Marketing

The Power of The Employee Voice: A Guide to Harnessing Your Most Influential Audience

"Sixty-two percent of millennials would rather sacrifice pay to work for a purpose-driven company than work for one that does not have a purpose”

Said Stella Low, senior vice president of global communications at Dell, during her powerful keynote at the 2018 PRSA International Conference. I’ve always believed that a company’s talent pool is their greatest PR asset. No one is closer to your company values or brand promise than those on the inside. Loyal employees will sing their organization’s praises in times of glory and come to its defense in times of crisis. Like a momma bear protecting her young cubs – it’s that personal. Because where we choose to invest our time, energy and ideas is a direct reflection of us.

Yet, internal communication is often overlooked or not given the level of creative treatment that external communication receives.

Stella went on to make the bold statement, “There is no second-class audience. Internal is external. And external is internal.” Simply put: the external and internal divide is gone.

Stella stresses that for business leaders to build trust with their employees they have to be ethical, transparent, authentic and have a purpose. So, how do we harness the power of the employee voice to drive influence? Stella’s key lesson to the thousands of communication and PR professionals in the room was to embrace Dell Technologies’ I.M.P.A.C.T model.

The best example of the I.M.P.A.C.T. model in action is when Dell Technologies had to change the perception of its overseas facility. By immersing employees into the actual work environment through a creative virtual reality experience, this pivotal audience could “walk” the facility in real time, debunking any concerns about sweatshop like conditions in the most transparent way possible.

Stella concluded her keynote with “we are no longer just a press release department.” And I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t wait to talk to her backstage.

My Interview with Stella Low

Q: What are the steps to turn employees into brand ambassadors?

A: Make sure you are constantly communicating. You should not just be communicating only when there is big news. For example, we have quarterly broadcasts where we have CEO, Michael Dell and our CFO talking about results. Our HR leader talks about benefits and it’s all hosted by our CMO. We also use it as a way to share and celebrate great examples of what team members are doing.

Q: How do you bring employees into the fold of a purpose-driven organization? And how do you measure trust internally?

A: We use something called “TellDell.” For example, we found out that a few years ago people were not confident in explaining our strategy. So, we had a training with HR for our senior leaders and they were responsible for cascading that training down to their teams. It would be very clear if our employees didn’t trust us. It would come out in that survey for sure.

Q: How do you handle employee communications around mergers and acquisitions?

A: You don’t need to spend a million dollars, but you do need to overcommunicate. And you need to communicate in lots of different ways. Sending out a single memo is not enough. Most often, people want to hear from their boss. Don’t dress it up as something it’s not. People understand that there are sometimes issues along the way and they want you to be honest. It all comes down to trust and transparency.

Q: How did you show that communications deserves a seat at the table?

A: I could not to do my job if I wasn’t strategically involved with some of the larger decisions. If you haven’t got a seat at the table – deliver. Prove yourself. Show the results. And then say this is how much better it would have been if I would have been there. The biggest lesson I ever learned about leadership was to understand your strengths and understand your weaknesses. Unless you understand yourself, how can you ever lead anyone?

Q: If you could write the headline of what’s in store for the future of Dell, what would it be?

A: Be known for more than PCs. Because we do so much more than that. I want us to be the number one technology company in the world that everybody thinks to go to when they have a business issue that they need to solve.

Today’s wide-eyed workforce is a passionate bunch who expect more from their employers and of themselves. The nine-to-five-time card is a thing of the past and people view their occupations as more of a vocation than simply a means to a paycheck. The employee voice is more powerful than ever. Harness this influence with thought, creativity and care to make an impact. Soon enough you’ll build a culture of brand ambassadors who are not afraid to brag about it.

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Influencer

Community Management Check In: 3 Ways to Take Your Community Management to the Next Level

Welcome to a recurring series where we explore different areas of community management on social media. Community management is all about the relationships your brand has with its consumers in the social space and how you convert consumers to loyalists.

Building that initial relationship can be tough, but it’s important to be responsive, attentive and transparent with consumers to build and maintain their trust. It’s part science, part art – and it’s always changing. Follow along as we delve into different questions we receive and how we approach community management. Brands today are judged based on popular perception. A brand is what consumers say it is, which makes social community management and awareness an important part of brand strategy.

Whether it’s listening to and answering consumer complaints and questions, engaging a community for user-generated content and soliciting insightful opinions, or discovering and celebrating a brand’s biggest fans, opportunities abound to harness the power of the popular collective. Here are three ways to make the most of a brand community and community management beyond just posting content.

What is the Best Way to Reward Brand Advocates, And When and How Should a Brand Do It?

It’s wise to consider every customer that reaches out to a brand (even the angry ones … more on that later) as a future champion and advocate. Once a super fan has been identified, a brand should also consider going the extra mile.

Sharing customer content on your brand’s channels and personally thanking the customer for being an active fan can go a long way. Fans want to know that a brand sees them, recognizes their passion and appreciates it. But why stop there?

While big giveaways and desirable prizes drive engagement and are useful, sometimes a short, personal (Remember our first post?) and signed note delivered by the good old-fashioned USPS speaks volumes to a consumer about how much a brand cares about them.

The ideal reward is a combination of something exclusive that only the brand can provide and something that can be fulfilled at a low cost. Maybe a super fan moves out of town and is pining for a brand’s product, so the brand sends some product with a handwritten note. Or maybe a brand champion disappears for a time and later messages that they’ve been in the hospital, so the brand sends a care package.

These may seem like small deeds, but when it comes to humanizing a brand, forging a lasting connection and creating talk triggers, they can make a big difference in amplifying word of mouth marketing.

For example, here’s how one consumer responded to receiving a gift from an Empower-managed brand:

“I received your gift today! I just wanted to say thank you again! I also love the fact that my info was written by an actual person and not just by some mainstream machine, it’s really great to know companies out there really try to help and are actually personal! I’ll be sure to spread the word of the greatness you have given to me :)”

How Can a Brand Turn an Upset Customer into an Advocate?

Part of community management is customer service. Not everyone that reaches out to a brand is going to be happy when they do it. In the age where attention is in short supply and people are busier than ever, the fact someone took the time to reach out with a detailed complaint means they feel so strongly about the matter they’ve let the brand know about it.

Best practices for community management include responding to complaints and trying to fix the issue for the customer. Sometimes that’s not possible. But sometimes even more opportunity exists to personally address their concerns in a way that will make them an advocate for life.

An example from Empower: a consumer was upset that the marketing materials he saw in his feed from a brand were targeted towards women, rather than parents in general. As a working dad, he reached out to the brand on social to voice that he felt disenfranchised after seeing the brand’s posts. Rather than simply apologize, the social team recognized how passionate he was about the matter and offered him the opportunity to work with the brand and share his experiences as a working dad by developing content. It resulted in valuable insights for the brand, content that resonated with the brand audience and – most importantly – cemented a relationship.

When addressing consumer complaints, think about the person, not the problem, first.

How Can A Brand Turn What Is Learned From Community Management Into Actionable Insights?

A community is, by definition, more than one person. In addition to minding brand champions and addressing individual concerns, leveraging a following includes listening to the community as a whole and soliciting community opinions when possible.

There are a number of ways you can use your community to inform your business. By posting polls asking consumers what they want to see more of or prefer, a brand can gain valuable information about what is important to a fanbase. That intel can then be used to create future content that will really move the needle and resonate.

If many fans are saying the same thing, it’s an opportunity to address a concern more broadly and should definitely provoke further thought. If a community manager is seeing the same thing over and over, take note. Chances are the issue is bigger than social media and extends to the brand as a whole; for instance, if there’s confusion or negative sentiment around a brand or a product, it’s likely not isolated to the digital realm.

Every brand is different, and correspondingly, every brand following is different. But taking the time to thoughtfully provide community management is good for brands. Add a personal or exclusive touch to give a fan social currency and let them know the brand cares. Think of people first, rather than the problem, when addressing concerns. Leverage the whole community to provide guiding insight and brand strategy. Your brand will be better for it.

Community Management

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Media

Google Adwords Launches “Ad Suggestions” Feature

Beginning April 30th, 2018, Google will be adding a feature called “ad suggestions” to certain AdWords accounts.

This feature is designed to automatically create paid search ad variations based off the account’s current ads. Once these ad suggestions have been auto-generated, advertisers will receive an alert within AdWords and via email. Advertisers will then have 14 days from the arrival of this notification to review, approve or remove the ad suggestions, after which they will be automatically enabled within the account.

What Are Ad Suggestions

Ad suggestions will be created based off content within the advertiser’s existing paid search ads and landing pages. They will have the ability to edit, pause or remove the ad suggestions at any point, though Google recommends waiting until the ads have generated enough impressions for appropriate confidence levels to be reached.

New accounts created after the official launch date will be automatically opted-in for ad suggestions, while suggested ads already active within an account will remain active even if the advertiser decides to eventually opt-out.

Why Did Google Add This New Feature

Google’s data suggests more ads per ad group can help improve performance:

“Research has shown that ad groups with 3 or more high-quality ads can get up to 5% to 15% more clicks or conversions than ad groups with only 1 ad, provided ad rotation has been optimized. The more ads you provide, the more options you’ll have to show the ideal message for each user search.”

Advertisers agree, but also understand a sweet spot exists. Ideally there are three to five ads within each ad group to ensure proper testing. Having more than that in the mix would likely produce inconclusive results or require a longer testing runway. As with most facets of paid search — it’s the quality of the ads that matters, not quantity.

Google’s thinking is an influx of ad copy variations will help push the industry to constantly A/B test. This will in turn ensure advertisers are using their best possible creative rotation, getting users to click on their ads as often as possible. The more people click on ads, the more revenue Google generates.

The Good News

With this new feature, Google will be providing the added value of machine learning-based messaging. Advertisers simply have to review the ad copy that’s created — keeping only what they want. Additionally, it isn’t necessary for the entire ad suggestion to be approved. Advertisers can pick and choose parts of the suggested ad, inserting those selected snippets into their current messaging to help their ads better resonate with their target audience.

Advertisers should view this as a value add to their current account features. Empower’s recommendation is to keep the ad suggestion feature live, but monitor it closely — ensuring no suggested ads are activated without being thoroughly reviewed and then approved.

The Watch-Outs

There may be advertisers for which this doesn’t make sense — ones with thousands of ad groups, or ones with inherently complex legal approvals. For advertisers like these, the ad approval process alone may make this new feature unusable. In such instances, our recommendation would be to opt-out. Google has noted though, they will only be providing ad suggestions for a small portion of advertisers, and those select advertisers may only see a few ad suggestions at a time per account. This mention makes it seem as though the number of ad suggestions created will be manageable, regardless of account size.

Additionally, all advertisers need to be cognizant of the messaging included in suggested ads before approving them. Most have legal/copyright guidelines to adhere to, standards and initiatives to follow, etc. that an external, automated process simply can’t account for.

Overall, the new ad suggestions feature seems like a worthwhile opt-in from a “test and learn” perspective, assuming time is set aside to properly manage the process. The big question is — can machine learning craft messaging in an automated — yet tailored — fashion that fits the individual needs and expectations of every advertiser? Automation is the obvious answer for huge, time-consuming tasks that require deep intelligence at an incredibly small scale (i.e. algorithmic bidding), but can it handle the delicate nuances normally associated with the written word? Further, can Google’s machine learning-generated ads convey that human element that still eludes most language processing applications? We’ll have to wait and see.

Google Search Search Marketing

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Marketing

Making Sense of the Home Landscape

The home category has always been a passion of mine. Since building my first home nearly 15 years ago, I’ve learned professionally and personally that the category is much like a roller coaster and it’s critical to keep an eye on what the trends are saying. I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by the Home Improvement Research Institute, better known in the industry as HIRI. And you may find the insights quite interesting.

Though it seems like yesterday, it’s been 10 years since the housing market plummeted. Over the course of the past decade, new construction starts went from a half million a year to over 1.3MM today. This has not only put builders back into the game, but it’s also driven up the cost of new homes. Not only are builders busier, but construction materials costs continue to increase over one percent a quarter: 5.6 percent from 2017 to 2018. Because of the increase in building costs, current national home sale closings have surpassed inventory in the sought-after $150K-$500K price range. The result is a seller’s market and an increase in available home inventory.

It has also resulted in a hockey-stick graph for remodeling with forecasted projections to continue through 2020. With all that said, this is where trends and forecasting play a critical role. The question is, is ‘fat and happy’ sustainable for the industry? According to a Metrostudy Housing study, key economic metrics are positive. Job growth is healthy and unemployment rates are at a 13-year low. IHS Markit and Macroeconomic Advisers state that crude oil prices will be restrained by rising US supply, wage gains will continue to outpace inflation and spending will continue to be up due to federal tax cuts; however, multiple sources at the HIRI conference stated that because of all of these reasons, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise the federal funds rate, negatively impacting mortgage rates. With an anticipated increase of more than one point, rates will rise to a range that we haven’t seen since before the housing crisis. So do increased mortgage rates plus limited housing inventory, plus higher costs equal a potential stall in the marketplace? Or, it could result in an even bigger bump in the home improvement category!

Who’s Driving the Category?

Availability to content has helped create more Do It Yourself-ers (DIY-ers), that are willing to tackle most projects in the home. According to Nielsen, landscaping, Interior wallpaper or paint, plumbing and flooring top the list for home improvement projects. Whether its cable networks like HGTV and DIY Network or online destinations like Houzz and Pinterest, there’s no shortage of ideas on how to make your home more attractive and to continue driving the category product sales.

Marketing in a Tumultuous Landscape

With marketing being driven and informed by a plethora of data, it’s easy to fall into a non-human approach to what we do. Gartner predicts that by 2020, people will have more conversations with bots than their spouse. Whether you believe that or not, it’s hard to ignore that phone interactions with most companies are primarily with a computer. Instead of trying to fight it, as marketers, we embrace it. We use data to better inform where and how to speak to a consumer. At the HIRI conference, Venveo spoke on three big shifts for brands and companies to grow awareness:

Conversation is the new lead
Value is the new currency
Community is king

A common theme in these shifts is that irrelevant one-way messaging is a thing of the past. Data-driven marketing equals quality consumers resulting in a better chance of short-term sales and long-term customer relationships.

Impact of E-Commerce on the Home Category

It’s no secret that e-commerce is changing how we live. Reviews, comparison pricing, one-click purchasing and home delivery are just a few ways how it’s simplified our lives. According to the NPD Group, Inc., the home improvement category saw a 4.6 percent increase in sales overall and a 33 percent increase in online sales. Smaller items and frequency-based products such as blinds, air filters and area rugs were the leaders in growth. Options like ‘Subscribe and Save’ with Amazon will continue to propel this category, especially among products like filters and scheduled maintenance products. Even in historical Do it For Me (DIFM) (Do It For Me) categories like flooring, consumers are beginning to purchase more modular, self-install products online, enjoying the benefit of install savings, flexibility with design and the advantage of ship-to-home. Omni-channel shopping is also a contributor to retailers needing to evolve their online shopping capabilities:

1-in-5 buyers shop in-store and online
8 –average number of purchases made in-store and online in the last six months
6x – Omni-channel buyers spend more than in-store only

It’s clear retailers like Home Depot have embraced this with their free ship-to-store option. But, in order to compete with Amazon, primary brick-and-mortar retailers will need to continue to evolve the value they bring their consumer and balance that with price and quality of the products they sell.

Summary

So, to recap HIRI’s presentation:

The home-improvement market is riding a wave right now
Increased mortgage rates and tight inventory could create problems in the near future
Leverage data to identify, quality and communicate with the right customer
Brands and retailers need to continue driving the value they bring their customers
Evolution is critical to be relevant

Account Service

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Media

Apple’s Purchase of Texture is About The Value of Direct Relationships

It’s been a busy news week for F.A.A.N.G., the coined moniker for the collective of the most popular tech stocks that includes Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill regarding data misappropriations, Amazon absorbed the President’s Twitter assault and Apple announced a key hire in Oliver Schusser to run Apple Music and oversee their international content; however, these stories are overshadowing an interesting acquisition of which marketers should pay close attention.

Apple, rather quietly, acquired the digital newsstand, Texture. Texture has been called the “Netflix of magazine publishing” because it has bundled together around 200 magazines to offer monthly subscribers digital access to for around $10 per month.“We are committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for users,” said Eddie Cue, Apple’s SVP of Internet Software & Services.

This is an interesting acquisition in three ways:

First, this acquisition reflects how a digitally native company like Apple found sustainable value in the print publishing business, proving, at least for now, that print still reigns supreme for reader engagement.

Secondly, as more publishers increase their exploration of direct monetization opportunities, Apple’s acquisition serves as a further endorsement that these strategies will prove more sustainable for media companies than relying too heavily on advertising revenue.

Finally, Apple is looking to keep pace with Amazon and Google and their respective subscription services, focused on establishing and maintaining constant connection to consumer and audience preferences. This article won’t focus on the subscription priority, but suffice it to say, subscription plays a huge role in why Apple is doing this.

Magazine Quality Has Never Diminished

The publishing industry has endured its fair share of negative press and doomsday headlines over the past decade. But there’s one area where magazines have remained virtually unscathed — their lasting quality in storytelling and photography. Even in the most tumultuous of market conditions for magazines, when all advertising seemed to be migrating online, they never sacrificed their product. Editors, publishers and sales reps alike have all stood behind their brands. Magazines have continued to produce stimulating stories married with beautiful photography on the interests and passions of millions of people.

You won’t find repurposed articles or stock images in the leading publications because they never lost sight of their mission to connect with their readers in a meaningful way. These print businesses simply couldn’t afford to compromise the quality of their product. That’s not to say they aren’t immune to cost cutting given their decline in revenue stream. But what has always differentiated a magazine experience is its ability to deeply and uniquely engage reader’s interests and passions.

Apple’s purchase of Texture reinforces that this rigor in reader engagement is more important than ever, and is the key to pivoting to more direct monetization strategies, and consequently, more sustainable business models. Digital-first publications have been too focused on volume and have lost focus on quality. It’s clear that consumers are willing to pay publishers directly for better content.

Long Live Print

Coming from the print director, the headline above may seem very self-serving. But Apple’s Texture acquisition lends tremendous credence in the value offered by the magazine-model for quality content production. Print circulation has certainly diminished, but most, if not all of it, can be tied to faltering at the newsstand. The number of loyal subscribers has virtually remained the same.

In fact, very few publications have lowered their monthly ratebase to account for the dip in single-copy sales because subscribers account for the majority of their readership. According to the MPA, the audience for print and digital magazines actually increased by 5.4 million in 2016. And in this digital era, printed magazines continue to launch successfully.

Hearst launched “The Pioneer Woman” from Food Network’s celebrity chef Ree Drummond. The initial print run sold out on newsstand so Hearst printed more copies to meet the marketplace demand. The same could be said of Meredith’s “The Magnolia Journal” from Chip and Joanna Gaines. The magazine is on its fifth ratebase increase since the premier issue in October 2016 and will reach 1.3 million readers each issue in 2018.

Print is no longer a significant, spontaneous purchase as it used to be. But print should not be viewed simply as a purchase of content. Print is a commitment by the reader to pursue passions and interests that have value well beyond the price of subscription.

Texture Incentivizes Trial

Texture’s subscription model provides consumers the option to browse available magazine choices to find things they like, and things they didn’t know existed. Readers have the ability to encounter a selection of curated content and can choose how and what they consume.

According to Texture CEO John Loughlin, the average new subscriber typically reads four to six of the 200 titles offered per month. But within six months, that number spikes to eight to 12, and overall time spent in the app expands by 60 percent.

This opens the door for magazines to acquire new subscribers, some of whom may not have any previous exposure to the brand. Texture should help print publishers expand their subscriber bases, further accelerating the pursuit of direct monetization. Texture stands to be another beacon for the publishing industry to pursue quality.

What Should Marketing Take Away?

Print, more than any other medium, may hold the most potential for relationship marketing; however, most marketers may miss seeing this because they’re stuck in an advertising mindset, thinking first to violate the reader’s space in order to derive value from the medium.

That misses the point entirely.

As the print-publishing business doubles-down on quality content, relying less on advertising revenue, and as marketers ratchet up their investments in content, it is now time that marketers rethink their relationship with print. Print may be the best medium for brands to sustain the attention from their best audiences to drive brand loyalty.

Content Marketing Out-of-Home Print

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Media

Visual Search: The Big Picture

There’s a myth out there that proclaims humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. It’s since been refuted, but still points to the basic truth that images are more easily digestible than text.

We’re surrounded by imagery. It’s pervasive in every facet of our lives. It’s only natural to want to learn as much as we can about the world around us from the most readily available and easily discernable stimuli. Visual search – a means of connecting real-life imagery with online information to help us better understand the physical world – lends itself to this inherent need.

Imagery as a Search Mechanism

The beginnings of visual search stretch all the way back to 2008 with the introduction of reverse image search engines. What set these apart was their ability to conduct searches via image recognition, using an image to locate similar imagery on the internet instead of keywords and metadata. Google would introduce reverse image search functionality based on mathematical modeling in 2011, but not before rolling out a true precursor to visual search two years earlier with Google Goggles.

Going Beyond Image Recognition

Google Goggles was an image recognition app – officially killed a few months ago – that was able to recognize imagery and landmarks via pictures taken on mobile devices. Once the image was recognized, the app could then bring up relevant information about it. An incredibly novel idea at the time, and one that would pave the way for visual search’s evolution.

Despite its ingenuity, better options like CamFind would soon become available that would signal the eventual demise of Goggles. Unquestionably, though, these tools were ushering in a new era, one where visual search technology extends beyond basic image recognition by weaving into our daily lives.

Accessing Your Point of View

Google Glass, although considered a quasi-failure, is another trailblazing milestone in visual search. It introduced many to the idea of tech that can see what you see. To accomplish this, it integrated with a visual search app developed by the people behind the CamFind app. The app allowed Google Glass to actually take in the world around the user. The possibilities, if fully realized, could have been limitless. Wearable, intelligent technology that can recognize, interpret and categorize what’s in your field of vision – that is next level stuff.

In reality, Google Glass came just a few generations (product, not human) early. Like Apple’s Newton, which gave way to the PDA and eventually the iPhone, Google Glass could be viewed in a positive light for its influence on future technology. A nostalgic misstep that was ahead of its time, but behind in adoption. One that would eventually pave the way for bigger, better things.

Visual Search and the Physical World

For the longest time, Google and other search engines had been relegated to staring directly at us. Waiting for a query. A command. Something to answer or fetch. The idea of letting a search engine or machine extend beyond the limits of the screen and into the physical world without waiting for human interaction was just a pipe dream.

The version of visual search we know today – rooted in tools like Google Goggles, Glass and CamFind – will allow the eventual expansion beyond what we allow machines to search for. Soon, artificial intelligence and machine learning will bring us information before we’re even aware we need it.

Current Competitive Landscape

Fast forward to the more recent technological advances in visual search. The focus remains on Google, but additional high-powered entrants like Bing, ASOS, eBay, Amazon and Pinterest have jumped into the mix.

All of these players have a major stake in the game. They’re all vying to create the technology that turns the entire world into one giant retail shelf. From a commerce perspective, that’s the strongest allure of visual search. It puts a for sale sign on almost everything you can point your phone at. It’s a tool that can entice the purchase of those in the moment, impulse-heavy items that just as easily could have gone unpurchased.

That’s the weight visual search carries for the tech giants. It’s the retail equivalent of a Craigslist missed connection, except on a global scale and nowhere near as creepy. It allows users to more readily act on the impulse to buy, as opposed to letting the opportunity pass by.

Where Each Player Stands

When it comes to offerings, it’s still a point-at-something-and-see-what-pops-up approach, the promise being that the tech will provide results that are as similar as possible to what you’re trying to find.

ASOS – an online fashion and cosmetic retailer – is extremely product focused. Their Style Match visual search tool functions similarly to the aforementioned reverse image search engines by matching static images to their image catalog. It can match the pattern, color and type of clothing depicted in the image and make match recommendations from there. Earlier this year they boasted 85,000 items, noting upwards of 5,000 items were being added on a weekly basis. ASOS does have its limitations; its matching capabilities only extend as far as its product catalog does.

Pinterest and eBay have created a similar functionality, with Pinterest integrating their visual tech, known as Lens, into Target’s retail offering last year. eBay’s Find It On eBay feature allows users to upload a photo or click their Find It On eBay button while visiting other sites. Bing has been investing heavily in its visual capabilities over the last few years, recently announcing an updated version that lets you snap a photo to get information or additional links. Pinterest, eBay and Bing’s visual search tools extend beyond their own platforms, but none have the capacity to recognize real-time imagery.

Google Lens Stands Alone

This quote from Google’s blog sums up their offering’s main differentiator in visual search. It’s the window into your physical world. With Google Lens, users can point their device at an image, object, text, barcode and more and the tech will serve up information on the item in question in real-time. By employing deep, machine-based learning, Google is able to translate the physical world into an online environment. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence continues to improve the system as its exposure to content increases.

While the technology itself is exciting, its applications for everyday usage give it true value. It’s the type of offering that can become an engrained, trusted tool for the average consumer rather quickly. The potential benefits extend well beyond the shopping cart, which is a noteworthy win-win for both the users and developers of the tech.

“Lens now works in real time. It’s able to proactively surface information instantly—and anchor it to the things you see. Now you’ll be able to browse the world around you, just by pointing your camera.”

So is Visual Search the Next Big Thing?

There have been a lot of “next big thing” contenders in the search industry over the past couple years. There was the goal of providing answers instead of results, the inclusion of audience-based buying data, a heavier focus on user-level context, and the rise of voice search (which we covered a few months ago). At one point, all of these have been hailed as the next evolution of search.

But the truth is, instead of overthrowing the current process, they’ve been incorporated into what we now know as the evolving search landscape. They’ve formed an amalgam of approaches and tactics that have helped significantly bolster search and the methodology behind it.

Visual search will be no different. It will serve as an added, highly interactive layer that will fold into the current search ecosystem. It won’t signal the end of keywords, as many have predicted, as there are still too many elements visual and voice search can’t account for yet. Visual and voice, however, will continue to evolve into more prominent roles in the search fold.

The Omniscient Watcher

Visual search is just beginning to bring aspects of its environment into the equation. The eventual goal will likely be devices that are always interpreting their surroundings. Gone will be the days where they’re waiting for us to engage them. This requires a device that could share the user’s point of view and constantly interprets the same visual stimuli and cues, all while formulating answers to potential questions before they even arise.

Imagine a person walking down a crowded street when a new car drives by and catches their eye. Before they could recognize the make, the device would be compiling all pertinent information and tailoring what it presents – possibly via paid ad – to the user. The information would be comprehensive. Gas mileage, safety ratings, seating capacity, average local purchase price, etc.

It’s the idea of visual search as an omniscient watcher. One that’s waiting in the wings to provide answers to questions prompted by external stimuli. To some, this may be the very definition of invasive tech. But to others, it’s something that can change how we view the world on a daily basis. It can interact, educate and inspire awe all at the same time.

Google Programmatic Search

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Media

Why You Need Attribution at The Center of Your Media Plan

One of the hardest questions for any marketer to answer is: How should I spend that next marketing dollar? Whether you’re planning a full-year campaign or supplementing your current execution, there are many factors to consider.

The availability of data, attribution products and methodologies has grown significantly in recent years, and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate all of the options. There are two primary products we offer clients that empower them to answer that key question:

Marketing Mix Modeling

For cross-channel strategic level insight, marketing mix modeling is the best tool for the job.

Empower offers marketing mix solutions with robust simulation capabilities that allow our clients to run what-if scenarios and examine the impact of diminishing returns all at a fraction of the price of traditional MMM vendors.

Additionally, our tight combination of analytics, strategy, and integration teams allows us to quickly and dynamically identify opportunities and capitalize on model driven insights.

Marketing mix models are relatively easy to implement on the client side. In 2018, Empower has built and implemented marketing mix models for clients of sizes ranging from one store to 1,000+. Model driven insights have resulted millions of dollars of incremental revenue for Empower clients.

TV Attribution

TV attribution has grown in popularity in recent years since the introduction of smart TVs.

At Empower, we offer an in-house fractional TV attribution product that allows us to provide airing level web and offline KPI attribution to clients. Additionally, we partner with world class TV attribution providers like iSpot TV.

These solutions allow us to provide attribution at the airing level for our client’s TV campaigns and can be executed against digital or offline conversions. Tying those attribution results to past spend allows us to optimize and supplement campaigns at a granular level that was previously only possible in the digital space.

Optimise Your Media Mix

Both of these products will make your brand smarter and give you insight into both how your marketing has performed in the past and how you should spend that next dollar for the future. Combining them provides an even more insightful view of marketing performance and efficiency. Pairing powerful analytics with world-class integration and strategy teams allows Empower clients to maximize the impact and efficiency of every marketing dollar.

Attribution Intelligence

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Media

Get Ready for 5G

There was once a time when simply accessing the Internet on a mobile phone was a big deal.

Since then, accessing the web from our devices has become as necessary to quenching our insatiable attention spans as oxygen is to our bloodstream. We can’t fathom waiting rooms at the doctor’s, lines at Starbucks or even idle time at the dinner table without feasting our eyes on mobile content. Soon, this content will be available at quicker speeds and crisper quality than ever before as the wireless networks begin rolling out 5G service.

What is 5G?

Right now, we inhabit a 4G world. The “G” is indicative of “generation,” which helps classify the internet capabilities of your mobile network. Along with a number of technical specifications determined by the International Telecommunications Union, 4G is characterized by attaining certain data speeds. In other words, our mobile internet is fast, but it could be a generation faster.

That’s where 5G comes in. Current estimates suggest the next generation of mobile will clock in anywhere between 100-1000 times faster than the standard 4G pace. Faster speeds will also yield better quality video and sound; streaming with incredible ease instead of suffering through buffer interruptus.

Improved connectivity to smart devices, minimal latency, and untapped potential are the other key expectations of the 5G evolution.

5G is Fast, But How Fast Will it Arrive?

5G won’t be widely available until 2020 or beyond, but the major mobile players – Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile – have plans to roll out the technology piecemeal.

A slew of metropolitan areas like Chicago, Houston and Atlanta will be the first to access 5G across most networks before the full rollout hits.

Advertising Implications

Marketers should be proactive about the upcoming changes. Use this time to game plan and get ahead, so you can hit the ground running once the new generation arrives. The focus should be on taking your digital innovation to the next level because 5G will be a gamechanger.

At the bare minimum, the upgrades will result in more opportunities for advertisers to reach their targets as a faster, more accessible connection means screen time should increase across the board.

As the mobile landscape continues to shift, we predict video usage to rise alongside more widely adapted virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences. 5G’s heightened capabilities make these great advertising opportunities and, more importantly, create the potential for unique, previously unthought of digital experiences.

Ultimately, the smoother online experience and amplified internet usage should also bring in more opportunities for data collection. While this will be a boon for data-savvy marketers, it’ll likely feed the need for additional data regulation as well.

Since the switch to 5G will happen in phases, there will be a window of time where advertisers need to straddle the fence. Be fearless, be bold, but consider this as you roll out new initiatives and slowly phase out the older ones.

5G Creative Media Mobile Technology

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(Not) Another GDPR Article

This is not another “what it is” or “checklist” for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Plenty of that content has been produced already and Empower has curated some of the best that we’ve seen here for easy reference.

It’s also important to note that Empower doesn’t collect or store personally identifiable information (PII) on behalf of our clients in any capacity. In order to deliver mass-personalized media solutions, we leverage a network of ad tech partners, all of which are working towards GDPR compliance.

Even though GDPR is an EU regulation, the perfect storm appears to be brewing, which has the potential to bring GDPR (and more, e-privacy?) to the U.S. much quicker than anyone would have thought. The recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle is not only the latest in a long line of data blunders, it may have finally pushed us beyond the tipping point. Facebook has notified advertisers that they will be shutting down Partner Categories (their targeting solution that enables third-party data providers to offer their data directly on Facebook) and Mark Zuckerberg has a date with Congress.

So what does marketing look like in a post third-party data world? OK, that’s admittedly a stretch. It’s highly unlikely that third-party data will go away completely. In fact, this may be just the thing the industry needs to clean up its act. Though scale will surely suffer from shifting to opt-in data collection, the quality should increase. There are a few interesting ideas out there already that will give consumers more control and also benefit in return for sharing their data.

If you’re playing buzzword bingo, blockchain-based digital advertising solutions like Liberdy and BasicAttentionToken are incentivizing consumers to share their data with advertisers as part of a token economy. Only time will tell if these services will have the desired effect of a data relationship that is mutually beneficial to consumers and advertisers.

But just when you didn’t think first-party data could be any more valuable, BAM! Scale has always been the challenge here, so advertisers need to double down on efforts to collect their own data. Pixel that website. Capture that email address. Deploy that SDK in your mobile app. Of course, we encourage you to do so in compliance with GDPR in anticipation that at least some of those restrictions will become a reality here sooner than later.

Second-party data also becomes more valuable. Whether it’s a one-to-one relationship, private marketplace facilitated by a data management platform (DMP) or second-party data at scale, the combination of accuracy and scale becomes an increasingly important component of an audience strategy, if third-party data becomes a scarce resource.

Marketers can also shift more ad dollars into contextual targeting to offset the impact of the loss of behavioral targeting via third-party data providers. Consistently a top performer in our campaigns, we’ll have to keep an eye on this as increased demand will drive up the CPMs for endemic media placements.

Preparing for compliance to GDPR, e-privacy and whatever else comes next is one thing. Identifying alternative solutions to maintain marketing campaign performance is another. But we should also strive to shift the paradigm that got us into this predicament in the first place.

Ask not what their data can do for you. Ask how their data can be used to serve the people that created it.

Would a person, not a consumer, think it’s appropriate that you have access to their data? How can this data be used to improve an experience for that person? Humanizing your data by forcing yourself to realize that there are always real people who created it. That will not only help keep you on the right side of an ongoing ethical debate, it may even enable you to think about marketing efforts in a whole new way. And that’s a win-win.

GDPR Content for Reference:

https://www.twobirds.com/~/media/pdfs/gdpr-pdfs/bird–bird–guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation.pdf?la=en
http://www.ana.net/content/show/id/advocacy-general-data-protection-regulation
https://ico.org.uk/media/1624219/preparing-for-the-gdpr-12-steps.pdf

GDPR Partner Documents

https://www.adobe.com/privacy/general-data-protection-regulation.html
https://lotame.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#6000000074w7/a/f2000000PaRo/BUW1wOzSSFmgCQUns3VVuzID1TzSDuDptAM5mYiIMA4
https://www.acxiom.com/what-we-are-thinking/gdpr/
https://liveramp.com/eu-gdpr-2018-general-data-protection-regulation/
https://advertising.amazon.com/ad-specs/en/policy/gdpr?ref_=blog-inpage
https://www.blog.google/topics/google-europe/gdpr-europe-data-protection-rules/
http://www.flashtalking.com/gdpr/
https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/about/events/gdpr.html

Intelligence

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Empower’s SXSW 2019 Cheat Sheet

Last week, Empower sent a crew down south to Austin, Texas for the SXSW 2019 Conference.

Our team included: Josh Flynn: Senior Director, Word of Mouth Marketing. Katie Ross: Senior Manager, Word of Mouth Marketing. Leigh-Ann Bortz: Associate Director, Social. Chris Ruberg: Senior Specialist, Social. Allie Snyder: Specialist, Digital Media. Evan Dulaney: Jr. Copywriter, co-host of Breakfast First. Andrea Book: Associate Designer, co-host of Breakfast First. After a week of talks, tech and tacos, here’s what we came away with:

One Thing You Can’t Wait To Share With Clients

Dulaney: As one of the “podcast people” here at Empower, I want to emphasize the best advice from Gimlet co-founder Matt Lieber regarding placing ads in a podcast: Ads should feel like they’re incremental to the listening experience. Don’t just throw ad money at podcasts because it’s the new hot thing. Put time and thought into producing ads and integrations that listeners will actually want to hear.

Flynn: How brands such as Lyft, AirBnB and Patagonia are navigating the political and social challenges where consumers expect corporations to have a position. The whole organization has to be on board – not just one department’s responsibility. “It shouldn’t feel like something you have to do.”

Book: Oh man! There’s opportunity for your consumers to PAY to get content from your brand. Some brands have taken the initiative to create editorial content that their consumers pay for. For example, Casper has the magazine “Wooli,” which has content surrounding better sleep, while Airbnb came out with a publication that celebrates humanity through travel. Brands can elevate themselves way higher than the products they offer.

Bortz: Facebook Pixel Sharing Opportunity. This allows us to partner with publishers on Facebook instead of looking into a black box when it comes to conversions on webpages that are not owned by the brand. Soon, we’ll be able to have a more holistic view into valuable actions on publisher pages. For clients that heavily rely on conversion-based metrics, this will certainly be a game changer.

Snyder: Reminding brands that consumer emotional response drives behavior. Our messaging needs to be clear and elicit emotion. To really emphasize this, the CEO of Canvs AI wants to start buying media on a cost per emotion versus a cost per impression.

Ross: Leigh-Ann and Chris uncovered some great learnings from their time with Facebook that apply to our influencer work that I can’t wait to test. The influencer space within Facebook is finally advancing and will take identification and tracking to the next level. 🙌

Ruberg: Being effective utilizing Facebook Messenger. There are some simple activations that can identify hand raisers for upcoming promotions who can later be targeted with offers. There are more in-depth activations that can assist with setting up appointments or utilizing QR codes to create unique, customizable experiences.

Most Reassuring Thing You’ve Heard

Ross: So many companies want to become “lifestyle brands,” but are afraid to piss people off. We preach that in order to become a lifestyle brand, you have to have a life – an authentic, genuine personality that is cohesive across all marketing efforts. Patagonia, Nike, Taco Bell – they all have a voice and take stances to make themselves relatable. As humans, we learn to accept that we can’t please everyone, and brands need to do the same. You can’t become a “lifestyle” brand without having conviction and confidence in your story and what you believe as a company. This reinforced what we at Empower believe – plant the damn flag and make it personal, man!

Snyder: Many speakers stressed the importance of picking one KPI. We can’t solve for everything within one campaign, so you have to ask yourself, “What is the most important metric?” There are more and more data points available, so you must make sure you’re capturing data for the right reason based on your one goal. This will help avoid data overload.

Ruberg: Data is driving everything we do. We look at data holistically and make the majority of our optimization and strategy decisions based on data. One speaker mentioned many marketers just use data to influence one insight or recommendation and then toss it. We analyze throughout campaigns, quarters, and years to discover any trends that will inform our decision making.

Flynn: Everything with influencer! Went to multiple sessions and heard “Build relationships,” “Find the right match,” “Don’t look at followers,” “Find and celebrate your advocates,” and “Collaborate, don’t dictate.”

Book: We’ve been ahead of the curve when it comes to our stance on authenticity and transparency. Amanda Clark, Senior VP at Taco Bell, talked about the importance of remaining true to your brand. While consumers were growing more focused on ingredients, Taco Bell switched to free-range chicken and cage-free eggs, but never swayed from their “Mexican-inspired” beefy, cheesy goodness that keeps their audience coming back.

Bortz: It was cool to see the Facebook’s best practice dashboard. When they pulled up Empowers dashboard, we were at 96% best practice utilization. Chris and I were patting ourselves on the back.

Dulaney: There was plenty of talk around authenticity and empathy when it comes to storytelling. This has already been at the forefront of Empower’s thinking, whether it’s the hero’s journey or consumer’s journey, in both creative and media.

Best New Thing You Heard

Flynn: 95% of our decisions are made on auto-pilot with emotions influencing 70% of our decisions as well. We, as humans, are not as rational and mindful as we think we are.

Ruberg: Building off Josh’s stat, we scroll through 300 feet of content each day, while making about 35,000 decisions each day, most on auto-pilot.

Book: Robert Capps of Godfrey Dadich Partners led a session called “Can Brands Be Authentic Journalists?” He took a very interesting approach to presenting content to consumers by framing it as “what does my consumer want from me?” as opposed to “what do I want to give to my consumer?”

Bortz: We do more right than we give ourselves credit for. Transparency, authenticity and data-driven insights were common themes throughout the week, all of which are things Empower preaches daily. More often than not, I found myself “yes-and’ing” to what speakers were talking about.

Ross: I loved hearing about the future of technology in live event spaces like Staples Center. With things like increasing lens intelligence, 5G and ARCloud disrupting how we live our lives – the tech of tomorrow will form a digital stage on top of real life for marketers to play with.

Snyder: I learned about an organization, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), which is a group of leading content providers, media agencies and advertisers. This group is on the forefront of innovation in audience measurement for television and cross-platform media. Their initiatives are great resources for my day-to-day work, so I’m excited to use them as a resource moving forward.

Most Inspirational Session

Flynn: Same thing that I want to share with clients. “Brand: The New Political Reality.” They were all doing things that didn’t feel like the boardroom term of “Corporate Social Responsibility”. They were legitimately passionate about everything involved and how they could make the world better and not just squeeze out more revenue.

Book: Evan and I went to a podcast recording of Roy Wood Jr. of The Daily Show speaking about his creative process. He emphasized finding what separates you from your competitors, or in his case, other comedians. When Wood Jr. was turned down for a spot on a BET comedy show, he religiously watched the show and kept tabs on the subject matter of each segment. He found the gaps of what wasn’t being discussed to see where he could capitalize by being different. His methodology is awe-inspiring and can easily be applied to the work we do at Empower.

Snyder: “Drowning in Data, Starving for Insights” was my favorite session. The speakers stressed the importance of combining experiential data with emotional data. They helped us take a step back and allow us to question how we are using specific data to target our consumers.

Ruberg: Kai Wright’s “Follow the Feeling: Creating Brand Value” session was amazing and insightful. Wright is extremely smart and presented a variety of unique ways to look at things like advertising, branding, emotion, and audio. He detailed how using buzzwords is actually hurting the message we try to get across to clients. If they cannot (literally) draw the word we are saying, then they do not understand it.

Bortz: Facebook Messenger School. It was awesome to see it come to life in a way that made sense, which is not something I often see. More times than not advertisers tend to force it. This was different.

Ross: “Why Women are Building the Brands We’ve Always Wanted.” There were a couple panels that touched on the importance of diversity of thought, but this was my favorite. Did you know that over 50% of male-consumed products are purchased by women, and this percentage is growing each year? Yet, only 28% of CMO’s are female. The impact women are having on marketing is what’s helping brands succeed, and representation in the C-Suite is helping to forge a new frontier for brands to prioritize being open, real and empathetic. To women in marketing, “rise up and reach back.”

Dulaney: Susan Fowler, the brave whistleblower from Uber who is now a staff editor for the New York Times, gave a stirring keynote recounting the last two years of her life. She left the stage with one resounding message for companies, politicians, and every walk of life: “Be better.”

Coolest Experiencial Execution

Dulaney: The Daily Show’s Trump Presidential Twitter Library. Absolutely marvelous and hilarious execution.

Snyder: The whole experience reminded me of being at college orientation. So many people walking around (and seeming lost most of the time), the streets were shut down, and having to eat granola bars for lunch because our time in between sessions was almost non-existent.

Flynn: Surprisingly, the Real Beauty house was the most engaging. Instead of talking about what services they did, they allowed people to experience them from Botox to HydraFacials (which I experienced) and gave you something to actually talk about to your community. Everything else was just a wrap of a house that 3 other brands would do the same week.

Book: The Lululemon #SweatLife House. They outfitted a house with AstroTurf that routinely had different instructors putting on yoga and meditation sessions. They also offered guests a turn at their vending machine that was activated when the user tweeted they were at the #SweatLife House. The vending machine alone must have gained so many impressions.

Ross: One that comes to mind is Amazon Prime’s Good Omens activation, where several teams of actors grew the footprint throughout the conference in a cohesive and fun event.

Ruberg: The Good Omens experience was awesome. Seeing their experience come to life over the course of a few days was really cool.

Bortz: The Amazon Prime Good Omens experience. By far the most in depth and had dogs!

Best Eat in Austin

Snyder: Magnolia Café. Mag Mud Queso is amazing. I actually had queso with every meal. No shame.

Dulaney: Travel tip: When you first arrive in a new city, Uber Pool from the airport. Occasionally you’ll meet locals who know all the best spots. My Uber Pool companion nailed each recommendation, but nothing beat her Summer Moon Café suggestion. Their moon milk is out of this world.

Ross: MOON. MILK. Google it.

Book: The blueberry pie from Magnolia Café knocked my socks off! So much so, I took a slice with me through airport security. A big thank you to Emily from our Uber pool for all of the recommendations!

Flynn: Gus’s Fried Chicken.

Ruberg: Gus’s. Hands down. Amazing Mac n’ Cheese and accidentally had fried okra which was awesome. The freshest chicken I’ve ever had

Bortz: Gus’s Fried Chicken for sure.

Bird Scooter Review

Flynn: Enjoyed it! But they should absolutely be outlawed

Ruberg: Terrifying but cool. Should definitely be illegal.

Snyder: First time bird rider! Definitely the best way to get around town! But, on my third ride, I almost ran into Josh and saw my life flash before my eyes. After that episode, I got around town on foot…

Bortz: Experience on Bird Scooter: 9/10 (very fun, very scared, very dangerous). Thrill factor: 12/10. Nothing like turning out in front of three lanes of traffic and living to tell the story.

Dulaney: I logged almost 90 minutes on Bird Scooters at SXSW. I am one with the scooter.

Book: I used Lime for the first time, and it was terrifying. However, I made it to my final destination in one piece and made Evan take a picture of me to prove it.

Ross: 10/10 would Bird again. Evan was my Bird trainer and made sure I didn’t die – even after we shifted over three lanes of traffic on a bridge…

Event SXSW

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