editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

From PepsiCo to GM, Big Advertisers Set to Cancel Commitments to TV Networks

May 20, 2020 No Comments

Companies are seeking to take advantage of options that became available May 1 to cancel up to 50% of third-quarter spending

Big advertisers from General Motors Co. GM -1.05% to PepsiCo Inc. PEP -1.07% to General Mills Inc. GIS 2.80% are seeking to walk back spending commitments they made to broadcast and cable networks, a dynamic that is testing the industry’s five-decade-old way of doing business.

TV ad spending fell in the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, but was insulated from an even bigger drop. That is because the majority of the roughly $42 billion spent on national TV ads in the U.S. is bound by contractual commitments that are made well in advance of a new TV season, which starts each September.

Under those “upfront” deals, the first real opportunity since the pandemic struck for advertisers to cut back future spending commitments began May 1. Companies now have the option to cancel up to 50% of their third-quarter ad spending.

Many companies are seeking to take advantage of that option to varying degrees, including General Motors, PepsiCo, Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores Inc., General Mills, Domino’s Pizza Inc. DPZ 0.12% and pharmaceutical giant Sanofi SA, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ad buyers estimate that roughly $1 billion to $1.5 billion in commitments for third-quarter ad spending could be cancelled. “The cuts are going to be pretty deep,” said Dave Campanelli, chief investment officer at media buyer Horizon Media.

Advertisers have had these options in their contracts for years, but exercising them to this extent is unusual, ad buyers said.

Marketers are worried about the ability to sell their products in a prolonged economic downturn, and aren’t certain what programming networks can put on the air, given the near-total shutdown of production in Hollywood. Fox on Monday became the only major broadcaster so far to put out a fall schedule.

Owners of broadcast and cable networks, from Comcast Corp. CMCSA -2.24% ’s NBCUniversal to ViacomCBS Inc. VIAC 1.16% to Walt Disney Co., DIS -2.98% are trying to prevent big cracks in a major pillar of their businesses and are struggling to forecast what will happen to ad spending in coming months. ViacomCBS Chief Executive Bob Bakish said on a quarterly earnings call last week “it’s not pretty,” while AMC Networks Inc. cautioned ad revenue would drop about 30% in the second quarter.

Beyond the “upfront” ad market, companies can also buy ads closer to when they air, and that spending has also taken a big hit.

Some ad executives expect the pandemic will accelerate the shift of TV ad dollars to other marketing channels including streaming-video services and tech giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. “We’ve seen a lot of great returns with Facebook and Instagram,” said Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer at Tex-Mex chain Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., which has shifted some dollars out of TV.

A spokeswoman for General Mills said the maker of Cheerios cereal is shifting some TV advertising dollars into digital video and e-commerce, areas where it is seeing people spend an increasing amount during the pandemic. General Motors, PepsiCo, Domino’s Pizza and Sanofi declined to comment. A Cracker Barrel spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

As movie theaters sit empty during the coronavirus pandemic, some films are being released direct to streaming services and digital platforms, shaking up a distribution model that’s been in place for decades. WSJ explains.

When companies realized the severity of the coronavirus crisis in March, they raced to get out of or postpone their ad spending commitments with networks.

“There were dozens and dozens of calls saying, ‘we need to get out of this now,’ ” said a network executive. “It was very hard to be on the phone and not be human.”

In March and April, networks were under no obligation to offer any breaks. Advertisers can generally cut up to 50% of their commitment for a particular quarter only if they notify networks roughly 60 days ahead of time. That window had already passed for the second quarter.

Tense negotiations ensued in the normally clubby world of Madison Avenue. Networks ultimately chose to offer relief to the companies in the hardest hit industries such as travel, restaurants, automotive and specialty retail. Companies canceled ad spending or shifted it to later quarters in 2020.

As a result, national TV ad spending in certain categories—sectors such as automotive, retailers, liquor, and pharmaceuticals—declined about $2 billion, or an estimated 30%, to $4.82 billion from Feb. 17 through April 26, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to ad-tracking firm Kantar Media.

When May arrived, the calls started coming to networks again, and this time many companies had the right to cancel deals under their contracts. Some advertisers have delayed their decisions on whether to cancel spending until later this month, in hopes they will have better visibility, according to media and ad executives.

Some media executives, including ViacomCBS’s Mr. Bakish, are hopeful ad spending will actually improve in the third quarter, especially if the National Football League resumes play Sept. 10, as it intends to.

Attention will soon turn to negotiations over ad spending commitments for the 2020-2021 TV season. The TV industry has operated on a calendar starting in September since 1962, when ABC decided to launch all its programs after Labor Day. That was the week new car models were unveiled and advertised. The calendar took firm hold in the 1970s.

Normally, networks pitch their new programming around May in glitzy New York City events and negotiate ad deals for the fall soon thereafter. This year, the live-events were canceled, and most executives believe deal making will drag out and likely happen in stages. Some advertisers want to delay the process several months; others see an opportunity to lock in rock-bottom prices if they do deals now.

Advertisers will push for more flexibility in their next round of contracts so that they can pull money out more easily if there is a second wave of coronavirus infections, ad executives said. Networks will likely charge a premium for that flexibility, media executives say.

“We will be surprised if the volumes are not down dramatically,” said Michael Levine, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group.

Feature Image Credit: PepsiCo is one of several advertisers looking to cut back future spending commitments made to TV networks. Photo: Pepsico/Associated Press

Write to Suzanne Vranica at [email protected]

Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

In News

H&M and Footlocker are overhauling how you stand in line

May 19, 2020 No Comments

By Lilly Smith

Philips’s new system enforces social distancing before you even go into the store.

Retail stores are starting to open in some states—but that doesn’t mean your shopping experience will be the same.

Philips Professional Display Solutions, a branch of the company behind everything from refrigerators to toothbrushes, has designed a line management system called PeopleCount for stores to use after reopening. If you’ve been through the checkout line at a busy Whole Foods, which uses screens to tell you what register to go to, the experience might feel familiar. But this design has another purpose: It determines who can even come in the door.

The system has a few key parts: a camera that tallies how many people enter and screens near the entrances that display real-time messaging such as capacity, number of people inside, and wait time. (The screen can also display promotional messaging—these are businesses, after all.) The displays can make audio announcements or use a traffic light-style system to communicate with customers.

Once the screen indicates the store is at capacity, shoppers will have to wait in a line outside until somebody leaves and it’s safe to enter. The system can also connect to automatic doors, so they only open when there’s space for more people to go inside, without needing an employee to monitor the situation. The system is being installed in some major retailers such as H&M, Primark, and Footlocker before they reopen, and Philips is in talks with other organizations in Europe and the U.K., although it declined to provide more information.Philips’s screens are just one solution to the question of how to reopen retail while keeping people safe from COVID-19. On the lo-fi end, stores are putting masking tape, paint, or colored circles on the ground to help people keep the proper distance. Stores such as Bandier are thinning out the products on display so as to create more space, while Warby Parker plans to have an employee regulate the number of customers coming through the door.

“Something as simple as visiting a supermarket or entering a leisure setting may now require a new level of thought,” Roeland Scholten, sales director at Philips Professional Display Solutions, said in a statement. “Technology can play a huge role in ensuring the current rules and guidelines are maintained and that customers and staff feel confident, safe and well informed.”

Of course, people counters aren’t new, but sharing that information publicly in order to direct consumer behavior is. Installing clear signage with real-time messaging could offer peace of mind and inspire consumer confidence that the store is following social distancing protocols. But unless these are utilizing existing cameras or counters, privacy advocates are likely to wonder if efforts to regulate social distancing will open up new opportunities for surveillance. With one camera for every 4.5 people in the U.S., companies install more?

Feature Image Credit: [Image: Philips]

By Lilly Smith

Lilly Smith is an associate editor of Co.Design. She was previously the editor of Design Observer, and a contributing writer to AIGA Eye on Design. More

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

IKEA warns customers after explicit video of woman shopper goes viral

May 19, 2020 No Comments

By Daniella Genovese

Shoppers are reminded to ‘maintain a good shopping environment’

IKEA is reminding customers that its DIY business model applies only to the furniture.

The Swedish furniture giant’s statement comes after an explicit video of a half-clothed woman inside a China store went viral, according to multiple reports.

IKEA China said it is increasing security inspection of its showrooms, sales areas, parking lots and blind spot areas in stores. Stores will also strengthen cleaning and disinfection protocols in the showrooms, sales areas and customer service areas, in addition to its regular maintenance and cleaning procedures.

“We are strongly against and condemn this kind of behavior and have already reported to the police in the city of the suspected store,” IKEA China told FOX Business in an emailed statement Tuesday. “IKEA is committed to continuously providing the consumers with home inspiration and creating a safe, comfortable and healthy shopping experience and environment.”

The company is calling on customers to “maintain a good shopping environment” while perusing the aisles, and employees are being reminded to report suspicious personnel to security.

It is unclear when the video was filmed, however, the lack of masks in the footage suggests it was filmed pre-coronavirus. The virus first surfaced in the city of Wuhan in late December. Within a matter of weeks, the second-largest economy in the world was brought to a standstill in an effort to mitigate the spread.

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The woman has yet to be identified and the video has since been scrubbed from social media in China, where citizens reportedly face hefty repercussions for indecent exposure.

Feature Image Credit: Workers walk outside an IKEA store in Hangzhou in east China’s Zhejiang province. (Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

By Daniella Genovese

Sourced from FOX Business

In News

I’m Selling As Hard As I Can, Why Aren’t You Buying?”

May 19, 2020 No Comments

By Tim Hughes

The problem is very simple.

The world has moved on.

I grew up in a world where the only games in town was sending letters and cold calling, there was no internet and no email. Yes there was such a world.

We stopped sending letters, why? because email meant it saved us the price of a stamp. Again the world had moved on.

Just look at this research from Simon Kemp.

“that 4.57 billion people now use the internet, an increase of more than 7 percent since this time last year. Social media users are growing even faster, up by more than 8 percent since April 2019 to reach 3.81 billion today.”

“social media users around the world have both increased by more than 300 million over the past twelve months”

and there are “Big jumps in digital activity, especially in countries that have seen the strictest COVID-19 lockdowns”

The world has switched to digital.

I was on a webinar today and said “everybody hates advertising, cold calling and emailing. Why? Because it’s based on interruption“.

And the penny dropped with the interviewer.

As a seller you may hate that, but that’s the world we live in. Social media has changed society and changed how we do business.

We all have mobile phones, we all can buy things (and do) without talking to a sales person. So when we see an advert, we get a cold call and a cold email ….. it pisses us off. Why? Because you have interrupted us and we know that you contacting us like this is so old fashioned and out moded.

Why Don’t People Buy Through Cold Calling and Email

Because you cannot build relationships … especially in a world of no face-to-face meetings

Because You cannot build trust …. why would I trust you after you pissed me off and we are living in a world of no face-to-face meetings

Because you cannot prove you are an expert and help the client

Because are savvy to your manipulative questioning

Because you are too busy running around trying to “qualify” sales rather than being able to only focus on deals you can win.

Because you are too focused on being liked by everybody

Because you don’t have the depth of relationship to convince the buyer

Because advertising, cold calling and email does not scale – it takes you far too long to build multiple relationships across a business

Because your methods are efficient … if you take cold calling 1 min of effort, translates into 1 min of output effort. With social you can take 1 min of effort and turn it into thousands of minutes output.

Because, because, because …..

This is your Leadership Moment.

While other analogue managers are going to stick with what they did in their 30s. “It was good for me then, so it can be good for me now”. We so often hear.

Covid19 has accelerated the need to move to digital and social.

You know as well as I do that you and your team need to be fitter and stronger and have embraced digital and social by the time we get out of this crisis.

Social Selling Business Case

We expect each of the people we train in social selling to be able to make (if they do what we say) at least one additional meeting per week. Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals. That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter. If your average deal size is $100,000, then each sales person is closing an additional $400,000 per year. As sales team of 10 will create $4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year. Forever!

The Low Risk Approach

Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to use social and digital for four years. We have the track record, we also know what when we run our social selling programs the results are repeatable and predictable. In fact, we have done this so many times that we are a low risk option.

If you want to get out of this mess, maybe it’s time to talk to us.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/

We make dozens of prospecting calls, send hundreds of emails. We find customers with some level of interest, then do everything we can to convince the customers to buy our products.

https://partnersinexcellenceblog.com/im-selling-as-hard-as-i-can-why-arent-you-buying/

By Tim Hughes

Sourced from Digital Leadership Associates

In News

Cookieless Targeting Finds Its Way Into Online Advertising From Unlikely Tech Companies

May 18, 2020 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

Attempting to find a solution to Google’s cookie shutdown, companies have begun rolling out alternatives to targeting. Infutor on Tuesday introduced a cookieless identity data product aimed at dealing with difficult ad-targeting challenges.

The tool, Total Mobile Ad ID Solution, launched with data exchange BDEX. The company gained early access to provide brands, retailers and agencies with digital identity data through Infutor’s platform. The goal is to combat marketers’ dwindling reliance as browsers like Google Chrome stop supporting third-party cookies.

During the past year, Infutor has been making investments in identity offline as well as digital in general. Specifically, the company has been working on a digital graph with an opt-in privacy compliant system where hashed emails tie to mobile ad IDs, explains Brian Burke, VP of product at Infutor.

“It gives us a strong sense of the device owners that allows us to build a more determinate and accurate view to help customers understand what devices consumers use,” Burke said.

The idea is to get past an environment where advertisers rely on third-party cookies by linking a hashed email to a device ID without disclosing the owner. This is done through a one-way encryption algorithm that does not allow the company to backtrack through the data to determine its origin. Although the brand may only have a fraction of the information, additional data from Infutor ties together the data without disclosing personal information.

BDEX ingests Infutor’s Mobile Ad ID and hashed email database of about 350 million digital devices and 2 billion MAID/hashed email pairs. This includes a Confidence Score on the recency and frequency of pairing, giving marketers the probability of a pair being active.

Ideally, linking anonymous digital identities to first-party CRM data in a privacy-compliant way improves audience segmentation, personalized messaging and digital and programmatic onboarding rates.

Infutor is not the only company that believes it has found the solution. Atlanta-based ad tech company Clickagy, which has technology that can track more than 1.5 billion devices in the U.S. and filter the world’s online behaviour in real-time, recently released a tool it calls Privacy Clusters.

Most of the solutions in the cookieless world have one of three major vulnerabilities: scale, fraud, or future-proof. Some email-based solutions check all privacy-compliant boxes, but only achieve between 5% and 10% scale, and zero visibility to fraud introduced by publisher greed, according to the company. There’s no audit trail.

It’s important to remember that cookieless targeting emerged because consumers do not want to be tracked. Rather than trying to hide the tracking device, Privacy Clusters concedes that one-to-one prospecting isn’t the future, so it “micro groups” individuals across devices, including Apple’s without needing consent. The company claims its privacy compliant in every country worldwide.

Privacy Clusters act as a cookie replacement, where any existing analytics, attribution, or behavioural data technologies will continue to work, and there is zero reliance on cookies or any form of PII data.

By Laurie Sullivan

@lauriesullivan,

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Consumers Don’t Think Brands Should Stop Advertising During Coronavirus Pandemic

May 18, 2020 No Comments

By Jasmine Enberg

rands are pulling or pausing their ad spending as the COVID-19 crisis puts a strain on their businesses, but new research shows that consumers may not want them to stop advertising altogether.

A March 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex asked internet users in 13 markets whether brands should continue advertising as normal. Nearly four in 10 US respondents ages 16 to 64 agreed, and a similar share (35%) were neutral, compared with 28% who disagreed. (The global results were on par with those in the US, at 37%, 36% and 27%, respectively.)

In another March 2020 survey from Kantar, just 8% of consumers in 30 countries thought that stopping advertising should be a priority for brands. But 77% of respondents said they wanted advertising to “talk about how the brand is helpful in the new everyday life,” and 75% said it should “inform about [the brand’s] efforts to face the situation.”

That suggests that while consumers don’t expect brands to abandon advertising, brands should rethink their strategies. Campaigns that were planned pre-pandemic may no longer be appropriate as consumers clamor for information about how the crisis is being handled and how they can stay safe. That includes information about how brands are responding to COVID-19.

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GlobalWebIndex’s research offered guidance on what those efforts should be. In the US, 80% of internet users agreed that brands should provide flexible payment terms, 70% said they should offer free services, and 66% said they should close nonessential stores. Another 59% of respondents agreed that brands should suspend normal factory production to help produce essentials.

Further evidence of consumer receptiveness to coronavirus-related brand messaging comes from advertising analytics company Ace Metrix. Research published in mid-March showed that 86% of US ad viewers were open to brands mentioning COVID-19 in their ads. More than four in 10 (42%) respondents said any mention was OK, which was roughly on par with the number who said it depended on the message or brand (44%).

Brands that continue to advertise during the pandemic may be concerned about their ads appearing against coronavirus-related content. Those fears are understandable, but they may be unwarranted. In a March 2020 survey by Integral Ad Science (IAS), 78% of US internet users said their view of a brand whose ad was adjacent to coronavirus coverage would be unchanged vs. just 16% who said they would have a less favorable opinion.

By Jasmine Enberg

Sourced from eMarketer

In News

How to stop websites accessing your webcam and microphone

May 18, 2020 No Comments

By Maria Mellor

When was the last time you checked what permissions you’ve given the sites you visit?

Websites want to control your computer. It might be using your web cam for video chats, your microphone for voice commands or your location in order to get the weather for your area, but to do they need access to your machine’s settings. Over time, it’s likely that you’ve handed away a lot of control.

Much like apps on your phone, websites have to ask for your permission to use these settings. But after years of using your web browser without clearing your data, you could be giving permission to dozens of websites to access your settings. Take a look at what permissions you’ve given to check that you are comfortable with what websites are allowed to do with your computer, says David Emm principal security researcher cybersecurity company Kaspersky. “It’s a good idea to go to the settings and look at the ones that particularly relate to tracking,” he says.

Cookies are the most common form of online tracking. They aren’t inherently malicious – they are used to carry information about your interaction with websites, for example keeping you logged in, remembering your preferences and to understand how you are using the site. Disabling all cookies may limit your ability to use a website, but you may want to limit how much you are tracked on a browser in order to limit the amount of data collected about you.

Since the implementation of GDPR, in May 2018, most websites will ask you before using cookies that will allow personalisation of ads. In your browser settings you are able to make it so that you automatically don’t allow these information collecting tools called third party cookies.

But there are other ways websites can make change to your computer. It’s important to keep an eye on whether a website is asking to use a setting that is unrelated to what you are trying to do – for example if you’re trying to check a news report but the website is asking for access to your microphone, it may be trying to do so for more nefarious purposes. “The key thing is always just to keep focused on who’s asking and what’s the purpose and that really links back to why are you there,” says Emm.

Chrome

Google may have a bit of an image problem when it comes to privacy – as an advertising giant it’s in its best interests to track you in order to show you personalised ads. However you can still use its settings to restrict websites from tracking you. In Chrome, go to settings by clicking the three dots in the top right hand corner. Find the ‘Privacy and Security’ section and click on ‘site settings’. To manually block cookies, go to ‘cookies and site data’ – here you can choose to block just third-party cookies by turning on ‘block third-party cookies’ or block all cookies by turning off ‘allow sites to save and read cookie data’.

In the ‘site settings’ section you will also be able to find the settings for the location, camera and microphone, which will all automatically be set to ‘ask before accessing’. Click the toggle to block websites to use these – if you’ve been using Chrome for a few years, the list is probably pretty long. You can also control which websites are allowed to send you notifications, turning off ‘sites can ask to send notifications’ so you’ll no longer get those pop-ups asking you every time. You can add sites to the list of those either blocked or allowed to send you notifications.

Firefox

Head to the hamburger menu in the top right corner of your Firefox and click on options. On the left, the fourth section down ‘privacy & security’ is where you will find all the options to cut down what permissions websites have. Firefox automatically has tracking protection – it blocks trackers and other malicious scripts to cut down on the amount of data websites collect about your behaviour online.

However, you can choose to ramp up the level of protection from ‘standard’ to ‘strict’. Although Firefox warns that this could impact the functionality of some sites, it’s actually just blocking all first and third party cookies. There’s also a third option to customise your protection where you can choose to block cross-site and social media trackers, cookies from unvisited sites, all third-party cookies or all cookies.

Additionally you can get Firefox to send websites a ‘do not track’ signal. The setting is voluntary for websites to honour – and most do not – but it adds an extra indication that you’re opposed to too much tracking. If you scroll down in the same settings page, you’ll find the ‘permissions’ section, which will give you options for blocking access to your location, camera and microphone. Click on settings for each and you’ll be able to see which websites have requested to access. If you don’t want a website to have these permissions, simply remove it from the list. At the bottom of the pop-up window, you can tick ‘block new requests asking to access your location’.

Safari

To stop websites accessing your location, camera and microphone you need to visit the ‘websites’ section of Safari’s preferences. To get here you need to navigate to the top bar above your Safari browser, click the Safari menu, then select ‘preferences’. Once you have found the websites section, you can see which sites you have already given permission to. At the bottom of the box, there is an option box for ‘when visiting other websites’ – set this to deny to automatically block them from accessing these settings.

Under ‘privacy’ you can tick the box ‘prevent cross-site tracking’ and tick ‘ask websites not to track me’. This will send a message to websites, but it’s up to the website creator whether they choose to follow your request not to be tracked. As with all browsers, the do not track setting is largely redundant. Blocking cookies is just below this – untick the box to block all cookies.

Microsoft Edge

Go to the three dots in the top right corner of Microsoft Edge and click on ‘settings’, three options from the bottom. ‘Privacy and settings’ is the second option on the left. Here you have three options – ‘basic’ will allow most trackers, so websites can collect data about you and personalise ads, but blocks known harmful trackers. Microsoft Edge automatically sets your tracking prevention to ‘balanced’ which blocks more trackers but sites still work as expected. Choosing the ‘strict’ option will mean you have the least personalised content and ads. In this section you can also choose exceptions to these rules and if you scroll down, you can ask the browser to send ‘do not track’ requests.

To manually block cookies you need to go to the ‘site permissions’ section on the left. Here you can switch on the toggle to block third-party cookies or turn off ‘allow sites to save and read cookie data’ to block all cookies. On the site permissions page you can also choose whether to let websites ask to access your camera, microphone, motion and light sensors, and location – if you don’t then the sites will be blocked from accessing these settings entirely.

Feature Image Credit: WIRED

By Maria Mellor

Maria Mellor is a writer for WIRED. She tweets from @Maria_mellor

Sourced from WIRED

In News

3 Ways Covid-19 Has Pushed Brands to Reevaluate Social Strategies

May 15, 2020 No Comments

By Eric Toda

Marketing on platforms has a renewed focus on communities and tone

For years, social media teams for brands all over the world advocated for resources to be more than just a distribution channel for marketing assets. They presented data, they touted growth numbers, and they elevated the best of their community content to executives to show just how powerful these channels were.

How do I know this? I was one of them. And I work with these types of organizations every day still as a consultant.

Up until a few months ago, the teams looking after these social channels were managing brands. Distributing brand messaging from a larger campaign, maintaining a presence on social to check a box or operating on a shoestring budget to build their social-first strategy inch by inch. Then Covid-19 hit; their brands started pulling advertising spend from out of home, TV, radio and all of the other traditional avenues a brand would allocate money to. Agencies were put on notice, and we collectively entered an entirely new space as marketers.

With everyone sheltered in place, where would attention turn? In that moment, every brand’s social media strategy went from nice to have to a necessity.

Acknowledge reality

In the first two weeks of the pandemic, channels went dark. Those that posted (some of which was likely scheduled posts) felt the wrath of Twitter, but most brands took a step back and assessed the chaos that had engulfed our world. Then brands, in the trusty hands of their social media organizations, started to emerge. They acknowledged the crisis, offered to help, pointed their communities toward government messaging and reiterated the messages we were seeing everywhere: shelter in place, social distance, wash your hands, stay safe.

Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

In that moment brands reflected the reality their communities of followers faced without hyper produced imagery, influencers, fictional storylines—just reality. We didn’t need the fluff; we needed acknowledgment. And brands did their best to support us in this new reality.

With every executive now increasing their focus on one of their only active channels (social), another big shift emerged from the chaos: comment sections and replies needed to be addressed and were exposed as underutilized or underfunded. With everyone in an organization now focused on these posts, brands increased their presence in finally treating these connections as conversations, ranging from how they can help or be of service to content creation.

Curation versus creation

The evolution of content hasn’t happened slowly during the pandemic. It felt like it happened overnight, and honestly, it’s still evolving.

Just take a look at your favorite brands. For many, you can visibly see where the shutdown started. One day they were posting beautiful product imagery, then—boom!—it’s all information on how to wash your hands, how they’re here for you during shelter in place, how they’re creating PPE.

Then something interesting happened. As creative agencies and brands wrestled with not being able to go into a studio and produce the beautiful imagery we were accustomed to, many brands looked inward. We don’t know how long we’ll socially distance or when we can even go back into the office. Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

The pandemic has prioritized the need for community content and also the executive attention necessary to make sure this continues on through the global recovery and beyond in the brand’s plans for marketing.

Shattering the social ceiling

As social media teams within each brand have adjusted to this new normal they face heightened visibility from the organization, an increased pressure to post, scrutiny normally saved for a TV campaign (for a single post), more executive communication to show what’s working and what’s not. While this is all an adjustment, it’s also an opportunity to up-level the internal awareness and showcase the discipline of what it takes to run a social media team.

These teams will come out of the pandemic highly experienced and with a newfound respect from peers within a marketing organization and across the leadership ranks. They kept the brand going, they engaged the people that the brand serves, and they evolved the brand.

As we continue our journey sheltered in place and wait for the pandemic to give us a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel, I encourage everyone to continue to learn, evolve and share insights with your teams and those across our industry.

By Eric Toda

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

How to become a data scientist without getting a Ph.D.

May 15, 2020 No Comments

By Scott Matteson

Data science is a growing speciality with plenty of opportunity. Read some insights from an industry expert on how to build a career in this promising field.

Data science is a field offering plenty of diverse career path opportunities, and Glassdoor.com named it the number one job in several recent years.

Northeastern University lists on its site a comprehensive set of potential jobs related to data science including business intelligence developer, data/applications/infrastructure architect, machine learning scientist/engineer, and, of course, the traditional data scientist role.

SEE: Big data management tips (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

My colleague Alison DeNisco Rayome covered data science last year and provided a plethora of details related to the topic. I recently spoke with Martijn Theuwissen, co-founder of DataCamp, a data science educational organization, to learn more about the concept.

Scott Matteson: What skills are needed to be a data scientist?

Martijn Theuwissen: There is a common misconception that to become a data scientist one needs to know statistics, linear algebra, calculus, programming, databases, machine learning, I could go on. Some even say a Ph.D. is required. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, anyone can become a data scientist. All you need is a learning plan with measurable objectives, and a basic understanding of the popular data science languages like SQL, Python, and R.

But let’s step back a bit to see what data science really is. Data science can often be segmented as descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics.

Descriptive analytics is essentially describing data that your company already has in the form of reports, dashboards, or other ways to share data visualizations and summary statistics.
Predictive analytics is the realm of prediction and machine learning: For example, classifying whether an email is spam or not, based on its content, whether a customer will churn, based on interactions with your company, or whether a tumor is benign or malignant, based on diagnostic imaging.
Prescriptive analytics, or decision science, brings rigor to decision making by tying it to the data world. Sure, machine learning is sexy, but the lion’s share of the value data science has created today across most verticals is actually in descriptive analytics by serving relevant summary statistics, visualizations and dashboards to relevant internal stakeholders.

SEE: What does a data scientist do? We talked to one to learn about this popular and lucrative field (TechRepublic)

And anybody can do this! I’ve seen data scientists on marketing, commercial, and product teams need to redefine their own roles as their “non-technical” teammates have learned some SQL and data visualization in Python or R to do work and create value that was previously inconceivable. And these are just some of the skills that we want to help build data fluency throughout the world.

Scott Matteson: Can you look within your organization to find the useful skills? Should enterprises turn to education and training?

Martijn Theuwissen: Yes to both. There are data scientists at every company. Instituting a mentor program, for example, combined with a continuous learning curriculum can greatly improve data fluency across an organization.

And this is no longer an option — it’s an imperative. Data is king in business. Data science is a means by which you can use data to make business decisions. Without the basic data science skills, employees can’t make these important decisions.

As your team becomes more comfortable with the language of data, they’ll be more comfortable bringing data to bear on important business decisions. It will become clear that some team members are more comfortable using data skills than others are. Encourage the proficient ones to mentor others. Even at DataCamp, where data science is our business, some people don’t work with data continuously. When they need help on a complex problem, they pair up with those who do.

SEE: How to fail as a data scientist: 3 common mistakes (TechRepublic)

It’s all about shared tools, skills and responsibilities — they can dramatically improve communication and understanding between employees, which ultimately improves workplace culture.

Scott Matteson: Can employees be trained in data science?

Martijn Theuwissen: Absolutely. But first, companies need to create awareness that data science today is not exclusive to data scientists. In fact, many tasks at companies require some level of data science—finance, marketing, operations, and HR, just to name a few. It’s a cultural challenge as much as a skills challenge.

Second, companies need to implement upskilling initiatives that fit the lifestyle of their employees. Solutions like DataCamp that provide on-demand and interactive learning options were specifically built for busy people. This reflects a fundamental shift in the upskilling and reskilling initiatives taking place in many industries. We’re seeing a transition from L&D functions creating in-person training material to them, curating personalized content for their employees using online resources.

SEE: Oracle using data science to give retailers an intelligence edge (TechRepublic)

Most importantly, don’t take your foot off the gas pedal. Learning isn’t a one-off, especially in a dynamic space like data science. Make sure the programs you’ve implemented are repeatable and that you’re measuring success and growth. In the future of work, continuous learning is the norm. The number of tools developed and skills needed to solve real business problems is growing quickly. We’ve entered an age where continual learning is essential to staying professionally relevant. This is true generally, but even more so in the data world.

Scott Matteson: Do data scientists need a Ph.D.?

Martijn Theuwissen: There are no shortcuts to writing code, but with practice, anyone can build the skills needed to solve problems using data, especially with the right education tools.

For example, one of our employees pivoted from account executive to data scientist using DataCamp. We’ve also heard similar stories from our customers. Then you have examples of well-known data scientists without formal degrees. Cloudera Co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher, election forecaster Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight), and Moneyball brain Paul DePodesta are three that come to mind.

This is not to say there isn’t value in having a university degree in data science. In fact, we give DataCamp subscriptions for free to many universities because we stand for democratizing data science, regardless of the education medium.

Scott Matteson: Is being a data scientist about the skill, dedication, understanding, or education? A mix?

Martijn Theuwissen: A major part of being an effective data scientist, which goes beyond having any sort of degree or training program, is knowing how to conduct conversations and ask the right questions around such topics as:

Data generation, collection, and storage
What data looks and feels like to data scientists and analysts,
Statistical intuition and common statistical pitfalls
Model building, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI)
The ethics of data, big and small

Monica Rogati, who’s a total rock star in our field, wrote a great article on this topic called Data Science Hierarchy of Needs that’s worth seeking out. I’m biased, of course, but I also highly recommend our brand new Data Science for Business Leaders course to learn more.

SEE: Top 5 things to know about data science (TechRepublic)

Scott Matteson: Can you describe what the daily activities of a data scientist are, using subjective examples?

Martijn Theuwissen: Today’s data scientists add value on a daily basis by conducting data collection and data cleaning; constructing dashboards and building reports; data visualization; statistical inference; communicating results to key stakeholders; and providing quantifiable evidence to decision makers on their results.

Data scientists in the tech industry now know how data science works and the value it provides. They begin each day by putting a solid data foundation in place–one that will conduct robust analytics. From there they utilize online experiments and other methods that will result in sustainable growth. Last, but not least, they construct machine learning pipelines and customized data products to help them gain a greater understanding of their business and customers and make better decisions.

Scott Matteson: How long would it take for an individual to learn the trade and launch a career in data science?

Martijn Theuwissen: A reasonable estimate is spending six months dedicated to learning full time and completing projects. This would also include writing them out in Jupyter / R Markdown notebooks. The work should also be published on github and a personal blog. All of that work would equip someone well for an entry-level position like junior data analyst or junior data scientist. From that point on, the key is continuous learning that includes all of the latest tools, techniques, concepts, communications, and questions.

Feature Image Credit: NanoStockk, Getty Images/iStockphoto

By Scott Matteson

Sourced from TechRepublic

In News

Customer experience software can help companies weather the Covid-19 storm

May 15, 2020 No Comments

By Cath Everett

Advanced customer experience software can help companies weather the current Covid-19 storm, as well as build resilience. Marks & Spencer is one firm exploring the technology.

The rapid spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic and the resultant global economic downturn as countries put their citizens in lockdown means that both individual organisations and entire industries worldwide are having to rethink how they operate.

But rather than simply abandon the customer experience (CX) management activities and competencies they have been building steadily over the past few years, Bruce Temkin, experience management (XM) guru and head of the Qualtrics XM Institute, recommends they focus on “adjusting and reprioritising their efforts to align with the organisation’s changing needs”.

He believes XM professionals have an important role to play in assisting their companies to weather the current storm by helping them to understand how customers and staff are feeling and then using such insights to adapt their activities quickly.

“In these times of rapid change, the last thing you want to do is to lose a connection with your customers,” Temkin says. “You need to be listening and responding even more than you have in the past.”

While there are various ways of doing so, which include gathering input from employees and undertaking pulse surveys among the client base, asking for feedback needs to be undertaken with care, otherwise organisations risk appearing “self-absorbed” rather than supportive of customer needs, warns Temkin.

Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that the “ideal pace of feedback” should be defined by a company’s “capacity to act on what it finds”. This is because the ultimate goal is to “drive actionable insights” across the business, with the aim of enabling it to adapt appropriately on an enterprise-wide basis rather than simply in pockets.

“CX is about changing the entire organisation to become more focused and responsive to the needs of the customer,” Temkin says. “But it’s not good enough to just learn what customers are thinking and feeling – you have to get actionable insights into the hands of the people who have been empowered to do something with them, such as customer support or product design, and in a form that’s useful to them.”

CX maturity is at base camp

Unsurprisingly then, given the extent and depth of the organisational transformation required to adopt this kind of approach, Temkin rates the “CX movement” as currently being at “base camp” in terms of maturity – a finding that would appear to be backed up by technology services company NTT’s latest Global customer experience benchmarking report.

This study indicates that, according to most of the organisations questioned (57.8%), their CX strategy is still in development, with a further 13.8% acknowledging it is only at the planning stage and has yet to be defined. A mere 7.6% said they would describe their CX strategy as being optimised, while only 12.1% believe their customer base would give them a positive Net Promoter score.

This is despite the fact that 81.6% were convinced CX offered the business a competitive edge, with 58% considering the approach to be a primary differentiator – although only 14.4% stated that CX formed a crucial part of their overall organisational strategy today.

According to Rob Allman, NTT’s senior vice-president of customer experience, there are three key reasons that companies are failing to optimise their CX strategy effectively. These consist of “lack of leadership, a lack of inter-departmental cooperation, and a lack of empowered capability in implementing well-designed, intelligent processes and outcome-driven data fluency”.

As a result of this scenario, Temkin believes it will be another three to five years before CX progresses into the mainstream, not least because most enterprises are currently just moving through the first of three waves of adoption.

The first wave consists of deploying some form of CX or XM platform plus analytics and dashboard functionality to help organisations start collecting and distributing customer experience data, which can then be combined with operational information to create “signal data”.

“So experience data is what you collect, but signal data is what you take from that information,” Temkin says. “For example, if a telco sees that young consumers in the South East are reacting poorly to a particular service, that’s a signal.”

CX: the difference between success and failure

Other key technology initiatives that are currently being prioritised by CX teams, the NTT study indicates, include customer journey management and the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) software. The latter is mainly taking the shape of virtual assistants, natural language processing and machine learning applications to undertake specific tasks rather than acting as a means of automating the entire business.

The second CX wave, meanwhile, is about introducing more intuitive analytics tools and integrating the CX system and underlying processes more tightly with organisational workflows. It is also about designing effective ways to put information and insights into the hands of employees who can take action on them.

Finally, the third wave will take place when a clear understanding exists of what data is required to operate effectively, Temkin says. In other words, companies’ CX system and processes will be able to provide staff with the right information to take immediate and appropriate action when dealing with customer issues, whether that means starting an action ticket or informing the customer support team of a particular problem.

But, he advises, it is important to bear in mind that CX is not just about how you treat an individual customer – instead, it is about “creating an entire system that continues to learn”.

“This system propagates insights and adapts rapidly in a repeating pattern that you have to make faster and better across the organisation. There’s no individual or team that owns CX – it affects everyone,” Temkin says.

But looking further into the future, he believes that AI software will also have an increasingly important role to play due to its ability to spot “signals” much earlier. This, in turn, will inevitably mean that companies are able to “reorient themselves at a much faster pace” – something that could make the difference between success and failure in the face of yet another crisis, whether local or global.

Case study: Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer’s decision to add a chatbot to its interactive voice response (IVR) system not only led to it generating incremental sales of several million pounds, but enhancing the customer experience at the same time.

The high street retailer’s IT team started working on the initiative about 18 months ago in response to a challenge from the senior leadership team to cut costs and adopt a digital-first strategy, with the aim of moving all sales online by 2026. This situation translated into a focus on simplification and automation, which included improving support for efficient processes and eliminating inefficient ones.

To this end, the choice was made to layer natural language processing (NLP) and customer intent analysis software on top of the company’s IVR system. The aim was to have the resultant chatbot act as a gateway, initially to deal with the high-volume, low-value and low-complexity customer calls coming into 12 of the company’s stores that still used legacy switchboards – although the software has since been rolled out at the company’s contact centre too.

When calling, most customers simply wanted to be put through to a specific store, department or individual, but rather rely on an expensive team of 135 switchboard operators – most of whom have since been redeployed – the aim of introducing the chatbot was to route people intelligently to the right place after establishing their intention.

As to how the system works, the NLP software, which was integrated with the telephone platform using Twilio’s speech recognition application programming interface (API), converts customer speech into text in real-time. Further integration with Google DialogFlow also enables the software to determine why the customer is calling. It then routes the call to the appropriate destination.

Much more flexibility

Chris McGrath, Marks & Spencer’s IT and digital programme manager, says the deployment has made a significant difference in customer service terms. “At the store level, it wasn’t a great service as between 60-70% of calls weren’t being answered, but that’s completely changed now,” he says.

As a result of this turnaround, the monetary gains have been high. Not only are customers happier with the service they receive, but stock enquiries are now handled by a centralised call centre rather than individual stores, which has resulted in a sales boost.

Reporting is also much quicker than previously as the retailer knows exactly how many customers are calling about what in real time. This means it is clear which products are in high demand and which are not, which helps improve forecasting.

In other words, says McGrath: “We’ve turned the system from not providing actionable insights into providing actionable insights.”

He also indicates that, although the expectation had been that 10% of calls would still need to be managed by humans, in reality 97% of customers are happy to communicate with the chatbot and have it route their call.

Such levels of acceptance are particularly important during the current Covid-19 lockdown when the number of contact centre agents required to work from home has expanded greatly.

“From a call centre point of view, it’s been really challenging as while supporting food-related enquiries is an essential service, we have a duty of care in not bringing people together. So, NLP technology has given us much more flexibility at the front end in redirecting calls, which has been really useful there,” McGrath says.

By Cath Everett

Sourced from ComputerWeekly.com