Marketers Studio (soon to be Serial Marketer)

How Newton's Third Law Applies to SXSW

originally published in Advertising Age

To understand what happened at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year, pick up a physics textbook. Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion can be considered the primary law of the festival, and of the entire advertising industry: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

The law can explain practically every cultural phenomenon. It predicts how the rise of gyms and low-calorie foods coincided with the spike in obesity, and how we're in the heyday of both secularism and religious fundamentalism. Across the media, marketing and technology fields, polar-opposite trends keep surfacing, and five of these themes were pronounced during SXSW.

1. The long and short of content marketing. During a session where I spoke at German Haus, there was some debate about content best practices. Should marketers maintain an editorial calendar across platforms, or should they nimbly co-opt what consumers post about their products and category? Do consumers prefer media with high or low production value? Do people prefer shorter or longer content? I brought up Newton's Third Law during the session. A planned, beautifully shot five-minute video can be just as successful as a spontaneous, grainy, ten-second short. Other factors are more critical, such as the impact of the story, how well it fits with the channels where it runs, and the strategy to ensure the message reaches the right audience. Meanwhile, content will keep getting longer and shorter, richer and simpler, and more planned and spontaneous.

2. Multi-purpose vs single-purpose. Visa's startup competition at its Everywhere Lounge, run in conjunction with Kite, presented two different types of hardware startups. One was Knocki, a device that can be placed discreetly on or under a surface, and anyone can program it to perform various digital tasks that are triggered by knocking on the surface. It takes a page from If This Then That: If you tap it twice, then it will turn on the lights, and knocking three times will text a preset message to your spouse.

A competing startup was Hiku, a small device that uses voice activation or a barcode scanner to add groceries to your shopping list. Knocki can do anything, and its optimal use case may vary across its customer base. Hiku can only do one thing; it's taking a feature of the Amazon Echo and turning it into a standalone product. Simplicity and complexity are both proliferating with technology. Facebook, for example, has the Moments app that is only for privately sharing batches of photos with friends, while it is simultaneously turning Messenger into a platform that can be used for virtual assistants, games, shopping and possibilities that have yet to be imagined.

3. The many faces of influencers.When looking at the escalation of interest in reaching influencers, it's unlikely that there will be a totally opposite reaction where marketers seek people who are non-influential. Instead, marketers will find themselves shifting interests among many different kinds of influencers: 1) celebrities with massive reach but little organic connection to a given brand; 2) well-known content creators typically famous within a certain platform; 3) lesser-known people who have established credibility around their areas of expertise; 4) nominally influential people who have above-average engagement from their audiences and can be packaged together to achieve scale; 5) customers who may not have measurable reach but can become advocates and influence their peers; and 6) employees who can promote their organization's messages.

4. Virtual reality vs. reality. The opposite of Google Cardboard isn't Oculus Rift. No, the opposite of virtual reality is reality. As virtual reality becomes more popular, so will real reality. It's akin to why there's now cultural cachet in putting your phone away. The deeper that we get drawn into technology, the more we crave in-person interactions. There could be ramifications for other forms of media consumption should virtual reality usage become a standard part of one's daily life. If people find themselves too immersed and cut off from the real world, then they may look to overcompensate in minimizing usage of other media. Perhaps instead of watching two football games on Sunday in virtual reality, someone will watch much of one game in VR and then forsake watching the other at all. This in turn can have unpredictable effects on ad inventory, though benefits of VR's immersive ads could counter inventory decreases.

13 Things to Know about the Alpha Generation

originally published in Ad Age

Members of the Alpha Generation, on the heels of Generation Z, are only 0 to 2 years old today. They account for absolutely no purchasing power. But they will soon take over the world -- because that's what subsequent generations supposedly do.

I have spent thousands of hours observing one member of the Alpha Generation, and I have done meticulous ethnographic research on her peers in playdates, at family gatherings, and at the cutest baby ballet classes ever. Here, for the first time, I am publishing critical insights about the Alpha Generation -- dubbed "alphers" to ensure that they forever resent their forebears.

1. They hate the sharing economy. Anyone you meet in the Alpha Generation is likely to be decidedly anti-sharing. In fact, ethnographies have revealed that not a single member of this generation wants to share anything. That's good news for marketers: Ownership is back. The more verbal among this generation may not even be able to say the word "share," but they are likely to shout utterances such as, "Mine!" and "All mine!"

2. They are very mobile, except when they're stationary. Those in the trailing cohort of Generation Alpha, particularly those 0 to 6 months, tend not to be mobile at all. They just sit there.

3. They don't care about privacy. This is exemplified by their strange habit of always trying to take off their clothes, or at least a single sock. Building on the narcissistic tendencies of millennials and centennials, alphers are extreme exhibitionists.

4. They don't play by the rules. Want to play chess with them? Forget it -- they'll eat your rook. Want them to color within the lines? They'll break your crayon. Want them to watch your 30-second pre-roll spot before your video loads? They will come to your office, take off their diapers, and pee all over your stand-up desk until you accept that they're the ones in control now.

5. They break free of any boundaries. Just try to restrain them in any way. Whether you're putting them in a diaper, swaddling blanket, snowsuit, high chair or car seat, alphers will find a way to get out of it.

6. Full-fat, organic dairy is in. Don't buy them skim milk. They know that decades-old spurious research on saturated fat led to nutrition guidelines that spurred the obesity epidemic. They want their dairy real, and fresh -- with many in the younger Alpha Generation cohort preferring to drink mother's milk right from the source. This trend has been documented in literally every country.

7. Carbs are in, too. Crackers are huge. Cookies go over well. Pasta, rice, cereal and vitamin-fortified puffs are all staples. Many are practically addicted to macaroni and cheese. Maybe there's something to it, as alphers are said to have the longest life expectancy of any cohort yet. We should all be on the AG diet.

8. They eschew organized religion. When participating in any kind of formalized worship, alphers are inclined to scream or shout so loud that they must be taken outside, or conversely they will sleep through an entire service. If such atheistic tendencies hold true into adulthood, it could drastically alter the presidential elections of 2032 and beyond.

9. They are reinventing wearables. The Alpha Generation prefers low-tech wearables. Everyone in this cohort from about six months and up tends to wear milk, Cheerios, peas, crackers or noodles on every single part of their body any time they attempt to eat. Additionally, they love wearing dirt, stickers, blankets, crayon marks, their parents' shoes and jewelry, and other accessories not typically spotted on Milan's runways.

10. What's better than touchscreens? Tastescreens.Generation Z, millennials, and even boomers fell in love with touchscreens. Alphers -- avant garde pioneers that they are -- try to operate devices via their sense of taste. They will lick or attempt to ingest any and all technologies, including analog devices such as books. Unfortunately, product manufacturers have yet to equip their products with taste sensors to appeal to alphers' preferences, so this presents a market opportunity.

11. They trade binge-watching for cringe-watching.Remember how you spent all weekend watching the latest season of "Fargo" or "House of Cards" because you couldn't wait to see what happened next? Then you're clearly not an alpher. Instead, older alphers expressing their media preferences want to experience the last thing they watched over and over and over. This applies to music, too. No matter how much you love Adele's "Hello," playing it 500 times in a row is the kind of torture the military would inflict on a modern-day Noriega. And alphers inflict this punishment on their caregivers every single day.

12. They live in the moment. They have little sense of the past and no concept of the future. They want everything now. Goodbye, YOLO ("you only live once") and FOMO ("fear of missing out"); hello, NOTOMO ("no tomorrow") and GITMOE ("give it to me -- or else").

13. They're constantly changing. It's hard enough targeting this cohort, given the differences between leading and trailing alphers. What's worse is that they're changing all the time. By the time you complete a creative brief, they're exhibiting new behaviors. This is proving so daunting that some brands, such as those in the spirits category, plan to wait two decades to even try to reach them. That may sound extreme, but alphers have a way of vexing even the most seasoned marketers.

Two New Bylines on Content Marketing and LinkedIn Marketing

There's no wintry slowdown here - which is fitting, since it doesn't feel like winter.

In case you're curious, I've got two new bylines that were published over the past week.

In Adweek, I published my first byline there. I don't expect to make it a habit, but the idea for it came up a few months ago during a Twitter chat (I sometimes treat #adweekchat as a competitive sport), and the story just ran. As an avid Adweek reader, just being published there is a thrill. The story is about 8 Ways You Should Be Using LinkedIn, But Probably Aren't. For instance, here's number 2:

Add Projects to your profile: Perhaps there's a campaign you worked on, whose credits already appear publicly in an outlet such as Adweek, or maybe you've collaborated on a research report or a corporate social responsibility program. Add these to the underutilized Projects field on your profile and tag others who contributed. Given that this is public and part of your own profile, make sure it's work that you were directly involved with and not just something your company did.

Head to Adweek to read all the rest.

Over at Commpro, I discuss how 2016 will be a year of reckoning for branded content. It recaps some of the major developments in 2015:

Over the past year, ad blocking threatened publishers as widespread consumer adoption wiped out billions of dollars’ worth of advertising impressions. The rise of native advertising has assuaged some of the bleeding, but a lot of what’s known as native advertising is easily blocked by browser and mobile plug-ins, and the Federal Trade Commission is now on the lookout for cases of marketers deceiving consumers through such ads. Publishers and marketers alike have coincidentally birthed a remedy to ad blocking: branded content.

Yet content marketing isn't quite the panacea some are hoping for. This piece goes into why. I'll also be discussing some of these issues during an upcoming webinar with Chute; stay tuned for details or follow their blog. 

Happy New Year one and all; thanks for the readership this year, and I look forward to the interactions ahead in 2016. 

Why 2016 Won't be the Year of VR

To close out the year, I started writing a post about what won't happen in 2016. All my favorite subjects centered on virtual reality. The column below originally ran in Ad Age. 

Reality Check: 2016 Won't Be the Year of VR

10 Reasons Why Marketers Can't March Blindly Into Virtual Reality

If 2015 was the year in which mainstream marketers started caring about virtual reality, then in 2016, will VR become a budget line item? It's unlikely. Marketers' reality doesn't move at the speed of virtual reality. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Goodbye, PR VR gravy train. One of the reasons why marketers have taken notice of VR is the public relations value of first-mover campaigns. In 2015, VR meant PR. In 2016, the PR hype curve will tumble downward as the press gets tired of writing yet another story about brands either creating a VR stunt that all of 10 people use, or brands shipping thousands of cardboard VR viewers that get buried in a desk drawer. The more campaigns that launch, the more they sound like copycats.

2. Massive scaling in VR. Without PR delivering reach, marketers will need to get people to use their VR experiences. In 2016, massive scale in VR will mean an experience that reaches a million consumers, so marketers won't be cutting budgets from publishers that reach hundreds of millions of people. The cost of reaching hundreds of thousands of people, let alone a million, will be astronomical relative to other media, and the payoff will rarely be worth the effort. There are app store models emerging, such as Oculus Share, but that alone won't overcome hurdles marketers will have in promoting VR initiatives.

3. Familiar adoption curves. Whenever technologies and media debut, consumers gravitate to them first and most brands follow years later. This has been true for various forms of mobile and social media, and it's happening again in fields such as wearables and the internet of things. VR should benefit from marketers taking a more hands-on role to promote the technology themselves. Still, expect the vast majority of brands to jump into VR later this decade only if it becomes a mass market hit with consumers.

4. Definitions remain murky. Will VR become a catchall for any kind of souped-up video? That's happening already. For example, Stanford Football recently described a 360-degree video post on Facebook as VR, but it's a far cry from an experience designed for headsets such as Oculus Rift. As the quality of higher-end VR improves, liberal uses of the term VR cheapen the brand. When a marketer promotes VR content, the consumer won't have any clue what to expect.

5. A plea to a higher power.Oculus Rift is designed to work with higher-powered computers designed for gaming. It's not the kind of device that can plug into a Chromebook. Smartphones are rapidly evolving into supercomputers, and VR hardware keeps improving to overcome those limitations, but that won't be solved in 2016, and that will limit consumer adoption.

6. Don't try this at home. A lot of the best VR experiences are customized for certain events and locations, with higher production costs and additional hardware requirements, from handheld sensors to equipment such as bikes and treadmills. After experiencing the full potential of VR in such a custom setup, toying with a handheld handset will feel like a letdown.

7. Searching for a killer app. VR often poses an existential question for consumers: When is strapping on a headset better than using a mobile app or watching something on TV? For instance, a live sporting event may deliver courtside views and the option to explore the action from any angle, but the tradeoff is that one can't kick back and multitask. Focusing on a single experience sounds like a great idea, but it's an uphill fight in our distraction-oriented culture.

8. Social is being redefined. Facebook, which acquired Oculus, is betting that VR will be a social activity. It's true to some extent, but VR makes it far more difficult to connect with people who are in the same room. VR today rewards sharing perspectives with people in remote locations while blocking face-to-face interactions.

9. VR lacks compatibility. Remember the fun of creating apps for both iOS and Android before most people had smartphones? Now all of that is coming to a head again in the latest Betamax vs. VHS showdown, but it's so early that the field of contenders hasn't yet been winnowed down. For instance, will Microsoft's HoloLens be a breakthrough or the next Google Glass? Will developers build great experiences for HTC's Vive VR powered by Steam? Marketers and publishers can't afford to bet on every device and format, so that will cause many to wait for a shakeout.

10. Make the logo less pixelated. If you grew up with PCs in the 1980s, you'll recall graphics standards going from CGA to EGA to VGA, or gaming consoles going from 8-bit to 128-bit and beyond. A lot of VR is still in CGA, 8-bit days, so some of the most protective brand managers will squirm when they have to spend minutes twisting dials on headsets to make their own logo look clear.

References abound calling 2014 the first "year of virtual reality," and that will be true for the rest of the decade. 2016 will bring far more VR interest from marketers, far more experimentation, and lots of stunts and gimmicks. It just won't be the year for consistently scalable, reliable, repeatable campaigns.

A 4-Step Guide to Killing Your Social Media Career

As I play catch-up here, I wanted to give a little plug to my friends at the Shorty Awards, where I've been a member of the Real-Time Academy of judges since I was in short pants (get it?).

They asked me to publish some career advice there, and I know they have been regretting it ever since. Yet somehow, they keep this article up there, probably because they don't know anyone else who will sift through 900 "best use of a GIF featuring a member of the Real Housewives" award submissions on the three-day notice they give judges. Granted, they do pay me, in the form of a priceless reward of a ticket to their award show, and once I gave them some really mediocre bourbon and they replaced it with a bottle of Lagavulin, so I'm okay with that arrangement.

What was I saying?

Oh, right. I wrote an article for them that somehow references Craigslist, Mario Batali, Tinder, Lee Daniels (kind of), and Bernie Madoff. I swear Lagavulin was not involved. It begins:

Congratulations, young social media guru, or former artist or journalist who now wants to get into this social media business. It’s the perfect time to make such a career move, if you can survive on ramen and are eager to rent a studio with five of your closest friends who you just met on Craigslist (or Tinder, or wherever kids meet today). After all, you were one of the first 50 million people on Snapchat and you had figured out Instagram long before Wal-Mart started using it for their weekly Guns & Taco Kit promotions, so you know all about how social works. Just in case you’re still a little too fired up for what’s ahead, here are four ways to kill your career before it even starts...

There may actually be some useful career advice in the mix. But given that my blog gets billions of hits and their blog only gets millions, I didn't think it was totally fair to repost the whole article here. You have to read it over at their blog, and then come back here to comment on it, and go back there to say you commented here, and go back here to respond to the comments left on your comment, and then right-swipe the comment on Pinterest.

Or something like that.

The Two Rules That Matter for Branded Content

Originally published in Ad Age

Are you betting big on branded content? Whether it's because you've caught the content marketing bug or you're trying to escape the horrors of "Adblockergeddon," you're not alone. While content marketing is complicated, knowing two rules at the outset can make the whole process much more effective: Build trust and get out of the way.

Your partners who produce the content may not say this so bluntly. After all, they want your money. But this month alone, these two themes have come up constantly, including at events hosted by AwesomessTV and OneSpot, in the press, and in daily conversations.

Here's why these are the two universal rules:

Build trust
When something isn't working with content marketing, trust is often the essential element of what's missing.

Ad Age wrote about a symptom of this issue in its recent article, "Did the Cannes Lions Unveil a Crisis of Content Creativity?" Ann-Christine Diaz's story discussed how the festival hasn't bestowed the top Grand Prix to any entrant in the branded content category for the past two years. One reason for this may be that branded content is a relatively new discipline, especially when it comes to brands significantly investing in this with agencies, publishers' content studios and other partners. Building trust takes time.

It takes even more time to determine how well branded content works. One of the most touching branded videos I've encountered is Purina's "Dear Kitten," which now has nearly 24 million views on YouTube and about 75 times as many likes as dislikes. When trying to research the business impact of such videos, all I could find was a story from September 2014 in the Wall Street Journal saying that Purina might not know the impact on sales "for at least a year." Perhaps Purina finally has its answer.

Those creating content (whether, for a brand, these are internal or external parties) need to learn and internalize the brand's values. Content creators must be able to demonstrate that they can produce great content that adheres to the brand's most important goals. Coming to some agreement on what success means is crucial for any lasting relationship, and it becomes more important as content marketing matures.

For a sense of just how much you should value great content creators, consider how Snapchat shut down its original content arm, Snap Channel, this month. Snapchat hired some experienced executives to run it, but Snapchat didn't have the same credibility as the premium publishers featured in the Discover tab. Even hiring top talent and distributing media freely to hundreds of millions of people is no guarantee of success. Content creators with a strong track record are in high demand.

Get out of the way
As brands and content producers trust each other, the next step is for brands to get out of the creatives' way. It's something that constantly comes up in conversations with content creators. When The Onion's senior VP-content Rick Hamann gave a keynote talk at OneSpot's Unify summit this month, his first rule of branded content was, "Let the funny people be funny." Swap out "funny" with any other adjective, and the rule is true for all content creators, especially when you're working with those that have a built-in audience. You know your brand, and they know what should resonate with viewers. In-house teams and agencies should also have a strong command of whom they're trying to reach and what matters to them.

A common complaint of the content creators is that the brand lead wants to pretend they're James Cameron or Tina Fey (yes, agencies are guilty of this, too). Instead, marketers should be relieved that they can delegate all the hard work that goes into content creation, while marketers focus on ensuring that the content remains on-brand.

The results of successful partnerships are pretty easy to gauge, as they lead to content that people want to view and share. When the partnerships are unsuccessful, it's usually for one of two reasons. One reason is that the content isn't that interesting and it's ignored. Far worse is when it's so ham-handed that it tarnishes the reputations of the brand and everyone associated with creating it.

What content creators sometimes forget is that trust is earned, and that usually takes time. What brands need to realize is that once they find trustworthy partners, it's the brand's job to deliver the brief and step back to let the creative process flourish.

A 12-Step Guide to Solving Every Ad Industry Crisis

originally published in Advertising Age

The crises hitting the ad industry keep multiplying. Ad-blocking stories have topped the trades and mainstream press for weeks. Talent shortages abound, though the great work produced by top talent is rarely properly rewarded. Twenty years after the first banner ad debuted, we still can't agree on what an impression is. There are crises of confidence matched by crises of competence.

Every crisis breeds opportunity. Here is a simple guide to solving every major predicament in our industry.

1. Agree on impressions. This is easy. An ad must be fully viewable on the screen for it to count. Publishers can charge a premium when consumers take actions on those ads, provided there are rigorous measures in place to prevent bots from taking such actions.

2. Fix video views. No, a split-second impression doesn't count as a view. P&G defined the "first moment of truth" -- the time it takes a shopper to make up his or her mind about a product when encountering it on a store shelf -- at three to seven seconds. Granted, other research cited by Malcolm Gladwell and others say opinions are made in a split second. Let's split the difference and call three seconds the minimum for what counts as a video view. A bonus: The shortest popular form of video today is Vine, running six seconds, so even Vine would only have to charge for half a view for a promoted post.

3. Fix video placements. Stop putting video ads in the dumbest possible places, like 30-second spots in front of 60-second movie trailers (which, by the way, are ads), or overloading ads on kiddie music videos (the whole point of letting kids watch those videos is to let parents do something else, so 99% of those clicks are from toddlers trying to get to Elmo).

4. Reject short-term opportunism for long-term gains. Can you cram another ad on a page or between pages or every 12 seconds during a video? Sure. What will that do to the user experience? And even if today you can get away with it because you're the only game in town with a certain kind of content, you're making people hate us all more. See also: the Tragedy of the Commons.

5. Vow full disclosure -- about everything. Want to know where your impressions are being run? You got it. If any kind of influencer hawks a product for a fee, or because they received it for free, the disclosure should be as clear as the promotion. Making a change to a privacy policy? Instead of burying it in the fine print and waiting for someone to discover it, declare in advance what the changes will be and gauge feedback from customers. Getting kickbacks? Great. Just tell the buyer about the incentives for what you're selling so the buyer can decide if it's a conflict of interest.

6. Don't <adage_no_lookbook_links>steal. That means ideas. That means work. Don't ask for something for free when you would have had to pay for it by other means, and then use it as if you have the rights to it. Anything of value has a cost. Pay a fair rate.

7. Reward great work. Instead of constantly nickeling and diming partners and vendors, offer a premium on truly great work, whether it hits a specific goal or achieves some kind of breakthrough success.

8. Be open about what work costs. "Work" is defined broadly here -- whatever it is you're selling. Don't shy away from making your case. If it really can be done as well by someone in the Philippines or a college kid on Fiverr, you're fighting a losing battle anyway.

9. Accept where the race to the bottom leads. If your only goal is to shed costs, you will get the worst of all the industry has to offer. If you're the seller though, your focus should be charging what your offering is worth -- not what you can get away with charging for the time being.

10. Uphold security at all costs. The Ashley Madison hack won't stop people from doing stupid things online, especially when it comes to their personally identifiable information. We have to accept that we are all Ashley Madison: We are all trusted with customers' information, and we have a duty to protect it. Even if the stakes are lower, given that most of our businesses don't have Ashley Madison's moral issues, we all must make the head of security the best-known person at our organizations. Without security, nothing we do matters.

11. Eat our own dog food. It seems people in the ad industry were early adopters of DVRs and Netflix (TV's ad blockers) but late adopters of ad blockers used online. Perhaps rationalization is the cause; on TV, ad skipping or avoidance is an ancillary benefit, rather than the entire purpose as it is with ad-blocking software. We can no longer afford to be blind to the tools used to get around us.

12. Put trust first. That's where all of this leads. Our industry ranks somewhere down there with ambulance-chasers and Congress in terms of least trusted institutions. At our constant galas, we're so busy patting ourselves on the back that we don't consider how despised we are. What would it take to become one of the most trusted industries? Much of the time, we're helping people find out about stuff they probably want, while subsidizing media that would cost far more without our efforts. All that we're missing is a consistent effort to earn the trust of our customers -- and each other. A reputation for trustworthiness, more than anything we can ever offer in terms of salaries, would do wonders for our talent crisis as well.

There you, crises solved. Now we can get back to our day jobs.

10 Ways the 2016 Olympics Won’t Resemble 2014

Marketers' Road to the 2016 Olympics from MRY

An abridged version of this post was originally published in VentureBeat as "7 New Ways Brands Will Get Attention at the 2016 Olympics," and this version has been published on LinkedIn as well. If you're reading it for the third time, a) thank you, and b) why?

 With the Olympics now a year away, kicking off August 5, 2016, that may seem like a long time for most of the more than 200 million Americans who watch the summer Games. Yet it’s all too soon for marketers, technology firms, and media companies aiming to capitalize on the attention and interest that the Games generate.

Most of the playbooks marketers used for the 2012 London Olympics and even the 2014 Sochi Olympics will be dusty come the Rio Games. Building on a report we just released, Marketers’ Road to the Olympics, here are ten ways that marketing, media, and technology in 2016 will be different.

1) Secretly social: Hooray, more people will be using social media than ever. Unfortunately for those trying to monitor the chatter and target the chatterers, a lot of that will be happening in private outlets such as WhatsApp and Snapchat. The added social surge during the Games will be a great time to consider which such apps your audience is using and figure out how to reach such consumers who are more reluctant to marketers reaching them.

2) Many devices, consistent campaigns: The Olympics presents one of those perfect, ‘come to Christ the Redeemer’ moments for cross-device targeting. With even casual fans likely following the Games from multiple devices in multiple locations, marketers have opportunities to target them with consistent messages through cross-channel campaigns. A year ahead of the Games, marketers should ensure the various brand, agency, publisher, and technology teams are coordinating efforts.

3) At your service: The 2016 Olympics should be a boon for personal and virtual assistants. Consider that during the 2012 Olympics, NBC reported that 46% of 18- to 54-year-olds said they “delayed doing laundry and other chores” to watch major events such as gymnastics, according to The New York Times. If you have an easy way to clean someone’s home, restock their fridge, walk their dog, or make their bed, August 2016 should be the best time ever to demonstrate value. Then the big question is how to get customers to keep using those services come September.

4) Nolympics: The 2012 Olympics was the most-watched televised event ever in the US, with nearly 220 million American watching the Games. Break it down further, and NBC averaged 31 million viewers nightly. On a given night, that meant most people were doing something else, signaling opportunities for counter-programming. Will there be a Puppy Bowl of the 2016 Olympics – that tent-pole event for people who don’t care enough about athletics or patriotism to watch the Games? Will teens be immune to Olympic hysteria and instead keep logging into sites like Twitch where they’ll watch less athletic people compete in more sedentary games? Even while the Olympics air, much of the programming is relatively dead air between competitions, so marketers and publishers can focus on rolling out compelling mobile-centric experiences to attract multi-screening audiences.

5) The real influencers: While former presidents and current Hollywood celebrities will be among the most recognized ambassadors to the Rio Games, expect a lot of celebrities that most people older than 30 won’t recognize. Vine and Instagram stars such as Jerome Jarre and Fuckjerry will likely field offers to cover the Games for brands, as will many more niche influencers that have devoted audiences. Some Olympic athletes become celebrities during the Games, but to connect with younger Millennials and Gen Z, it’s good to work with the existing idols and icons who speak to them.

6) Up or down Periscope: The International Olympic Committee probably ranks Periscope somewhere between an ISIS attack and double toilet installationson its list of major threats to the Rio Games. If too much good footage is available via unathorized video streaming, that eats into broadcasters’ ad revenue. This year, video streaming from mobile devices has been fluctuating around a hype curve; the expectations for this tactical tool tend to outstrip its utility. Come August 2016, broadcasters will have a golden opportunity to show the value for mobile video streaming on a global scale, or perhaps show why it hasn’t deserved the attention it has already received.

7) Silicon Panda: As China strives to ensure its March of the Volunteers national anthem plays non-stop during the medal ceremonies, expect a surge of activity in Chinese apps, from core messaging apps like WeChat to goofy selfie studios like MomentCam and MyIdol. By 2016, China should have more than 620 million smartphone users, according to eMarketer – or a smartphone user base about twice as large as the entire US population. Brands that are ramping up in China should line up now to place bets on the biggest Chinese mobile social properties and offer exclusive content and deals.

8) Drone’s eye view: There will undoubtedly be all sorts of prohibitions against drones at the Rio Olympics, with regulations likely coming from Brazil’s government (concerned with drone terrorism) and the IOC (concerned with media rights). That’s all the more reason to make some fun drone stunts stand out to show fans a perspective they’ve never experienced before. Additionally, by next summer, automated user-tracking drones such as Lily will be on the market, which will allow people to capture their own Olympian-esque feats even if they didn’t quite quality for the Games.

9) Virtual reality, real hype: Forget who has the wittiest real-time social media post. The real bragging rights for marketers will go to who has the best virtual reality experience. Expect a lot of stunts on location around the Games venues, and other remote experiences for fans to try at stores, hotels, and other venues. Others will toy with more lightweight builds that work with Google Cardboard. Even with all the excitement around VR, this could prove to be the last Summer Olympics for awhile with so much hype about it, as content producers will be paying a premium for buggy technology that requires added hardware and is difficult to scale; by the 2020 Games, VR could go the way of 3D TV. Marketers can enjoy being among the first to market here, even if they’re also among the last.

10) The real value of wearables: Want to get in Olympian shape, or at least get off the couch more? In 2016, athletes endorsing products won’t be talking as much about what fast food sandwiches they’re eating as they will what wearable devices they’re using. Expect some apps to arise that allow people to compare their workouts to the athletes they follow, and get insights and tips from the medalists. Marketers can help create this content, tapping athletes on their payroll. For wearable brands, these real-world examples of athletes using the devices to achieve a meaningful goal may make existing customers brush off their trackers or upgrade to the new version.

This is an abbreviated list. Other themes that will surface include the role of artificial intelligence applications for both businesses and consumers, developments in the mobile payments space, the role of multi-channel networks, further applications of crowdsourcing, and an increasing focus on promoting female athletes in this age of celebrating women’s empowerment. Think a year’s enough time to get ahead of all this as the changes keep coming?

 

Oh, Snap! Dissecting Snapchat's Spotty Ad Pitch

originally published in Ad Age Digital Next; an updated version is below

Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel came to the Cannes Lions festival with a fittingly short message that he hopes won’t disappear from advertisers’ minds after 10 seconds. He promoted 3V advertising, where the V’s stand for “Vertical Video Views.” He makes a strong case, but he’ll still lose out to another model.

Spiegel gave a command performance, and not just to a full house of 3,000 delegates at the Cannes conference hall. If you really want to appreciate Spiegel’s message, watch his video at Snapchat.com/ads on your smartphone. It doesn’t take long; I’ll wait.

Now, here’s the pop quiz: did you watch the video vertically or horizontally? If you’re like me, there’s little you do on your phone horizontally, though I make an exception for Marvel’s Contest of Champions game. Viewed vertically, Snapchats video is perfectly framed. I even wondered at first if Snapchat was hosting the video itself to make a point to advertisers.

But Snapchat belies its own message. Go back to your phone and turn it around 90 degrees. The video, hosted on YouTube, rotates along with the device. Yet Spiegel says people using Snapchat don’t tend to rotate their phones, and it’s why Snapchat notes that vertical videos are completed at a rate of up to nine times higher than horizontal mobile videos.

Spiegel comes off as a polished pitchman. It’s as if Millennials got together and said, “We found a nice Jewish boy, gave him a sweatshirt that almost kind of looks like a sweater, and sent him to you to get you to speak our language.” Despite Spiegel’s stellar delivery, the effect of rotating the video is so jarring that it’s a mobile version of trompe l’oeil. It makes me wonder if there are creative directors first watching the video on their laptops where they’re only seeing the horizontal video and going, “This is terribly shot! They’re only using one-third of the screen!”

Another bit trompe l’oeil can be found in Snapchat reporting numbers on daily minutes spent on screens, with vertical screen usage rising from 2011 to 2015, and horizontal minutes leveling off. The point here is that mobile is gradually overtaking other media such as TV and desktop usage. But in very tiny print, Snapchat notes it analyzed eMarketer’s numbers. A public eMarketer report shows that most of the time US adults spend watching mobile video is on tablets, yet tablets are typically horizontal screens. And Snapchat’s own chart seems to indicate that vertical screen usage isn’t growing quite as fast as it was around 2012 to 2013.

3V makes sense for Snapchat. But even if Snapchat usage overtakes every other media property, that doesn’t mean Spiegel’s model will win out. After all, Spiegel further notes in his pitch that his generation doesn’t appreciate ad targeting, and his video pitch says, “In the early days of internet advertising, marketers relied on things like targeting to help differentiate ad products that weren’t very engaging.” It’s the biggest “oh, snap!” moment delivered by Snapchat’s CEO. Ads can’t be both creative and targeted? Just when sweatshirt guy is at his most charming, he manages to offend both the creative and media sides of the business, along with most ad tech companies and publishers.

What will beat 3V? I’ll propose an alternative model: 3S, or “Square Social Stories.” Let’s break down each component:

Square: Square video will take up the majority of the screen in either horizontal or vertical orientation on any device. It works perfectly for the ‘card’ model of digital content pioneered by Twitter, and square content will fit in well on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and other outlets. Adapting square content to full-screen formats could leave room in the margins for additional branding or a call to action. Marketers will appreciate creating one asset that works well across devices and channels regardless of orientation and aspect ratio.

Social: Why would marketers today want views to be the gold standard? Perhaps if you’ve been beaten down by debates around viewability, getting guaranteed video views is appealing. Instead, marketers should strive for getting people to share a video and associate their own brand with the marketer’s brand. Aim higher than merely generating impressions, which Mr. Spiegel may appreciate is a mindset from “the early days of internet advertising.” (Snapchat’s not the only one that can deliver an ‘oh, snap!’) And isn't Snapchat to resorting to the much-maligned interstitial format? Their whole model is a dusted-off relic. 

Stories: Video, when done well, is an amazing way for marketers to tell a story. But sometimes a still image or jarring copy can do just as well. Beyond video, marketers are dabbling with virtual reality, and Google Cardboard won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Mobile this year. Marketers should feel free to use whatever creative approach works best to deliver their message.

In short, 3V’s great for Snapchat, but marketers will demand better targeting and will bristle against producing video for individual properties. 3S places greater demands for marketers to create something others will share, and the content can be distributed far more widely. Then again, I’m a Gen X’er who wears button-down shirts rather than a Millennial in a sweatery-looking sweatshirt, so you will have to choose who you trust.

The Apple Lords Giveth (not Taketh Away)

 This post was originally published in Advertising Age Digital Next; read it there for the full effect. 

 Also, I  added a poll via Riddle.com, which I support as an angel investor. I would love your feedback if you try it out. 

And now, my (slightly belated) post on WWDC...

The Apple Lords Giveth (not Taketh Away)

One might be inclined to think that the sole intent of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference this week was to wreak technological genocide. This June alone, Apple supposedly killed Flipboard, Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, Tidal (as if it wasn’t self-destructing), Google Maps and other transit apps, Google Now, Google search, Android, Android Auto, PayPal, physical loyalty cards and their related digital apps, Microsoft’s Surface, and more.

Based on the coverage, one might expect tumbleweeds to soon roll through Silicon Valley and property values to plummet back to bargain basement 2013 levels. Entrepreneurs will apply en masse to business school, law school, or – could it be so bad? – medical school. All those 22-year-old startup founders’ parents will be signing up for Snapchat just to tell their kids, “I told you so.”

Yet how come there’s so little focus on the real story of Apple’s annual WWDC? Or the real story from Google’s similar I/O event that took place the week before? This isn’t a story about what such companies taketh away, but what they giveth. It’s not a story about death but renewal.

First, consider the history of such events. Google continues to innovate with Maps, Wallet, search, and its other products. Startups are tackling these areas as well; it’s hardly a two-horse race in any field. iCloud hasn’t killed Dropbox, FaceTime hasn’t killed Skype, and the list goes on. There are relatively few examples of Apple, Google, or others finishing off companies based on a new feature.

Instead, there are many more examples of are these platforms adding value to others’ businesses. This is especially true for brands. During the Apple Watch section of the keynote, one prominent logo was Volkswagen’s. VW is making its products more valuable with updates such as fuel and battery monitoring, remote control access to climate settings, and alerts when another driver of one’s car (such as a teenager) is speeding. VW can use Apple’s technology to make its cars more valuable, and to deepen the role of its brand in consumers’ lives. Similarly, Product Hunt users just named Chipotle’s ‘burrito button’ one of the best Apple Watch apps. Apple is giving brands more tools to compete and differentiate.

Despite such opportunities, marketers can find themselves on a razor’s edge. Many will lose out by announcements made at WWDC, though to no fault of Apple. They’re the same marketers who lose out from Google I/O – the ones who ignore phenomena cataloged by sources such as the annual trend report by Mary Meeker at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Apple, Google, and others build products that in some way shape how people use technology, and those products in turn must adapt to trends in consumer behavior. Recent such trends include: how notifications are becoming the most powerful way to reach consumers with time-sensitive updates; the shift toward messaging apps as the main conduits for communication and content sharing; connected devices getting better at delivering clear value propositions to consumers (save money, protect your home, etc) and heralding a new wave of innovation; the rise of ad blockers and other methods for consumers proactively protecting their privacy that will create greater pressures on advertisers to rely on word of mouth and influencer marketing; shifting screen sizes forcing creatives to take usability best practices from tiny screens such as smartwatches and apply them to increasingly larger screens such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart TVs; the potential to tap new types of health data such as one’s physical activity to target people in ways never before possible on such a personal level. Marketers still prioritizing big, clunky website builds over nimble mobile web and app development might as well be formatting their media to be viewed best on fax machines.

The more entrepreneurial-minded of marketers will be relishing these trends to discover and reach audiences in ways they never could have dreamed of before. And there will be new entities arising to capitalize on these trends that can in turn better help marketers reach their goals. Ad-supported media properties such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Buzzfeed, and Wattpad can all thank the rise of the iPhone and the smartphone wars that followed for their success; marketers tapping into those audiences can in turn thank Apple for what it ignited. Apple has paid out $30 billion to developers since the App Store launched, but that’s a small fraction of the value of businesses that have been built around reaching people across Apple’s devices, let alone businesses that are more successful thanks to Apple’s groundwork.

If anything should die after the latest WWDC, let it be the punditry around what Apple has killed. As it is written in Deuteronomy, “Choose life.”