The Full Monty: The Price of Loyalty – July 16, 2018

Loyalty takes work, and there are breadcrumbs to follow; how social platforms use A.I. to protect users; soon 50 percent of searches will be voice-based; customer experience is the new brand; social media may not be reflective of offline behavior; retail is growing by acquisition; Facebook's culture is deeply rooted; Twitter purged millions of locked accounts; consumers may be paying more for digital programming soon; five lessons learned from podcast advertising; Airbnb for camping; how to measure communications results; reading makes you a better person; plus the podcast pick of the week and more in the The Price of Loyalty edition of The Full Monty from Brain+Trust Partners for the week of July 16, 2018.

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Top Story

Trust is undoubtedly one of the most talked-about and sought-after elements of corporate reputation. It forms the basis of everything that companies can or should do. And yet, many still struggle with it.

Another term that we hear a lot about these days is loyalty. Everyone seems to be trying to figure out just how to master customer loyalty. And more often than not, we tend to see this second item addressed independently. As in, unrelated to trust.

Well, trust and loyalty are inextricably linked. And to gain trust, you have to do things consistently and repeatedly, over time. And you need to deliver value to the customer in the process – meaning what's valuable to them, not to you.

Value can be expressed in many ways, including saving time or money, changing an emotional state, and more. But imagine if you approached it as a mutual benefit rather than as a transaction.

Some ideas on just how to do that can be found in Episode 38 of The Full Monty podcast, airing this Wednesday. If you'd like to follow along with the rest of this commentary, please be sure to subscribe on the player of your choice.

Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

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

Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ

Facebook, Twitter, and Google are all using A.I. to protect social media users. From stamping out trolls to removing fake bot accounts, here's how social networks are waging war using A.I. weapons.
White collar jobs aren't immune from being replaced by machines. For example, some companies in the fashion industry are using algorithmic solutions to perform design or purchasing tasks.
Marketers are having difficulty defining artificial intelligence. The amorphous use of A.I. by marketers creates confusion, even among A.I. experts. It's going to require a move away from buzzwords and a commitment to a deeper understanding.
Apple is combining machine learning, A.I., and Siri teams under John Giannandrea, who was hired from Google earlier this year
Analysts estimate that 50% of searches will be voice-based in the near future, with smart speaker devices, currently in around 13% of homes, projected to be in around 55% of households by 2022.
A new A.I.-powered garbage can will separate the recyclables from the trash. The device, called – what else? Oscar – is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter starting on July 17. For reference.

Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ

Parking spot startup SpotHero announced they have outfitted 500 of their garages in the Chicago area for self-driving cars. Planning for the future, when cars will find their own parking spots.

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

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

Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

Customer experience is the new brand, according to Shep Hyken. Be it customer service, product quality or just the way the customers feel about the companies they do business with, customer experience rises to the top of whether or not the customer will decide to keep doing business with a brand. Today, 89% of companies compete on customer experience.
When you can't even deliver on the basics of what customers expect today, Mitch Joel wonders why are you focusing on the future?
How to transform into a modern marketing department: CMOs and marketing leaders are in a prime position to determine what internal changes must be made to propel a transformation effort forward.
Of every dollar spent on automated ads, only 40 cents reaches the site selling the space. Some big advertisers think blockchain is the answer to reducing digital spending waste.

Jᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ / Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴs / Rᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

There’s an important distinction between online and offline sentiment, conversation, and behavior. The bottom line: social media may not be reflective of offline behavior.
What's your reputation worth? The link between how stakeholders perceive a company and its actual value can be quantified, according to a recent survey.

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.

Retail Apocalypse

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

Due to slow organic growth, retail and consumer products companies are turning to often smaller, nimbler companies to boost digital innovation—from getting better consumer insights to cutting-edge logistics.
As retailers struggle with declining traffic, they should resist the temptation to abandon physical locations. An intelligent combination of online and brick and mortar experiences will drive customer loyalty.
There is a gap between consumer expectations and business execution for restaurants; diners have high expectations for restaurant digital experiences. Operators are often slow to adopt new technologies and those that they've implemented aren't always satisfactory.
When a retailer launches an app, the focus is often on user acquisition. But the goal should be to take those app installers and turn them into buyers – boosting users' lifetime value, since fostering loyalty can pay off down the road.
Walmart's Jet.com is building a fulfillment center in the Bronx, working with recently-acquired Parcel to handle same-day and next-day delivery. This addresses two needs: Walmart's previous inability to get into New York City, and the last-mile conundrum.
Today is Amazon Prime Day. And that doesn't only help Amazon, but it has resulted in a boost for other retailers.

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Platforms

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

Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ

A German court has ruled that a Facebook account can be inherited like a journal or diary when a loved one dies.
Facebook is struggling with how to handle fake news, as it has determined that sites that share spurious information and conspiracy theories fall into the realm of opinion, and will instead hide content and downgrade those pages' viewability. Facebook is in a tough spot: right- and left-wing groups will take issue with banning such pages (seen as censorship) or keeping them up (seen as not delivering on a commitment to eliminate fake news).
Instagram added a questions sticker to poll friends in Stories.
When the young Mark Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto in 2004, he and his buddies built a corporate proto-culture that continues to influence the company today (referred to by some as 'bro-grammer', as witnessed by Zuck's first business card that read "I'm CEO...bitch"). Culture eats strategy.

Tᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ

Twitter is testing Promoted Trend Spotlight ads that put a banner with a GIF or image background atop Explore content for the first two visits that day. It took long enough for 1990s banner ads to come to Twitter. You can't teach the ad industry new tricks.
Twitter pledged confidence in follower counts as the company removed locked accounts that hadn't been validated. These are not exactly the same as spam or bot accounts, but are typically not in the control of the account creator.
Larger accounts saw a big drop-off of followers: Twitter's own account lost 7.5 million followers (a 7.5% drop), and the 100 most-followed accounts saw on average a 2% drop. In one case, we saw a social media "guru" who clearly bought many of his followers drop by 34% – from 68K to 45K followers.
An analysis of the impact of the purge on elected officials on Twitter by BrainTrust Insights.

Oᴛʜᴇʀ

A number of social media platforms are experimenting with augmented reality ads that let shoppers see what products look like before they buy – how a piece of furniture looks in a room, how glasses look on their face, etc. Snapchat, Facebook, Amazon, and Google are among the early adopters.
A behind-the-scenes account of Google, arguably the most important company on the internet, via an excerpt from Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (as Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), published by Twelve.

Media

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

Vɪᴅᴇᴏ

Following the acquisition of Time Warner, HBO now falls under the leadership of AT&T. Last month, executive John Stankey shared what the company's plans for HBO include. The entertainment network will maintain its independence and invest in content and platform to drive more hours of engagement.
Scott Galloway provides a perspective on how making HBO more like Netflix is wrong.
Some 59.5 million U.S. homes – representing almost two-thirds (63.5%) of all homes with Wi-Fi – watched OTT video in April of this year, marking a 17% increase year-over-year. And the amount of content they watched grew by 28%.
As the popularity of cord-cutting grows, eventually consumers should expect to pay more for digital programming in total than they do now for their traditional cable or satellite package. We're creating our own bundles now...

Aᴜᴅɪᴏ

The Washington Post has built a dynamic podcast ad insertion tool, called Rhapsocord, that “identifies places to put in ads, automatically inserts them and then sends the file to different podcast platforms.” Programmatic for podcasts.
If you're exploring when and how to do podcast advertising, here are five lessons learned from podcast advertising from an industry veteran.
The best podcasts of 2018 (so far).
Program of the Week: Our pick this week is You Must Remember This, a storytelling podcast about the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century, that returns for another season. 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.
So many stories in this section this week – more available in our Flipboard magazine.

Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ

Russia's information hack on the United States went deep and long as it sought to shake Americans' trust in local news.
The U.S. intelligence chief has flagged that "the warning lights are blinking red again" with respect to election hacking and influence.
The UK’s regulatory body found that Facebook “contravened the law by failing to safeguard” the information of 87 million people, it said. As a result, the company is facing the maximum fine the regulator can impose.
There are some reliable ways to avoid card skimmers trying to capture your credit card information at gas pumps.

Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ

Uber will let you pay for rides and food with Venmo. Expect to see more mobile payment integrations with other apps of all kinds in the months ahead.
Uber has laid off its self-driving car operators in Pittsburgh as the company rethinks its autonomous vehicle strategy following a fatal crash in Arizona earlier this year.
If you're a landowner and have patches of unused land, what can you do? Tentrr is matching campers with landowners. That's right, they're the Airbnb of camping.

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.

The PR industry isn't widely known for its measurement. AVEs have been derided, and PESO (paid, earned, owned, shared) media is more relevant. Here then is the massive guide in how to measure results in the PESO model from Spin Sucks.
Marketing data management is an alphabet soup. John Bell sorts out CRM, CDP, DMP and more.
B2B tech marketers understand that revenue metrics are important to senior leadership, but only a minority are measuring their revenue influence according to Spiceworks.
You might think that the practice of data analytics has caught on. You'd be mistaken. A new study from MIT Sloan Management Review and Think with Google finds that decisions are still being made more on the basis of intuition than data.
Working around Google Analytics to improve your content marketing outlines two easy ways to get better data on single-page visits so marketers understand how users engage with their content.
Data is not a natural resource and should not be treated as such, but is rather a new informational dimension to individual and community life.
If content is king, context is queen. Be sure to put context around your data for better insights.

Mental Nourishment

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

You may be busy, but always make time to read outside of the context of work material. Why? Because reading makes you a better person, according to research.
Archaeologist have found a clay tablet dating to the 3rd century A.D. that may be the oldest written record of The Odyssey by Homer.
CMO Moves (a stellar podcast from which to learn from marketing leaders) announced that most of its interview guests are offering an hour of their time for mentorships. Mentees with the strongest proposals will be considered.
Loneliness and isolation. Self-doubt and inadequacy. These are just some of the fears that great leaders struggle with.
Have you noticed that the Disney logo has changed in subtle ways over the years? A designer looked at the strange squiggle in the Disney logo.
Creating goals is important, but even more essential is establishing habits, which lead to systemic change.

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.”

— Charles C. Nobel

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Top image credit: Diogenes by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1859 (public domain)

Monday, July 16, 2018