Nowhere to Run...Nowhere to Hide – October 15, 2018

I'm back from a one-week hiatus with shocking news of a trust deficit that seems to be stuck in a pattern somewhere over Silicon Valley; what CEOs need to know about A.I.; the trucker shortage in the U.S. may have broad effects; video advertising makes up 25% of digital spending; brand loyalty isn't dead – but its demographics are aging; Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; Walmart's retail and media acquisitions and partnerships; Amazon dashed employee hopes as it raised wages; stats about teen social media use; an ex-Google executive's novel about a dystopian future; how to tell if your Facebook account was breached; hacking is about to get much worse; Roku has a solution for OTT advertising measurement; how to learn anything; sobering selfie statistics; plus the podcast pick of the week and MUCH more in the Nowhere to Run...Nowhere to Hide edition of The Full Monty for the week of October 15, 2018.

The Full Monty makes you smarter faster, by curating the essential business intelligence every week. Links are below with commentary in italics. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And check out The Full Monty on Flipboard.

Announcements

If you aren't yet subscribed to updates on my blog, please check that out. I create two posts a week that capture an issue of today and tie it to a quote from the classics of philosophy, history, or literature.

Last week, it was all about the consistency of action and word that builds your reputation and legacy (for an example of this at work, see Facebook in the Top Story below).

Top Story

If you're online, you're compromised. At least that would seem to be the message we're getting these days.

From the latest Facebook breach of some 50 million users' data, to Google+ shutting down after 500,000 users' details were leaked, and Instagram prototyping a new privacy setting that would allow it to share your location history with Facebook (even when you're not using the app), nothing is safe.

And Facebook, in a remarkably tone-deaf move, launched Portal, a smart camera and speaker, linked to Alexa. “I would like a camera in my home controlled by Facebook,” said no one ever. Especially weeks after a data breach and after years of continually breaching consumer trust.

Let's not forget the Facebook origin story. Reputation and legacy are a powerful thing.

Meanwhile, Google announced Google Home Hub, its smart assistant with a screen that integrates other Google services. In the battle for the home, Google stands a good chance of winning. Against who? Amazon, the other company that has all of your data.

Think about all of the information you share across these three companies alone. If you choose not to make yourself available for their experimentation, you have to think pretty deliberately about your choices. Because they're ubiquitous.

As Martha and the Vandellas sang,

Got nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide
It's not love, I'm a running from
It's the heartbreak I know will come
'Cause I know you're no good for me, but you've become a part of me

But when their actions are predicated on false promises and outright lies, they simply don't deserve your information.

I hand-curate all of the content you see below (plus other stories on Flipboard that don't make the newsletter). If you've got something you think I should see, @ me on Twitter, Facebook, or email.

Speaking Engagements

Always looking for recommendations for speaking engagements – including executive briefings / workshops and keynotes. I connect our digital selves with classical influences, pointing out the universal human truths that can unlock the secret of retaining and growing customer relationships.
Can I speak to your organization or at your event? Feel free to contact me to discuss it.

Pubcon in Las Vegas, October 16-18.
Now booking for 2019 for groups small and large. Check out my speaking page for more info.

Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

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

Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ

What innovative CEOs and leaders need to know about A.I. Views from McKinsey, Deloitte, and MIT Sloan Management Review. (Psychology Today)
Examples of A.I. transforming the customer contact center include reducing or eliminating the mundane and repetitive. (The Future of Customer Engagement and Commerce)
Five takeaways on A.I. from the Disrupt SF conference. These include: keep an eye on China, beware of bias, and the future of autonomous transport includes humans and machines working together. (TechCrunch)
Researchers have determined a new way to find social media bots. (MIT Sloan) Are we too late for the next election?
Amazon shut down a machine learning tool for rating job applications in 2017 because it was biased against female candidates. (Reuters) Good for Amazon for taking this step. Now if we could only shut down similar-minded humans.

Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ

Self-driving car company Aurora has become the first company to be officially authorized by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to test its vehicles on public roads. (TechCrunch) We love that it shares the same name as the steam launch Sherlock Holmes used to apprehend the criminal in The Sign of Four.
Waymo's driverless cars have now driven 10 million miles on public roads, up from 5 million miles eight months ago. (VentureBeat)
One of Waymo's lidar patents has been gutted, thanks to an engineer not connected with the company or its competitors. (CNET) This is the story about a guy who noticed something amiss and spent $6,000 of his own money with the U.S. Patent Office to correct it.
The United States is short about 50,000 truck drivers. This in turn affects the retail industry, which may need to raise prices. (CNBC)

Related: Uber Freight's app is getting an upgrade to help truckers better interact with shipping companies.

GM and Honda are collaborating to produce an autonomous car. This includes a $750 million investment in Cruise Automation by Honda. (Quartz)

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

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

Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

Amazon's advertising business is booming. Some advertisers are moving half of their budget from Google to Amazon. (CNBC) It makes perfect sense. When you're trying to sell products, Amazon is where people will find them. Google delivers information; Amazon delivers products.
Marketers’ uptake of artificial intelligence is poised to grow as more companies invest in the emerging technology. Five charts on how marketers use A.I. (eMarketer) Two of the most popular ways that marketers are applying A.I. are for ad targeting and audience segmentation.
TV ads and recommendations from friends and family are the top influencers of purchases for Gen Xers. (MarketingCharts)

This would be a good time to buy Talk Triggers by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin.

This year video ad spending will grow nearly 30% to $27.82 billion. That means video ads will make up 25% of U.S. digital ad spending. (eMarketer)

Jᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ / Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴs / Rᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

Older adults tend to be more brand loyal than their younger counterparts. (MarketingCharts) Rather than a ding on Gen Z or Millennials, this may just be a factor of having had more time to spend with brands.
The structure of standup comedy can tell us a great deal about storytelling. (The Pudding) Great find by Dave Delaney.
When it comes to B2B, in today’s low-trust environment, the always-connected customer’s attention and trust must be earned, not bought. (Heidi Cohen)

Retail Apocalypse

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

Sears, the 125 year-old retailer, filed for bankruptcy protection overnight and its CEO has stepped down, although he'll retain the chairman title. (CNBC) The one-time retail giant was the Amazon of its day (ScottMonty.com), even changing the way mail and parcels were delivered. It may never recover. Here's a brief look at how it got this way:

How Casper sent Mattress Firm into bankruptcy. (CNN Business). The direct-to-consumer model is affecting many industries. Especially the dinosaurs who have expanded too quickly or too far.

Related: listen to this episode of the Household Name podcast: The Mattress Firm Conspiracy Theory. (Stitcher)

From 1-hour delivery to drive-thru grocery pickup to offering myriad payment methods, convenience is king for the modern shopper. But location is less important than ever to digital shoppers. Can convenience stores go digital? (eMarketer Retail)

Related: Can Amazon go head-to-head with convenience stories and QSRs? It's all about this one one: frictionless.

Walmart made two acquisitions recently: intimates retailer Bare Necessities and plus-size brand ELOQUII. (Axios and Walmart Today) Both serve a female market and expand Walmart's online offerings.
Amazon generously raised the minimum wage for workers. But some workers are fuming. Why? Because Amazon will no longer offer them bonuses or stock grants. (New York Times) Don't let the smoke and mirrors of the PR effort fool you.
Amazon’s private label business is booming, on pace to generate $7.5 billion this year and $25 billion by 2022. (Quartz)
Costco's secret weapon: food courts and the $1.50 hot dog. (CNN Business)

"No one has ever become poor by giving." – Anne Frank

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Platforms

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

Three stats about teen use of social media: it has doubled in the last five years; they favor Snapchat over Instagram; and only one in three says that social media is very important to them. (MarketingCharts) It's a great time for marketers to begin thinking about how to address, interact with, and track the future habits of this generation – but more importantly, to keep in perspective that older generations have more cash to spend.

Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ

There's another concern on the horizon: there are American groups that are mimicking the Russian strategy of spreading disinformation on Facebook. (New York Times) As if Facebook doesn't have enough to deal with.
Instagram is using A.I. to detect and shut down accounts that are bullying others in photos and captions. (The Verge) A welcome improvement during National Bullying Prevention Month.
Facebook unveiled Portal, the video chat camera for people who still trust Facebook. (Washington Post) So, what – there'll be 391 sold? Bonus: Facebook realized how crappy its trust scores are, so the Portal comes with a camera cover.
Facebook will soon be relying on Instagram for revenue growth. (Recode) With the founders gone, there's nothing to delay this. Except for that little thing about Instagram tracking your every move.
Vice is rolling out new video programming on IGTV, Snapchat and YouTube this fall. (Variety)

Tᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ

A study by the Knight Foundation discovered that more than 80 percent of Twitter accounts exposed as fake in 2016 are still active. (Engadget)
Sparktoro analyzed every account following Donald Trump and found that 61 percent are bots, spam, inactive or propaganda. (Sparktoro) Sounds about right.
Twitter announced several updates to the company’s policies aimed at fighting “emergent, malicious behaviors” by fake accounts, repeat offenders, and the spread of hacked information. (Gizmodo)
After a researcher complained that Twitter refused to provide info about how it tracks him when he clicked on links in tweets, the EU initiated a GDPR compliance inquiry. (Fortune)

Oᴛʜᴇʀ

Nine nuggets from the leaked memo from Snap's CEO. (TechCrunch) Great strategic insight from the leadership team here. Worth reading for how to recover from poor decisions, if nothing else.
Pinterest will generate more than $500 million in U.S. ad revenues this year, a 43.8% change from last year. (eMarketer) Don't neglect Pinterest; it's a great resource for the right advertisers.
A novel by a former Google executive depicts a tech dystopian nightmare. (Fast Company) Is this fiction or nonfiction?
Raised by YouTube: the platform’s entertainment for children is weirder—and more globalized—than adults could have expected. (The Atlantic) My own concern as I observe my kids watching the manic and extensive content is that they'll have no collective experience to share with peers when they grow up.

Media

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

Vɪᴅᴇᴏ

Walmart is teaming up with MGM to create original programming for the retail giant’s Vudu video-streaming service. The shows will be based on MGM’s film and TV catalog. (Bloomberg) Walmart is sourcing the best partners in retail and media as it continues to go head-to-head with Amazon. They recognize they don't have the in-house capabilities to build, so they partner. Will it pay off? Stay tuned.
Jeffrey Katzenberg's mobile video-subscription platform Quibi launches next year and will include short-form content aimed at people between 25 and 35. It will be priced at $5 a month, or $8 if you don’t want ads. (Variety) You kids get off my Netflix!
AT&T is launching a Netflix rival next year. It will be anchored by HBO and feature WarnerMedia's other properties, including movie and TV franchises. (CNBC)
Hulu plans to rely less on traditional commercial ad breaks and lean more on cultural moments and seasonal events as it aims to generate more than 50 percent of its advertising revenue from non-intrusive formats by 2021. (AdAge)
Subscription services might dominate the over-the-top video market today, but free, ad-supported platforms are beginning to find their way to viewers on internet-connected TVs. (Digday)
The next season of Black Mirror on Netflix will feature a choose-your-own adventure set of storylines. (Bloomberg) Fascinating way to engage viewers.

Related: maps that reveal the hidden structure inside the choose-your-own adventure books. (Atlas Obscura)

Aᴜᴅɪᴏ

Visualizing 40 years of music industry sales. (The Visual Capitalist) There was a moment there when I thought 8-track was really going to make it.

Podcasting is the new blogging. "Podcasting is the generous act of showing up, earning trust and authority because you care enough to raise your hand and speak up." (Seth's Blog)
The most crowded categories in Apple Podcasts. (Pacific Content)
Spotify released which musical artist each state plays the most. (Buzzfeed) Great use of data. Check yours and let me know if you're shocked.
Pandora launched online analytics tools and announced a distribution agreement with SoundCloud. (Martech Today)
Program of the Week: Our pick this week is Nerdificent, a nerdy deep-dive for everyone.

And don't forget about The Full Monty podcast, our own 5-minute weekly business commentary.

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

As you know, Facebook was hacked. Almost 30 million Facebook users' phone numbers and email addresses were accessed by hackers in the biggest security breach in the company's history. (CNN Business)
Of those, 14 million accounts had a broad array of data stolen. (NPR)

How to tell if your account was hit by the massive Facebook attack. (Slate)

Tim Cook reminds everyone that a "Facebook-like data breach" won't happen at Apple because "privacy is essential to liberty." (Vice) Thank you for being the grown-up in the room, Mr. Cook.
Charlotte Moore, the BBC's director of content, said Amazon and Netflix have an "insatiable greed for data-gathering" and are motivated by profit, rather than what's good for audiences. (Business Insider) And here I thought the British were polite and indirect.
After years of preaching self-regulation, the world's biggest advertising companies are suddenly getting behind the idea of national regulation on privacy. (Axios) Let's be clear: only because they have to, as GDPR dictates. Having a standard within the U.S. would mirror what they're required to do in Europe.
"We're entering a world of catastrophic cyber risk, where someone can remotely disable the steering of a car, kill someone using an Internet-connected medical device in their body, or shut down a power grid," warns Bruce Schneier in Internet Hacking Is About to Get Much Worse. (New York Times)

Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ

Microsoft announced a strategic investment in Grab, gaining a foothold in ridesharing in southeast Asia. (Engadget)
Taxify now operates in more African markets than Uber. (Quartz)
Two of Uber's executives are leaving to join electric scooter start-up Bird. (Fortune) If it's not one civic regulatory disruptor, it's another.

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.

Michael Lewis is the poet laureate of data analysis and in The Fifth Risk, the author of Moneyball reminds us that it's bureaucrats in the Departments of Energy, Commerce and Agriculture, the guardians of scads of data, who are keeping the government running.
Roku is assembling a crack team of measurement partners for OTT advertising. The Measurement Partner Program is made up of 11 partners, including Nielsen, comScore, Research Now, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Acxiom, Experian, Oracle Data Cloud and more. (Ad Exchanger)

Mental Nourishment

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

Striking portraits of lonely cars in 1970s New York. (Atlas Obscura) Four decades later these lonely cars, and most of the businesses around them, are long gone. For some reason, this fascinates me as a literal snapshot of time.
Did you know that being lazy is actually good for you? Not the idle kind, but the kind where you have unfocused attention that can be harnessed. (Time)
While you have more downtime from being lazy, here's how to learn anything, according to a leading expert. (Quartz)
Why is it that some people seem to be hugely successful and do so much, while the vast majority of us struggle to tread water? The difference between amateurs and professionals. (Farnam Street) Trust me, I'm a professional.
This piece by Kara Swisher gets at the heart of what it's like to work for others and to be a boss yourself. (Slate) It's a brutally honest, self-reflective column that should inspire others to challenge themselves to achieve success.
A Twitter thread between two sci-fi/fantasy authors became an improvisational horror story –and a SYFY film. You Might Be the Killer is likely the first film to directly adapt a viral Twitter thread. (The Verge)
The backstory to an artist you've never heard of and one of his well-known paintings. (My Modern Met)
And from the sad but true department: more than 250 people have died taking selfies since 2011. And these are only reported deaths. There were likely many others. (CNN) Narcissus is alive and well, and walks among us.

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Top image credit: Leonidas at Thermopylae by Jacques-Louis David, 1814 (public domain)

Monday, October 15, 2018