Knock That Off — September 18, 2017

Silicon Valley tech companies are being asked to step up, and they need to act; understanding AI requires us to first understand humans; we might get too complacent about self-driving technology; focus not on Millennials or moms, but on Corpsumers; news of fake news puts more trust in the news (got it?); why people don't like to buy groceries online; WPP demands more of Twitter; Facebook shuts down ad capabilities on salacious content; you can see ABBA in concert; billions are going into original content on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook; Spotify goes for text; more on the Equifax breach; the complex financing of ride-hailing companies; why we're unlikely to undertake experiences that will improve us; and more in the Knock That Off edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust for the week of September 18, 2017.

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Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Autonomous

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

While artificial intelligence seems to be the main focus of many industries these days, before we're successful at AI we need to understand more about humans. Let's start with as simple one: can anyone help me understand my teenager? Okay, maybe that's not all that simple.
"She is so human that millions of people are eager to talk to her. When Xiaoice was released for a public test on WeChat (a popular messaging and calling app in China) on May 29 of last year, she received 1.5 million chat group invitations in the first 72 hours. Many people said that they didn’t realize she isn’t a human until 10 minutes into their conversation." Your next new best friend might be a robot. AKA the largest Turing test in human history.
While that might sound lonely, you might welcome the chatbot that will let you sue Equifax for up to $25,000 without a lawyer. Don't let the robots read Shakespeare ("The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.")
Retail brands are excited about the possibilities of artificial intelligence for image search.
Just for fun, check out this infographic: the Future of Artificial Intelligence, According to Pop Culture.

AUTONOMOUS

Chris Urmson, former CTO of Waymo, warns that we might get too complacent about self-driving technology before it’s totally ready.

Case in point: NTSB says that in the fatal Tesla crash in May 2016, the driver's over-reliance on Autopilot contributed to the crash. The agency approved safety recommendations for automakers, the Department of Transportation, and NHTSA.

GM and Cruise announced the first mass-production autonomous car. And GM has the inside scoop on how they did it.
Meanwhile, how does Ford test people's reactions to autonomous vehicles when unsupervised cars are still illegal on the street? Simple: they throw on a ghost suit. Remember that van with the driver disguised as a seat in the August. 14 edition? This is it.

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

Industry developments and trends, including retail, fake news, customer experience, content marketing, and influencer relations.

Here's how marketers are deciding on where to put their media dollars: go where the audience is and do what has worked in the past. But they also look for channels that can be easily measured or that demonstrate ROI.
They should be looking at Corpsumers, a demographic that's larger than Millennials or moms combined. These are consumers who care as much about a brands values as its products.
The real reason most of your marketing fails? You haven't taken the time to really—truly—understand your customers when you're looking at reports, analytics and spreadsheets all the time.
On Flipboard's Red Couch with GE CMO Linda Boff, in which she talks about content marketing, experiments, passions and regrets.
Fake News update:

Evidently, tagging fake news on Facebook doesn't work, according to a survey of 7,500 people.
However, it may not matter: research from Ogilvy’s annual survey of media debunks an emerging myth that the fake news phenomenon is wearing down consumer trust in the world’s most established media sources. The research found that the rise in reports of fake news has actually elevated trust in traditional media.

THIS WEEK IN RETAIL:

Walmart is simplifying its U.S. operations, reducing the number of divisions The idea is to react more quickly to changes and better communicate, as it continues to compete with Amazon.
Bonobos CEO and founder Andy Dunn explains why selling to Walmart was the best option for the upscale retailer.
Walmart will be building huge data centers to house its cloud computing and make a sizable push into deep learning, a segment of artificial intelligence. The retailer will build a "GPU farm" using graphics processing units (GPUs) from NVIDIA to power its cloud platform.
Amazon is looking for a city to house a second North American headquarters. These cities are the top contenders.
We know that Amazon is trying to take on Walmart with its purchase of Whole Foods and push into online grocery shopping. But that may be for naught, as currently, people don't like to buy their groceries online. The main reason? Hint: seeing is believing.

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Platforms

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

TWITTER/ PERISCOPE

Twitter is expanding the reach of its accounts-sharing tool, Teams, to its mobile apps, which will enable multiple users of a single account to manage their social activity on the go.
WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell took Twitter's Jack Dorsey to task on the platform's lagging growth rate in comparison to rivals. Dorsey admitted the social platform needs to "deliver what matters in the moment and what's relevant to people" and acknowledged that it needs a simple advertising model to boost revenue.
People love getting customer service help on Twitter — so much so that they'd actually be willing to pay for the service, according to an Applied Market Research study.
When two museums get in a Twitter fight, we all win. Not only was there plenty of one-upsmanship, but it came with a side of education.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

Facebook wants creators to make money, but not through content related to violence, p*rn, drugs, hate, debated social issues, and other content types. The company has released guidelines on ad content that prohibit monetization in such questionable categories.
Researchers at the University of Iowa and Lahore University of Management Science in Pakistan say a security loophole has allowed at least a million Facebook accounts, both real and fake, to generate at least 100 million "likes" and comments as part of "a thriving ecosystem of large-scale reputation manipulation."
Facebook has a new "Snooze" button that allows you to temporarily mute people in your feed who are oversharing. Like providing live updates for the entirety of the Emmy Awards last night...
Video is all the rage. On Instagram, engagement with videos surging — nearly at the level of engagement with photos.

OTHER

Neighborhood social network Nextdoor has seen activity jump in parts of Florida following Hurricane Irma.
And in case you're not familiar with Nextdoor, here's a pretty good example of every Nextdoor neighborhood on the platform.

AR/VR

You may have heard a little something about an Apple event last week. Well, its phones are the platform that will make augmented reality widely dispersed among consumers.
And if you're like us, you may have been asking yourself, "How can I see ABBA in concert?" Well, your timing is impeccable. ABBA is indeed going on tour again for the first time in 35 years. In virtual reality.

Media

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

VIDEO

Facebook will be spending up to $1 billion to invest in original programming for its video platform Watch.
And Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins says the streaming service will spend about $2.5 billion on original content in 2017, less than half of the $6 billion Netflix says it's spending this year. Don't forget: Netflix is increasing its spend in 2018 as well.
Netflix is seriously lacking in classic movies. There's a reason for that.
eMarketer has lowered its TV ad spend forecast for 2017 because consumers are cord-cutting at a higher rate than previously expected. By 2021, the pay TV audience will shrink by 10%. And TV ad spending in 2017 will total $71.65 billion, a year-over-year increase but down from the $72.72 billion predicted earlier.
The rise of online streaming services such as Netflix and HBO Go has dramatically altered the media habits of Americans, especially young adults, 61% of whom primarily use streaming TV.
Coming soon: a new bundle. Discovery, Viacom, A&E Networks, AMC Networks, Scripps are banding together for new service that doesn't include sports programming.

AUDIO

After months of looking for a buyer and experimenting with a new on-demand streaming service, Pandora is trying to become the old Pandora again by refocusing its efforts on ad-supported radio. As the leader in streaming media, Pandora may find itself well served by returning to its roots. Then again, it wasn't surrounded by the sharp elbows of Spotify then.
Understanding the importance of SMS messaging — particularly within younger cohorts, Spotify has launched an iMessage app for texting songs to friends.
Online radio service Slacker Radio was acquired for $50 million by LiveXLive, a streaming service focused on live music. The consolidation continues.
Program of the Week: This week, Andrea Bloom recommends Pop Culture Happy Hour, the NPR offering that promises a lively chat about books, movies, music, television, comics and pretty much anything else that strikes a nerve. 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:

The Equifax Breach:

We're a week in, and here's what you need to know — a handy FAQ from Krebs on Security, including how to freeze your credit.
Equifax's maddening unaccountability is a commentary worth reading. Consumers' feet are held to the fire for every minor detail regarding their credit. Equifax? Not so much.
As you might expect, the lawsuits against Equifax are piling up.
It really was a perfect storm, including no corporate leadership board involvement in security, an underperforming website, a bumbling crisis team. Who would have guessed a company that named itself after a Fax would fail to be armed for modern threats?

Everyone is at risk of a cyber-attack. Here are four things businesses should be doing to protect themselves.

ON-DEMAND ECONOMY

Airbnb's former director of product shared some lessons on how Airbnb scaled 100X.
Alphabet, which invested in Uber through GV (formerly Google Ventures), is in talks to invest about $1 billion in Lyft, driven by CEO Larry Page.
This is in addition to Uber being in talks to get hundreds of millions from Softbank, which is also the largest investor in Chinese company Didi Chuxing. The funding alliances in the ride-hailing business are a complex web.
New York Times reporter Mike Isaac is writing a book about Uber. Ambition, betrayal, sex, deceit and power grabs will make it a page-turner. And that's before we even get out of Travis Kalanick's office...

LEGAL

The FTC is getting serious about influencers not disclosing their relationships — and will begin holding them responsible, as well as the brands they work with.

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.

Mobile ads are reaching their intended audiences at a higher rate than desktop ads, a finding that may relate to desktops’ higher likelihood of having multiple users, according to a comScore report. In its analysis of US digital advertising in-target rates in Q2, comScore found higher rates on average for mobile (53%) than desktops (49%).

Mental Nourishment

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

Don't copy your competition; look outside of your industry, perhaps even outside of the business world, for inspiration.
The entire history of management ideas can be seen as a series of answers to a few pragmatic queries.
Maria Popova helps us understand the paradoxical psychology of why we resist the experiences most likely to transform us for the better.
Good leaders need to learn to be the last to speak. It gives others in the room the sense that what they have to say matters, and it gives the leader a chance to listen to all of the input before saying anything. Straight from Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Habit 5: "seek first to understand before seeking to be understood."). And something I saw first hand at Ford Motor Company under the capable and inspirational leadership of Alan Mulally.

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Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

Social Mitten 2017 in East Lansing, September 22, 2017 (Scott)
Content and Commerce Summit in Los Angeles, September 18-20, 2017 (Christopher)
MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum in Boston, October 3-6, 2017 (Tim and Scott)

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Top photo credit: The Denial of Saint Peter, by Gerard Seghers (Google Cultural Institute)

Monday, September 18, 2017