; Facebook continues to copy Snapchat; Google gives external companies audit rights to avoid ad controversy; Uber has [another] a bad week of publicity; the battle for autonomous and artificial intelligence talent; the pending fourth Industrial Revolution; creating an audio hook for your audience; how brands should work with influencers; how to set up a VPN; a 3-part series on data and analytics in crisis planning; a key interview technique you're missing; and more in the trust edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust  is speaking (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.

        If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

        Click to tweet this edition of The Full Monty.

        Industry

        • Tensions are escalating as the Netflix evolves into a direct competitor to the traditional studio model, investing in more than 70 original shows this year, is hogging talent, pushing up prices, and spurring pushback from rival TV producers who once saw it as a partner. Netflix: the Monster that's Eating Hollywood.
        • It looks as if BuzzFeed will be going public in 2018. The media company with the sensibility of a tech company is positioned well to make a splash in the IPO market.
        • This Week in Fake News
        • The fast food brand Carl's Jr. lost its way with risque advertising featuring buxom blondes in recent years. They're rebooting their advertising with a clever, funny and self-aware spot that highlights their origins over their recent distractions, with a fictional Carl Hardee, Sr. in the starring role — a nod to the combined brands of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. Showing that they've heard feedback and can be self-deprecating may give the brand a boost, in addition to their focus on quality ingredients and lower-price alternative to other similar chains.




        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.

        Platforms

        TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

          FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

          Via romas77 (Instagram)

          ALPHABET / GOOGLE

          MICROSOFT / LINKEDIN



          Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

          LODGING

          TRANSPORTATION

          • There's no easy way to say this. If you're an Uber driver, the company is manipulating you. Uber is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate drivers in the service of its corporate growth. Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and noncash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder — and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for them.
          • Uber will be shutting down in Denmark next month, where it has 2,000 drivers, after new taxi laws mandated that cabs be fitted with seat occupancy sensors and fare meters. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." — Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4.
          • Lyft is testing Shuttle service in San Francisco and Chicago with fixed pricing and a set route, running on weekdays from 6:30-10 a.m. and 4-8:00 p.m. Another public transportation, UberPool and Via competitor.
          • Audi is buying Silvercar, the luxury car rental service that only offers Audi A4s. The automaker had invested $28 million in a Round C of financing previously.
          • Ford has an idea of how we'll get around in the city of the future, whether or not it involves cars.
          • Amid the recent and continual crush of negative news, Uber published its heralded diversity report, which indicated that Uber is no better than its Silicon Valley confederates. And to complicate matters, the page included names of employee resource groups (ERGs) that, although they were named by employees, were nonetheless tone deaf to Uber's woes and how they might be perceived by external audiences.

           AUTONOMOUS 

          • The Google-turned-Uber executive at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between the two companies in their autonomous vehicle programs is refusing to testify or hand over related documents. As in the intellectual property that he allegedly stole from Google before departing for Uber. He sounds like a perfect fit for the Uber culture.
          • It's becoming increasingly difficult to retain good self-driving talent, as they flee one company for the next.

          ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

          • Similarly, big corporations are hoarding the world's best artificial intelligence talent. Which is great if you're the talent, but difficult if you're a smaller competitor trying to gain a foothold
          • It is actually developing economies that are poised to be hit the hardest by the fourth Industrial Revolution, or “Industry 4.0,” where machines are networked together in “smart factories” that have little need for human input. The question is, assuming that this trend toward the networked automation of factories continues — and there is little evidence to suggest that it won’t — what happens next?
          • Domino's (featured in last week's edition) has outperformed tech stocks, and its robots will deliver your pizza. Just don't forget to tip. You don't want to mess with a robot.
          • Interviews with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Ray Kurzweil and others indicate a wide range of predictions and concerns about AI in coming decades, its regulation, and possible implementations.
          • Can AI make you a better tweeter? The startup Post Intelligence hopes it can.


          Virtual Reality / Audio

          VR/AR

          AUDIO




          Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

          • If you're focusing your content marketing efforts on headlines and click-bait and your writing is sub-par, you're missing the point. Instead, concentrate on content strategy, says Rebecca Lieb.
          • There are two models of brand newsrooms — physical and virtual — and you need to find the model that works best for you. Examples include Reebok, Nestle and SoFi
          • Jay Acunzo has a simple rule for how brands should work with influencers: think about retention versus acquisition.
          • Amid worries about bad behavior and content by third-party influencers, Doug Simon recommends companies to think about internal experts as influencers.
          • The on-protocol and by-the-book customer service messaging didn't work for United last week. What would have made the difference? It's the topic of Episode 27 of The Full Monty. Listen in for commentary, trivia, and the poem of the week. And please leave a rating and review wherever you subscribe.




          Privacy / Security / Legal




          Measurement / Analytics / Data

           



          Essential Watching / Listening / Reading






          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?



          Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements



          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: The Funeral Games of Patroclus by Jacques-Louis David (Wikipedia)

          --

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