Month: July 2018

As I was speaking at Digiday’s 2018 Artificial Intelligence Marketing Summit about “Human-Centered Design”, something struck me: When I looked around the room, it was filled with, well, humans. Yet there I was, imploring a room full of eager, red-blooded marketing professionals to design the “human” way. Our eagerness to dive right into what’s next often leads to conversations about technology and innovation that are devoid of humanity. If AI is meant to automate and scale human characteristics for the benefit of users, it seems to me that human-centered design becomes a discipline that requires our mastery.

To truly unlock the potential of human centered design, we must lean into what makes us human: our relationships, our thoughtfulness and our emotions. We must believe that our “human-ness” is the very thing that allows us to truly take advantage of the awesome technology at our fingertips. At imre, we have a few core principles to ensure that we are solving consumer problems with a human approach to technology.

Party of one

We recently created a campaign using virtual reality to recreate stories from the past, and in doing so, I learned something that has had a lasting impact. The experience of using VR in itself, albeit truly incredible, pales in comparison to watching someone experiencing VR for their first time. This is a reminder that we must design technology with a particular person in mind. This one-to-one view of communication ensures the experience is meaningful, contextual and wonderful. If you are able to deliver this personal approach, you can then bottle up the emotion of that experience and employ technology to scale that interaction. Imagine for a second trying to buy a birthday gift for all of your friends versus buying a gift for just one of your friends.

Fear factor

Fear may be the most motivating human emotion. AI is surrounded by fear. Fear of automation replacing our jobs. Fear that our understanding of truth may be tainted with human emotion and bias. Fear that our robot overlords won’t treat us well when we are forced to serve them as pets. But typically, what accompanies fear is opportunity.

The new millennium brought with it a paradigm shift in how creatives developed art. Adoption of computers took off like a rocket ship and opened up an entire world of possibilities. I was in art school at the time studying fine arts and almost all of my classmates agreed—those graphic design kids certainly weren’t creating art. Then, things quickly changed. I remember the first time I used Adobe Illustrator to separate out color plates to create pixel-perfect screen prints. It felt as though I stumbled onto the cheat codes for a video game. The point is that we tend to fear technologies that require us to reconsider our process, but we must always remember that comfort is the enemy of progress.

Hooked on a feeling

“Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.” — Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey.

As we continue to feel overwhelmed by data and become more reliant on machines to make sense of it all, we must always remember that we are feeling creatures, and that we validate our feelings through relationships with other feeling creatures. When I want someone to understand how I feel, I almost always tell them a story because I want them to feel what I was feeling, even if just for a moment. An algorithm can’t do this. It can’t recall what it was like the first time you ate a perfect slice of pizza or laugh at the irony of why you lost your first job.

Tide did this expertly with their “It’s a Tide Ad” campaign that hijacked the 2018 Super Bowl. They were able to attach their brand of clean clothes to familiar and beloved ad campaigns such as the Old Spice “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign. This execution was a brilliant example of understanding how their audience feels and creating the perfect moment to deliver their message in the context of that feeling.

The irony of it all is that the best way for us to be more human is to just be human. Trust your instincts, don’t overthink it and treat customers like they’re people. At imre, we call ourselves “creative-led and tech-enabled.” We embrace the role of humanity over the role of technology. Technology is the container, but emotion is the element. I believe that training designers to access human emotion on this level will both totally elevate the potential for AI and continue to transform our role as marketers.

The post Being “human”: Human-centered design in the age of algorithm appeared first on Digiday.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Blockchain Fever While still buzzy, advertisers are starting to test blockchain as a tool that can shine a light on the digital supply chain. Marketers such as AB InBev, AT&T, Kellogg’s, Bayer and Nestle are using the technology to measure the flow of their… Continue reading »

The post Brands Believe In Blockchain; Twitter Tramples Fake Accounts appeared first on AdExchanger.

Many big publishers have a fraught relationship with Facebook over everything from its dominance over the ad market to a new political ad policy, but the platform is drawing praise from local news publishers.

Facebook in June wrapped up a three-month-long Local News Subscriptions Accelerator program. In three gatherings in New York, Austin and Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park, Facebook brought together people from 14 metro papers representing the country’s big newspaper chains to exchange best practices in growing subscriptions at local papers. The participants, which included the Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times, met monthly, got training from experts and designed programs to put the training into action, which Facebook is funding with grants totaling $3 million.

The impact of the $200,000 grants won’t be known for a while, but given the general climate tension between publishers and Facebook, there was a feeling of pleasant surprise when the program ended. (Facebook is evaluating how to continue the program but didn’t have specifics.)

Mark Campbell, svp of digital marketing at Tronc’s Tribune Interactive and a participant, said the benefits included learning best practices from people in and outside of the news industry; networking with peers from other news organizations and getting a grant to pursue a new subscriber acquisition initiative. He said the grant will be used to re-engage registered users using AI to get more people to the paywall and convert them to subscribe. It also plans to use the money to experiment with ways to convert people who are using mobile devices.

“This accelerator program illustrated how Facebook and similar companies have the resources and connections to be able to assemble such a wide-ranging group of local publications and expert coaches,” he said.

The Tennessean also had a positive experience, said Maribel Perez Wadsworth, USA Today publisher and president of the USA Today Network, which includes the Tennessean. “They brought together a cohort of local publishers, paired them with consumer marketing experts as mentors, and provided a great forum for the sharing of learning from experimentation successes and failures,” she said.

The publishers that the program was designed for are more resource-poor and harder hit than national outlets as audiences’ reading habits shift to digital. Opinions on what if anything the tech giants should do to help news publishers are as varied as the publishing industry itself, but local news has greater needs than big outlets.

“It’s great to get money, but what I need help with is product development, and that’s where Facebook and Google have a lot of expertise,” said Neil Chase, executive editor of the Bay Area News Group, which wasn’t part of the accelerator program. “The thing you can’t hire as easily is the way they think. To sit down with them is valuable.”

Facebook has stepped up its training and outreach to local news outlets in the past couple of years in an effort to repair its image with news publishers generally that have been stung by algorithm changes and the platforms’ dominance over digital ad dollars. Facebook has also taken steps to elevate local along with high-quality news broadly after the 2016 presidential election, when tech platforms were found to be helping spread fake and extremist content.

In contrast with past efforts, the accelerator program wasn’t focused on teaching publishers to use Facebook tools. Facebook organized and funded the program and the Facebook Journalism Project shared best practices, but had a relatively bit part in it. The workshops were led by news-industry veteran Tim Griggs, a former New York Times exec and Texas Tribune publisher. The grant program was organized by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the Philadelphia papers and funds news startups nationally. It was reminiscent of the way Google shows publishers it’s on their side, as with its annual gathering Newsgeist, which has the aura of an industry conference that Google just happens to organize.

The information Facebook gleans from the accelerator also could inform its subscription test that it’s running with a handful of publishers and that it’s relied on publishers to shape.

“Facebook and local news have a highly codependent relationship. Facebook needs and values local news on its platform, so there’s enlightened self-interest at work from sides of the partnership,” said Jim Friedlich, CEO of The Lenfest Institute, whose The Philadelphia Inquirer participated in the accelerator.

Of course, the irony in all this is that the rise of the platforms has contributed to the state digital media finds itself in. And despite Facebook’s pledge earlier this year to help local news, an analysis by CJR showed the engagement of many local publishers has actually declined since then.

Facebook said that while it has decreased news overall by 20 percent in the news feed, it has stabilized distribution for small and medium-sized local publishers, with some pubs up or down a few percentage points based on factors like the news cycle and competition. Beyond the feed, it’s also adding new sections to Facebook to boost local news, like “Today In.”

The post ‘To sit down with them is valuable’: With $3m in grants and advice, Facebook finds favor from local newspapers appeared first on Digiday.

Dollar Shave Club is no longer an upstart. The direct-to-consumer business, which started as a razor subscription service in 2011, is now part of consumer goods giant Unilever after a $1 billion deal finalized in 2016. Now the company wants to be guys’ first choice for everything bathroom by selling toothbrushes, towels and peppermint-infused butt wipes.

But there’s one way DSC isn’t changing: It’s still doing nearly all of its marketing in-house rather than outsourcing it to agencies. Instead, DSC leans on a 10-person creative team, which works alongside units devoted to media buying, analytics, customer service and product development. Every so often, Dollar Shave Club has tested running small campaigns with external ad agencies and agencies for media buying and production, but the overwhelming majority of work is controlled internally.

“It helps us infuse our brand tone and voice into all touch points the consumer sees and even some internal facing things that the consumer doesn’t see,” said Michael Dubin, founder and CEO of Dollar Shave Club, who himself has starred in DSC advertising.

DTC brands have emerged as a bright spot of marketing. Many have proven adept at mastering new digital marketing techniques and, in a worrying sign for ad agencies, have typically bypassed outside partners even as they’ve grown well beyond their startup roots. Most cite the need for control of data, nimbleness, cost-savings and unified visions for handling marketing mostly internally.

“We’re able to touch more things than just advertising,” said Matt Knapp, vp of creative and executive creative director at Dollar Shave Club. “If you’re at a creative agency, an ad is the only thing you have at your disposal to solve a problem.”

Being able to outsource bits and pieces of marketing is essential for some DTC companies that might lack the talent, expertise or funding to operate certain roles in-house. But maintaining control over data and messaging is a major motivator for staying in-house, and it is especially paramount for DTC companies that are starting to shed their classifications as startups.

Luggage brand Away is in the process of multiplying its physical footprint and evolving into a travel lifestyle company. With $50 million in funding the company received in June, it plans on opening six more brick-and-mortar stores this year (for a total of 10), and adding more lifestyle projects as it has done with its travel magazine ‘Here’ and temporary hotel concept Chez Away, all the while promoting its line of luggage as fashion accessories. Such goals require focus.

Jen Rubio, co-founder and chief brand officer of Away, said having its own marketing agency was pivotal in the company’s growth to-date and remains a “first priority,” since it allows the company to be in control and responsive with customer service. Away often creates new products based off of customer requests on the fly and needs to launch campaigns in a number of days for those products. “It’s hard to outsource that type of flexibility, and even harder to do it in a way that’s true to your brand,” said Rubio.

With the exception of some tactical offline media buying and the outsourcing of some video and production assistants, stylists and camera operators, Away does all of its marketing in-house, and has done so since it sold its first luggage online in 2015, according Rubio. A team of 50 people, a third of Away’s overall company, manages all creative, including for TV and strategy, as well as media buys. On top of that, a 25-person customer experience team interacts with all customers and shares insights with the in-house team.

Close contact between internal teams allows for more sharing of data. With such close proximity to the data analysis team, Dollar Shave Club’s 10-person creative team can have instant access to consumer data that proves the effectiveness of its ads, allowing them to immediately iterate on their work to augment the ads and placements that are working, according to Alec Brownstein, vp of creative and global executive creative director at Dollar Shave Club. “By closing the feedback loop, we can be significantly more agile and effective than an external partner who wouldn’t have access to the real-time data,” he said.

An internal marketing team also allows companies to bypass the often tedious and potentially long process of working with an agency on something that should be done quickly.

Fabian Seelbach, svp of marketing Curology, which sends customized acne treatments to consumers, has a 20-person marketing department that conducts most of the company’s creative, strategy and media buying. One of the main reasons for its existence is that it gives Curology the ability to quickly react to things; Curology wants the freedom to strategize on a video idea in a morning, and go live by the afternoon, said Seelbach.

“We don’t have a complex process or long and detailed creative briefs,” said Seelback. “Often a short conversation or Slack message is enough to align on a creative project and quickly execute it.”

M.Gemi, an online retailer of luxury Italian shoes, is also finding that more internal resources are helping it to be nimbler. In June, it opened its own video production studio and shoots an Instagram Live every Monday to drop a new pair of shoes it’s selling online. Before, the marketing team of five had produced creative shoots in-house but constantly had to outsource for various elements of the shoots, such as studio spaces, stylists and photographers, meanwhile working with SEO, affiliate and direct-mail agencies to distribute its work. Now, it’s attributing a 20 percent boost in revenue to the new studio, according to Cheryl Kaplan, co-founder and president of M.Gemi.

Saving money is another plus to an internal team. “There are certainly cost savings to building in-house than paying a monthly retainer,” said Brownstein. But Brownstein added that, while reduced costs are a benefit, an even larger advantage is generating more effective creative work since employees are working for the success of the business and not for the success of an external agency.

“They’re not trying to win ad awards or build an effective portfolio,” he said. “The portfolio is the success of the business.”

The post DTC brands like Dollar Shave Club are growing up, but still mostly skipping agencies appeared first on Digiday.

A lot of marketers talk about achieving transparent media trading, but often those demands are aimed solely at the agency. In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, a former ad buying executive at one of the big five holding groups says that too few marketers think about how they take control of their media beyond the relationships with their agencies.

The conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and length.

Why should marketers be thinking about transparency across their supply chain?
Marketers moan about agencies in the transparency debate, but they need to spend more time looking at what all the other players in their supply chain are doing. There have been concerns in the past over how much of money going in that chain actually ends up with the publisher, and yet there aren’t many who know how to get beyond working out what the agency may or may not have been skimming off the top of whatever got spent. When I was working at the agency, we were trying to convince one of our clients to run a test where we’d use a Google demand-side platform to buy from the Google supply-side platform to see how much the publisher got.

Was it a challenge to get a client to try the test?
If you tell your agency to chase price, then that’s what they’ll do. And if you measure the right thing, the actual cost of it is almost irrelevant. It’s hard to get some clients to reconcile with that, and that’s why I think we struggled when it came to getting the test over the line. There weren’t many clients I worked with that either had supply chain transparency or really wanted it. Media may be worth loads of money, but it’s still only a fraction of a marketer’s day job. Getting full visibility of your supply chain isn’t easy. You’ve got to take time to understand all your supply sources, look at the domain lists, decide on the audiences you want to target and then work out how you’re going to verify it and with what partner. And that’s only after you’ve worked out how you’re going to retain the data across the vendors and have established your metrics. None of this is new. It’s just really hard to do, which advertisers don’t always want to hear.

Why have marketers lost control of their media budgets?
There’s a responsibility on advertisers to ask the right questions and make things happen. Agencies need to be willing to respond to those demands in the right way, but ultimately it comes down to advertisers having the expertise, whether that’s external or internal, to make sure that you have a media plan that won’t just benefit them on the commercial side but will also give them the best media plan. I only saw a handful of clients thinking like that when I worked at the agency. In the main, discussions with clients always came back to media pricing.

Do you believe we’re getting closer toward smarter partnerships across the market?
There’s still far too much talk about media pricing and results. I don’t know if its because of the advice they’re getting from intermediaries or if it’s the fact that there are some senior clients worry over how to tell their CEOs that they’ve been asleep at the wheel. Whatever the rationale is, it’s led to some instances where clients have proposed models that will put our entire fee at risk if the agency didn’t hit certain targets. While that might sound like the right way to remunerate the agency, all it means is you’re making the agency take on all the risk. That’s not a partnership.

The post ‘If you tell your agency to chase price, then that’s what they’ll do’: Confessions of a former agency exec appeared first on Digiday.

For streetwear and lifestyle publisher HighSnobiety, the benefits of growing on Instagram have made up for any losses it felt in referral traffic from Facebook’s algorithm changes. What’s more, Instagram is driving the most revenue through branded content, according to the publisher.

Simply directing people back to HighSnobiety via its Instagram bio over the last six weeks has boosted referral traffic by 400 percent. The publisher wouldn’t share exact figures, but with little referral traffic action before, it’s likely this is from a small base. Instagram now accounts for 10 percent of the site’s social traffic, up from 2 percent at the beginning of the year.

“It’s become clear in the last six months that Instagram is the most important channel outside of HighSnobiety,” said Brock Cardiner, editorial director, Europe. “We’ve adapted the content strategy to prioritize increasing engagement and followers there as opposed to other platforms.”

HighSnobiety has five people dedicated to Instagram, and in total 12 have a hand in creating for the platform along with other social content duties, up from three and 10, respectively, the year before. In the next two weeks, the Berlin-and New York-based publisher is hiring an additional in-house social media graphics editor to increase the amount of original content, mostly illustrations and captions over clips, which stands at about 10 of the daily 30 posts that it publishes on Instagram. The main account — it has four vertical offshoots — has 2.2 million followers, up from 1.7 million a year ago, according to Social Blade. On Facebook, it has 2.4 million followers.

For the last month, HighSnobiety has taken a more controlled approach to testing what impact content changes have on driving audience interactions. Each week it focuses on changing one element, like posting more video, experimenting with hashtags, changing the aesthetic or adding geotags.

“It’s combining high-frequency distribution with high-quality creative,” said Alexei Edwards, head of social at Tribal Worldwide. “The well-crafted copywriting is also something that shouldn’t be forgotten about. It’s something brands tend to neglect across their communications on Instagram.”

Breaking news and topical news also do well on the platform, said Cardiner. “We used to think Instagram was complementary to our site rather than its own platform; now we put news up on Instagram before anywhere else. Partners are interested in having news like sneaker leaks or product drops up on Instagram.”

HighSnobiety plans to create more video specific to the platform. Currently, 15 percent of its posts are video, according to SocialBakers. The publisher found on average fewer comments, likes and shares on HighSnobiety’s video posts, but video has 20 percent greater reach through Instagram’s algorithm favoring video. A higher likelihood of featuring on Instagram’s explore tab means video is a prime vehicle for growing new audiences.

In May, HighSnobiety has 6.2 million video views on Instagram and 1.6 million Facebook video views, according to Tubular Labs. In April, it had 5 million on Instagram and 4.2 million on Facebook, per Tubular. Although it’s only posting just one less video a day on Facebook and instead posting more to Instagram Stories, where videos get several millions of views and a 60 percent completion rate. HighSnobiety’s average completion rate on Facebook news-feed videos is at less than 25 percent.

Out of the platforms, Instagram is HighSnobiety’s strongest revenue driver through branded content, which makes up the majority of HighSnobiety’s total revenue. Instagram distribution complements wider campaigns, and the publisher keeps commercial content to just one a day on the platform, in the feed or as a Story, despite the content disappearing after 24 hours.

“With clients, our site is the first place they want to be. Instagram is always the next place they want to be on,” said Cardiner. “Unanimously, Instagram is what they look for.”

The post HighSnobiety is prioritizing Instagram: ‘Unanimously, it’s what clients look for’ appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook’s mid-roll video ad breaks are beginning to show signs of life, though publishers still need a high volume of views and engagement to generate meaningful revenue from the ad product.

Launched last March, the ad breaks program lets publishers make money by serving video ads inside videos that are at least three minutes long and with the ad not showing up until after the first minute. Along with Facebook Watch, the program is Facebook’s attempt to help publishers and other video makers monetize their video, especially after previous failed attempts such as Suggested Videos. While the mid-roll ad breaks are closer to the products found on YouTube and other long-form video platforms, the program was delivering scant revenue to publishers in 2017. That seems to be changing.

Six publishers participating in the ad breaks program said they are seeing more revenue come in from the ad product this year. One publisher said its mid-roll ad revenue grew by 10-40 percent depending on the page from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2018, and is on track to make more than $10 million from the mid-rolls this year. A second publisher said Facebook mid-rolls are on pace to be a “double-digit-million-dollar business” for the publisher this year. A third publisher said their Facebook mid-roll ad revenue will be in the low seven figures in 2018. All three of these publishers are among the top Facebook video makers in terms of monthly video views.

“We’re seeing checks consistently in the six figures on a monthly basis now, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s a good progression from where we were last fall,” said an executive from the third publisher. “But it’s still not a huge leap; considering where our video views are at, it’s still not at the level you’d imagine it should be.”

Facebook’s ad breaks program is still a volume and engagement game, sources said. After crunching some numbers internally, one top video publisher on Facebook estimated that on one of their Facebook video pages, they made $360 from every million video views during the most recent quarter. Another publisher projected that it makes $264 for every million views.

Facebook declined to comment on the record.

Comparisons to YouTube
Publishers gave mixed responses when asked how Facebook’s mid-rolls compare to those on YouTube or other platforms. USA Today Network, for instance, recently said that Facebook was its biggest platform in terms of social video revenue, largely driven by its success with its feel-good “Kind” video series.

“Facebook is definitely the leader in terms of volume and revenue,” said Michael Kuntz, president of national sales and brand partnerships for USA Today Network. “YouTube’s a great partner as well, but we haven’t gotten the same tonnage there just yet as we have gotten on Facebook.”

Others that have more experience with YouTube see more revenue from Google’s video giant. The publisher that projected $264 for every million video views on Facebook said it expects $2,200 for every million video views on YouTube. For them, a Facebook video view is essentially worth 12 percent of a view on YouTube.

Of course, the comparison between Facebook mid-rolls and YouTube pre-rolls is limited given Watch is still nascent and user behavior there is still forming. “YouTube is a 5-year-old business for us, and a 12-year-old business in and of itself,” said Ken Blom, vp of branded distribution for BuzzFeed. “The Facebook Watch business is still at the ground stage. We’re still talking about a new user behavior for Facebook. The monetization is not going to be there until the behavior is.”

It’s still a long game
There are some promising signs for more ad revenue on the horizon. At VidCon, Facebook announced that it would expand mid-roll eligibility to video creators and more pages in the U.S. The time spent inside Watch has also increased by 900 percent since the beginning of the year, according to Facebook, which hasn’t said what its overall watch time is.

Facebook is also letting some top publishers directly sell their own mid-roll inventory, though these publishers can’t sell ad slots inside individual shows yet, sources said. Other publishers said they’re close to being able to do the same. Facebook also continues to test pre-roll ads within Watch (one publisher said Facebook elects to run a pre-roll unit when a user actively searches for a show or a video on the platform).

Sources expect the ad breaks product to remain a slow burn for both Facebook and publishers in the program. Sources said Facebook is still cautious in terms of how often it delivers an ad inside an eligible video. Based on its internal numbers, one publisher estimated that Facebook is only serving ads inside one out of every three video views that are eligible for an ad break.

“TV has four minutes of ad time for every 11 minutes of content; Facebook Watch has a fraction of a fraction of that,” said an exec at a top Facebook video publisher. “They’re going to expand the ad load, but in the short term, they’re inching into it so they don’t piss off users and create scarcity for the inventory as it opens up.”

Advertisers are also able to make direct buys for mid-rolls now, ad buyers said. One ad executive said that Facebook’s mid-roll units had a $5 CPM (based on a 10-second view) during a consumer-facing campaign it ran during the first and second quarter of 2018. For a business-to-business campaign during the same time period, the ad buyer paid an $18 CPM. YouTube’s CPMs are between $15 and $20 for this advertiser: “a little higher than Facebook, but in my opinion, YouTube’s a far superior video product,” the buyer said.

Advertisers are still waiting for Facebook to deliver benchmarks for a successful use of Facebook ad breaks.

“We’ve been testing [mid-rolls], but you can’t dump boatloads of money into it until you get better measurement and benchmarks figured out,” said Paul Dolan, CEO of Varick Media Management. “That would get Facebook even closer to what we see with pre-rolls on YouTube and other platforms.”

The market remains volatile
For publishers trying to make money with Facebook mid-rolls, it’s still a volume game and the platform remains volatile as some videos can capture tens of millions of views and along with it, a decent amount of revenue — while others bring in pennies.

“Volume is the game,” said a publishing exec. “The people that are winning are the same old millennial brands that milked Facebook early.”

“I don’t think the revenue numbers are going to skyrocket over the next 12 months,” said another. “Some months you can hit it out of the park, and some months it performs differently; I think that’s a reflection of them trying to figure out [a video and advertising] product and how it best fits into the market. They have to build something sustainable where people consistently consume video, versus occasionally lucking into a hit.”

For big publishers that can consistently capture billions of views on the platform, the return on revenue is noticeable, if not as meaningful as they’d like it to be. For some, the real prize is still in getting Facebook to share revenue that Facebook makes from the news feed. (BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, who said Tasty has made zero dollars with Facebook’s ad products, has been at the forefront of this argument.)

Said another publishing exec: “When do they share revenue that’s between videos that happens as a result of the engagement being created by publishers like us? Most of the ad revenue on Facebook is not within the video but between them.”

The post ‘Still not a huge leap’: Facebook’s video ad breaks program is showing signs of life appeared first on Digiday.

Nike’s new store in Los Angeles, which opened this week,  is being painted by the company as its most ambitious attempt to merge the digital and the physical retail experience, with a heavy emphasis on community and mining digital data.

“We describe it as a membership shop that is local and personable and solving for speed and convenience,” said Nike chief digital officer Aaron Sussman. “This is a first for us. It’s truly informed by our membership data, looking at purchase pattern in the neighborhood through our member app and city insights.”

Nike by Melrose, located on Melrose Avenue in West Los Angeles, stocks items based on purchase data from nearby members of NikePlus, its free community for shopping benefits and athletic events. So far, one of every 50 shoes purchased by NikePlus members in Los Angeles is the Cortez style, and therefore, the footwear wall for both men and women is stocked with a selection of that shoe. Every two weeks, 25 percent of the sneakers in stock will be changed, Sussman said.

That selection is part of Nike’s push to make the retail experience more personalized. In June 2017, Nike announced consumer direct offense, its effort to scale by obsessing about local business. The company named 12 cities as part of the strategy, including Los Angeles, and predicted those areas would represent 80 percent of its growth from then to 2020. Sussman was hired as Nike’s first chief digital officer in 2016 to focus on developing unique digital products and transforming its in-store strategy.

Shoppers with the Nike app can view products that are in stock and reserve them. Nike will then put those products in an in-store locker that the shopper can unlock via their Nike app when they arrive. For shoppers who don’t need to try products on, Nike by Melrose also offers curbside pickup and dropoff.

“It removes the friction of, ‘Is this product in my size?’ and enables a much better connection with you and that store athlete,” Sussman said. “Sometimes [customers are] there because they know exactly what product they want and sometimes they want to get styled by an expert.”

In-store shoppers also can grab some free items after they scan their NikePlus membership pass. At the launch event on July 12, Nike offered a selection of free socks. But prizes may get bigger with exclusive events or bigger items, Sussman said.

Many of these unique experiences require shoppers to be a NikePlus member. While it’s free and just requires a signing up via Facebook log-in or by email, Sussman said it isn’t a requirement to visit and to enjoy Nike by Melrose.

“Everyone is invited into the store, and you’ll have a great experience if you’re not a member. But you’ll have a better experience if you’re a member,” Sussman said. “We don’t want to force it on people, but we strongly believe people will want it when we can show what it can do for them. With the integration into the store, when you walk in you will want to be a member.”

Despite all these app-powered experiences in Nike by Melrose, Nike is still employing plenty of staff members, called “store athletes.” Another new feature is texting with a store athlete through the Nike app. Shoppers can ask for tips and reserve items, even though another part of the app also has that same functionality. Store athletes will be able to see purchase history and type of items a shopper is interested in.

“We’re a human brand, and we are about community. Absolutely we’re not about removing store athletes from our suite. We’re about empowering store athletes to have better connectivity to our members who are walking into a store,” Sussman said.

Nike is planning to bring some of these experiences to other stores in the future, including launching in Japan later this year and in the flagship store in New York. Yet some of these features could change over the next year.

“One of the things about digital transformation is the ability to test and learn quickly. We have a lot of hypothesis of things that are working, and we’re going to improve on them and make them better, Sussman said.

The post Nike’s new Los Angeles store merges community and membership appeared first on Digiday.

Even the world’s biggest platform has to roam onto other platforms in the bid to shape opinion.

Facebook started to get very chatty on Twitter earlier this year. Not just the company’s executives tweeting to defend themselves in the wake of algorithm changes and the spread of fake news, @Facebook started tweeting a lot more than usual to share positive news about itself, to bid farewell to its comms chief Elliot Schrage and to respond to senators.

“Given Twitter is often the social equivalent of the water cooler gossip hangout for journalists, it’s no surprise a lot of Facebook bashing was driven far and wide by influential commentators there. The only surprise is how long it’s taken them to do it,” said Matt Navarra, a social and digital media consultant.

Indeed, brands using social platforms as tools for marketing and for customer service is nothing new. But it’s constantly changing. Here’s a look at how platforms use themselves and other sites.

Facebook
Facebook’s chattiness on Twitter seemed to begin as a correct the record campaign. When Digiday reached out to Facebook’s public relations team to ask them about their Twitter use, they responded with a single emoji: “.”

Facebook’s new style, at least on Twitter: defensive, straightforward and cutesy.

On July 12, Facebook’s account responded to CNN reporter Oliver Darcy’s tweet about Facebook’s struggle to explain why it’s kept InfoWars on the platform. Facebook shared a statement in the form of two tweets:

We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech.

— Facebook (@facebook) July 12, 2018

Other times Facebook will respond with fewer words.

— Facebook (@facebook) June 29, 2018

“One piece of advice for Facebook: They may be able to copy Snapchat’s product with ease, but if they try to get ‘down with the kidz’ by going nuts on Urban Dictionary to help craft their tweets, Twitter users will go to town mocking them with no mercy,” Navarra said.

Facebook also runs Twitter accounts for Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. These accounts appear to be more for sharing community-related posts and product announcements. Facebook also does customer support in each of them.

Facebook doesn’t appear to have a Snapchat account.

Facebook’s YouTube account includes interviews with employees and its ad campaigns.

Google
Even though Google’s own efforts at creating social networks have been futile, the tech giant has been an early adopter to new platforms for marketing.

“We really aim to keep it real. What’s important to us is to stay humble. The tone is candid and transparent,” said Rachelle Lacroix, Google’s social media manager. “The older tweets are more old school Google-y, but it’s the same purpose. We tell stories about Google, about our product, the people who make them and the people who use them.”

Google uses Twitter to share news and customer service. It doesn’t have specific accounts for customer care. For example, when YouTube TV went out during the World Cup game on July 11, the company shared status updates via the YouTubeTV account:

And we’re back! Enjoy the rest of #ENGCRO by going to https://t.co/DYqXd9XXAr.

We are so sorry about the service interruption and we understand your frustration. If you continue to experience issues let @TeamYouTube know.

— YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) July 11, 2018

Google has used Snapchat for surprise announcements and an inside look at company events. For example, in 2016, Google revealed the name of its next version of Android via Snapchat.

You don’t want to miss this. #AndroidNReveal pic.twitter.com/6ivBfkNVCV

— Google (@Google) June 30, 2016

Lacroix said Google it doesn’t use its Snapchat account as frequently now, but the company still buys Snap ads to promote various products. Lately, Google has been using Instagram and Instagram Stories to show behind-the-scenes of events such as its developer conference Google I/O and products.

Twitter
Of course, Twitter uses Twitter. (It manages about 200 accounts.) Twitter’s main objective on other social platforms is to drive people to Twitter, said Helen Lawrence, Twitter’s global head of social media, and one of the most effective channels for that has been Instagram Stories.

“We use Instagram Stories in a particular way to show stories they may be missing out on whether it’s Beyoncé dropping a new album or the World Cup or the viral video of the lemon going down the street. We use Instagram Stories to drive people to moments,” Lawrence said.

Twitter does not have a Snapchat account and doesn’t buy ads there either.

Twitter does use Facebook and will share big announcements there. Most recently, Twitter posted about Teyana Taylor’s listening party for her new album KTSE, which was streamed on Twitter.

Twitter also uploads videos to YouTube. It’s treated as an archive of announcements like launching photos on Twitter and other events like South by Southwest and the NBA Finals.

Snap
Snapchat’s own snaps may disappear, but its posts on other social networks don’t. Snapchat joined Twitter in September 2011, the same month it launched.

And we’re live!! Download the v3.0 update from the App Store here: http://t.co/gSCHHdAg

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) September 28, 2011

Snapchat’s founding team used Twitter to chat directly with users in a fun tone. One of its early tweets was to EDM band Krewella:

@Krewella lolol we’re actually testing a top secret new feature that might be able to help with that…

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) December 28, 2012

Snap cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel would respond directly to user requests. For example, he once revealed the secret way to get black and white color options for the pen tool:

@LilZeekford no prob 🙂 there’s also a hidden effect: B&w… pic.twitter.com/KukEHl7a

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) December 28, 2012

But these days the now publicly traded company is a bit more serious. Snap now has handles for its company Snap and its separate products: the app Snapchat and its video-camera sunglasses Spectacles. It also has support accounts for Snapchat and for Spectacles.

A Snap spokesperson told Digiday that the company uses Twitter to show perspectives and creativity in the community. That includes retweeting people’s snaps from the main app and from Spectacles. Snapchat also shares users’ creations from lens studio, its augmented reality kit for developers.

Snapchat doesn’t use Facebook or Instagram. It does have an active presence on YouTube, sharing videos about new features like Snappables and Snap Maps.

The post How social platforms use other social platforms to win hearts and minds appeared first on Digiday.

Personal-computer shipments in the second quarter had the strongest showing in six years, driven by stronger demand from business customers, according to preliminary data from two research firms.