The Full Monty: Trickster – June 18, 2018

When brands try to get cute, the impact is questionable; we need more humanities graduates to lead A.I. efforts; the viral Olive Garden chatbot misfire; the autonomous talent wars and mobile payment wars; testing your strategy; unmasking fraudulent influencers; inside the binge factory that is Netflix; how to address the gap between podcast awareness and listening level; what consumers do to keep personal data personal; your PR metrics dashboard; Leonardo was ahead of his time; a discount to a Digital Summit; plus the podcast of the week and more in the Trickster edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust Partners for the week of June 18, 2018.

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Top Story

If you were online last week, odds are you got caught up in the hoopla around IHOP's announcement. For weeks they hyped an announcement on June 11 that would reveal what was behind their supposed name change to IHOb. People speculated what it might be: bacon? breakfast? bitcoin? But it seemed rather transparent in all: that IHOP was pulling some major stunt.

When last Monday arrived, the announcement was both underwhelming and overpowering: that the 'b' in IHOb stood for burgers. Underwhelming in that it's an item that has been on their menu for 50 years. And overpowering in that it dominated discussion online and in the news.

But really, does anyone think that IHOP is actually ditching its name and its namesake products?

Evidently, the restaurant has been experiencing a slump in sales in the last few years, so it needed something to boost the numbers. Their CMO said that they needed something disruptive to shake things up a bit. So they pulled a stunt. A trick.

Let's be clear: this is in no way a rebranding. Nor is this a campaign. This is a PR or marketing stunt. The question is how will its success be measured? Because right now, the creatives seem to be high-fiving about the success. If the company's goal was awareness, then it's an unbridled success. But what about consideration? Or sales?

We'll put the question to you: when a brand gets cute like this (or like the snarky retorts from the likes of Wendy's and others), does that change your likelihood of patronizing their establishments?

We'd say the jury is out on the success of the IHOP stunt with respect to rescuing flagging sales.

Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

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

Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ

When it comes to the future of A.I., technology, and engineering, having the technical chops is not enough. Tackling today’s biggest social and technological challenges requires the ability to think critically about their human context, which is something that humanities graduates happen to be best trained to do.
Professional hockey, baseball, and basketball teams are using A.I. to supplement traditional coaching and scouting for players. From Moneyball to...botball?
Teach your kid machine learning with these free lessons. And while you're at it, how about yourself or your team too?
DeepMind’s scientists have built an artificial vision system that can take something like a two-dimensional photo and from that construct a 3D model of a scene.
The underlying fear behind A.I. seems to be that the killer robots will be coming for us. But killer robots will only exist if we are stupid enough to let them. Because humans don't make stupid decisions...
Programmers are working on developing A.I. chatbots – simulations of deceased people – to interact with grieving survivors. It's Black Mirror come to life.
A spoof of an Olive Garden commercial disguised as a supposed A.I. misfire is going viral, and it's the funniest thing you'll read today.

Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ

How to deliver safe urban autonomous vehicles to European cities.
Parking is one of the banes of driving. A new technology lets passing cars equipped with parking sensors measure open spots and create a map for other drivers that shows where their car might fit.
It's Scootergeddon in San Francisco, where thousands of electric scooters are gone from the sidewalks.
A look at Waymo's early rider program after a year in operation. The top five destinations are: work, restaurant, school, bar, and car repair.
Apple has hired a senior self-driving car engineer from Waymo.
And Argo, a driverless car startup backed by Ford, is luring talent from Uber and Apple.

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

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

Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

Ten questions to ask that will test your strategy.
Only a few years ago, people connected with their local businesses solely at physical store locations. With the ubiquity of mobile devices and social media, that has changed, and Facebook shows how mobile-first connections drive small business marketing.
Better response, higher engagement, and and customer insights are among the benefits seen by 87 percent of mobile marketers who see success with location targeting.
How CMOs and marketing leaders are in a prime position to determine what internal changes must be made to propel a transformation effort forward.

Jᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ / Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴs / Rᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

Curation is an underrated and underutilized process. Here's how Flipboard approaches curation of its daily email.
After 10 years of growth, the use of social media for news is falling across the world. It's due almost entirely to habits, as people are moving toward more private conversations – some of which Facebook/Instragram are pushing themselves, with "Stories."
Unilever called for urgent action on fraudulent influencers. The firm will not work with any influencers who buy followers; none of Unilever's own brands will buy followers; and finally, Unilever will prioritize partners who 'eradicate fraud and support increased visibility and transparency'. Good.
The Atlantic takes us inside luxury hotels that are being driven crazy by Instagram "influencers."

The 4th annual Digital Summit Detroit is coming up Sept 12-13. Keynotes
include Chelsea Handler, Scott Dikkers (Founder of The Onion), and Evernote CMO Andrew
Malcolm. Plus over 50 in-depth digital marketing sessions led by brands including
Waze, BuzzFeed, Jaguar, Discover, Salesforce, and more.
Register with promo code MONTY and get $50 off your pass. Hurry – early bird pricing ends on June 22.

Retail Apocalypse

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

Five surprising findings about shopping behavior — such as, most shopping isn't omnichannel yet, and online journeys tend to be longer than in-store.
The sixth annual Mobile Payments & Fraud Survey indicates that Apple Pay and Google Wallet are losing ground to American Express and PayPal.
Microsoft is working on technology that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines from stores, in a nascent challenge to Amazon's automated grocery store.
Chinese retailer JD.com opened a warehouse which can handle 200,000 orders a week. All robotics, just four human workers to maintain the robots.

Go ahead, press this button. See what happens.

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Platforms

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

Aʟᴘʜᴀʙᴇᴛ / Gᴏᴏɢʟᴇ / YᴏᴜTᴜʙᴇ

Google accounts for 90 percent of all internet searches. It has a monopoly on the gateway to information in the modern world. It dominates everything from maps to smartphone operating systems to video distribution — gathering user data along the way. Should Google be broken up?
Gmail is updating its iOS app with an A.I.-powered feature that prioritizes messages and only sends notifications about important emails.
How to set up and use private YouTube messages on mobile.

Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ

Facebook's marketing is changing. How marketers can be prepared as Facebook focuses more on content that sparks conversations and brings people closer together.

Tᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ

Twitter announced a wide set of changes to make it easier to find and discover what is happening now on Twitter – be it breaking news or events.

Oᴛʜᴇʀ

Snap announced the release of Snap Kit, its developer platform. With the opening of the Snapchat API, it lets other apps piggyback on Snap’s login for sign up, build Bitmoji avatars into their keyboards, display public Our Stories and Snap Map content, and generate branded stickers with referral links users can share back inside Snapchat.
By the end of this month, advertisers will be able to purchase most of Snapchat’s ad formats programmatically with the platform rolling out a tool for all advertisers dubbed ‘reach and frequency’ that lets brands purchase its popular AR lenses in a more automated, targeted way.

Media

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

Vɪᴅᴇᴏ

Inside the Binge Factory: Netflix is hiring everybody in and out of Hollywood to make more TV shows than any network ever has, and it already knows which ones you’ll like.
Speaking of battles, Comcast launched a $65 billion bid for Fox, to undermine Disney's efforts to grab the company. What's at stake is huge, particularly in the wake of the approval of the AT&T / Time Warner deal.
The AT&T / Time Warner merger means bigger, not cheaper cable bundles. For marketers, the deal could seriously kickstart the digitization of television advertising.
Apple has signed Oprah for a multi-year deal of original programming.
Fortnite has become the most viewed game on YouTube and the top game on Twitch. “It’s created kind of a global arcade,” via the New Yorker.

Aᴜᴅɪᴏ

Four areas that can close the gap between a high awareness and a low listening level of podcasts. The good news is that #3 and #4 are within your control.
U.S. podcast revenues hit $314 million in 2017, up 86 percent from 2016.
The most important question to ask before you launch a podcast.
Program of the Week: Our pick this week is In the Dark, which enters its second season. Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime, has won every appeal, and has been tried by the same prosecutor all six times. What's keeping him on death row? Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts.

Privacy / Security / Regulatory

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

Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ

Request your data from over 1,000 different sites using this service.
What are consumers doing to keep their personal data personal? Is the top choice 1) using different email addresses to sign up for services; 2) ditching Alexa because of its enabled microphone; 3) clearing cookies from browsers regularly; or 4) enabling two-step verification for passwords?
No one is opening the GDPR emails about privacy, and marketers are getting nervous.

Perhaps you should read Our Terms of Service Have Not Changed.

Most consumers will sell their personal information to brands for this amount of money.

Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ

The bike share war is really heating up in Seattle.

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.

What to include in your PR metrics dashboard.
One take on the measurement of ROI by communicators. There's something missing from this study, though. Our friends at BrainTrust Insights can help.

Mental Nourishment

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

Unlimited vacation is a scam. Personal guilt and corporate pressure mean people take far less time than they need.
Leonardo da Vinci knew exactly what was needed to come up with great ideas.
China got a smartphone zombie walkway – that is, a dedicated lane for slow walking texters.
Here's why you should think twice about using emoticons with someone from a different culture.

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Upcoming events:

Webinar: How to Protect Your Brand in a PR Crisis with AirPR on Wednesday, June 20 at 1:00 pm ET.
Content Marketing World in Cleveland, September 4-6. And YOU can register here, with $100 off by using the code BRAINTRUST.

Can we speak for your organization or event? Drop us a line.

Brain+Trust Partners companies evolve at the speed of customers. From social and content strategy development to technology vendor selection, to improved operations, our focus is on helping companies craft one true view of the customer. 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: Ulysses and the Sirens by Thomas Moran, 1900 (public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Monday, June 18, 2018