The Full Monty — May 8, 2017

Comcast and Charter team up to go wireless; Hulu goes live; Ringling Bros. circus breathes its last; media consumption habits of Americans; two features: This Week in Fake News and This Week in Retail; the state of social media reports for Twitter and Facebook; the continued push for video from each; the on-demand economy is not sustainable; Uber's in trouble (again); Apple may have an answer to Echo and Google Home;  how Spotify gets music discovery right; personalized experiences are key to digital stores; the blending of online and offline operations is still in doubt; how data and hacking lead to a hijacked election; the world's most valuable commodity; the mental models you need for intelligent decision making; and more in the Cinco de Mayo edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust is speaking (final section below).

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If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Programming note: next week, we'll have a slightly amended set of topic headers. We hope you'll find those just as relevant and helpful as those you've come to know below.

Industry

• Comcast and Charter Communications, the two largest U.S. cable operators, have agreed to explore ways to work together in the wireless business and better compete nationwide with mobile giants like AT&T and Verizon.
• The Disney Digital Network will combine existing brands from the company, including Oh My Disney and Babble, with Maker talent and its gaming-focused Polaris network.
• Hulu launched its live TV service for $40 a month, which also includes Hulu's subscription video service as well as Hulu originals. Hulu is owned by NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment Group, Disney-ABC, and Turner Broadcasting, making this the first time that TV companies are selling a pay TV service directly to TV viewers.
• Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, "the Greatest Show on Earth," is shutting down this month. Its demise was partly due to dwindling attendance, animal rights activists, and changing preferences in entertainment consumption. In a nod to this, the circus will broadcast its final show on Facebook Live on May 21.
• Given that American adults now spend 12 hours and 7 minutes a day consuming media, the above should come as no surprise.

• Also of no surprise is how dominant Facebook and Google are, as together they account for 20% of global ad revenue.
• Domino’s is connecting its pizza tracker to other connected devices and platforms — from posting to/from a customer’s social platforms to turning the outdoor lights on at your home to make it easier for the delivery driver to see your address. Domino’s continues to be one of the most innovative companies in any consumer industry, much less the food industry — and stands out as a prime example of how leading companies execute digital transformation. Domino’s is as much a tech innovator as a pizza maker.
• This Week in Fake News
• Facebook is getting ahead of fake news in the run-up to the UK election in June. The social network published a series of advertisements in newspapers in Britain, giving advice to its millions of users in the country on how to spot misinformation online. It also removed thousands of possibly fake accounts and tweaked algorithms to reduce the amount of misinformation.
• The Media Insight Project looked at the reasons that people pay for news, finding that half of all US adults pay for some kind of news subscription, and do so because of coverage of a specific topic. This and a number of other factors related to digital and print subscribers are part of this study.
• Storyful and Moat debuted Open Brand Safety, working with CUNY School of Journalism to catalog sites that spread misinformation, then share findings with brands.
• Wall Street executives have stopped taking President Trump seriously. 
• This Week in Retail
• Walmart's acquisition of Jet.com gave it a much-needed boost in e-commerce. Here's a look at their strategy to compete head-to-head with Amazon. (Disclosure: Walmart is a Brain+Trust client)
• Bonobos is in Walmart's sights as another acquisition target. Four lessons from their retail experience that can be applied to any digital experience include design of product pages and using retail locations as touchpoints for discovery.
• The next retail crisis may be felt in grocery stores, as these five forces come to bear on American supermarkets. 

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Platforms 

TWITTER / PERISCOPE

• A look at Twitter's Q1 2017 growth that surprised Wall Street, although revenue was down. This was the largest quarterly growth Twitter has seen in two years. 
• In addition to a 24/7 news channel in conjunction with Bloomberg, Twitter is betting on TV with a dozen partners, including BuzzFeed, LiveNation, the WNBA. 
• Twitter's TV app is live on Roku. It doesn't require a Twitter account to join, and lets users watch videos on Twitter's timeline, similar to the implementation of Twitter’s apps on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Xbox One, which all launched over the past few months.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

• A look at the state of Facebook at this Q1 juncture: closing in on 2 billion users, a majority of users are mobile-only, and the company continues to push for video.
• The financials look healthy: $8.03 billion in revenue in Q1 2017. Revenue growth is slowing as ad inventory fills up, but it's still moving at a more brisk pace than Wall Street expected. The real question will be where Facebook next turns for revenue.
• Television is a good guess, as Facebook prepares two dozen TV-like premium shows.
• Film is another, as Facebook is looking for a film producer to create “motion picture content,” along with a software engineer for film and a production lead for media partnerships.
• Not long after its launch, Facebook Stories appears to be struggling to gain users or traction. Whether this is a deliberate ploy by Facebook to make Snapchat seem less appealing to Facebook users, or a reflection that Snapchat users don’t simply want the same features on Facebook’s platform is yet to be seen.
• With Facebook Live being used to broadcast murders, Facebook is adding 3,000 people to its community operations team to review reports of inappropriate content and to help prevent suicides.
• Facebook rolled out Instant Games on Messenger to all users, currently with up to 50 games including Words with Friends.

SNAP

• In its effort to create TV-like content, Snap has signed original show deals with NBCUniversal, Turner and others, and is in talks with CBS and Fox.

ALPHABET / GOOGLE

• Google is testing a job posting feature that could rival LinkedIn. This follows Facebook’s move into the jobs space. It will be interesting to see the impact on LinkedIn (and whether LinkedIn opens wider to blue collar jobs in response to the dual threat from both Facebook and Google).

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Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

• The on-demand economy is not sustainable, because most startups in the space are essentially subsidized by venture capital, rather than a viable business model. The survivors will figure out how to win customer loyalty to a clear-cut service that requires frequent use.

TRANSPORTATION

• Waymo says former executive Levandowski made deal with Uber before he left, was given 5M shares of Uber stock the day after leaving, which was months before his autonomous driving company Otto was acquired by Uber. The plot thickens.
• Uber's use of its "Greyball" technology [first reported by us on March 6, 2017] has it in hot water with authorities: the company is facing a criminal probe over its use of software to identify and evade authorities looking to crack down on Uber.

 AUTONOMOUS 

• Baidu is releasing a free operating system for self-driving cars. China’s leading search engine hopes to speed development of autonomous driving and draw carmakers to its services.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

• Apple may have an answer for Amazon's Echo and Google Home. According to a report, there’s “an over 50% chance” that Apple will unveil a device, potentially called the “Siri Hub” this summer.
• Slack released a new search feature powered by artificial intelligence. It's designed to help users find relevant channels and subject matter experts more quickly than traditional search.
• Health care giant Humana will be relying on AI to improve customer service. Just as long as my doctor isn't a cold, unfeeling robot.

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Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

• Oculus is shutting down its Story Studio for VR film production, shifting away from internal content creation to support more external production. Leave the content creation to the experts.
• Microsoft is building an augmented reality viewer into the next version of Windows 10. It's designed to let Windows 10 users augment 3D objects, created in 3D Paint, into the real world by using any laptop with a webcam.
• WeChat is building an augmented reality store.  

AUDIO

• Did you ever wonder how Spotify is able to nail it with its Discover Weekly playlists? Wonder no more as you're taken behind the magic.
• NPR, the AP and local newspapers are beginning to experiment with voice-activated news updates via Amazon Echo.
• Program of the Week: Beyond Social Media Show, hosted by David Erickson and B.L. Ochman, is an irreverent, fast-paced take on the week's advertising, public relations, and online marketing news by two long-time communication professionals. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet:  smonty.co/yourpodcasts.  
• And don't forget to subscribe to our show via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher,  Spreaker or SoundCloud.

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Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

• Not all marketing content is content marketing. Gartner weighs in on how to tell the difference and explain it to colleagues.
• An outtake from 20 Extraordinary Content Marketing Insights: "Once people realize 'more is more' we will see very significant growth in content."
• Value is everything. If you're not creating value, there's no reason to be contributing. And there are many ways to go about creating value, such as these 30 Possible Ways to Create Customer Value.
• Consumers want intuitive, personal digital store experiences, yet many of the major e-commerce players are missing the mark by relying on basic strategies that broadly target customer bases. Click the above for strategies to address that.
• Connecting the online and offline experiences and making them feel seamless and consistent is one of the takeaways in this customer experience obloquy from Ann Handley. It's well worth the read and touches on the many aspects of digital transformation — people, processes and technology — that we consult on at Brain+Trust.
• If you saw the flaming disaster that was the Fyre Festival, you'll want to see the leaked pitch deck that is beyond parody. This is everything that influencer marketing should not be; don't let this taint the otherwise well-executed practice.

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Privacy / Security / Legal

• Google Docs was used as the base for a giant phishing scam last week that affected millions. 
• Want to improve your company's reputation and increase the trust of your customers? Focus on data and privacy.
• A long read on the data and hacking that led to Brexit and the hijacking of democracy. An important read to understand the dynamics of what's going on currently and what's at stake.

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Measurement / Analytics / Data

• The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. Just as titans of 100 years ago related to the oil industry needed monitoring— Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, so do today's data monoliths: Facebook, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.
• In its effort to better understand the impact of its Journey site, Coca-Cola created a new metric around engagement.
• When asked "What Key Performance Indicators should we use for our business?" Reply with, "What are you trying to get done with your digital strategies?" This and other pieces of wisdom from Avinash Kaushik in The Very Best Digital Metrics for 15 Different Companies.

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Leadership / Further Reflection

• Making better decisions is part of the leadership process. And in order to be well informed and make intelligent decisions, it's helpful to understand the variety of mental models available for consideration.
• Is FOMO a thing of the past? Digital minimalism is taking root amid the fear of burning out. It's a more practical answer to short-term detox and permanent plug-pulling that's gaining momentum among computer scientists, lifestyle experts, and even beauty brands. We might even call it JOMO (the joy of missing out).
• Teens certainly don't suffer from FOMO. Largely because they can't put their phones down. According to GlobalWebIndex, teen internet users worldwide spend 3 hours 38 minutes going online via their smartphones during a typical day—roughly 48 minutes more than the overall average for people ages 16 to 64.
• The beauty of our galaxy is something to behold. A pilot on a night flight across the Atlantic caught a time-lapse video of the splendor of the Milky Way.

FlightLapse #01 - MilkyWay from SkyProduction on Vimeo.

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Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.

Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. Won't you consider supporting The Full Monty?

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Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

• Keynote at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017. (Scott)
• Keynote at Health:Further in Nashville, August 23-25, 2017 (Frank and Scott)
• Can we speak for your organization? Drop us a line.

Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. 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 photo credit: The Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862 (public domain)

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The Full Monty — May 1, 2017

ESPN undergoes a major layoff; mobile and desktop advertising surpassed TV; This Week in Fake News; Radio Shack goes out in style; Facebook's associated apps) are approaching the 1B mark; Twitter outperforms in earnings and followers; LinkedIn's Matched Audiences will be a boon to advertisers; Airbnb aims for business travelers; Didi is huge and getting huger; Uber aims to fly high; free self-driving rides in Phoenix; what freaks people out about robots; the impact of autonomous processes on society; VR is only one letter away from QR, but some are wielding it the same way; United heard the cacophony and has made policy changes; Fyre Festival organizers had a flaming mess on their hands; CMOs need more than marketing savvy; a look at Hanlon's Razor; and more in the You're Fyred edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust is speaking (final section below).

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Become a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. 

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The Full Monty, a Brain+Trust Partners publication, exposes you to virtually everything you need in business intelligence at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Industry

• ESPN laid off more than 100 employees on Wednesday, including many familiar and highly credible on-air faces. Most observers chalked the moves up to “cord-cutting,” the freefalling relevance of ESPN’s flagship highlight show SportsCenter in a digital world. This challenge extends to other multimedia brands, whether in broadcast or print, in which content is available on any device, and there's a mismatch of attention and big ad spending, combined with an inability to keep up with a rapidly changing media landscape.
• Mobile and desktop advertising have surpassed TV, and mobile now accounts for more than half of all digital ad revenues, up 22% in 2016 over 2015, according to the IAB. Revenue from digital video is leading the charge, up 53% in 2016 and reaching a record total of $9.1 billion. As TV ad spend declines in favor of digital, it highlights the challenges faced by networks like ESPN.
• Taking a more "engineering approach" to the future of advertising marketing, WPP purchased Deeplocal, an "innovation studio." A fitting description for a shop rooted in engineering that creates inventions for clients. The future of advertising may be more about experiences than the ads themselves.
• Consumers want a digital advertising experience that's more subtle, but the question remains about how marketing silos will be broken down to deliver that.
• This Week in Fake News:
• Fake news will continue into the foreseeable future for at least four reasons: our media consumption habits have changed; we consider our friends on social media as trustworthy, and therefore not in need of fact-checking; Millennials gravitate to social for news; and they're more open to alternative news sites for information (think Vox, Axios and Quartz, for example — although these are not fake news sites).
• Social media is polarizing opinions faster than ever. People pick sides, find like-minded users, and dig in. Academics teamed up to dig into the behavior of some 12 million Facebook and YouTube users, and found that within 50 likes of content in a category, users were entrenched. In other news, water is wet.
• Facebook recognizes that it has a role to play in disinformation campaigns that occur through its platform. They've got a strategy, but it doesn't include a method for combating the creation of false and malicious material at its source, and a sense of Facebook's responsibility when genuine users share those links.
• Mark Zuckerberg set out to change the world by making it possible for anyone to share anything. But in accomplishing that, the platform has unleashed human nature on itself, making the News Feed the defacto newsfeed to the world, leaving Facebook the unenviable task of trying to fix its own worst bug.
• One way it is going about this is to suggest more articles to read in the News Feed to help fight its 'filter bubble.'
• Turkish authorities have blocked access to Wikipedia by Turkish citizens. No, you don't get to ask why. And there's no truth to the rumor that this is to pre-empt fake news.  
• Radio Shack has closed hundreds of stores in the past few years, but none closed quite like the Reynoldsburg, OH location. Businesses with franchisees should consider who has access and control of individual stores or locations’ social media presences. Then again, if you're completely eliminating their livelihood because you mismanaged your entire company, you might just deserve what you've got coming.

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Platforms 

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

• Jack Dorsey shared some thoughts about Twitter’s growth and the pressure to grow more, the problem of harassment and destructive speech on the platform, whether his company’s done enough to fight it, and of course about Donald Trump.
• Despite some ongoing controversies, Dorsey does seem to be making positive strides toward halting Twitter’s slide. The platform added nine million users in 4Q 2016, achieved EPS of 11 cents in the same period, beating expectations of only one cent, and saw greater-than-expected revenues of $548 million. It’s too early to declare victory, but these results should provide investors at least a little relief.
• Twitter is partnering with Bloomberg Media for a 24/7 ad-supported live video news channel, expected to start this fall. Another play for more video ad dollars.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

• Instagram continues its meteoric growth, now topping 700 million active users. Its growth is accelerating, as it added 100 million more users in just four months — significantly faster than it took to jump from 500 million to 600 million or from 400 million to 500 million.
• Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp: Facebook is about to have four different billion-user platforms. And if you count the users like many agencies count impressions or reach, you would conclude that there are 4 billion people using Facebook platforms. #alternativefacts
• Digital advertising rates are likely going up, thanks to Facebook's plan to bring the Facebook Audience Network (FAN) to mobile web pages to challenge Google. 
• Sheryl Sandberg's own willingness to be frank and share her thoughts and experiences is a large part of what drives Facebook's success.

SNAP

• WPP is chasing the younger crowd as it commits to some $200 million in advertising with Snapchat in 2017, up from $96 million in 2016.
• Facebook learned the hard way. As did Instagram. And even Twitter, to much consternation. They all changed their feeds to work with an algorithm to prevent information overload. And fans rewarded them. Snapchat may be held back because of its refusal to do the same.

ALPHABET / GOOGLE

• The latest advance in Chromecast viewing increases the quality and performance of video you can stream to your TV. The war for streaming services and devices wages on...
• Google is doing its part to combat fake news, rewriting its search rankings to bury fake news and label questionable sources.

MICROSOFT  / LINKEDIN

• LinkedIn has reached 500 million users worldwide. That's work-minded users in 200 countries, with approximately 250 monthly active users on mobile.
• Following Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is rolling out Matched Audiences, allowing all LinkedIn advertisers to target ads based on people’s web browsing, their email addresses and their employers.

OTHER

• WeChat is huge in China. The messaging app has succeeded in the absence of other major platforms, partially because of its simplicity and because of its growth as a mobile operating system. Four insights from its ecosystem report:
• Time spent on the app is up, with the majority of people spending an hour or more a day on it.
• 57% of users are willing to pay for content on the app.
• "Miniprograms" within the app still have yet to catch on.
• Workplace use of WeChat is widespread and may become more codified.

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Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

LODGING

• Business travelers, rejoice! Airbnb is adding a filter that will allow users to find business-friendly listings. Such listings would include things like amenities, 24-hour check-in, wifi, a desk and at least 60% five-star reviews.
• Airbnb is fighting racial discrimination by allowing California officials to watch for racist hosts who refuse potential renters in violation of fair housing laws. 

TRANSPORTATION

• Chinese ride-hailing service Didi is raising $5 billion, on its way to a $50 billion valuation making it one of China's most valuable companies. 
• Gett has acquired Juno for $200 million — a rival in the New York market. We're surprised no one came up with the obvious headline: Juno Gets Got by Gett.
• Uber announced that it plans to launch flying cars by 2020. Perhaps this is to take the attention off of accusations of chauvinism at the company; either way, the phrase "when pigs fly" comes to mind.
• It's now easier to find your rider rating in the Uber app. The company wants to encourage “better” rider behavior. It has yet to do much about the behavior of its own employees, though.
• Uber announced that it will make it easier for users to access privacy settings and won't require users to contact support if they want to delete their accounts. 
• Lyft drivers are taking legal action against Uber for its "Hell" program that tracked their movements.

 AUTONOMOUS 

• Uber's head of autonomous driving is stepping aside amid the ongoing Waymo lawsuit. Instead, he'll focus on security and operations.
• Waymo is giving free self-driving car rides in Phoenix in Chrysler minivans and Lexus SUVs. The company will also be adding 500 vehicles to its fleet, which currently has 100 vehicles.
• Lexus is also involved in Apple's autonomous vehicle testing.
• With all of the news of Tesla, Uber, Waymo, and Apple and their autonomous vehicle programs, you might be surprised to learn that it's likely that your first self-driving car may be a Ford.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

• Artificial intelligence will be the business differentiator of the future. From automated communications to drivers of efficiency, there's an opportunity ahead for more personalized experiences.
• Between autonomous machines and artificial intelligence, what will the impact be on society? Can robots do things better than humans?
• The inventor of Siri says that one day AI will be used to upload and access our memories. Don't look now, but Black Mirror is slowly but surely coming to life. 
• Speaking of which, robots are becoming more human-like in their approach, and the personalities and psychology we instill in AI will show what we're made of.
• In fact, Alexa is learning to talk with pauses, whispers and inflections, in order to mimic the human voice. "Alexa, you're freaking me out."
• When something as game-changing as artificial intelligence is on the horizon (or here), we're naturally uncertain. A new report shows that humans are scared of robots, but for the wrong reasons. It's generally tied to misunderstanding; for example, they're okay with familiar things like health diagnoses and predictive policing but a little more skittish about the perception of robots taking control of their own volition.
• How's this for predictive policing? A Silicon Valley company is creating crime-fighting robots that will replace mall cops. 
• And not a moment too soon, as a Silicon Valley man was arrested for fighting with a crime-fighting robot. While drunk. 

Credit: Marcelo Braga (Flickr)

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Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

• A bar in London has added unnecessary VR components to its cocktail menu. Great. We're getting to the point where companies are going to start using VR like QR codes: just doing it because they can, rather than improving the experience or adding value.

AUDIO

• SiriusXM acquired connected car company Automatic. Initially, it seems like it might be an odd mix, but SiriusXM has a vested interest in connected cars, since that's where most of its customers listen to the stations. Disclosure: I own shares of Automatic. 
• Musical.ly and Apple are linking up, where Musical.ly users will be able to stream full-length songs — rather than just 15-second clips — from Apple Music's catalog directly within the Musical.ly app, with the further option to save particular songs to their own playlists within Apple Music.
• Program of the Week: We've got a bevvy of selections this wee: the top 28 marketing podcasts for entrepreneurs. There's plenty to choose from. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet:  smonty.co/yourpodcasts.  
• And don't forget to subscribe to our show via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher,  Spreaker or SoundCloud.

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Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

• United Airlines announced ten sweeping policy changes, more than two weeks after the now-infamous dragged-off-the-plane incident with Dr. David Dao (with whom United settled this week). The policy changes, announced in an email from embattled CEO Oscar Munoz, include no longer asking law enforcement to remove customers from flights (“unless it is a matter of security or safety”), increasing incentives for rebooking, and no longer asking passengers to give up their seat once seated on the plane. 
• Despite the policy changes -- and Munoz’s apparently candid admission in an AP interview that “I messed up” the initial response and that the Dao incident ‘may sway’ consumers’ airline choices -- many have responded skeptically, pointing out among other things that the airline is only increasing incentives for overbooking, not ending the practice. Regardless of the policies United may put in place, the airline’s issues stem as much from culture as from policy — and culture takes much longer to fix. Stay tuned.
• The rumors of the death of content curation may well be exaggerated; major media outlets like the New York Times are finding success with curation, so businesses taking a smart and audience-centric approach to curation may also find success.
• We're just at the beginning of the bull market for content marketing. There's a high demand for marketing skills and executives have a desire for more long-form content.
• It's possibly the worst event promotion and execution in history, and influencers were involved in it. That's right: it's the great Fyre Festival Fail of 2017.
• And while it may be reasonable to ask the FTC to get more serious, the real blame lies with the organizers, who are now facing a class action lawsuit from disgruntled rich kids. To the tune of $100,000,000.

In a way, Fyre Festival was an amazing success. Instead of entertaining thousands of people, it entertained millions.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) April 29, 2017

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Privacy / Security / Legal

• Hacking reaches the entertainment world, in the form of streaming video: hackers released season 5 of Netflix's Orange is the New Black a month in advance of the official release. Orange is the New Hack?
• Facebook and Google were victims of a $100 million phishing scam that infiltrated their supply chain. 

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Measurement / Analytics / Data

• Success as a CMO today requires much more than marketing savvy; it also requires leaders to have functional knowledge and understanding of big data, analytics, and technology. See the AI section above as another reminder.
• The latest trend for software companies is to create new data-driven discipline for sales teams. Data scientists are applying algorithms to the otherwise intuitive world of corporate sales.
• The data you voluntarily give up may end up in the hands of a company you don't particularly care for. That's what users of Unroll.me discovered when they were informed that their information was being bought by Uber.

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Leadership / Further Reflection

• The advertising world seems to have a high percentage of people with dyslexia. It turns out that being 'wired differently' may set you up for success in certain fields.
• The key to surviving a difficult conversation as a manager is to listen more than you talk.
• You've heard of Occam's Razor, no doubt. Well, Hanlon's Razor can be summed up as: ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect.’ Bottom line: give people the benefit of the doubt if you don't know the full story.
• "Forgive everyone everything" is one of 50 life lessons from Regina Brett, cancer survivor and author of God Never Blinks.
• It's always a good idea to find inspiration in successful people. And while you may not have the same opportunities or skills as they do, there's still a way to follow their habits. Here are 7 traits of successful people that require no talent at all.

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Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.

Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content. Won't you consider supporting The Full Monty?

---

Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

• Keynote at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017. (Scott)
• Keynote at Health Further in Nashville, August 23-25, 2017 (Frank and Scott)
• Can we speak for your organization? Drop us a line.

Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. 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 photo credit: Sunset on the Coast of Sicily After a Storm, by Andreas Achenbach (The Metropolitan Museum)

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The Full Monty — April 24, 2017

The United issue shows there may be more at stake in concentrated industries; sports-free bundles may encourage cable subscriptions; This Week in Retail finds Walmart experimenting with a discount formula and looks at what's causing the retail meltdown; the request for Twitter to sell itself - to users; announcements from Facebook's f8 conference; publishers are unsatisfied with Instant Articles; how Facebook pummels the competition; Yahoo's demise is a harbinger; Uber really has some ethical issues (again!); AR is the future of Facebook; The Podcast Consumer 2017 report; the FTC needs to crack down on sponsored posts; success factors for CEOs and managers; and more in the post-vacation edition of The Full Monty. We're sure you subscribe to The Full Monty podcast, and don't forget check out where Brain+Trust is speaking (final section below).

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Edition notes: I'm back from vacation this week, but have to attend my father-in-law's funeral. Next week may be a bit light.

Industry

• The United issue isn't over yet. What we're experiencing with cable companies and airlines is due to their already poor reputations that are only solidified as their industries become more heavily concentrated.
• United demonstrated that "if you're an airline, you don't have to be very good at public relations." Wells Fargo demonstrated something similar in banking. It's the result of business policies that reward overbooking and cross-selling. Hindsight is 20/20 in post-crisis analyses.
• And what is a crisis, but an opportunity? An opportunity to change one’s culture, to model scenarios and set up a crisis plan, to become a better company.
• Silicon Valley lobbying group Internet Association, which represents Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and others is urging FCC chairman Ajit Pai to keep Obama-era net neutrality rules.
• AMC, Discovery and Viacom are looking at entertainment programming without sports for an affordable monthly fee for cable subscribers who want "skinny" bundling.
• Burger King took Subservient Chicken to the next level by trying to outsmart Google Home with a phrase in its latest ad and updating the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper, which is where the ad-prompted voice request would lead. Google quickly shut it down.
• It's a regular topic here, and now fake news will be a topic at Facebook's shareholder meeting. When it's risen to this level, you know it's real.
• Oracle is buying ad tech company Moat for $850 million. The company's latest iteration is as a digital ad auditor that verifies that ads are appearing where they're supposed to be. 
• Digital marketing is (or should be) less about the tools and more about strategy first and customer over product. With some spiffy cartoons from the always-entertaining Marketoonist.
• This Week in Retail:
• Walmart has come up with a unique discount formula that may appeal to its price-conscious shoppers and spark additional buying in stores, but without crimping its margins. With its Jet.com acquisition, logistics aptitude, and massive distribution network, Walmart can go toe-to-toe with Amazon. Disclosure: Walmart is a Brain+Trust client.
• India-based ecommerce platform Flipkart is positioned to take on the threat posed by foreign firms Amazon and Alibaba, adding $1.4 billion to its coffers in a new round of funding that gives it a post-transaction valuation of $11.6 billion.
• Some 89,000 Americans have been laid off from retail jobs since October —  more than everyone employed by the coal industry. Is American retail at at tipping point? Modern-day retail is almost unrecognizable compared to what it was just after WWII, and retailers are in desperate need to adapt quickly.
• In the middle of an economic recovery, hundreds of shops and malls are shuttering. What in the world is causing the retail meltdown of 2017? The reasons go far beyond Amazon.

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Platforms 

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

• Twitter is going hard at video: brands can now run in-stream video ads to align with videos from Amplify partners, including top TV networks, major sports leagues, major publishing houses and magazines and professional news outlets. Twitter also highlights that these are "brand-safe" placements, pitting itself against the issues YouTube has recently been dealing with.
• Did Twitter delete some tweets that were negative toward United Airlines?
• Twitter's annual shareholder meeting will include a proposal generated via a petition that recommends that Twitter sell itself to some of its more fervent fans.
• There's a serious problem at Twitter that needs to be addressed: disinformation is being spread by fully automated bots as well as semi-automated spam and trolling accounts that make up a sizeable part of Twitter's active user base. Just look at any @realDonaldTrump tweet seconds after it's been sent — it's been liked and retweeted hundreds, if not thousands of times.

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / WHATSAPP

• Facebook now has 5 million monthly advertisers. Expect a lot of revenue to be reported in its upcoming earnings call. And expect Facebook to continue to grapple with the ever-increasing limited inventory in the News Feed, where ads appear. The result may be increased advertising costs for businesses. And more revenue for Facebook.
• Facebook is rolling out tech changes using patterns to find fake accounts that can spread misinformation, malware, and falsely boost page rankings.
• Instant Articles were supposed to be a bonanza for publishers and Facebook alike. Now Facebook's shifting priorities and inferior monetization options are leading some big publishers to abandon the format. In one case, The Guardian is dropping out of Facebook's Instant Articles and Apple News.
• Facebook wants publishers to create more video—both live and produced—going so far as to offer money to publishers for videos that will accommodate Facebook's new ad products. What Facebook wants, Facebook usually gets. We'll have to wait to see if this ends like Instant Articles.
• At its f8 developers conference, Facebook just announced a slew of updates for Messenger, including a "Discover" tab, more games, and lots of bot integrations. The bots are coming, and Facebook will be leading the way.
• One of the first is Group Payments, allowing users to send money between groups. Allowing people to obtain money through the platform is usually a powerful motivator. The equation is simple: Money x User Base = Massive Success.
• One of the more important announcements at f8 was the launch of AR Studio, open to developers around the world. With the help of thousands of outside developers, Facebook will defeat Snapchat. If you can't beat 'em (or buy 'em), get a bunch of friends to do it for you.
• And it's already happening at Instagram, where Instagram Stories have surpassed Snapchat in users.
• The reason Facebook keeps beating its rivals? It's quite simple, actually: the network. Billions of people can't be wrong. 

SNAP

• Snapchat is trying to make it easier for advertisers to spend money with them, introducing a self-serve platform for Snap ads. Sounds like Facebook...
• Snapchat rolled out new world lenses, a more three-dimensional style of objects which users can add to images.

ALPHABET / GOOGLE

• Google, the company that has set the pace for digital advertising for a generation, is planning an ad-blocking feature in its Chrome browser. The goal is to filter out ads that provide a poor user experience.

YAHOO / VERIZON / AOL

• Yahoo’s demise is a signal that web-native companies are next. If you run a business that relies on digital-advertising revenue for an outsized portion of your funding, you need to find new streams of revenue. Now.

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Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

LODGING

• The lodging industry’s plan against Airbnb shows “the hotel cartel is intent on short-sheeting the middle class so they can keep price-gouging consumers,” according to Airbnb. Is this another instance of taxi companies vs. ride-hailing upstarts? Or does the hotel industry have a workable solution? If the plan is just more legislation and regulation, rather than updating their business model, it may be a long, slow decline for traditional hoteliers.

TRANSPORTATION

• New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission is proposing that car services that only accept credit cards should be required to offer tipping as part of their user experience. Yeah, they're looking at you, Uber. Lyft already offers a tipping option.
• Uber has extended its internal investigation on sexual harassment and workplace culture. With hundreds of current and former employees lining up, it could be quite revealing.
• The culture there must be fairly toxic, as Rachel Whetstone, Uber's head of communications, stepped down. Who can blame her? She had a job that was about as enviable as Sean Spicer's.
• Uber program “Hell” created fake Lyft rider accounts to track Lyft driver locations, and identified individual drivers using Lyft vulnerability. Add this to the laundry list of questionable business practices by Uber. Why are you still using the app?
• Uber secretly identified and tagged iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a practice that could have resulted in the app being booted from the App Store. This New York Times article Uber C.E.O. Plays With Fire sums up his behavior and the company's business model succinctly: "In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered." He'll push boundaries and copy competitors, like Facebook; in that, he's like Mark Zuckerberg — but without a conscience. 

 AUTONOMOUS 

• A federal judge isn't satisfied with Uber, as they won't explain what former Google/Waymo employee Anthony Lewandowski is working on at Uber.
• An Uber engineer was forced to admit that Uber was working on a second, more Waymo-like Lidar and hid it from the court. Ethics.
• AAA is planning for a future where we don't own cars. They're not alone; but the fact that they are part of the industry crowd that has embraced this vision should further convince any remaining skeptics of the validity of this future vision.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / BOTS / BLOCKCHAIN

• When DeepMind's new WaveNet voice generator sings "Take the 'A' Train," it sounds just as routine as a karaoke bar performance. Is an AI cover band in the works?
• Despite our best efforts, artificial intelligence learns to be racist. How? Because it was created by humans.
• Amazon is building new business pillars in AI, next-generation logistics, and enterprise cloud, according to a deep dive into data from their their M&A, investment, jobs, patent, other activity. Expect Amazon to emerge as a central provider for AI-as-a-service.

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Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

• Facebook thinks the camera will be the main interface, and therefore Facebook will serve as the world's leading augmented reality platform. But how much of this will be a dystopian future? Calling Black Mirror fans...
• Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for AR in his remarks at f8. “Think about how many of the things you use [that] don’t actually need to be physical,” he said.
• As part of that, Facebook launched a beta version of Spaces, its virtual reality platform. It lets up to four users hang out in VR and is available in beta for Oculus Rift, with plans to expand to other VR platforms. 

AUDIO

• IHeartMedia, the parent company of IHeartRadio, warned that its current debt position indicate that it may not survive another year.
• Have a podcast? Here are the seven best podcast promotion tactics.
• The Podcast Consumer 2017, the latest in Edison Research’s annual study of the medium, contains all new data on podcast users in America. Highlights:
• Podcasting continues to rise, with Monthly listeners growing from 21% to 24% year over year.
• The Podcast listener remains an affluent, educated consumer— and one that is becoming increasingly more likely to gravitate to ad-free or ad-light subscription experiences.
• Subscribers tend to have been podcast consumers for longer than non-subscribers, consume more podcasts, and are more likely to use their smartphone as their primary podcast player.
• While Home continues to be the most often named location for podcast listening, the vehicle is a strong second.

The Podcast Consumer 2017 from Edison Research

• Program of the Week: Gabbing Geek is three friends doing a weekly podcast about movies, comic books, TV, science fiction, books, board games, video games, and all other things geeky. Suggested by Ryan Garcia. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet:  smonty.co/yourpodcasts.  
• And don't forget to subscribe to our show via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher,  Spreaker or SoundCloud.

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Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

• Sprinklr announced a major update to its platform, calling the bundled services Experience Cloud and focusing on customer-centric needs.
• We often talk of the need for storytelling, but Neil Gaiman gets to the heart of things when he addresses what makes a great personal story. TL;DR: honesty and vulnerability. Two very human characteristics.

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Privacy / Security / Legal

• How Russian hacking evolved: simple credit card schemes in the '90s, takeover by organized crime in the '00s, and now joint criminal and government hacker teams. Important to understand, from the standpoint of corporate security, communications and society.
• InterContinental Hotel Group initially announced a data breach of 12 locations. It turns out it's a little bigger: 1,200 IHG hotels were affected by the data breach. IHG is neither the first nor the last big organization that will suffer a data breach. Your company should be planning for how you'll respond if/when it happens to you  across the whole organization, from IT to communications to customer care to legal and beyond.
• Instagram celebrities (yes, that's a thing) keep sneaking in sponsored posts, according to the Federal Trade Commission. What? Influencers and celebrities not disclosing a material relationship with brands? No! 

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Measurement / Analytics / Data

• The Chicago Tribune notices a significant change in its Facebook metrics. Significant in that one-third of its posts aren't surfacing.
• Hopefully they'll be able to figure that out with Automated Insights and Custom Dashboards, two new features in Facebook analytics that integrate machine learning into the system.

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Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

• What would make you get over your aversion to replying to cold emails? How about cold, hard cash?
• Four things that successful CEOs do that set them apart, according to the Harvard Business Review, have nothing to do with education or previous successes:
• Deciding with speed and conviction
• Engaging in disciplined communications and influencing strategies
• Adopting proactively
• Delivering reliably
•  Successful managers also need to elicit radical candor. “If you think that you can do these [managerial] things without strong relationships, you are kidding yourself.”
• Believe it or not, introverts make some of the best leaders. They have better focus, savor the solitude makes reflection possible, have good listening skills, and more.
• Philosopher Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) knew the importance of quiet time. In his masterpiece The Prophet, he outlined the tension between reason and the silence required for thinking.
• Also in this week's dead philosophers section, Arthur Schoepenhauer (1788-1860) predicted the dangers of clickbait.

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Upcoming Brain+Trust Speaking Engagements

• Keynote at the CEO Communications Summit at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal, June 13-14, 2017. (Scott)
• Keynote at Health Further in Nashville, August 23-25, 2017 (Frank and Scott)
• Can we speak for your organization? Drop us a line.

Brain+Trust Partners doesn't believe in gobbledygook — we use common sense strategic guidance to help you master the evolving marketplace. From strategy development to technology and data vendor selection, to digital transformation and streamlining processes, our focus is on the customer experience. 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 photo credit: Belisarious Begging for Alms, by Jacques-Louis David (Wikipedia)

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