Too Much of a Bad Thing — March 4, 2019

An excess of technology may be negatively impacting us—particularly the younger generation; A.I. made a significant impact to the global economy; scooters are a bad deal; consumers prefer voice ads; should influencers be regulated?; pick your Amazon Day; the secret to Best Buy's success; why Facebook and Google won't change; a consumer revolt against cable is brewing; Spotify is powering more podcast listeners; how seriously your privacy is actually taken; Lyft's IPO and recent financials; Nielsen's move toward a product-driven technology company; charisma, charm, and the ability to persuade; and more in the Too Much of a Bad Thing edition of The Full Monty for the week of March 4, 2019.

Special thanks to colleagues who inspired me with link-worthy stories: Tamsen Webster, Heidi Cohen, Christopher Penn, Michael Rubin, Ann Handley, Mark Schaefer, and Ken Burbary.

The Full Monty makes you smarter faster, by curating essential digital 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.

Announcements

On March 12, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET / 10 am PT, I'll be giving a webinar for AdWeek in conjunction with Sprinklr titled Is Your Corporate Culture Transformation-Friendly? What's at Stake.

In it, I'll share the elements of a successful digital transformation plan. You’ll find out:

The building blocks of strategic transformation
Ways to change your culture to prepare for digital transformation
How to move digital transformation beyond marketing

Register Now

Top Story

Have we taken technology too far?

Smartphones in particular have become an appendage, and in doing so, have created a sort of dependency that we can't seem to shake. It's one thing for generations who didn't grow up with these devices, who have become what we once used to call "digital immigrants." But it's entirely another for the digital natives.

In particular, teens are seeing depression and anxiety as a major problem among their peers. They feel pressure from the usual places: academic performance, appearance, social acceptance. But it's likely that these areas of concern are amplified, thanks to technology — the ubiquity of social media and messaging apps being the prime suspects.

Is it any wonder? A recent story on NPR indicated that emotions can spread like viruses: in particular, anger is contagious online (as are other emotions). When teens, whose brains are not yet fully evolved, feel the lure of technology and addictiveness of social media, combined with their fluctuating emotional states, it's a dangerous combination. And because they might have a harder time creating boundaries or limitations on themselves, they're at a higher risk.

A group of researchers decided to get off of Facebook for four weeks to determine the effects. They discovered four things: (1) people spent less time on technology overall, and more time with friends and family; (2) they were less informed, but also less politically polarized; (3) those who gave up Facebook felt “small but significant improvements in well-being”; (4) those who left Facebook said they planned to spend less time on it after the study concluded.

Perhaps it's time that we reassess our priorities and put our attention where it can do the most good. While we don't have to go to the extreme of giving up technology or Facebook, we should determine just how much of it is good for us.

"Out of moderation a pure happiness springs."

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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About this week's image: The Glorification of Art and Diligence and the Punishment of Gluttony and Earthly Pleasures by Jeremias van Winghen depicts the dual nature of humanity: virtue and vice. The arts are prominently represented among the virtuous group in the foreground. A gentleman carves a sculpture while behind him another pair of men sketch in red chalk. Vice, on the right hand side of the canvas, is filled with gluttonous individuals consuming alcohol, being lustful, and eating excessive amounts of food.

Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

The latest in A.I., machine learning, and bots; mobility and autonomous everything.
Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ

Robots took on a record number of jobs in U.S., Canada and Mexico last year, according to the Robotic Industries Association. According to the RIA’s data, 35,880 robots were shipped in 2018 to the U.S., Canada and Mexico, up 7 percent from the previous year — and half went to non-automotive companies. (CNBC)
A.I. contributed $2 trillion to the global GDP last year, according to a report. The industry could contribute $15.7 trillion to the world economy by the year 2030. (PwC) Who stands to gain the most? China, with its improving technology and momentum-happy economy.
A.I. in content marketing: what it is, how to use it, and companies to demo. (Marketing AI Institute) We could all use some practical advice.
Microsoft unveiled an A.I. camera at Mobile World Congress. The Azure Kinect is “new intelligent edge device that enables developers to create a wide range of A.I.-powered experiences." (CNBC) Other companies such as Amazon and Google have their sights set on the A.I. camera market as well. A.I. Uses for grab-and-go retail, healthcare, and gaming await.
How recommendation algorithms favor conspiracy theories and outrage over fact. (NBC News) The squeaky wheel gets the link?
Letting your customers know when they're dealing with bots would be helpful. Then they can decide how to engage. After all, "spam decorated as human interaction is still spam." (Seth's Blog)

Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ

FedEx is testing autonomous delivery bots this summer in several cities. Called the SameDay Bot, the device looks like a FedEx box on wheels and is equipped with a camera for navigation. (Fortune)
Waymo is preparing to roll out more than 62,000 autonomous Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans as the autonomous vehicle collaboration between the two expands. (CNBC)
SoftBank made a $2.25 billion investment in GM's Cruise to help speed autonomous vehicles to market. (Bloomberg) The race is on!
The average Bird scooter costs $360 to make, but lasts just 28 days and earns on average only $75 across its lifetime. The fascinatingly bad economics of the scooter business. (Oversharing) As usual, amid the hype, the numbers in the sharing economy don't add up.

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

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

Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

A masterclass in brand building for companies small and large alike. (Medium) Because brand is more important now than ever.
Nearly 40 percent of consumers prefer voice ads on smart speakers to TV ads. (Forbes) An important wake-up call for marketers to focus on voice. For what it's worth, I can think of many things I prefer to TV ads...
Lessons from the magazine industry that can help content marketers. (Heidi Cohen) While journalism skills aren't a perfect transfer to content marketing, there are some essential ones to learn.
Email is the most popular channel for lead generation, with 84.2% of marketers using it, according to the 2019 Leads Council Benchmarking Report. But when it comes to performance, social media is ranked among the top three channels by 66.7%, email by 57.6% and paid search by 51.5%. (Media Post)
For the email marketers among us: Seventeen Emails Telling You That You Have Unsubscribed from Our E-mail List. (The New Yorker)

Jᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ / Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴs / Rᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

Given the debacle at the Fyre Festival and the usual blatant disregard for FTC guidelines, is it time to regulate social media influencers? (Mark Schaefer) My take: no, because enforcement is nigh impossible; brands need to step up and ensure the influencers they're working with aren't being duplicitous.
Today's influencer economy can be shared by a Victorian-era economic theory. In the 1899 book Theory of the Leisure Class, the author writes: “The motive is emulation—the stimulus of an invidious comparison which prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in the habit of classing ourselves.” (Quartz) TL;DR — even those in the 19th century wanted to keep up with the Joneses.
Whether you're an employee or a manager, here are seven communications skills you need in the workplace. (Fast Company)
How to build a crisis-ready communications team before you need them. (Agility PR) I did a fair bit of crisis work in my corporate days, and speak on the subject. LMK if you'd like to chat.

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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 is planning to open dozens of grocery stores at a lower price point than its subsidiary Whole Foods in cities across the country. (WSJ) The grocery wars are heating up, and it isn't yet clear whether this will cannibalize Whole Foods.
More than half of U.S. households will be Amazon Prime members by the end of 2019. (eMarketer) New membership is driven by expanding Prime categories such as grocery, apparel, and media.
Prime members can pick an Amazon Day — a single day of the week when all of their Amazon packages are delivered. (CNET) A clever play by Amazon — predictability, and a lower chance of package theft — that will help reduce shipping costs. The question is whether logistics will make this possible.
More than 300 store closures were announced in one day by J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, and Gap. (Business Insider)
J.C. Penney pulled the plug on its subscription service. (Reuters) I hope you'll join me in shock when I say, "J.C. Penney had a subscription service?"
While other retailers have struggled against Amazon, Best Buy has managed not only to stay afloat, but to thrive. How? (CNN Business) Best Buy has focused on customer services (like in-home tech support) to boost sales, and is matching prices fulfilling online orders at stores.

If you haven’t taken a moment to recommend The Full Monty in the past month, please find a couple of minutes. Three effective tactics (do one, two or all three):

1. Share the URL smonty.co/fullmontysub with a group of your friends at work, a community of practice that is relevant, on Slack, a Facebook Group, etc. with a recommendation.
2. Write a review on your blog, LinkedIn or in your column.
3. Tweet a recommendation. You could try this one or create your own.

Platforms

News to know about relevant social media and technology platforms that may affect your business.

With all of the outcry over the amount of data they collect and their dominance in the field, the real reason why Facebook and Google won't change. (Fast Company) Two words: surveillance capitalism. They like the money.
Insurers are using customers’ social-media posts to determine premiums, inviting the potential for our digital lives to become disingenuous performances. (The New Yorker) Just imagine if we judged the president by his tweets.

Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ

Without a doubt, the must-read of last week was Casey Newton's widely circulated piece on The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America. Facebook relies on third party contractors, sparing the sensibilities and psyches of its own employees. (The Verge) My take: if you've created the conditions that allow the basest instincts of humanity to surface, you should do your own dirty work.
Facebook has rolled out a new feature across the globe that enables users to combine Stories with events. (AdWeek)
Facebook is offering a Fan Subscriptions feature, but wants a 30% commission, compared to Patreon's 5%. (TechCrunch) You would think that with Facebook's size and profit margin, they'd undercut Patreon, not make a blatantly greedy grab for six times Patreon's fee.

Tᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ

eMarketer has raised its outlook on Twitter, estimating that its U.S. ad revenues will grow 22.8% between December 2018 and December 2020 to $1.62 billion.What's driving it? Having seen increased spending in the 2018 midterm elections, they predict that the 2020 elections will have a similar impact. (eMarketer)
Twitter confirmed that it is working on a Hide Tweet feature. It functions as an alternative to muting or blocking a user, while still offering some control over a conversation. (TechCrunch)
Users can apply to a Beta test group to preview new features coming to Twitter. (Social Media Today)

Oᴛʜᴇʀ

YouTube says it will disable comments on almost all videos featuring minors, improve classification of comments, and continue to ban harmful accounts. (YouTube Creators Blog)

Media

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

Vɪᴅᴇᴏ

Americans are increasingly giving up on expensive cable and satellite TV packages for more affordable services delivered over a broadband connection. (Axios)
A full-on consumer revolt is the result of high-priced cable bills as consumers have more choices in streaming media. (The Street) And cable companies have no one to blame but themselves, as they've carried intractably fat bundles for too long.
Director Steven Spielberg is prepared to propose a rule change that would prevent Netflix films from getting an Oscar at an upcoming Academy Board of Governors meeting. (Collider) You probably guessed this image was coming:

Aᴜᴅɪᴏ

New podcast listener growth is happening, thanks to Spotify. (Panoply)
Apple Podcasts issued a new rule last week: that podcast creators should refrain from using episode numbers in their shows. They later clarified, saying that creators should ideally use the iOS season and episode tagging features. (Apple Insider)
Pandora launched Pandora Stories, which will allow artists to intersperse spoken tracks with their music almost like an annotation. It will appeal to creators who wish to tell music-driven stories, made possible because the feature provides access to Pandora’s catalog of fully licensed songs to use in Stories. (TechCrunch) This is an interesting and smart play to leverage their music in the quest for more podcast relevance.
Dipsea has raised $5.5 million for its app that features short-form erotic stories. (TechCrunch) Quick — someone give me $5.5 million and I'll read Penthouse Forum into a microphone.
Program of the Week: The featured show is Should This Exist? hosted by Caterina Fake, who invites the creators of radical new technologies to set aside their business plan, and think through the human side.

If you're not already, please subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, 7 minutes of weekly business commentary, many times with a historical or literary twist. It's like Paul Harvey for business. New episodes every Wednesday.

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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

"We take your privacy and security seriously." So says just about every company. So, a journalist scraped every data breach notification filed in California last year and compared it to the companies that say they take your privacy seriously. (TechCrunch)
Genetic testing firms that take your DNA are sharing it more than you think. (Axios) So it's 23andMeandThatGuyandThisCompanyandThatLawEnforcementBranch?
TikTok was fined $5.7 million for violating a child privacy law. (Variety)
Facebook is lobbying against data privacy around the world, threatening to withhold investments unless politicians ease up on privacy laws. (The Guardian) Because of course they are.

Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ

Ride hailing company Lyft filed for its IPO, showing a 39 percent market share versus Uber in the U.S. (CNBC) While it lost $911 million last year, one thing to note is the cash burn as a percent of revenue: the three-year trend is going in the right direction.

Year / Revenue / Cash burned / Cash burn as % of revenue
2016 / $343.3 million / -$682.8 million / 199%
2017 / $1.1 billion / -$688.3 million / 63%
2018 / $2.2 billion / -$911.3 million / 41%

Both Lyft and Uber are considering giving pre-IPO stock to some of their earliest drivers. (Marketplace)

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.

Snap a photo of a printed data table and Microsoft Excel will convert it into an editable spreadsheet. (The Verge)
Don't do analysis in a vacuum. Context matters. (KDNuggets)
Nielsen's CEO said the company will focus on transforming into a product-driven technology organization following a difficult year financially. (The Drum)
How one winery uses data and technology for marketing itself. (KSRO)

Speaking

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, updated to inform business growth.

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.

Just where did Odysseus travel following the Trojan War? Homer fans have been trying to figure this out—and squabbling over their findings—for as long as the Odyssey has been in the canon. The Geography of The Odyssey. (Lapham Quarterly)
Any change movement within an organization will be resisted by 25%, with 50% uncommitted. Create opportunities for the middle 50 percent to spend time with the top 25 percent. (John C. Maxwell)
Are you a grammarian like me? Then you'll revel over this Harvard linguist's list of the most misused words in English. (Business Insider)
What is charisma? Simply put, it's authenticity plus attitude. How to improve it is another thing. (Public Words)

Related: How to be more charming. (Timeless Wisdom)

From a series of the Five Canons of Rhetoric on how to become a better speaker and writer, we come to Arrangement, the organization of a speech or writing to ensure maximum persuasion. (The Art of Manliness) The other entries are Invention, Style, Memory, and Delivery.
And finally, the importance of studying those who came before us, so that we may learn from their mistakes and speed our path to success:

Top image credit: The glorification of art and diligence and the punishment of gluttony and earthly pleasure by Jeremias van Winghe (Attr.), c.1580-1600 (Wikimedia Commons - public domain)

Monday, March 4, 2019