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How Big Data Makes a Difference in B2B Marketing

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Sourced from ElectricBot

Information acted upon is power.

Data is a crucial part of any business. Without it, you would be relying on guesswork and trial and error tactics. Everything revolves around data. Even our five senses are data-gathering machines that help us navigate through life.

Big data has become a buzzword these days. Many B2C and B2B businesses are heavily capitalizing on it. There are different ways in which you can use it to gain a competitive advantage. One big area is sales and marketing.

In this article, we will take a closer look at how big data is reshaping the marketing efforts of B2B companies. There are opportunities but also challenges in this new environment. Next, we will examine the connection between big data and the ABM approach which is the most popular B2B tactics these days.

How can “Big Data” help exactly?

If you had to summarize “big data” in one sentence you could say that big data offers a possibility to create both high impact and highly personalized marketing campaigns by offering deep insights into both the market and the consumer.

By having this deep insight, you will be able to create highly accurate and responsive campaigns. Knowing who to target, when, and with what message and price are the key benefits “big data” provides.

How does this function?

Big data is essentially any collection of data that can’t be effectively analyzed by existing traditional models of data. Since data can be in both structured or unstructured formats, and from numerous channels, you first need to make all the data accessible and usable. After, data analytic techniques can be utilized to effectively process and analyze all of the data. These actions are usually achieved by using a big data platform.

Examples of data sources can be competitive analysis and market information, marketing research, product knowledge data, website traffic data, social media posts, press releases, call center logs, customer feedback, device data, 3rd party data, consumer sentiments, and transaction logs.

How can big data affect marketing?

Marketing and sales departments were historically divided, and they still are. They have different targets and often come to a disagreement regarding several topics. For example, is the lead qualified enough and who’s at fault because they didn’t convert to a customer?

This tendency can be seen across the entire ecosystem of the company. Indeed, a company is just a collection of different systems, much like a large Fortune 500 company operates. In the case of an enterprise, these systems can be the ERP, CRM, Product Information Management System, Order Management System, and Marketing Automation System.

This is the old, so-called, silo approach to departments. Big data analytics helps us to turn all these different systems into a unified framework with a precise collective set of goals. All these systems are sources of data that can be used to create a perfect go-to-market strategy, set up different marketing segments and audiences, or to guide targeted advertising strategies and campaigns.

Big data is reshaping the anatomy of a company. In order to leverage the knowledge and data, all departments of the company should be integrated and interconnected.

Knowing where to focus marketing efforts is important. With big data, you can achieve more with precise targeting, lead generation, and increasing sales. Combined with predictive analytics and AI methods, big data can help us determine where the customers will be, how they may act, and what they may “do”. This responsiveness translates to better demand generation, the ability to create new markets and segments, while enhancing and optimizing both multi-channel and omni-channel marketing experiences.

Customer analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, Push/SMS/mobile app marketing, and digital ad platforms are just some of the areas where big data brings a competitive advantage.

Opportunities for B2B companies

Providing a unified and exceptional customer experience across all channels is the end goal that will increase your b2b sales. Great “above and beyond” customer experience can be achieved through personalization and customization.

Through personalization, we come to relevance and precise targeting. A simple example is a webpage, offer, coupon, or ad that displays a different message for an existing visitor compared to a new website visitor. If you are running an ecommerce business, you can deliver a perfectly timed discount, cross-sell, or up-sell campaign. This strategy or variation thereof, can apply to many types of businesses, webshops and digital storefronts and marketplaces are typically the platforms that get the most out of these personalization marketing strategies.

Another example is the ability to customize the price on a customer-product level. Again, highly valuable for any B2B eCommerce business since each customer is different. This wouldn’t be possible without the automated stream of data. You can also optimize the order and reorder processes by using the information about the previous purchase.

Some companies structure their entire business around data to produce something called the ultimate product. The ultimate product or service is that which came as a direct response to customer insight. By analyzing every piece of information to determine the most beneficial set of features, the product is guaranteed to be a success (if everything else goes well).

Challenges for B2B companies

If you compare a B2B and B2C market you will spot a tangible difference. Whereas you can have millions of users in a B2C market you have a lot less in a typical B2B setting. This in effect is the main challenge for B2B companies.

The number of customers influences the quantity of data, and the quantity of data influences the ability to draw conclusions. However, eCommerce businesses are an exception here. Although still having far fewer customers than a B2C store they can produce a large enough pool of actionable data. Again, this is not a rule.

Big Data and ABM strategy

There is an interesting aspect of a B2B market...

The number of customers is not large, they usually require highly customizable services, and prices will differ from one account to another. The usual approach of segmenting different customers into customer groups starts to lose its purpose since every customer is an island for itself. This line of thought has led to the creation of the ABM approach.

The ABM approach is the most popular B2B tactic. It stands for Account-Based Marketing. If you are not familiar with it, ABM is a business marketing concept that treats every account as a market. This approach represents a shift from the usual MQL (marketing qualified leads) strategy.

The major prerequisite for ABM is to have good, quality data. To identify key accounts and targets companies, while gathering strong firmographic and demographic data. After they have identified their markets they should reach them across a variety of channels and deliver relevant content.

Can you see the pattern? ABM is the most successful approach for small SMEs and other B2B players and it will almost always translate to an increase in B2B sales. However, that’s not possible if you can’t obtain quality data. The kind that big data platforms can generate.

Conclusion

Every company in every age has its own unique challenges and opportunities. We all know what happened to those who acted upon them. Luckily with the aid of the right technology, even the relatively small B2B companies have a chance to compete against bigger players.

The key is to have good quality data. 

The last few years have seen a growing trend among marketers. There is a rising demand for data quality. Each year more marketers list the quality of their data as a determining factor of their go-to-market strategy.

If you don’t know where to start from, we as a digital marketing agency can help you.

We are experts for B2B digital marketing and our main goal is to help you set up a successful ABM strategy, which you can’t do without quality data.

Everything is connected! Do you think you got what it takes to be the winner?

Sourced from ElectricBot

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How To: Create a Great Photographic Blog

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Sourced from AI-AP 

Generally speaking, a blog is a website on which someone writes periodically about personal opinions, activities, and experiences. For photographers, it’s where you can show your personality and describe your creative process.

Not only can a blog increase your online presence, it’s also the perfect opportunity to give your audience more background on you as a professional photographer and a person. I’ve heard from numerous art buyers and photo editors who enjoy reading a photographers’ blogs. Behind-the-scenes shots and fun stories help clients get a better sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you.

To some photographers, blogging comes naturally: the content flows like champagne mimosas at a Sunday brunch. For others, the thought of baring their soul to strangers is, well, anxiety producing. But fear not — it doesn’t have to be that hard.

Even though your site mainly aims to present you professionally, we still recommend having a balance between personal and professional content, as clients will want to see both your unique personality and a true love for photography and content creation. This also gives them an idea of what it could be like to spend a day with you on set.

Remember that your blog is your greatest free marketing tool. The posts don’t have to be too frequent or too long, but you should plan to post something at least once a month. As you get more comfortable with the blog posting process, consider increasing your output to one post per week.

If blogging doesn’t come naturally to you, try to break up your posts into a manageable schedule. You could set a weekly day that you always post a tear sheet or behind the scenes photographs. Some blogs, like WordPress, even allow you to pre-schedule posts so you can plan a month out to save time and create a routine for your workflow.

Make sure to embed your blog into your website so it reads as www.photographername.com/blog, or link it to your personal website if it lives on its own URL. This organization ensures that the user won’t be navigated away from your website, and they can continue to view your images on the same domain. Lastly, having the blog on your domain shows Google that you’re actively updating your site and that raises you in the search engine results.

BLOGGING STYLES

Blogging can come in many different forms, but a typical post could have anywhere from 500-1000 words and include multiple images and descriptive paragraphs. Still, there are other ways to get your work out there. Some photographers do image-only blogs, where they post shots from a specific assignment. Other than a brief introductory paragraph describing the shoot, those posts feature solely photos. Other photographers write shorter blurbs — think 100-200 words — and accompany them with a few images to give the reader a nice little morsel that doesn’t take too long to go through. And, of course, there’s the classic Q&A. You can’t go wrong with any of these kinds of posts; the key is simply to keep churning out the work.

Topic-wise, photographers don’t just write about assignments — they discuss other aspects of their career, focus on their non-photographic passions, or talk about a specific trend (COVID-19, in this context). For the most part, these posts are light, quick, and easy-to-consume reads that give the audience a good sense of the person doing the work. Let’s dive into some examples!

Richmond-based Caroline Martin does a nice job of writing about the client-based work and discussing other aspects of her career on her blog. She updates it monthly and gives each post an organic, relaxed feel, as though she’s simply conversing with the reader.

One of the nice things about a blog is that it allows you to publish your stream of consciousness in a certain way. Here’s what I mean in this case: one of the posts is about Caroline doing research on becoming an LLC, an incredibly important aspect of freelancing and a topic many photographers don’t really like getting into because it’s not as fun as taking pictures and working with people. But Caroline approaches this subject with an unassuming mindset, talking through her experiences with regard to making a passion profitable.

While Caroline’s blog is primarily focused on client-based work and lives on her website, which makes it super easy to find and explore, Saroyan Humphrey’s is quite different. Saroyan is a San Francisco-based editorial, portrait, and fine art photographer. We recently spoke with him about his ezine, Trailblazer, into which he’s put tons of time and energy during the COVID-19 quarantine. His blog is terrific for many reasons, but what I like most about it is that Saroyan focuses on his passions: racing, music, and travel. Depending on how in-depth a photographer goes with regard to creating a blog, sometimes it’s better to have it on a completely separate site. For Saroyan, this is the right move because the stories are a lot different than the ones he tells as a successful commercial photographer. Whereas Caroline’s blog is a branch on her website’s tree, Saroyan’s blog is its own entity.

Explore the site, and you’ll see a variety of blog post structures. Some posts are long stories with numerous quotes from the interview subject, others are more basic Q&As, and some are simply galleries of photos. It’s easy to get a sense of Saroyan’s personality and the way he converses with people by reading through these posts. And kudos to him for getting well-known, respected interview subjects with interesting stories to share! The Bay Area resident is clearly going above and beyond to produce quality content.

Partially aided by the fact that we’re stuck in lockdown, Saroyan has been consistently adding to his blog. Like him, Akron, Ohio-based Andrew Dolph keeps his work on a separate website. What makes Andrew’s blog different than the two we just covered is that it’s centered around COVID-19-related stories. The website, Essential Acts of Service, documents small business owners near Andrew who are trying to navigate an unprecedented era.

Like both his interview subjects and fellow photographers — and pretty much everyone else, for that matter — Andrew has lost business due to the pandemic. Instead of sitting around contemplating what to do next, Andrew got up and started taking pictures, hearing struggles, and writing stories. What’s great about these blog posts is that they’re short on writing. This means that Andrew doesn’t have to spend an unnecessary amount of time writing and can focus on pumping out content at a consistent pace. One small (but crucial) note: even though both Saroyan and Andrew have a separate website for their blog, you can get to them through their personal websites. If you’re going to keep your blogging on a different URL, it needs to be accessible from your main site.

Lastly, you have photographers like Natasha Lee in Santa Monica who uses Instagram as her blog. And she’s using it well! Notice how she has a personal caption about her subject, then she spaces down to add in all relevant hashtags.

Instagram lets you caption images with up to 2200 characters, and you can add up to 30 hashtags which can make you more visible and increase your following/likes. You can also tag or mention the client or products featured in the image which can catch someone’s attention.

One of the downfalls with using Instagram as your blog is that you’re going to miss out on the SEO enhancements that a typical blog can give you. Also, Instagram doesn’t hold metadata, so if you upload an image and someone screenshots, the only thing tying you to that post is if your username appears at the top of the post. What’d we’d recommend is that you use Instagram in addition to your blog, not instead of a blog. Plus, if you have more IG followers than unique website visitors, you’ll have a better chance of getting people from your Instagram to your website by utilizing these two platforms in concert, as we’ll cover below.

BLOGGING AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Anytime you publish a new blog post, get as much use out of it as you possibly can! Post a link on your Facebook page; tweet about the post (and include a link to the blog) on Twitter; Instagram an image from the blog and write a caption to tease your followers to click the link in your bio. Think of other ways that you can get the most traffic out of a single blog post.

I’d also advise posting links using bitly, a link tracking service. Bitly creates trackable links for you, so you can see how many people click each one.

SEO AND METADATA

For each image you’re posting to your blog, make sure the metadata is intact and informative enough that if a person were to save the image on their desktop, they’d have enough metadata stored in that image’s File Info to trace it back to you. This can be done simply in Photoshop and Lightroom by entering in particular keywords such as your name, location, what specialties you shoot, your web URL, and in some cases the client.

In Photoshop under File > File Info… you can enter keywords to embed SEO metadata.

In Lightroom, under Library you can enter your SEO keywords under the Keywording bullet. You can add personal details under the Metadata bullet.

For SEO tags, I’d create several that you plan to use (or already use) on your website and directly copy them to your blog. You can use your name, location, your photography brand, the client, what the shoot was for, and any descriptive words you can include. Adding SEO tags can do way more to improve your SEO than not using any or using irrelevant ones.

ANALYTICS

It’s as good an idea to track your blog’s analytics as it is to track your website’s. Through analytics, you can see what posts generate the most buzz and which may be falling flat, which is valuable intel. You don’t want to be wasting your time writing posts that no one is interested in reading.

There are a number of ways to track how well your blog posts are doing. Number one is Google Analytics; it’s easy to set up and will give you a great deal of useful information. A few things you can track through Google Analytics include:

*Number of visitors to your blog
*How long each visitor stayed, what pages/posts they viewed
*Where those visitors live, what language they speak
*What pages they entered on, what pages they exited from (which can help you see which posts continue to be popular over time. For example, our Writing a Photographer Bio post continues to bring in thousands of visitors a month, even though it’s over a year old)
*Traffic sources to your blog

In tandem with Google Analytics, I would also recommend enabling an RSS feed with your blog so that users can subscribe to your posts. Be sure to add the RSS feed of your choosing to Google Analytics results since many people never actually click through to a site when viewing through a reader and/or email feeds.

If you’re experiencing writer’s block, reach out via email or call us at 1 610 260 0200 and we can help cultivate some ideas for you!

This article originally appeared here.

Sourced from AI-AP 

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These are the world’s most innovative companies

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By Johnny Wood

  • Tech giants dominate the Boston Consulting Group’s list of 50 serial innovators for 2020.
  • Apple takes the top spot this year, with Alphabet second and Amazon third.
  • Only eight companies have featured in all 14 editions of the list.
  • Over time, the world’s most innovative companies have been growing in size.

The best innovators “walk the talk”, use their company’s size to good effect and constantly fine-tune their innovation systems for success.

That’s according to Boston Consulting Group, which has just released The Most Innovative Companies 2020: The Serial Innovation Imperative study, ranking the world’s 50 most innovative companies.

Have you read?

Tech giants dominate the list’s upper echelons. Apple has climbed two places from last year’s position to claim top spot, with Google’s parent company Alphabet in second, Amazon in third, followed by Microsoft, then Samsung.

innovation thinkings business companies corporation rankings rank ideas tech technology thought think thinking
The 50 most innovative companies of 2020.
Image: BCG

The list of top innovators has featured a total of 162 different companies across its 14 editions to date. This year’s top seed, Apple, is one of only eight companies to have been included every year, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung and Toyota.

innovation thinkings business companies corporation rankings rank ideas tech technology thought think thinking
Only 20 companies have made the top 50 list more than 10 times.
Image: BCG

Other consistent innovators include BMW and Cisco, which have both featured in 13 editions of the top 50. Only 20 companies have made the list more than 10 times, while 48 have appeared just once.

Who said being a serial innovator was easy?

Making their first appearances, this year’s newcomers include online retailer JD.com, engineering and appliance manufacturer Bosch, tech company ABB, pharmaceutical company Novartis and carmakers FCA and Volvo.

Among the old hands, some companies have made speedy ascents, including fastest-mover Huawei, which climbed 42 places to reach 6th place. Other standout climbers include Walmart and HP, both jumping 29 places.

Walking the talk

The most innovative companies are those that view the need to constantly innovate as a top priority, and support this approach with a coherent strategy and sufficient investment, according to the report. This group accounts for 45% of the more than 1,000 companies taking part in BCG’s Global Innovation Survey, which informs the top 50 innovator list.

innovation thinkings business companies corporation rankings rank ideas tech technology thought think thinking
One quarter of companies are not walking the talk on innovation.
Image: BCG

At the other end of the scale, 30% of companies in the survey were categorized as “skeptical innovators,” placing little importance on defining a clear innovation strategy or committing investment.

A quarter of companies sit in the middle ground, exhibiting an inconsistent or indifferent approach to innovation and its importance to their business.

“Committed innovators” have the winning hand, the report says, with almost 60% reporting an increased proportion of sales from products and services launched within the past three years, compared to just 30% of skeptics.

Big benefits

Large companies are increasingly using their size to “flex their innovation muscle”, the report states.

Dispelling the popular notion that smaller companies are the most agile and innovative, the report says bigger organizations could have an edge in developing winning products or services and creating progressive business models.

Barriers to this innovation cited by large firms include resources not being allocated to promising projects, and getting the whole organization to buy into the strategy.

This year, for companies large and small, the ability to innovate was especially important when tackling the disruption caused by the COVID-19.

Research for the top 50 innovator list began before the virus appeared, but the report says its big findings might be even more relevant as innovation leaders attempt to move past the disruption of the pandemic.

Feature Image Credit: Image: REUTERS/Loren Elliott

By Johnny Wood

Sourced from World Economic Forum

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Want to get — and stay — employed through 2030? 10 jobs to consider

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This post is part of TED’s “Build Back Better” series, featuring thought leaders and change agents evaluating our systems and practices to create a more sustainable, efficient and just world. To see more ideas from the series, go here.

What will the world — and specifically, the world of work — look like over the next decade?

While most of us are content to guess, there are other people who are actively figuring it out and their findings and educated assumptions could help us all prepare for the future. Among them is Ben Pring, IT futurist and cofounder of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, which tracks trends across technology, business and society.

Practically every industry in the world has been forced to adapt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown and economic fallout. It’s an understandably disorienting time — but it’s also one in which new careers and jobs are emerging.

“If you can position yourself and acquire the right skills, there’s a lot of opportunity, certainly if you’re a tech-centric person,” says Pring. “There’s a huge explosion of education and training material available to every one of us. Why not take advantage of that? There’s so much you can learn.”

So, which new jobs will be created in the coming years? Which jobs have already been invented in the last three months?

Here are 10 potential career paths that could become highly relevant, according to Pring.

WFH (Work From Home) Coordinator

During lockdown, millions of people had to quickly learn how to set up their home office, manage their schedules, and interact with their children and family members without getting distracted. These challenges could be made easier with a guide or assistant. “For big businesses who are suddenly scrambling to manage a huge explosion of people from home, this is becoming a dedicated role,” says Pring. This coordinator needs good managerial skills in order to support a company’s collaborative culture and morale, while also helping employees maintain their productivity.

Virtual Sound Mixer

If a baseball player hits a home run but there’s no one in the stands to see it, does it still make a sound? Thanks to the work of virtual sound mixers, the answer will probably be yes. Pring noted that European soccer leagues have been the first sports teams to come back, but their stadiums are empty due to social-distancing concerns. But while watching a recent match, he noticed that the empty stadium was far from quiet. To give it a sense of atmosphere, the producers added sounds that were sophisticated and relevant to what was happening. “I could imagine the sound engineers doing that real-time mixing,” says Pring. “Five weeks ago, no one ever thought of that job.”

Voice UX Designer

Where do you think Alexa gets all her answers? Someone has to write dialogue for voice-activated devices, and demand for this already-existing job could be accelerated by our current reality, says Pring. As people want to touch fewer items around their house and in public, they’ll be turning more and more to voice-activated gadgets. This job is good for playwrights, creative writers and journalists who can script human-like conversations.

Telehealth Facilitator

“While there’s a lot of technology in health care, the consumer experience of it has been really unchanged for a long time,” says Pring. Until now. Since doctors’ offices were largely closed — except for emergencies — in recent months, many people turned to telehealth consultations which was a radical change for most practitioners and their patients. “For millions of people, telehealth has completely changed the healthcare experience, and I can imagine the genie doesn’t go back into the bottle,” he adds.

Chief Purpose Planner

“Today there’s a need for businesses to articulate their purpose much more clearly,” says Pring. This person would set the high-level strategy and direction of a company. A creative role that’s similar to marketing and public relations, this job could help banks, airlines or other large, international corporations craft top-line goals and ideals.

Clean Hygiene Consultant

Who among us walks outside without carrying hand sanitizer now? With the public’s greater focus on health and cleanliness and the expectation that pandemics will keep occurring, there’s a growing need for people who can turn making the world a cleaner place into an actual career. “Wellness consultants” have been around for a while, and this would be its newest iteration — one that fuses well-being with public health. For this group of people, their mandate would be to make the world a cleaner, healthier and more livable place.

Virtual Events Planner

Video conferencing platforms like Zoom and BlueJeans have exploded in popularity since the pandemic began. However, as anyone who’s been to a glitchy Zoom party can tell you, there’s a lot of room for improvement. “People are thinking about how to create a virtual event that’s more sophisticated” with better socializing and networking, says Pring.

Subscription Management Specialist

Many people have reevaluated their budgets and tightened their belts during the last few months. What if there was someone who could do it for you? Pring imagines this idea as an online service or app that people would use to look at all of their subscriptions and see where they could cut their expenses. It would also simplify the subscription process and facilitate relationships between brands and customers. The skills for this job would align with those of social media managers, business analysts, or product managers, according to Cognizant.

Socially Distanced Office Designer

“Companies and hotels are having to think about redesigning their offices very seriously and in a very strategic way,” says Pring. If many workers continue to work from home, that will lead many big businesses to have excess capacity in their real estate portfolio, he says. As offices condense their holdings, they’ll need interior designers who can recalibrate and redesign interiors for a safer and more efficient and more flexible future.

Uni-for-life Coordinator

This job doesn’t really exist yet, and it depends on a major shift in college education. Traditionally, young people go to college for four years, where they study a particular field and then try to monetize their knowledge for the rest of their working lives. But Pring points out this model has been eroded by many factors, including the gig economy, rapidly changing technology and the high costs of higher ed. He wonders: What if instead of going to university for a single concentrated period, you’d go through alternate periods of learning and working after graduating from high school? Coordinators could offer “lifetime learning for all alumni,” according to Cognizant’s prediction, and they’d help manage a person’s learning over the course of their life. “This might be a completely new job that would help reconceptualize higher education to align it with change and volatility,” says Pring.

Go here to learn more about Cognizant’s Future of Work and Ben Pring’s work.

Feature Image Credit: Jenice Kim

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Kara Cutruzzula is a journalist and playwright and writes Brass Ring Daily, a daily motivational newsletter about work, life and creativity.

Sourced from IDEAS.TED.COM

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Estonia built one of the world’s most advanced digital societies. During COVID-19, that became a lifeline.

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By Jana Silaškova, and Masao Takahashi,

  • Estonia built one of the world’s most advanced digital society long before the COVID-19 pandemic, providing services such as electronic voting, online learning in schools, digital bureaucracy and healthcare.
  • When the coronavirus crisis struck, this investment paid off as Estonia’s digital public services continued mostly uninterrupted.
  • Public-private partnership and trust in public institutions are the secret of Estonia’s success. Citizens embraced the digital revolution because it was transparent, fair and to the benefit of all.

In early March, Estonia declared a state of emergency, closed its borders and entered a full lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19. But while other countries scrambled to deal with school closures and the disruption to vital services, Estonia simply continued to use the thriving, resilient digital infrastructure it had spent decades developing. Digital classrooms, online teaching materials and a huge range of online public services were already in place. Even more crucially, Estonians knew how to access and use them.

The small Baltic country has built one of the world’s most advanced digital societies. In the coronavirus crisis, this has turned out to be a life-saver. Some public services continued as before, because they were already online. Others were quickly adapted to the new situation.

Estonia’s success is about much more than technological innovation. At the heart of its transformation lies trust in public institutions, and a belief among Estonian citizens that everyone will reap the rewards of technological progress. Such broad support has led to a digital revolution that holds lessons for countries everywhere, and offers inspiration for re-thinking public services for a more resilient future.

E-governance to the rescue

During the lockdown, 99% of government services remained available online in Estonia. Online options already existed for everyday procedures such as registering businesses and properties and applying for social benefits. Certain benefits such as family benefits are even triggered automatically by events such as the birth of a child and its registration.

Image: Government ICT

Digital health records and e-prescription services freed up Estonian doctors, nurses and administrators for the fight against the pandemic. Strong public-private partnership have facilitated contactless options in everyday life, including at border crossings.

Such seamless online services are possible because Estonia has pioneered the use of digital identity. Official decisions are confirmed with a digital stamp, and individuals can sign with digital signatures. These digital versions are equal to physical stamps or signatures under Estonian law.

Estonia’s government has enthusiastically embraced digital life. Even before the crisis, the cabinet was able to hold digital meetings, with members using their electronic identity to attend. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, voters cast 43.8% of votes electronically. During lockdown, the government organized a global online hackathon, asking people to tackle COVID-linked problems. The results included an automated service for pandemic-related questions, and a platform that matched volunteers with people needing practical help.

Virtual classrooms

In Estonia, 87% of schools were already using e-solutions before the crisis. Estonian teachers are trained in digital education and internet safety. The country set itself the goal of digitizing all its educational materials as early as 2015. It came first in Europe in the 2018 PISA test, which measures teenagers’ educational achievements around the world, and attributed that success partly to its digital strategy. Wireless internet access is available almost everywhere in Estonia, and almost always free. Along with seven other Nordic countries, Estonia provided free digital education tools to support other education systems during the COVID-19 crisis.

At the start of lockdown, schools lent computers and tablets to students so they could access their virtual classrooms from home. Many IT companies and private individuals also donated second-hand devices to pupils.

This is in stark contrast to many other countries around the world, which frantically tried to switch to digital education after schools and universities shut down. In England, a study found that four in ten pupils were not in regular contact with their teachers during the closures, raising fears that millions of children were falling behind in their learning. In the U.S., many children in public schools were also missing out on education. These educational gaps could have far-reaching social and economic consequences, making Estonia’s example all the more urgent.

Estonia’s digital resilience extends to higher education. When the world went into lockdown, the University of Tartu in Estonia switched to remote teaching in just one day, because all the digital technology and materials were already in place.

Building trust

Countries all over the world have been rushing to emulate this digital strategy. But Estonia’s digital success didn’t happen overnight. It was the result of decades of investment and experimentation, and is about much more than technology. The key ingredient is trust. Estonians trusted their government to build a digital system that would serve and protect all of them.

Marten Kaevats, the National Digital Advisor, recalls the early days of the country’s digital transformation in the 1990s, when Estonia’s independence had only recently been restored. At the time, digitization was not just about technological and economic progress. It was also about building a vibrant democracy:

“When we started to build a digital society back in 1995, the aim was to create a society with more transparency, trust and efficiency,” he says. “In this process, with every step of the way, our citizens came to value the services and saw they were secure and efficient. This was a key element to ensure wide uptake of all government-provided online services.”

Privacy is enshrined in a number of laws and regulations. Estonian citizens own their personal data, including health data, and can check online who has looked at it. Public officials cannot look at or use this data without reasonable justification. Citizens can also block access to their health data.

Public data collection follows an “only once” principle: officials ask for each piece of information, such as a change of address, only once. Other public authorities then retrieve this information from a central registry, without having to approach the person again. This is particularly useful when it comes to benefits, as it means people don’t have to fill in the same applications repeatedly.

Image: World Economic Forum

A digital stepping stone

Digitization was never a goal in itself, but a tool to make life simpler and better for all Estonians. This required putting in place laws to ensure its beneficial use, and it also required a steady political will. As Doris Põld, an Estonian ICT Cluster Manager, says: “Digital-minded leadership that makes digitalization a priority is essential”.

In the current crisis, trust and foresight have paid off. Estonia’s success is often presented as a groundbreaking digital project. But it is really about a shared vision, inclusiveness, fairness and respect for individual rights. These values are at the core of Estonia’s social contract, and also form the basis of our public-private partnerships. They will endure far beyond this crisis, and help us all build the more resilient societies of the future.

Feature Image Credit: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

By Jana Silaškova, and Masao Takahashi,

Jana Silaškova, e-Governance Project Manager , Estonian Association of Information Technology And Telecommunications (ITL)

Masao Takahashi, Head of Institutional Membership; Member of Executive Committee, World Economic Forum

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Build your own home data centre to help re-engage your technical brain

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As technology leaders it’s easy to get disconnected from the technology part of our role. Here are three simple home technology projects to experiment with.

Like many who have been staying closer to home these past several months, I’ve embarked on all manner of projects. From building an overly elaborate tree house for my kids, to cleaning and reorganizing closets, to brushing the dust off my work clothes as I don another set of athleisure wear, which I previously knew as gym clothes.

SEE: Video teleconferencing do’s and don’ts (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

I’ve also tried to embark on some technology-related projects. Like many IT leaders, the nuts and bolts of technology are largely absent from my day-to-day professional responsibilities, and while I’m certainly aware of the new tools and techniques, I have little if any hands-on exposure to them. I’ve tried to change that a bit during my time at home, and it’s been a refreshing mental exercise to get my hands dirty with the technology.

Not only is it a nice change of pace, but much of the innovation is coming from open source and cloud-based platforms that are readily available, free to use for experimentation, and, frankly, rather fun. Reconnecting with the technology at a detailed level will also make you a more informed leader as you’ll have some hands-on experience rather than just having read the PowerPoint.

Feature Image Credit: takasuu, Getty Images/iStockphoto

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China and AI: what the world can learn and what it should be wary of

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China announced in 2017 its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. While the US still leads in absolute terms, China appears to be making more rapid progress than either the US or the EU, and central and local government spending on AI in China is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

The move has led – at least in the West – to warnings of a global AI arms race and concerns about the growing reach of China’s authoritarian surveillance state. But treating China as a “villain” in this way is both overly simplistic and potentially costly. While there are undoubtedly aspects of the Chinese government’s approach to AI that are highly concerning and rightly should be condemned, it’s important that this does not cloud all analysis of China’s AI innovation.

The world needs to engage seriously with China’s AI development and take a closer look at what’s really going on. The story is complex and it’s important to highlight where China is making promising advances in useful AI applications and to challenge common misconceptions, as well as to caution against problematic uses.

Nesta has explored the broad spectrum of AI activity in China – the good, the bad and the unexpected.

The good

China’s approach to AI development and implementation is fast-paced and pragmatic, oriented towards finding applications which can help solve real-world problems. Rapid progress is being made in the field of healthcare, for example, as China grapples with providing easy access to affordable and high-quality services for its ageing population.

Applications include “AI doctor” chatbots, which help to connect communities in remote areas with experienced consultants via telemedicine; machine learning to speed up pharmaceutical research; and the use of deep learning for medical image processing, which can help with the early detection of cancer and other diseases.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, medical AI applications have surged as Chinese researchers and tech companies have rushed to try and combat the virus by speeding up screening, diagnosis and new drug development. AI tools used in Wuhan, China, to tackle COVID-19 – by helping accelerate CT scan diagnosis – are now being used in Italy and have been also offered to the NHS in the UK.

The bad

But there are also elements of China’s use of AI which are seriously concerning. Positive advances in practical AI applications which are benefiting citizens and society don’t detract from the fact that China’s authoritarian government is also using AI and citizens’ data in ways that violate privacy and civil liberties.

Most disturbingly, reports and leaked documents have revealed the government’s use of facial recognition technologies to enable the surveillance and detention of Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.

The emergence of opaque social governance systems which lack accountability mechanisms are also a cause for concern.

In Shanghai’s “smart court” system, for example, AI-generated assessments are used to help with sentencing decisions. But it is difficult for defendants to assess the tool’s potential biases, the quality of the data and the soundness of the algorithm, making it hard for them to challenge the decisions made.

China’s experience reminds us of the need for transparency and accountability when it comes to AI in public services. Systems must be designed and implemented in ways that are inclusive and protect citizens’ digital rights.

The unexpected

Commentators have often interpreted the State Council’s 2017 Artificial Intelligence Development Plan as an indication that China’s AI mobilisation is a top-down, centrally planned strategy.

But a closer look at the dynamics of China’s AI development reveals the importance of local government in implementing innovation policy. Municipal and provincial governments across China are establishing cross-sector partnerships with research institutions and tech companies to create local AI innovation ecosystems and drive rapid research and development.

Beyond the thriving major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, efforts to develop successful innovation hubs are also underway in other regions. A promising example is the city of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, which has established an “AI Town”, clustering together the tech company Alibaba, Zhejiang University and local businesses to work collaboratively on AI development. China’s local ecosystem approach could offer interesting insights to policymakers in the UK aiming to boost research and innovation outside the capital and tackle longstanding regional economic imbalances.

China’s accelerating AI innovation deserves the world’s full attention, but it is unhelpful to reduce all the many developments into a simplistic narrative about China as a threat or a villain. Observers outside China need to engage seriously with the debate and make more of an effort to understand – and learn from – the nuances of what’s really happening.

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8 of the Most Important Instagram Trends to Watch Right Now

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By Katie Sehl,

Like most social media trends, Instagram trends move quickly. And in 2020, change has been fast and furious, with a global pandemic, social uprising, and competitors, shaking things up.

Trends make the difference between looking out of touch or ahead of the curve. That doesn’t mean you should throw your social media content calendar out the window. It means you should stay informed and stay flexible.

There’s a lot to stay on top of at Instagram. From Instagram Story trends to Live Shopping, and Instagram Shops, we break down the biggest trends on the app.

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a lifestyle photographer used to grow from 0 to 600,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

9 of the most important Instagram trends in 2020

These are the top trends on Instagram to watch right now.

1. Brands and influencers reckon with racial inequality

On June 2, Instagram feeds were checkered with black squares in support of Blackout Tuesday. The original concept, The Show Must Be Paused, was created by music executives Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas, as a day for the industry to “take a beat for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black community.”

But the black squares swiftly became symbols of performative allyship. The posts inadvertently drowned out the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a channel activists use to relay vital information. Many brands and influencers who participated were called out for virtue marketing or hypocrisy, spurring calls for transparency and action.

Designer Aurora James’s #15PercentPledge initiative calls on big retailers to pledge %15 of shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Brands including Sephora, Rent the Runway, Cupcakes and Cashmere have since made the pledge. UOMA Beauty founder Sharon Chuter launched #PullUpOrShutUp to challenge brands to back their marketing with employee diversity statistics.

Instagram plans to reexamine how its policies, tools, and processes impact Black and other underrepresented communities on Instagram. The company will focus on addressing harassment, account verification, content distribution, and algorithmic bias.

Black creators and professionals have also been speaking out about tokenization, pay disparities, and being sidelined. Several celebs, public figures, and influencers have responded to this disparity by sharing Black influencers and businesses or hosting account takeovers. As a result, many Black creators have seen their followings double overnight.

The social momentum behind Black Lives Matter is stronger than ever. But as initiatives like #PullUpOrShutUp demonstrate, brands need to know the difference between social trends and social movements. As eTalk CTV reporter Tyrone Rex Edwards said, “My trauma is not a trend.”

Anti-racism, inclusive marketing, equal pay and opportunity are not trends. They’re the new norm and the bare minimum of what consumers expect from brands going forward.

2. Instagram goes Live

Stay-at-home orders and event cancellations have helped propel Instagram Live viewership figures to new heights. Between February and March, the number of people tuning in for live broadcasts rose by 70%. More than 800 million people now watch live video daily across Instagram and Facebook.

Live lineups have been packed with star power. DJ D-Nice’s #ClubQuarantine sets have featured shoutouts to Rihanna, Zuckerberg, and Joe Biden as the viewership count soared above 100,000. Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber were among the 50,000 viewers punctuating a live convo between NBA star Stephen Curry and Dr. Anthony Fauci with emoji.

As people look for ways to replace in-person activities, brands and creators have jumped on live, too. In fact, 80% of live broadcasters have fewer than 1,000 followers.

Instagram Live sessions include everything from cocktail and comedy hours to virtual protests, yoga classes, and drawing tutorials. Desktop functionality, added in April, has made tuning in a lot more practical.

Like Instagram Stories, live videos tend to be more intimate and spontaneous than posts in the feed. Hosts can also respond to questions and comments in real-time, which is why Live videos tend to average six times more interactions on Facebook.

It’s too soon to know what staying power Instagram Live may have in a post-COVID world. For now, Instagram is rolling out enhancements, such as the option to save videos to IGTV and run fundraisers. Live Shopping and Badges allow creators to monetize livestreams.

Instagram is also testing showing two-rows of Stories in the feed, with live videos up top.

Until in-person activities resume, expect to see more memes and innovation on the Instagram Live front.

3. Creators can now make money directly on Instagram

Since its inception in 2010, Instagram creators have mostly monetized their audiences through affiliate marketing and brand partnerships. New features introduced in May now allow creators to make money directly.

Instagram is now testing Badges with a small group of creators and businesses. During a live broadcast, viewers can spend 99 cents to $4.99 for heart badges to stand out in the comment stream and unlock features. During the test phase, creators will receive 100% of revenue earned from these badges.

Instagram influencer doing a live video

Source: Instagram

Tests for IGTV ads are underway as well. These ads can last up to 15 seconds and appear after someone clicks to watch the full IGTV video. On par with YouTube, 55% of ad revenue is shared with the creator. In addition to ads, Live Shopping tools now let creators and brands tag products during live videos.

Influencer doing an Instagram live skincare tutorial

Source: Instagram

These changes come as competition to retain creators heats up between platforms. They also cater to a cohort of “specialized” creators who monetize their audiences by offering valuable content, rather than featuring valuable products and experiences in their content. It’s why many are shying away from the label influencer in favor of the term creator, or even ambassador.

Brand partnerships will still remain an important source of revenue, but they’ve already become a lot less transactional. Expect to see some fine-tuning in the Brand Collabs Manager from Instagram (and Facebook).

4. Instagram Shops set brands up to cash in on conversions

Instagram Shops promise to make it easier for brands to make money, too. Shops let businesses create a storefront directly in the app, so people can buy without the need to visit a website. By eliminating this friction, brands should be able to drive significantly higher conversions and sales.

In May, Instagram and Facebook launched a phased rollout to businesses globally. The plan is for the shopping experience to eventually be integrated across all of Facebook’s apps. Once complete, it will mean that when someone puts something in their cart on Facebook, they can check out later on Instagram using stored credit card info or Facebook Pay (which will likely be integrated, too).

Instagram shopping in Explore tab

Source: Facebook

To improve discoverability, Instagram will soon have a dedicated Shopping tab, like the Explore tab, which already features a shopping section. Accounts with shops have a View Shop button on their profiles, as well as a shop tab. Businesses can customize how collections appear, connect loyalty programs, and benefit from the platform’s built-in AI to create personalized experiences.

There are now more ways to spend money in Stories, too. In addition to product tags, companies can share gift card, food order and donation Stickers.

Set up Instagram Shopping so you can sell your products.

5. Shopping and advertising get AI-powered upgrades

More people shopping across Instagram and Facebook means more data. And more data brings the company closer to its vision of “making anything shoppable while personalizing to individual taste.”

To make anything shoppable, the Facebook engineers have developed an A.I called GrokNet that can automatically tag the products in a business’s catalog in seconds. The A.I., which is already used on Facebook Marketplace, can scan photos, identify attributes such as colour and style, cross-reference with catalogs, and suggest descriptions. On the flip side, this data is used to deliver better search results and targeted ads to users.

Rotating View is another A.I. project that aims to enhance social shopping. The feature, which allows people to create 3D-like images, is currently being tested on Marketplace. Maybe it will crop up on Instagram, too.

Instagram may soon introduce ads that use augmented reality to let people “try on” beauty products or preview furniture in their homes. Facebook already offers an AR ad format, and Zuckerberg recently announced more developments are on the horizon.

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a lifestyle photographer used to grow from 0 to 600,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

Get the free guide right now!

Read our complete guide on how to advertise on Instagram.

6. Instagram Guides accompany the rise of “info-social”

Brands and influencers often get asked for recommendations, from “where should we eat in Marrakech?” to “how do you talk to your kids about climate change?”. In the past, these requests have been handled by referring followers to highlights or blog posts. Now guides can be created directly on Instagram.

several different Instagram guides

Source: Instagram

According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, guides were initially developed for travel, but that idea was curtailed by the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they launched under the theme of wellbeing, with more themes coming up. Instagram recently assembled a racial justice resource guide, too.

Guides have their own devoted tab on profiles, and can be shared to Stories or appear in the Explore tab. They can include curated posts and videos with added notes and tips.

There’s a growing appetite for informative social content. On TikTok, educational videos are surging in popularity, especially in China, with a reported 14 million “knowledge-based” posts created last year. In the United States, career coaches, personal finance experts, and fitness experts are finding success on the app.

On Instagram, everything from “practice accounts” to doctor and nurse micro- and nano-influencers are popular, proving that engaged communities are much more valuable than high follower counts.

7. Values take center stage

Authenticity is a big buzzword in the influencer industry. But it’s not just an influencer trend. Consumers increasingly demand authenticity from brands, too, especially in the form of transparency.

As brands and influencers use their platforms to take a stand, promote values, and support causes, transparency will be more necessary to retain authenticity. For example, sustainable beauty brand Elate Cosmetics goes into great detail to explain the eco-attributes of its products and practices.

Influencers will share more about their decision making in general, and be more upfront about why they partner with specific brands. To maintain trust, disclaimers and clear labelling between spon-con and regular posts will be necessary, particularly in Stories.

With social advocacy on the rise, Instagram has added several fundraising tools, including live fundraisers and donation stickers. The company is also reportedly testing the option to add fundraisers to profiles. Nonprofits already have access to account Donate buttons.

Instagram is also adding context to posts from high-reach accounts. In April, the company started piloting a feature that shows location and where followers are based on posts from these accounts.

Instagram post showing where account is based

Source: Facebook

8. TikTok, Twitter, and Giphy invade Instagram

The days when Instagram was only a place for filtered images are long gone. Instagram’s feed now features everything from memes and Twitter takes to TikTok challenges, special effects, music, and more.

To keep up with competition from TikTok and Snapchat, Instagram’s been on a feature-adding bonanza—especially in Stories. The recent acquisition of Giphy, which already sourced 25% of its traffic from Instagram, will add to a collection of interactive features that already includes stickers, filters, and other special effects.

Despite more content variety in the feed, the Instagram aesthetic still creeps in. As Arimeta Diop points on in Vanity Fair: “It’s the end of the iPhone-Notes-App-Apology Era.” Bold typefaces, templates, and hand-drawn sketches have proven more popular, thanks in part to Instagram’s strong design community. Infographics and visual storytelling have taken off, too.

Most cross-platform sharing is up to the users, except when it comes to Facebook’s family of apps. Further integration between Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger—on the front and back end—is looming. Beyond a fully integrated shopping experience, Facebook is developing an option for users to view and reply to Instagram Stories from Facebook.

Facebook is also planning to merge messaging across its apps by the end of this year. Once complete, Instagram users would be able to message friends on WhatsApp and Messenger, even if those friends don’t have Instagram accounts. This level of integration would make the app family comparable with the WeChat, the super app that dominates in China.

Manage your Instagram presence alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule and publish posts, engage the audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.

By Katie Sehl

Sourced from Hootsuite

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How the post-COVID workplace will change business for the better

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By Mark Pringle,

  • Businesses that prioritize their return to work strategies and change how they operate will outpace their peers;
  • As we emerge from coronavirus lockdowns, we need to evolve the dated mindset that being in an office full-time is an actual business imperative;
  • Organizations should focus on four key pillars to ensure a smooth transition of team members back onsite.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced organizations across the globe into a balancing act – protecting the health and safety of their employees while simultaneously continuing their operations. Like all essential businesses, Dell Technologies is working through this challenge to implement the most effective approach for protecting as many stakeholders as possible. And, it’s critical that we partner with customers to put their business continuity, remote working and digital services into practice.

As we began creating our company’s return to site strategy, it became clear that the workplace impact would not be a temporary one, and organizations that seize this opportunity to change how they work will outpace their peers. This concept compelled us to create a formal Customer Playbook that serves as reassurance that our plan – and business – are strong, as well as providing guidance on how to leverage these strategies to strengthen their own businesses.

Emerging opportunities

As governments at local and federal levels start to lift restrictions and ask employees to “return to work,” we must remember: we are already at work. Our team members who are required to be in a facility or in the field are steadfast in their support of our customers. Meanwhile, the remaining 90% of our workforce continues to be productive working remotely.

We know coming out of this crisis that many of our team members won’t need to return to corporate sites, at least not on a full-time basis. While every industry and every business is different, it’s critical that organizations reinvent and redefine “work” in the new world. We must change how we think about spaces, cybersecurity, meetings, travel, events and policies, and we mustn’t forget the ways employees find balance through their family, volunteer work, hobbies and more. We need to evolve the dated mindset that being in an office full-time is an actual business imperative.

As we rethink where business is done, it creates the opportunity for organizations of all sizes to advance and achieve their goals and experience a more flexible culture, reduce their carbon footprint, enhance diverse talent recruitment and make new investments in innovation.

How does this paradigm shift enable us to do all of this?

Businesses should start with an honest accounting of how a reduced on-site workforce with more flexible workplace conditions can help the business execute on its strategy. We’ve aligned our business objectives with our evolving workforce in the following ways:

  • Use our values to develop new ways of working, with high levels of engagement and productivity.
  • Create a stronger customer and team member experience by investing time and money on the things that matter most.
  • Start from the top, with a leadership team and ethos culturally committed to increasing our work-from-home footprint and team member flexibility and choice.
  • Be a leader in workplace flexibility with a goal of 50% (or greater in countries with the right infrastructure) of our team members in flexible work arrangements.
  • Advance progress against our 2030 Moonshot goals by reducing our carbon footprint and opening new opportunities to bring in diverse talent.

Although this is specific to our own approach and goals established before the pandemic arrived, we’re confident it’s a strong framework for customers to consider as they adapt their own goals, along with the right technology to accelerate innovation and growth.

Of course, to achieve these goals, we must prioritize the safety and wellbeing of our team members at every step. This includes planning our return to site in a way that prioritizes flexibility and will require fine-tuning as we learn through the process. The way we’re approaching our strategy is focused on health first, through graduated return to site for different functions based on need and flexible schedules.

This strategy takes a conservative approach and relies strongly on data and science to determine safety and readiness, align to local government regulations and follow health and hygiene guidance. It also ensures we support our customers and partners, focus on teams who need to be on-site for enhanced productivity, and enables employees to return to the office while taking into consideration the future state of work.

Once the conditions are right, organizations should focus on four key pillars to ensure a smooth transition of team members back onsite while cementing the conditions for greater innovation and flexibility:

  • Return to site risk assessment – Evaluate the infection rates, active cases, recovery and scaled increase trends of the country/specific location to determine how safe it is for team members to return to site.
  • Pre-opening readiness – Assess and prepare for team members to return to site while ensuring hygiene, social distancing, and infrastructure all support team member health and productivity.
  • Phased return to site – Start with those team members who are physically required to be onsite, and gradually move to those functions and people who prefer to come to their place of work; as well as accommodating those who don’t feel comfortable to return.
  • Communication – Develop transparent and frequent communications, with a feedback loop, to team members and communities.

We’re rarely afforded the opportunity to make such dramatic changes to our businesses in such a short period of time – even rarer still is the ability to do so in a way that will better prepare our teams for the changing digital landscape while helping us achieve organizational goals around sustainability, diversity and innovation. Although it’s not a change that anyone asked for, it’s the change that will help us create more flexible, sustainable businesses that put people first.

Feature Image Credit: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

By Mark Pringle,

Senior Vice President of Corporate Real Estate, Global Facilities and Environment, Health and Safety, Dell Technologies

Sourced from World Economic Forum

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What’s next for social ad spend as one third of brands plot hate-speech boycott?

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By Rebecca Stewart

As brands continue to add their name to the growing list of companies boycotting Facebook, fresh research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has painted a sobering picture of how marketers view the social network and its rivals.

Volkswagen and Mars are the latest corporations to halt ad spend with Facebook over its handling of damaging content and misinformation. The car marque and food giant join Levi’s, Coca-Cola, Unilever and more in signing up to the ‘Stop Profit for Hate campaign’ which is backed by civil rights groups including the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

The coalition has been calling on major corporations to put a pause on advertising on Facebook for the month of July, citing its “repeated failure to meaningfully address the vast proliferation of hate on its platforms”.

Some brands have gone further, pulling the plug on all investment for the foreseeable future across all social networks.

The WFA’s research has revealed a diminishing faith in not only Facebook, but also its bedfellows, to address the issue at hand.

What did the WFA’s research find?

  • The WFA’s members control nearly $100bn in global ad spend. Following on from the news of the Facebook boycott, the trade body asked members about their policies on social media ad spend. The WFA’s research asked advertiser views on all social media platforms.
  • 76 responded, representing 58 companies and $92bn in marketing dollars.
  • Almost one-third of these marketers (31%) said they will, or are likely to, suspend advertising on social media over platforms’ failure to police hate speech. A further 40% said they were also considering doing so.
  • 17% said they were unlikely to withhold spend. 12% said they had no plans to withhold spend.
  • Brands were also asked which other actions they’d taken or had considered. 53% said they’d already had direct conversations with social platforms about hate speech. 48% said their main approach was to work through industry bodies to deal with the issue. 32% said they weren’t taking action for now and 13% said they were taking other actions.

What does the data show?

  • If anything, the survey shows how divided the industry is on how to handle the issue. Some brands are set on pulling spend, where others remain undecided.
  • The WFA also released some anonymised qualitative responses as part of the research. Again, these are a mixed bag: one marketer laments that it’s “simply depressing” how much the platforms are still falling short and says they would “appreciate support with identifying and viable alternatives for investments”.
  • Another pointed out that neither the platforms nor the advertisers propping them up are perfect: “Advertisers may pull out of these platforms,” the brand marketer continues, “but consumers will not.

What’s next?

  • Hate speech and how brands inadvertently fund it is an issue that has been on the WFA’s radar for some time. Working with social networks to find a solution to the problem is already being prioritised by the trade body’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
  • For its part, Facebook has promised “new policies to connect people with authoritative information about voting, crack down on voter suppression, and fight hate speech”.
  • Actions include labelling posts that are potentially harmful and even in violation of the platform’s policies but are not censored by the platform because they are deemed newsworthy.
  • Facebook will also add a link to its voting information centre to posts that reference voting, including those made by politicians such as President Trump.
  • Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this week, chief executive of the WFA Stephen Loerke noted how this moment feels like a turning point amid the pressure of the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign.
  • “What’s striking is the number of brands who are saying they are reassessing their longer-term media allocation strategies and demanding structural changes in the way platforms address racial intolerance, hate speech and harmful content,” he explained.
  • The magnitude of the brand exodus won’t really be clear until Facebook releases its Q3 results in October.

Feature Image Credit: Volkswagen and Mars are the latest corporations to halt ad spend with Facebook over its handling of damaging content / Unsplash

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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