The Mother of All Data Breaches — September 11, 2017

Equifax is equif___d; a data-based guide for implementing AI into business strategies; angry customers are advancing AI; legislation to move autonomous driving forward; social media as a source of news from Pew Research; Nordstrom goes sans merch; Amazon is looking for a second HQ; in-app tweetstorm composing; Twitter, Facebook, and the Russia problem; Facebook has a slew of transparency issues; broadband surpasses TV subscribers; Spotify and Hulu are offering a bundle; the silent Alexa hacker; the FTC gets serious with influencers; OMG turns 100 (OMG!); and more in the Mother of All Data Breaches edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust for the week of September 11, 2017.

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Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Autonomous

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

A report created by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group gives company leaders a data-based guide for implementing AI into their business strategies.
The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute is educating marketers about the present and future of AI in marketing and the tools that are making it possible.
What's pushing AI forward? Angry customers that deal with virtual assistants. Think about it: Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant only get the best you; it's the irate customers that are testing the limits of artificial intelligence (and helping it to learn).
Chatbots offer the first glimpse into a future where meeting and event planners can deliver mass personalization at scale using artificial intelligence. Indeed, it's the only way to deal with bridezillas (see previous item).

AUTONOMOUS

The world — particularly Silicon Valley — is fascinated with autonomous vehicles. The general outlook (helped along by aspirational brand Tesla) is that hands-free driving is available either now or in the immediate future. But we need to stop pretending that fully autonomous cars are imminent. It's still going to be a while before we're at Level 5.
One of the first steps in getting there is legislative approval. Well, the good news is that last week, the House of Representatives passed the SELF DRIVE Act — that's Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution (aside: there's got to be a whole Congressional body that's responsible for the clever naming of legislation!).
In the future, our cars will talk to us: they'll be able to detect our locations, our to-do lists, and our heart rates. Plus, they'll need to talk to the infrastructure and to each other. That's a lot of talking.
One industry that stands to benefit from an increase in autonomous driving: alcoholic beverage companies. Get your investment dollars ready.
The answer to the question “Which part of your car generates the most power?” will tell you everything you need to know about the future of mobility.
Decentralized power systems could have huge impacts on vehicles in the near future—and not just in terms of how we’ll charge our cars.

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

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

According to a new survey from Pew Research Center, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media.

Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat have all grown in share of users who get news on each site.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook outstrips all other social media sites as a source of news.
More Americans now get news from multiple news sites; and many still get their news from traditional news sites as well.
These and demographic breakdowns are available on the Pew site.

Playing it safe is no longer safe. You won't stand out in a sea of sameness. You're creative and unique; so why is your brand so boring?
The Greeks did it; marketers, artists and retailers do it as well. What is it? They conceal their intent via a Trojan Horse.
CMOs from P&G, Unilever and Bank of America are all demanding more transparency from their agencies. Digital advertising may be facing its moment of truth.
While the ad agency is at it, they might want to consider not simply porting over the same bad habits to ads for voice. Hey, they've managed to take the old broken model of TV over to digital and social; they wouldn't do that again, would they?

THIS WEEK IN RETAIL:

Nordstrom is opening a new store next month that is a fraction of the size of its typical locations, where shoppers will be able to enjoy services such as manicures and on-site tailoring. But the store will not have any merchandise. Interesting angle: embrace the experience while embracing online shopping.
The genius who predicted Amazon would buy Whole Foods thinks that Amazon's next big purchase should be Nordstrom.
A new study, Retail Revolution, finds that interactive technologies have fueled consumers' increasing demands, and the only way for companies to deliver the high-quality personalized experiences customers now expect is through the next stage of those technologies: artificial intelligence.
Amazon is planning to build a secondary North American headquarters, promising the chosen city some $5 billion and 50,000 jobs. It is requesting local governments to submit proposals. The New York Times has already narrowed down the choice for Amazon.

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Platforms

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

TWITTER/ PERISCOPE

For you late-night browsers, Twitter has released a nighttime version of its desktop app, to cut down on bright screens before bedtime. To activate it, click on your profile photo, then select Night Mode, which is the last option and has a moon icon.

Over the course of the last year, with plenty of political outrage to go around, we've seen the platform used in ways it wasn't initially intended. We speak of course of the rise of the Twitter thread.

The company has responded by making a tweak to the app that it may roll out to users in short course: an in-app tweetstorm feature that will allow users to create an entire thread/tweetstorm before sending the very first tweet. To which we reply: covfefe.

Oh, and just in case you didn't believe that Russian bots have infiltrated social media, when you get 23,000 retweets on your first and only tweet.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

Senator Mark Warner and experts raised the idea of regulating political ad spending on Facebook similar to broadcast radio and TV. Of concern: experts say that Facebook’s massive reach and lack of transparency about ads on its platform represent a risk to the democratic process.
Why? Because Facebook sold $100,000 worth of ads to a Russian troll farm during the 2016 election. That accounted for some 3,000 ads associated with 470 fake accounts, capable of reaching tens of millions of people.
The New York Times looks at the fake Americans Russia created to influence the election.
Facebook set out to combat fake news by hiring a slew of fact-checkers, but it's now in danger of undermining its own authority in the matter. The fact-checkers say they have no way of determining whether the “disputed” tags they’re affixing to fake news articles slow — or perhaps even accelerate — the stories’ spread because Facebook has declined to share any internal data from its project to counter fake news.
Facebook organic reach has declined significantly and increases in paid promotion have not enabled brands and publishers to maintain their levels of Facebook engagement. Moreover, the biggest fall in engagement was with image posts and link posts. Videos get twice the level of engagement of link and image posts. There couldn't be a more a clear-cut demonstration of Facebook gaming the system to guarantee more video consumption.
Perhaps it's a good time to look at this in-depth critique of Facebook and how its quest for growth and monetization shapes and distorts company's stated mission of simply connecting people via the London Review of Books.

ALPHABET / GOOGLE / YOUTUBE

More than four in 10 teen YouTube users ages 12 to 17 say there are too many ads on the platform, according to a January 2017 survey from Forrester Research. eMarketer projects that 23.2 million 12- to 17-year-olds will watch digital video monthly this year.

Media

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

VIDEO

The broadband market has topped the pay-TV market in subscriber numbers among the largest providers, according to an analysis of the latest quarterly figures from the Leichtman Research Group. TV is less about the thing hanging on the wall and more about which provider you get your programming from.

The streaming service Kanopy allows you to unlock streaming movies with your library card.

Marvel and Star Wars movies will be streamed exclusively on Disney's new streaming service. May the Force be with you. But only if you're with Disney.

AUDIO

Spotify and Hulu are partnering to offer both services in a bundle to U.S. students for $4.99/month. They'll offer other bundles to more customers in the future. An interesting mashup of audio and video content — a way to lock up the loyalty of an audience without having to develop all formats of content.
But they're not taking any chances either: Spotify hired a Disney executive to help the company focus on its original video and podcasting content.
Facebook is offering music labels hundreds of millions of dollars to cover infringing music in user-uploaded videos, as it improves its copyright flagging technology. Such a move would allow users to include such music in their videos while easing the burden on the copyright team.
Google Play is getting into the original podcasting business with the release of the series "City Soundtracks."
Program of the Week: This week, Jessica Willits recommends The Most Useful Podcast Ever, a show for getting things done. Now how can you go wrong with that? 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:

There's one hack that no one is talking about: ultrasound for hacking into voice assistants. A simple design flaw makes it possible to hack Siri and Alexa. Well, maybe they are talking about it and we simply can't hear them.

ON-DEMAND ECONOMY

The first big trial over workers' rights in the gig economy involves GrubHub, and it may affect how such companies deal with benefits, breaks and pay issues. Stay tuned to this, as it has the potential to impact the entire industry.
The Federal Trade Commission is warning a handful of Instagram influencers to disclose their business ties when they're posting something related to a sponsor. Letters sent to these 21 influencers cite specific posts that violate the FTC's Endorsement Guidelines. Each complaint can tally $40,000. Please let it include a Kardashian. Please let it include a Kardashian. Please let it include a Kardashian.
Lyft is partnering with Drive.ai to bring another self-driving pilot to the Bay Area.
Estonian company Taxify, backed by China's Didi Chuxing, is launching in London with the outright aim of grabbing thousands of drivers and passengers from Uber.
Sources say the FBI is investigating Uber over use of its defunct “Hell” program that illegally tracked drivers working for competitors like Lyft.
Waymo claims that ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski created Otto as a ruse to seamlessly bring the documents to his new employer, Uber. Too bad he quit. He seems like a perfect fit for Uber's culture.

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.

Good analytics tools do more than just push data out. They help you understand what’s driving those numbers by segmenting every metric and KPI you have. If you want to better understand your marketing funnel, drill down into key segments.

Mental Nourishment

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

How do some of the world's great writers begin their workday? It varies, but you'll find coffee, classical music, solitude, and reading to be among the top.
Do you think OMG began in the era of texting? Try again. Over the phone? Not even close. We're actually celebrating the centennial of OMG: a Septemer 9, 1917 letter to Winston Churchill. You can thank Lord Fisher, who was lampooning the abbreviations of new titles being introduced by George V: MBE, OBE, CBE, KBE, and GBE. But there's no truth to the rumor that he was to be made an Earl and an OBE: an Earlobe.

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Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

Digital Summit Detroit, September 12-13, 2017 (Christopher)
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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Brain+Trust Partners helps smart, risk-taking executives discern the real from the hype. 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: Hurricane by Winslow Homer, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Monday, September 11, 2017