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The First-Ever 24/7 Global Social News Network Goes Live Today

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Bloomberg and Twitter have got together to pump out news all day and all night on social media.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Bloomberg Media and Twitter today launched TicToc by Bloomberg, the first-ever 24/7 global news network built for a social media platform that targets the next generation of on-the-go, mobile-first news consumers. TicToc by Bloomberg combines the global news gathering capabilities of Bloomberg’s 2,700 journalists and analysts across 120 countries, with the digital power and immediacy of Twitter, one of the world’s fastest and primary news distribution channels. (You can follow @tictoc or visit live.twitter.com/tictoc )

The first iteration of TicToc by Bloomberg will feature a mix of live video and reporting from Bloomberg journalists around the world, as well as breaking news content from consumers, curated and verified by Bloomberg editors with a real-time distillation of the related conversation on Twitter. The news experience is designed to be interactive, rich with Twitter content and consumable on any device. Coverage will focus on general interest news worldwide.

Said Bloomberg Media CEO Justin B. Smith, “We’re seeing a shift in the media landscape today: more content companies are partnering with platforms to create hybrid businesses that better serve consumers and society. With TicToc by Bloomberg, we’re fusing the best of Bloomberg and Twitter to build a fast and credible modern news experience. The launch of this new network further reinforces our strategy of driving innovation through exciting new products and services that touch a broad audience around the world.”

According to Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, it’s early days. “Butwhat makes TicToc by Bloomberg unique is that consumers will be able to watch live news and the conversation around it at the same time, all while a dedicated team of Bloomberg editors verifies the facts. We’re leveraging our journalism and data to reach and inform an intelligent audience on Twitter around the world.”

Said Anthony Noto, Twitter COO. “Combining the journalistic integrity of Bloomberg with the speed and global availability of Twitter makes this a collaboration we are really excited about.”

TicToc by Bloomberg recreates the visual presentation of news for a mobile, social world through the use of video, data, and graphics. Users will have access to two types of news content:

  • Breaking News: global breaking news when consumers need it and when an event warrants it. Live coverage for key events will be presented alongside real-time distillation of the facts and Tweets about the event.
  • Global News Update: An hourly update of global news will be available in short, digestible clips, refreshed at the top of each hour. The segment will be comprised of top global news so that consumers are constantly up to speed on the stories that matter. It will also include slightly longer clips that put news into context, providing deeper analysis of the top news stories of the moment. At launch, top-of-the-hour news coverage will be updated from 6am to 10pm EST, expanding to 24 hours in early 2018, while weekend coverage will include regular news updates, prioritising live breaking news events.

The global news update will be available for replay and refreshed each hour with evolving stories from around the world. Relevant Tweets, curated and verified by Bloomberg, will run below the video programming, allowing consumers to see accurate Tweet conversations around the news.

So let’s talk about the money. Seven sponsors have signed on as the Founding Partners of TicToc: AT&T Business, CA Technologies, CME Group, Goldman Sachs, INFINITI, SAS, TD Ameritrade. TicToc will feature branded native content and unique integrations woven into the video programming.

“We know how critical education and information are to the investing process. And, in today’s fast-paced world, consumers want the latest news at their fingertips, in their format of choice, from a source they trust,” said Francie Staub, managing director of integrated and digital marketing at TD Ameritrade. “That’s why we’re so excited to work with Bloomberg as it reimagines the mobile newsroom – leveraging cutting edge technology to help create a more informed, confident investor base.”

There it is… they key driver… native advertising. Or “advertorial” to us of the old school terminology. Will it be a success? Or are we all sick of 24/7 news? Time will tell.

Tick, tock.

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It’s all in the name: luxury is about signalling status

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By Rob Wilson

Brands are the engines of the luxury market. The red-soled Louboutins, the Mulberry tree, the Ferrari horse… without them, would people still buy the products they are emblazoned on? Maybe, but certainly not as many.

Luxury has always been about signalling status. Therefore, as a concept it is always evolving as people’s ideas about what confers status change. From the opulent luxury of most of the 20th century, recent years seem to have shifted to less conspicuous forms of consumption. This presents a challenge to luxury brands. Now they not only have to emphasise their quality, but also demonstrate their credentials in other ways that will appeal to the less conspicuous luxury consumer.

Marketers have often targeted campaigns at people based on broad demographic factors – their age, their gender – but we have found a much more effective way is to connect with people through their passion points. Whether that’s football, food or fashion, if you can connect to people through one of their passions it will create a much stronger connection between them and the brand. Through connecting with these communities of shared interest, you can also have a more effective influencer strategy. Whether you work with more traditional celebrities or social media stars, by targeting a particular community of interest you can ensure your influencers feel truly relevant to your target consumer. When we worked with Breitling to launch its flagship store, we worked with celebrities that were truly relevant to its target audience, whereas when we launched Garnier Moisture Bomb we worked with everyday women as that is who was relevant for its brand and the community it wanted to talk to.

Luxury brands need to appeal to younger audiences or risk falling sales. Luxury brands can often be seen as outdated to younger generations because of product perceptions or the heritage they celebrate. We are working with Johnnie Walker to help it change perceptions of whisky as a drink that isn’t for everyone and open it up to new audiences. Delivering campaigns globally, we are helping it highlight the different ways and different occasions to drink Johnnie Walker, emphasising that it is a drink for everyone and anyone.

To recruit younger audiences, luxury brands need to respond to our changing spending habits. We are living in the experience economy. The latest figures from Barclaycard, which processes around half of all of the UK’s credit and debit transactions, show a rise of 20% in spending in pubs in April this year compared to last year, with restaurants, theatres and cinemas also seeing rises. More than ever, the experience a brand delivers is key to convincing people to part with their cash and when your product has a luxury price tag, people expect a luxury experience.

Through research we conducted for one of our luxury clients, we found that the retail experience is a particularly important part of the buying journey for luxury consumers. Across the range of different people we spoke to, most expressed a desire for a personal experience, where needs could be openly discussed, as well as a rich experience where they could learn about the brand stories and values underpinning a product. If a brand can achieve both these things they are much more likely to convert.

Every bit of the brand experience, from in-store to brand communications, online to packaging matters, is an opportunity for a luxury brand to damage its luxury reputation. Whether that’s a bad retail environment or a piece of packaging that doesn’t feel as hand crafted and special as the product it contains, it is very easy for brands to lose their luxury status in the minds of potential buyers.

Delivering a total luxury experience wherever a consumer interacts with your brand is a difficult task, but it is a must for luxury brands. Some luxury brands are embracing the experience economy already – this summer Cartier partnered with the London Design Museum to curate an exhibition called Cartier in Motion, telling the story of their unique approach to watchmaking and the evolution of the modern wristwatch. We will see more luxury brands turning to experiential marketing in the future.

Luxury is a highly emotive concept. It is all about the experience, the touch, the taste, how it makes you feel. And it is all too easy to break the luxury feel at some point in the experience a consumer has of your brand.

By Rob Wilson

Rob Wilson is strategy and creative director at RPM.

This article was originally published in The Drum Network luxury special. You can get your hands on a copy here. To be featured in the next special focused on the charity sector, please contact [email protected].

Sourced from THEDRUM

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A Successful Social Media Post DOES Drive Consumer Spending

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Whether the post is positive or negative, the more attention it gets, the more you will sell.

For businesses using social media, posts with high engagement have the greatest impact on customer spending. This is according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Published in the Journal of Marketing, the study assessed social media posts for sentiment (positive, neutral or negative), popularity (engagement) and customers’ likelihood to use social media, and found the popularity of a social media post had the greatest effect on purchases.

“A neutral or even negative social media post with high engagement will impact sales more than a positive post that draws no likes, comments or shares,” says study co-author Ram Bezawada, PhD, associate professor of marketing in the UB School of Management. “This is true even among customers who say their purchase decisions are not swayed by what they read on social media.”

The researchers studied data from a large specialty retailer with multiple locations in the northeast United States. They combined data about customer participation on the company’s social media page with in-store purchases before and after the retailer’s social media engagement efforts. They also conducted a survey to determine customers’ attitudes toward technology and social media.

The study also found that businesses’ social posts significantly strengthen the effect of traditional television and email marketing efforts. When social media is combined with TV marketing, customer spending increased by 1.03 percent and cross buying by 0.84 percent. When combined with email marketing, customer spending increased by 2.02 percent and cross buying by 1.22 percent. Cross buying refers to when a customer purchases additional products or services from the same firm.

“The clear message here is that social media marketing matters, and managers should embrace it to build relationships with customers,” says Bezawada. “Developing a community with a dedicated fan base can lead to a definitive impact on revenues and profits.”

 

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Study: Social Media Is Simply “People Watching”

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If you worry that people today are using social media as a crutch for a real social life, a University of Kansas study will set you at ease.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of communication studies, found that people are actually quite adept at discerning the difference between using social media and having an honest-to-goodness social interaction. The results of his studies appear in the journal New Media & Society.

“There is a tendency to equate what we do on social media as if it is social interaction, but that does not reflect people’s actual experience using it,” Hall said. “All of this worry that we’re seeking out more and more social interaction on Facebook is not true. Most interactions are face to face, and most of what we consider social interaction is face to face.”

According to Hall, social media is more like old-fashioned people-watching. “Liking” something is similar to a head nod. It’s not social interaction, but it’s acknowledging you are sharing space with someone else.

“Keeping tabs on other people sharing our social spaces is normal and part of what it means to be human,” Hall said.

Hall is no stranger to research on social media. New Media & Society published an earlier study of his that found people can accurately detect the personality traits of strangers through Facebook activity.

In his current paper in the journal, Hall details three studies. The first demonstrates that when using social media, most of us are engaged in passive behaviours that we don’t consider social interaction, like browsing others’ profiles and reading news articles.

The second diary study demonstrates that most of what we consider social interaction with people in our close circle of friends happens face to face. When interaction with these close others is through social media, it’s not something passive like browsing or “liking” but rather using chat or instant message functions.

Here’s where it gets interesting, Hall said. The first study found that chatting and commenting – things that we would even consider social interaction – are but 3.5 percent of our time on social media.

The third study had participants contacted at random times throughout the day. This study drives home how adept we are at separating social media use with social interaction. People reported 98 percent of their social interactions took some other way than through social media.

“Although people often socially interact and use social media in the same time period, people understand they are different things,” Hall said. “People feel a sense of relatedness when they’re interacting face to face, but using social media does not make them feel connected.”

All three studies, Hall said, circle around the idea that we still value face-to-face time with close others for the purpose of talking.

“If we want to have a conversation, we’re not using social media to do it,” he said.

The findings speak to a broader anxiety that many still have regarding social media.

“There’s a worry that people are seeking out more and more social interactions on Facebook and that social media is taking over our face-to-face time,” Hall said. “I’m saying, ‘Not so fast.’ People use social media to people-watch and still seem to enjoy a good face-to-face conversation.”

 

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The future of media agencies

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By Sam Garrity

Media agencies are facing the greatest level of disruption in our vertical we have ever seen.

I mean bigger than when we decoupled creative agencies from media buying agencies, when we were back in the day when everything was full-service, and bigger than the event of digital advertising and digital media in itself.

That moment when agencies like us were born, with new capabilities that the market did not have. This is bigger than that, because it’s fundamentally about the root-to-branch adoption of digital technology, and changes within the media landscape that affect the entire advertising and publishing supply chain.

How digital adoption effects the advertising and publishing chain

From a media owner perspective – and I’m not just talking publisher here, I’m talking about television, outdoor, radio – there are pressures upon these media owners right now to trade their inventory in a different way. That means changes to their technology, changes to their actual business plan, the way that they run their company.

Advertisers, thinking about them as businesses, they’re the driving force behind these changes that I want to talk about. They are going through transformational changes, which mean that they need a different type of agency today, right now. These pressures, either side of us from businesses, brands, advertisers and on the media/owner side, it’s meaning that a new type of agency needs to evolve right now. At an individual level, that sets a challenge for all of us in terms of the type of marketer we are going to need to become.

Where this is already happening

These are tectonic changes I’m talking about, and if you keep your eyes open, it’s happening right in front of you, in the headlines of our trade press, every single day.

Accenture, in terms of digital, have historically been involved in the big transformational discussions with the C-suite. They have now purchased businesses like The Monkeys and Karmarama. These businesses now, they are big players across the entire advertising supply chain, and within digital transformation. They are in our world. Huge networks, like Dentsu Aegis, have purchased Merkle. The agency landscape is completely changing.

The catalysts behind this movement

Buying people in real time

Firstly, this is about the personalisation of media. It’s about the fact that now, through technology, through digital advertising, we’re interested in buying people in real time for advertisers. We don’t want to buy a huge, expensive television slot with dramatic amounts of wastage. We want to buy people in real time, based upon data that we know about them.

The necessity of digital transformation

Digital, and specifically technological changes, is placing a transformational necessity upon companies globally. It’s about the experience they provide to consumers. Think about it; where do you set the bar?

How should we execute media buying in the future?

Let’s have a quick look at how we might execute media buying looking forwards. To some extent, this is in play right now. From a data perspective, you have things like analytics, CRM, first- and third-party data, all being fed into something like a data management platform, where we segment an audience based upon their propensity to do business with an advertiser, which we then feed into our ad tech, and we purchase media.

I’m talking about buying people in real time. We can now buy TV. We, as a business, as an agency, we’ve purchased radio, using data. These doors are opening for us, as an agency, and for advertisers. And this is what it’s going to look like. We’ll be trading across the entire piece, in real time. This is a data-activated, omni-channel buying machine. It’s about an experience. You want to be plumbing in personalised creative into all this. This is about a digital experience, that we would execute on behalf of an advertiser.

What type of marketers do we need to be?

This new world that we’re talking about, where transformation is taking place, and where there is a need for a new type of media and creative agency, it’s causing debate at the minute within our industry, about what type of marketer do we need to be?

Some people are saying, we need to be left-brained. Left-brained, think probably historically Accenture, mathematics.

Some people believe we need to be right-brained, which is creative. It’s the realm of traditional marketing. That is intuition, right-brain, but I’m with my counterpart at Accenture Interactive, who believes we need to be whole-brained marketers. The whole-brained marketer needs to exist within a framework like this, where analytics, CRM, media buying and creative augment a central pillar of activity, which is based around the transformational element, the strategy and, obviously comms. It has data at its core, and it also concerns itself perpetually with every single output around customer experience. That must sit at the very core of any organisational structure.

What my message is really about, and what I want to kind of get home to you all is that we will not be digital marketing agencies in the very near future. I don’t believe we’ll even be a marketing or a media agency in the very near future. I think we are now in the business of providing a customer experience. The quicker our industry orientates itself around that central theme, I think the quicker we’re going to mirror the type of value that our clients so desperately need, as they themselves transform

By Sam Garrity

Sam Garrity is managing director at RocketMill.

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Nearly Half of Millennials and Gen Xers Don’t Watch Any Traditional TV: Study

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Almost half of adults 22 to 45 years old are watching absolutely no content on traditional TV platforms, according to a new study by Omnicom Media Group agency Hearts & Science.

Instead, this 47% is consuming TV content and video on streaming platforms that didn’t exist as recently as the series premiere of CBS’s “NCIS.” That doesn’t mean they aren’t watching TV content or even that they aren’t seeing ads. They’re just consuming it in places where ad models vary, audiences are fragmented and measurement is harder.

“It’s pretty scary,” says Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn, referring to the group as “unreachable” by marketers. “We are not reaching young audiences effectively, just over-indexing on older viewers on TV.”

TV viewing for decades was described by Nielsen, but the proliferation of new platforms, viewing habits, devices and ad models has complicated everything considerably. While Nielsen has the technology to measure many of these non-traditional platforms, roll-out has been hampered by the heavy lift it requires from TV networks and other content providers.

Less than one-third of the TV and video watched by millennials and Gen Xers is accounted for by traditional measurements, according to the study, which included a survey of about 1,500 people. The rest is being watched in apps on smartphones and streaming devices like Roku and Apple TV.

Marketers have to think creatively not only to reach millennials and Gen Xers but also to make the most of it when they do, according to Hagedorn. “We are headed toward a creative wake-up call,” he says. “If most of this content is being consumed in-app, we need to think more about the utility of advertising here.”

Feature Image: They’re having a blast. Marketers, less so. Credit: istock

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Jeanine Poggi covers the TV industry and how broadcast and cable networks and distributors are adopting to the changes in the world of TV advertising. She joined Advertising Age in 2012, following six years covering the retail and media industries and other financial sectors for Women’s Wear Daily, Forbes and TheStreet.  View all articles by this author

Sourced from AdAge

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The IAB wants to make it easier to advertise on podcasts

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By Lisa Lacy

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its first IAB Podcast Playbook, a buyer’s guide to podcast advertising that provides insights into audience demographics, listener behaviors, creative treatments, ad formats, delivery, targeting and measurement.

The guide also features research that confirms the increasing popularity of podcasts as nearly 25% of US consumers over the age of 12 listen to podcasts on a monthly basis and, on average, each person subscribes to six podcasts per week.

Not surprisingly, the IAB found smartphones are the primary devices used for listening to podcasts and consumption is frequently on the move – particularly during commutes to and from work – but it noted consumers also frequently listen while doing chores at home, exercising and traveling.

In terms of audience demographics, the IAB found podcast listeners tend to be young – 44% are under 34 – and they are also are educated, wealthy and likely to be business influencers.

Advertisers have a variety of options on podcasts, including native and host-read ads, as well as dynamically inserted, standardized ad units. What’s more, the IAB said two-thirds of listeners cite high brand recall and nearly the same number say podcast ads inspired a purchase.

“Podcasts create an especially intimate space for listeners to engage with content because these listeners have made an active choice to download or stream,” said Harry Clark, co-chair of the IAB group that produced the guide and executive vice president at Market Enginuity, which says it connects marketers with the public media audience.

Recent IAB research forecasted podcast advertising revenue will top $220m in 2017, an 85% increase from $119m in 2016.

“This playbook will serve as a go-to reference guide to help brand marketers understand podcasts and effectively steer more ad dollars toward opportunities that will deliver in terms of audience reach,” said Anna Bager, senior vice president and general manager of mobile and video at the IAB, in a statement. “In an industry where explosive growth and dramatic change have been endemic, podcasts are having a standout moment. We want to educate marketers on the unique and valuable benefits of advertising on the medium.”

By Lisa Lacy

Sourced from THEDRUM

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How blockchain is used in media and advertising

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By Shareen Pathak.

It suddenly feels like blockchain is everywhere — and that includes media and advertising. Here’s what to know.

What it is
Blockchain is the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin; it’s essentially a massive Excel sheet that operates in a decentralized network format. That means that the data can have large amounts of information that can be transmitted and added onto, without compromising on security. You can’t change the blockchain — and for data purposes, not one person or entity can destroy it.

What it isn’t
Blockchain is not bitcoin. While that’s what it is best known for, bitcoin is basically a digital currency that operates on blockchain. The blockchain developed for bitcoin was developed specifically for it — which is why other uses for it were only developed much later. And while bitcoin works because it is anonymous, blockchain for other types of businesses don’t have to be anonymous. In fact, they shouldn’t be: Participants are able to tell where data came from so they can trust that it’s real.

Use in media

  • Monetization: This week, blockchain content distribution platform Decent announced the launch of Publiq, a “rewarding” process that will let writers and creators distribute content on the blockchain and get paid immediately.
  • Advanced TV: A new technology by Comcast’s advanced advertising group lets brands make ad buys on both broadcast and OTT TV using blockchain technology. The group, which has brought together Disney, Altice USA, the U.K.’s Channel 4 and TG1 Group in Italy, plans to — in 2018 — let marketers, publishers and programmers share data without having to pool it in any one place. A CPG marketer, for example, would be able to use data from a content producer like Hulu to understand how to target its ad buys without receiving the actual data itself.
  • Fraud: In June, MetaX and the Data & Marketing Association launched adChain, an open protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that tags a piece of creative and follows it on the internet to make sure someone sees it, determining who it was as well as what actions were taken afterward. Like Comcast’s approach, adChain lets multiple parts of the industry, from agency to publisher to marketer, work together without dependency.
  • Whitelisting: MetaX also runs an adChain registry in collaboration with the DMA and ConsenSys that uses a cryptocurrency called “adToken,” which incentivizes people to determine whether a publisher can be whitelisted or not (or is deemed reputable or not). Brands can then decide to spend money only on those publishers.
adToken (via MetaX)

 

  • Ad buying: New York Interactive Advertising Exchange, which will be a marketplace where brands, publishers and agencies can buy and sell future ad inventory will launch this year, in partnership with Nasdaq. The idea is to automate contract execution as long as conditions are met. It plans to first support only digital ad buys.

The problems
Blockchain isn’t widely adopted: Fred Askham, associate director of analytics at IMM, which is looking into using adChain, said while fraud is a big concern, the big problem in the industry is adoption. Blockchain relies on multiple “nodes” and players, and if people don’t participate, it doesn’t work. “In the advertising industry, we’ve seen this happen a few times where the tech to measure something comes out and then there is some lag time,” he said.

It’s too theoretical: Comcast’s platform won’t launch until 2018, while NYIAX is still in the proof-of-concept phase. Most moves in blockchain are in the theoretical phase, with their realization expected to be years away, if they even happen.

It won’t scale: Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, whose investor Union Square Ventures recently announced a major blockchain investment, said blockchain’s biggest promise is in ad delivery, but scale remains an issue. “It’s good for problems that are easy to solve on an individual level but hard to compute overall,” he said. “It’s really about five years away, if not more.” For example, an Ethereum-based blockchain processes 20 transactions per second — light-years away from how quickly real-time bidding works. Research firm Gartner places blockchain right before the “Trough of Disillusionment.”

It won’t work for many types of transactions: Jon Heller, co-founder of FreeWheel, which worked on the insights platform and is owned by Comcast, said that where there is no secondary market, like in the premium video space, blockchain for smart contracts doesn’t make sense. “Premium inventory doesn’t have this commodity-like feeling,” he said. “The parts where it makes a ton of sense is that it lets you trust a transaction without having to trust the counterparty. So that’s not everywhere in marketing, but it’s in a decent number of things in marketing.”

The counterargument
“There are few technical barriers. Blockchain has proved itself robust and adaptable to dozens of high-impact use cases. Companies need to develop compelling-enough applications that it can make a real impact. This is already happening,” said Alex Tapscott, author of “Blockchain Revolution.” “As I say, the future’s not something to be predicted; it’s something to be achieved. We’re seeing people achieving amazing things already.”

By Shareen Pathak

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

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Twitter chief Jack Dorsey: ‘We’re doubling down on adtech’

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By Jennifer Faull.

witter’s co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey said he plans to “double down” on adtech investment, saying the company has learned lessons from past mistakes that could see it pivot towards forging partnerships with third parties rather than acquiring or building its own offering.

“Advertising is our business and technology is how we manifest that,” said Dorsey at the Cannes Lions festival today (21 June.) “We’re definitely not out of the adtech investment phase. We’re doubling down. Especially with the hire of Bruce [Falck]. He’s taken right to it.”

After an exhaustive search, Bruce Falck joined the company earlier this year as general manager of revenue product, reporting directly to Dorsey (previously he was the chief executive of adtech outfit Turn). That hire was very much seen as a push by Twitter to bring a advertisers a more targeted and measurable offering as well as stand up against the Google and Facebook, which control in excess of 70% of the market.

Falck joined having spent much of his career working for adtech businesses. Prior to his tenure at Turn, he served as chief operating officer at video ad company BrightRoll and developed display advertising products at Google.

According to reports, not confirmed by Twitter, it has since been reconsidering several of its advertising products, including the direct response business, parts of the Promoted Tweets product, and TellApart, the digital ad platform it acquired in 2015.

Speaking on what has went wrong in the past on the advertising side, Dorsey said that it simply “didn’t always prioritize [it] in the right way.”

“We acquired companies or platforms and didn’t give them the options that they needed or tie it together with everything else that we’re doing,” he said. “And that doesn’t set up the acquisition for success. So, we’re [now] being really deliberate in what we look at and why.”

He went on to say that moving forward it would look to “buy versus build” its adtech offering, although he did add that it may also look to pursue this strategy by partnering with third-party tie-ups.

“We’ve tended to build a lot in the company. When we started it was before there was a public cloud that we could use and that set the DNA of the company. But we need to change that mindset. We don’t need to build everything, but we also don’t need to acquire everything. We can go through third parties and just really focus on what our strengths are,” he said.

Rebuilding from the inside out

At the beginning of the year, Twitter set about on a rebuild of the company to “get back to basics” and redefine itself around one core mission – being “the best and fastest place to see what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about.”

In a three-pronged attack, it set about re-establishing its execution of the product (“we needed a lot more discipline”), better marketing to “tell the story of what Twitter is” and focusing “our energy on our strengths” on the users already had, rather than trying to attract more.

During this reset phase, it was forced to layoff nearly a tenth of its global workforce – around 350 people – which Dorsey said was one of his darkest periods at the company.

“It was heartbreaking,” he explained. “I remember the night before, I hand wrote thank you cards to everyone we were letting go. I was up until 2am although, unfortunately, there was mishap with mailing and we couldn’t get them to everyone on time. But it was really the toughest thing. It’s still so painful to think about and I wasn’t expecting to do anything like that in my life.”

However, he said it’s now seeing results from the changes. Twitter surprised analysts with a strong performance for the first quarter for the year, seeing a spike in both user growth and earning.

“It now gives us breathing room to take bigger steps and do some non-linear things,” he hinted. “We want to bring a whole lot more creativity back into the organization and more playfulness with what we’re focused on. I’m really excited about this year.”

For more news from Cannes Lions follow the dedicated news stream on The Drum website

Feature Image: Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and chief executive, was speaking at Cannes Lions 2017

By Jennifer Faull

Jen Faull is deputy news editor at The Drum with a remit to cover the latest developments in the retail and FMCG sectors. Based in London, she has interviewed major business figures including top marketers from Mondelez, Unilever, Tesco, and Lidl.

Sourced from THE DRUM

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P&G’s media chief doubles down on bid to better balance targeted ads with mass-reach strategies amid $2bn marketing cuts

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By Seb Joseph.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is working to get the right blend of precision with mass-reach in its marketing after previously admitting that it had targeted excessively online.

It doesn’t have to be an “either or” debate, opined Gerry D’Angelo, the global media director for the world’s largest advertiser at the Festival of Media in Rome this week (9 May).

“The approach I’m trying to instill here is to make sure we’re using all the technology to drive scale and reach and then once that’s in place we can use that muscle memory to build personalisation,” he said.

D’Angleo’s talking about building a better use of data and technology at the business, where its marketers have a more robust idea on how to get the most reach but also the right precision. Rather than pull swathes of media money from online platforms, the noises coming from P&G suggest its revamped approach will revolve around how to better buy reach. Part of this thinking would have likely guided P&G’s decision to redistribute its programmatic data duties earlier this month when it cut ties with AudienceScience.

“It’s not that personalisation is a bad thing,” assured D’Angelo as if to ward off concerns that he and his peers will start pulling reams of budget from the likes of Facebook and Google.

“We just need to make sure we don’t follow it out the window and end up talking to a fraction of our category buyers. As long as you can accommodate both of those concepts [personalisation and mass reach] simultaneously, which I think you can, then I think its absolutely acceptable to be able to talk o people and also talk to them in a highly targeted way.”

It’s a change in tack from P&G, which was one of a throng of advertisers to pump money into targeted ads that consequently sacrificed reach. The company’s top marketer Marc Pritchard admitted as much last year when he said “we targeted too much and went too narrow” on Facebook. Four years ago, the business was adamant, as many of its peers were, that this was the way to go. In 2013, it moved a third of its advertising budget online and then a year later slashed its spending by 14% and refocused on what it said at the time was an “optimised media mix” with more digital, mobile, search and social investments.

But businesses like P&G own brands built on mass media, with the type of recognition that has always chaffed against the hyper-targeted sensibilities of environments like Facebook. And with tougher cost pressures on the company’s marketers as seen by its plan to cut a whopping $2bn in marketing costs over the next five years, it may have to go back to the marketing sensibilities that defined the industry in order to continue to grow.

Nowhere is this need clearer than in P&G’s four-point plan to overhaul its investments around viewability, third party measurement, agency relationships and online ad fraud.

If Pritchard is going to lead by example on his view about the death of craft in advertising currently then he needs to disentangle the media supply chain and consequently tackle mass personalisation.

“There is a reality that personalisation can go too far,” said Matthew Heath, chairman and chief strategy officer at Lida. “Firstly you need brand salience and attraction – you can be as personal as you like but I still need to trust you and be interested in you in the first place. Secondly brands often need a dimension of discovery and serendipity, that disappears in the overly personalised world.”

By Seb Joseph

Sourced from THE DRUM

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