Technology has brought with it so many advances that have allowed us to do more than we once thought possible. But with it, we're losing out on some of the things that connected us in the past.
While it doesn't mean we need to regress, it does give us a chance to reflect on the power that binds humans together emotionally. Which in turn can give you a leg up on the competition, as you zig while they zag.
And just like that, you're growing your business based on better customer experiences, humanity and trust.
Theme song: Afternoon by Maestross is on a royalty-free license from Jamendo.com.
Incidental music: Heartwarming by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100207
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Image credit: Photograph of mural General store and post office by Doris Lee at the Ariel Rios Federal Building, Washington, D.C. (Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)
Who can you trust these days? Is Alexa dangerous? What happens when new mobility meets the U.S. legal system? What concerns CEOs most in 2019? Why aren't DTC brands saying yes to Amazon? What 10 social media trends will matter most? What's the secret sauce of podcast advertising? How is streaming turning into cable's business model? Should you be able to monetize your own data? Is it time to regulate influencers? How are marketers changing their TV attribution strategies? Are digital detoxes solutions looking for problems? When can I come speak to your team? The answer to these questions and more await in the Believe Me edition of The Full Monty for the week of January 28, 2019.
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.
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Top Story
"Can I be honest with you?"
That question should spark immediate suspicion. Because it connotes that the person asking the question (a) isn't usually honest with you, and (b) is about to bring down a hammer of sorts.
Here's the thing: we have a problem right now with the truth and trust. The #3 issue keeping CMOs up at night is establishing trust.
It's apt then that the latest edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer came out last week. Also ironic that Mark Zuckerberg's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal ("The Facts About Facebook") was the same untrustworthy stuff we've heard from him — such as the old canard "We don't sell people's data." No, you sell access to people by using their data. Semantics.
And entirely transparent that Zuckerberg used the WSJ as the medium for his message. Facebook has systematically weakened the news industry, and its CEO can't publish this on his own page? Oh, right: regulators don't necessarily follow him on Facebook, but they do read the WSJ opinion pages.
Ever since getting caught up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has said that its #1 mission is to establish trust (I won't say "restore," because that implies they had it in the first place). But gaffe after gaffe has seemingly obliterated that platitude.
As you read though the links this week, take a good look at how many of them have to do with a lack or breach or trust, or an absence of honesty.
It's an epidemic. And the brand that figure out how to be authentic, believable, and trustworthy stand to win.
If you enjoyed this commentary, please sign up for Timeless Wisdom in addition to this newsletter and I'll send you a couple of more items a week.
About this week's image:
The Procession of the Trojan Horse into Troy by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1760) illustrates a famous passage from Virgil's Aeneid (Book 2). After a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse—the horse being the emblem of Troy—and hid a select force of men inside including Ulysses (Odysseus). The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war.
Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous
The latest in A.I., machine learning, and bots; mobility and autonomous everything. Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ
We're just at the beginning of voice assistants. Soon, they may be much more than humble servants. Which leads some to ask: is Alexa dangerous? Which really stems from a wider question of trust. (The Atlantic) Alexa, are you dangerous?
Alexa is now delivering headlines in a "newscaster" voice. When U.S. users ask "what's the latest?" the device will use direct waveform modeling to respond in the tone used by anchorpeople. (TechCrunch) I wonder if we'll be able to pick the newscaster voice that's the most trustworthy to us? Imagine if Walter Cronkite or Sean Hannity answered.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing unit is open-sourcing Neo-AI for machine learning. This will serve as a framework for optimizing A.I. models on other platforms, such as Google's TensorFlow, Nvidia, and others. (VentureBeat)
The technology behind Libratus, the A.I. bot that defeated human poker champions in 2017, has been contracted by the Pentagon for $10 million. The technology will be used for military strategy, planning, and simulations. (Outer Places) But not for shutdown negotiations, obvs.
Waymo will be assembling self-driving vehicles in Michigan. (Medium) Note: assembling, not building. Waymo relies on other auto manufacturers to integrate its own hardware and software.
Automakers may have overestimated how many people actually want electric cars. (Quartz) From the department of 'duh.' It's likely rooted in low gas prices and automakers' need to have a higher price point than consumers want.
Driver-assistance systems have too many different names. AAA found that there are 40 different brand names used to describe automatic emergency braking, 20 different names for adaptive cruise control and 19 terms of lane-keeping assistance. (Roadshow)
Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy
Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.
Under a threat of potential jail time, a group of British online influencers have agreed to change how they post online after their social media profiles were investigated by the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority. (CNN Business)
Notably, people said they trust their own employer to do what's right.
But major gaps of trust exist between the informed and uninformed public.
There was a massive rise in news engagement — to the tune of 22 percent.
Journalism took a major hit last week with over 1,000 layoffs in media jobs in one day, including from BuzzFeed, Gannett, and Verizon Media. (Axios) This comes amidst a battle for supremacy from tech giants like Facebook and Google, an already eviscerated local news landscape, and the ubiquitous availability of free content everywhere.
Here's what concerns CEOs the most in 2019, including recession fears (external) and talent quality and leadership development (internal). (The Conference Board)
Personalization is needed more than ever. But how do you do it at scale? It's really all about knowing your audience and serving them up what matters to them, ideally based on what you know - such as their purchase history. IRI has the solution in their latest FREE webinar: How to Improve Audience Targeting for Your CPG Ad Campaigns. (IRI Worldwide)
Retail Apocalypse
Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is — is undergoing a historical metamorphosis.
Amazon knows that direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands own the relationships with their customers (and the rich data that results from it). And Amazon wants a piece of it. But the DTC brands aren't falling for it. (Digiday)
Amazon will begin testing its robot Scout, for delivery of one- and two-day shipping. (Wired) We'll see how long it takes for thieves go from grabbing packages off porches to simply loading Scout into the back of a van.
Millennials have been credited with upending entire industries, and retail is no exception. Here's what retailers need to know about attracting and retaining consumers from a maturing generation of digital shoppers. (eMarketer) And technically, it's not just Millennials; it's anyone from any generation who is doing more online.
News to know about relevant social media and technology platforms that may affect your business.
How a Vermont social network became a model for online communities. (The Verge) The bad news for large players like Facebook is that it takes human curation, approvals, and interaction, and that it seems to work well in manageable numbers (Vermont's is about 160,000 members). The good news is that it serves as a model for brand- or interest-based communities.
Related: the 10 social media trends that will matter most this year. (Search Engine Journal)
Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ
The biggest news about Facebook dropped on Friday, with the announcement that the back ends of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger would be integrated, allowing users of any of those Facebook-owned platforms to be able to message each other across platforms. (The New York Times) This is widely seen as an effort to leapfrog regulators, to make it more difficult to break Facebook up.
Twitter is beginning to roll out a redesigned interface for web users, including the addition of an emoji button and an update to its trending section. (The Verge) I've been using it for the last couple of weeks; it's very similar to the mobile app.
The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them. Vɪᴅᴇᴏ
How the success of Netflix's Bird Box, which was watched by 58% of its user base in its first month, drives Netflix's virtuous cycle as an aggregator. (Stratechery)
Hulu is lowering the price for its least expensive subscription plan while raising the cost of its live TV offering, a move that aims to bolster its subscriber numbers while increasing the margins on its most expensive plan. (The Wall Street Journal)
Internet video stream cord-cutting services started as cheap alternatives to cable television, but now they are duplicating cable's business models with similar costs. (ZDNet) What's past is prologue. The media industry has little imagination or variation on its models.
Program of the Week: Mo Rocca hosts Mobituaries, an irreverent but deeply researched appreciation of the people (and things) of the past who have long intrigued him.
Please subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, our own 5-minute weekly business commentary. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
Do try this at home: "Alexa, play the latest episode of The Full Monty."
Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ
How to protect yourself from getting your Nest device hacked. (Tom's Guide) It's a simple matter of self-education that's necessary when you buy with connected devices.
Facebook may be facing a record fine from the FTC over its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. (Recode)
Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ
With so much money flooding into a largely unregulated, still-developing market, all sorts of ethical lapses are bound to ensue, and indeed they have. Is It Time to Regulate Influencers? (NY Mag)
A look inside Uber's Special Investigations Unit, a 60+ team handling severe reported incidents, nearly 1,200/week, often leading to stress and emotional trauma. (CNN Business)
Instacart admits that it uses tips to calculate how it pays workers. In other words, if a customer leaves a large tip, Instacart figures it doesn't have to add much in, so the tip becomes the wage. (Working Washington) Possibly illegal? Certainly unconscionable.
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.
How can you energize your team and give them actionable ideas for boosting customer engagement? It's all about applying Timeless Wisdom to your process — practical and relatable lessons drawn from historical and literary contexts.
Combine this with Fortune 10 executive experience and some great stories, and you'll be happy that you spent a fraction of what it costs to send your team to a major conference. I'll spend anywhere from an hour to a whole day with your team and give them the power to develop trusted, lasting relationships with your customers.
Let's chat and see if I can customize a session for you.
Mental Nourishment
Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.
The company that bought Necco, Round Hill Investments LLC, shut down the plant that produced Sweethearts last year. As a result, this will be the first year since 1866 that you won't be able to buy those candy hearts imprinted with messages. (The Guardian) Do they make one that says "TOO BAD"?
Digital detoxes: are these well-meaning practices just solutions looking for problems? Technology isn't inherently bad, so detoxing isn't inherently good either. (Quartz) "Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison." —Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.
If you've been to New York, you've undoubtedly gone past the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. Perhaps you've even gone inside for a bit. But have you really seen it? This video tour has the hidden details of the New York Public Library. (Architectural Digest)
Top image credit: (public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Life can be tough. We've all experienced a setback from time to time. And often, those setbacks can seem difficult to surmount.
But imagine if you had traversed 1,500 miles over ice and snow, only to lose your race into the history books, and then realize that you wouldn't make it out alive, with only 11 miles to go. Would you still keep going?
Keeping perspective and staying true to your mission are critical in times like this.
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
Difficult is worthwhile; the human mind is still elusive from A.I.; Ford is shutting down Chariot in favor of micromobility solutions; the guide to growing your audience; flyover influencers; what will solve almost every business woe; personalization at scale; traditional retail is in a golden age; Amazon's aims are big; chronic social media use is a societal problem; Facebook and Google put $300M toward news; Netflix and Hulu growth numbers; what it will take to double podcast listening; LinkedIn was used in a Russian spy effort; what CMOs are mostly concerned about; how to have a practical, humane approach to life; and so much more in the Winter Is Coming edition of The Full Monty for the week of January 21, 2019.
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.
Have you signed up for updates from my main blog, Timeless Wisdom? That's where I share insights on current issues, through the lens of what great figures of history, philosophy or literature have taught us. Please add this essential to your inbox.
Top Story
The first workday after a long weekend. Getting out of your toasty warm bed on a frigid morning. Walking to the nearest public transit stop in windchill temperatures below zero.
All of these things are hard.
You know what else is hard? Doing your own thing when the crowd is doing another. Focusing on quality work while your competition is churning out vast quantities of work. In short, doing great things.
The seemingly inextricable situation in which Facebook currently finds itself — thanks to product engineering that outpaced ethics — is not going to be easy to address. But society (and perhaps soon, government) demands it.
It's also the case for the politically-fraught topic of toxic masculinity that Gillette chose to address in its controversial ad. The topic deserves discussion, but it's going to be hard going for those willing to stake their brand on it.
There are rewards available to all of us. The question is whether or not you want to put in the work.
If you enjoyed this commentary, please sign up for Timeless Wisdom in addition to this newsletter and I'll send you a couple of more items a week.
About this week's image:
Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous
The latest in A.I., machine learning, and bots; mobility and autonomous everything. Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ
“Today, A.I. is not as good as you hope and not as bad as you fear." That may soon change — but AGI, or general A.I., remains elusive. "There's a lot about us that we don't understand…that's not explainable in terms of neural networks and computation algorithms." (60 Minutes) The human mind is more complex than we can understand.
The future of voice assistants is more likely to come through your car than your phone or your home devices. (Recode) I've been talking to my Ford and Lincoln vehicles for 10 years, through the SYNC system. My dad's been talking to his cars for 60 years...
Ford invented a robot to mimic your sweaty rear end when testing its seats. The name? Robutt. (Motherboard) Some of these headlines write themselves.
Japan's robot hotellaid off more than half of its robots after they created too much work for humans. (The Verge) And here we were, fretting about losing jobs to robots. I wonder if there's an automated process in HR for these kinds of layoffs.
Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ
Ford is shutting down its on-demand bus service, Chariot, after lagging demand. The company is instead focusing on scooters. (The Verge) Just goes to show that in some cities in the U.S., public transit is a hard sell.
Scooter startup Bird is raising $300 million in its bid to dominate micromobility. (Axios) Looks like Ford's decision makes sense.
Which issues are keeping the most CMOs and brand managers up at night? (MarketingCharts) The top three are ROI, big data/tech/security, and establishing trust.
Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ
In a survey, nearly three-fourths of consumers call Gillette “socially responsible” in the wake of its "We Believe" ad. But the survey also showed how the reaction fell along political lines, with 73% of Democrats giving it high marks and 48% of Republicans reacting favorably. (WSJ) While consumers appreciate brands taking a stand, only brands comfortable with risk should be considering such moves.
There's a new network of influencers aimed at average Americans, rather than coastals. (AdWeek) Hear that, coastals? You're not average.
Done well, word of mouth marketing is the most effective and cost-effective way to grow any business. So here's the The Ultimate Unified Word of Mouth Strategy. (Convince & Convert)
Personalization is needed more than ever. But how do you do it at scale? It's really all about knowing your audience and serving them up what matters to them, ideally based on what you know - such as their purchase history. IRI has the solution in their latest FREE webinar: How to Improve Audience Targeting for Your CPG Ad Campaigns. (IRI Worldwide)
Retail Apocalypse
Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is — is undergoing a historical metamorphosis.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are challenging traditional retail brands through earned media. (eMarketer)
Some say traditional retail is dying; however, we might actually be in the midst of a golden age of retail. (TechCrunch) Given the amount of data and the increased online competition, retail stores are doing everything they can to keep us shopping there.
Make no mistake: Amazon is on the path toward total domination. “Amazon is moving us toward a future in which the buying and selling of goods occurs not in an open public market, but on a private platform controlled by Amazon.” (Medium)
Some of the major retailers such as Macy's, Kohl's, and Target have indicated that in the post-holiday market and throughout 2019 they're expecting less demand. (Bloomberg)
Just a quick moment to thank those of you who have recommend this newsletter (publicly) to friends and colleagues. You've helped countless others discover these stories and learn from them. Please consider doing it again, as the new year is upon us.
Platforms
News to know about relevant social media and technology platforms that may affect your business.
Zuckerberg's challenge for 2019: get out of his bunker and talk to people. "I’m an engineer, and I used to just build out my ideas and hope they’d mostly speak for themselves." (Quartz) Perhaps — hear me out — this is why we need humanities majors working side-by-side with engineers.
Twitter has made updates to improve 'conversational health' on the platform. The updates include a new design for threads, meant to make it easier to follow conversations as they unfold, as well as completely new features like statuses and presence indicators that could indicate when someone is online or when someone is typing. (Mashable)
A thoughtful piece on the demise of Google+. Good strategy, questionable people. (The Vital Edge)
Media
The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them. Vɪᴅᴇᴏ
The creators of the Choose Your Own Adventure books are suing Netflix over Bandersnatch, which used the same concept to allow viewers to select the storyline. (io9) Netflix, you have a choice: settle, or go to court. Which will it be?
Netflix added nearly 9 million new paying subscribers during the final three months of 2018, beating its own expectations of 7.6 million. (CNN Business)
NBC is entering the streaming wars, announcing a new streaming service that will compete with Netflix, Disney, and Amazon. The service will be free to anyone who subscribes to pay TV. (CNBC)
What will it take to double podcast listenership? That's the question posed to Tom Webster, Senior VP of Marketing at Edison Research and 'podcast guru', who said, “We are talking about a medium that is knocking at the door of mainstream America.” (Medium)
Program of the Week:Retropod, a show for history lovers, featuring stories about the past, rediscovered. Host Mike Rosenwald introduces you to history’s most colorful characters - forgotten heroes, overlooked villains, dreamers, explorers, world changers.
Please subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, our own 5-minute weekly business commentary. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Try this at home: "Alexa, play the latest episode of The Full Monty."
Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ
A fake LinkedIn profile linking poisoned double agent Sergei Skripal to Christopher Steele — which prompted conspiracy theories about MI6’s role in the Novichok attack — was allegedly created by the GRU more than a year before Skripal was poisoned. (The Telegraph) They probably went with "Hi, I'd like to add you as a connection," so as not to be discovered.
T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it. (Motherboard)
Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings – which lets marketers rank how well their ads perform across platforms – will include YouTube’s mobile audience. (Fast Company)
How can you energize your team and give them actionable ideas for boosting customer engagement? It's all about applying Timeless Wisdom to your process — practical and relatable lessons drawn from historical and literary contexts.
Combine this with Fortune 10 executive experience and some great stories, and you'll be happy that you spent a fraction of what it costs to send your team to a major conference. I'll spend anywhere from an hour to a whole day with your team and give them the power to develop trusted, lasting relationships with your customers.
Let's chat and see if I can customize a session for you.
Mental Nourishment
Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.
For whom, the bell tolls: the English language is complex and changing all the time. It seems that "whom" is dying a slow death, and some people are up on arms about it. (Quartz) I'll admit that I am one of those people for whom this is an unwelcome development.
How's your affective presence? It's how you make people feel. And it has a great deal to do with whether or not people look forward to seeing you. (The Atlantic)
You've undoubtedly used one. Multiple times. But did you know that it's called a Brannock Device? It has a fascinating history. (Tedium)
At CES earlier this month, Osé was one of the devices that was honored with the Innovation Award. Until the organizers discovered it was a sex toy, rescinded the award, and called the device "obscene." (BuzzFeed News) No way, Osé?
You've got your plans, you've made your resolutions, and the new year is upon us. The sky's the limit!
Not so fast.
Somewhere along the way, there's going to be a glitch. Someone's going to find a way to slow your project down, to put up objections. You're going to self-sabotage and fall short on your resolutions by March. It's inevitable.
We all experience failure. The thing is, it's what you do with that failure and how honest you are with yourself that will give you a path forward.
"Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous."
New Year's resolutions normally don't stick - unless you approach them differently; A.I. and its effects on humans; humans go to war against autonomous vehicles; five phases of digital eras; five content marketing trends you can't ignore; real influencers with fake sponsors; the photo that Walmart's CEO keeps on his phone; feeling bad for Facebook; get your sales team to use social media; which streaming service is better for films or television; podcast predictions for the year; the biggest tech challenges ahead include security and privacy; who's winning ride hailing; differentiated data will help win machine learning races; what attention actually is; and so much more in the New Year, Old You edition of The Full Monty for the week of January 7, 2019.
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.
Have you signed up for updates from my main blog, Timeless Wisdom? That's where I share insights on current issues, through the lens of what great figures of history, philosophy or literature have taught us. Please add this essential to your inbox.
Top Story
It's a new year, as you know. And that's typically when we make pledges to ourselves in the form of resolutions.
Do they work? Well, the jury is out on that. If you're anything like most humans, the new habits may stick for a while, but you'll find that you simply slip back into your old ways.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the way we're wired. So stop trying to change.
It's difficult to tackle something new and different if we haven't properly prepared ourselves for it. That could range from beginning to exercise, developing a new strategy, taking some operations back from agencies, a leadership role, or more.
If you haven't been warming up and you try to just jump in, it's going to be hard going.
"We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared."
– Epictetus
The alternative is to adopt Atomic Habits. That is, begin with the smallest things and build from there. So, rather than pledging to stop drinking alcohol entirely in 2019, try cutting back to one drink a week. Or instead of giving up carbs at once, cut back your servings per day. And don't expect to figure out the analytics of your entire department in one quarter; begin with the metrics around one specific part of the operation.
It's human nature to want to make drastic changes to show our commitment to change. But those changes are more likely to stay with you if they're done bit by bit, over time.
If you enjoyed this commentary, please sign up for Timeless Wisdom in addition to this newsletter and I'll send you a couple of more items a week.
About this week's image: Goya depicted the story of god Saturn (the Titan Cronus in Greek mythology) eating his children upon their birth, as he feared he would be overthrown by them. His wife Ops eventually hid his third son, Jupiter, on the island of Crete, deceiving Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place. Jupiter eventually supplanted his father just as the prophecy had predicted.
Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous
The latest in AI, machine learning, and bots; mobility and autonomous everything. Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ
Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in A.I. will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will. (Pew Research Center)
A look Five Standards for Responsible A.I. Use through the eyes of CEOs in industries that will be affected by it. (strategy+business) Ultimately, this is an exercise in many areas beyond the technology; namely, ethics, operations, risk management and more.
A smartphone that detects your sadness? A car that knows when you’re tired? Experts in "affective A.I." are building emotionally intelligent technology. (Wall Street Journal) Quite a feat when there are humans that have a hard time with even emotionally intelligence.
Amazing police reports from the Phoenix area on how people are messing with self-driving Waymos: a slashed tire, a pointed gun, bullies on the road. In one case, a drunk guy tired of them in his neighborhood stopped one just by standing in front of it. (AZCentral) It’s not enough that we’re horrible to each other - now we’re going to mistreat the machines too?
Former Uber and Otto executive Anthony Levandowski launched a self-driving truck startup Pronto.ai, which plans to ship Level 2 automated driving systems in 2019 starting at $4,999. (TechCrunch) Hope he didn't steal anyone's IP for this one.
Can you teach a car to drive itself simply by showing a neural net millions of examples of good driving? In their quest to build the most experienced driver, researchers at Waymo detailed some of their work to explore the boundaries of A.I.
We have run out of room for growth of personal automobiles in urban areas: prepare yourself for the coming explosion of light electric vehicles. (Hugh Malkin) Except in northern cities in the winter, that is.
Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy
Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.
Influencers are so desperate for attention and approval that they're faking sponsored content. (The Atlantic) Nothing surprises me any more.
SPONSOR
How does personalization at scale grab you? It's really all about knowing your audience and serving them up what matters to them. But how are you supposed to know exactly what to deliver if you don't know their purchase history? IRI has the answers and shares them in their latest FREE webinar: How to Improve Audience Targeting for Your CPG Ad Campaigns. (IRI Worldwide)
Retail Apocalypse
Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is — is undergoing a historical metamorphosis.
"Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy."
–Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
Just a quick moment to thank those of you who have recommend this newsletter (publicly) to friends and colleagues. You've helped countless others discover these stories and learn from them. Please consider doing it again, as the new year is upon us.
Platforms
News to know about relevant social media and technology platforms that may affect your business.
Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ
It's kind of a nuanced ethical question: despite everything that's gone down, is it okay to feel bad for Facebook? (Six Pixels of Separation) Here's the thing: it comes down to your belief in their intentions and the usefulness of the platform to you. You need to be comfortable with those.
Facebook shelved plans for a product that would have promoted civil discourse. Evidently, conservatives would have thought it was biased against them. (The Verge) I'm still trying to make sense of that last sentence.
Instagram launched walkie-talkie voice messaging. This will place it in competition with other messaging services like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram for voice services. (TechCrunch) My teenager hangs up on friends to text them, so I don't know how well-received this will be.
The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them. Vɪᴅᴇᴏ
If you have Netflix, you undoubtedly heard about or watched Bird Box over the holidays. It's a sign of how Netflix is taking over Hollywood. (Axios)
Original content accounted for 37% of Netflix's U.S. streams, up from 24% a year ago, with the rest of viewing from licensed content. (Variety) This, plus the move of Disney and other content owners to open their own streaming services, is why Netflix is dedicating a significant budget to original content.
Program of the Week:Headlong: Surviving Y2K. We all know what happened at midnight on December 31, 1999. But in the months leading up, we were uncertain. Surviving Y2K has the stories of how people reacted and prepared in those crazy times.
Please subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, our own 5-minute weekly business commentary. Try this at home: "Alexa, play the latest episode of The Full Monty."
Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more. Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ
CEOs haven't yet gotten the message that security is important enough to put a leadership position in place. Just five percent of top 100 firms listed a chief information security officer (CISO) or chief security officer (CSO) on their executive teams. (Krebs on Security) And if their insurance carriers keep paying out to cover damages for security breaches, there's no incentive to change either. Perhaps insurance companies should look at executive team structures before determining premiums.
Lyft is offering to help low-income households who live far from grocery stores and who don’t have cars to get to the store by giving them rides for $2.50. (MarketWatch)
Are you tired of hearing about the latest thing you have to chase from executives or so-called gurus who love shiny objects? The platform du jour, the latest trend in influencers, stunts, and the like? Then allow me to wow your team with Timeless Wisdom — lessons drawn from historical and literary contexts, combined with my Fortune 10 executive experience, that still apply today. You'll walk away with a sense of reassurance after hearing some of my stories. I connect the dots between digital and analog, pointing out the universal human truths that drive us all, with insights that will help your team better connect with your customers.
Mental Nourishment
Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.
How books provide us with solace, empowerment and transformation. “Some books are toolkits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings… Some books are medicine, bitter but clarifying.” (Brain Pickings)