Month: September 2018

WeWork is not just the world’s biggest real estate company; it wants in on providing content marketing services.

In March, WeWork acquired content-marketing shop Conductor for an undisclosed amount, one of several high-profile purchases in the last year. Conductor analyzes what people are searching for via Google, YouTube, Pinterest and other search engines to help companies figure out what questions they can answer and market themselves. Conductor also provides people and other resources to do the latter.

Conductor already had some big customers like Citibank, Salesforce and WeWork itself. WeWork is sharing resources with Conductor including funding to expand its business, opening new offices, hiring engineers and adding new customers — many of which work in WeWork locations. Conductor’s second quarter of 2018 was the best quarter in its 12-year history, growing its new business segment by 130 percent compared to a year prior and adding more than 50 employees to a 275-person team, the company said.

“I felt WeWork was a platform that we could take our mission and vision, give it more scale and visibility. There’s no point in having a mission that nobody knows about. If we can make it something that’s universally known, that’s phenomenal,” said Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor.

Besmertnik said before the sale, WeWork’s executive team invited him to all-hands meetings so he could see if the leadership was as transparent and decentralized as it professes to be.

WeWork has “lots of leaders, building a platform for businesses to expand. When they thought about the bigger picture of WeWork, physical space is and was the place to start. But on a more broader level, they want to help businesses grow, grow employees, grow revenue, and digital marketing is a space that really needs help,” Besmertnik said.

WeWork began in 2010 as a single coworking space in New York. Over its 8-year history, its grown to be one of the biggest office tenants in Manhattan with more than 200 locations globally. Throughout those offices are thousands of startups — and larger companies — needing services like coffee, internet and perhaps some marketing. Some, especially direct-to-consumer businesses, have opted to do nearly all of their marketing in-house. Conveniently, Conductor offers a platform and customer service representatives to help them with their content marketing, with or without an agency.

To Besmertnik, unsurprisingly, content marketing is the foundation for marketing. While Adobe and Salesforce provide technology on how brands can better serve their existing customers when they’re already on their website, Conductor focuses on generating new customers.

Conductor has more than 1,000 clients. Since the WeWork acquisition, its new business has increased by more than 19 percent with notable names like SoFi, Visa and Nordstrom Rack. WeWork clients are a small but growing percent of Conductor’s client base; since the deal, it’s added 12 new customers who are also WeWork clients, for a total of 70. Besmertnik said Conductor doesn’t cater to a specific vertical but seeks out companies interested in being customer-first rather than growth-hacking to scale.

Both businesses are hoping to add more enterprise customers, Besmertnik said. About 25 percent of WeWork’s clients are enterprise, a service it launched in the spring of 2016, Besmertnik said. That’s up from 20 percent around the same time last year. Conductor, which is headquartered in New York, has mostly U.S.-focused clients, also is growing internationally with offices in Kiev and San Francisco and now London.

Conductor provides technology to any brand, whether they use an agency, a consultancy or simply work alone in a WeWork.

“I think the future of agencies is a combination of very dark and very bright. Agencies historically, particularly in digital marketing, have built their businesses on providing a competency. You outsource something. Successful agencies don’t see the companies getting bigger as a threat but an opportunity,” Besmertnik said.

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Even the richest sports league in the U.S. is worried about declining linear TV ratings — so worried, in fact, that it’s offering unprecedented streaming access to live games during the coming season.

THE KEY HITS:

• For the first time, live local-market NFL games will be available for free on mobile phones regardless of wireless carrier and requiring no TV authentication.
• CBS will also put the next Super Bowl in front of the authentication wall; Telemundo experimented with free access during the World Cup.
• As Amazon, Facebook and other tech giants vie for live sports rights, you’ll begin to see even more free access to live sports.
• But these are gradual shifts, and TV is still the biggest game in town.

A lot has been written about the NFL’s ratings woes, which we don’t need to rehash here. But the truth is that fewer people are watching NFL games — and not just NFL games, but other live sports and linear TV in general — than they used to. NBC’s telecast of the last Super Bowl drew 103.4 million TV viewers, which still counts as one of the 10 most-watched TV programs in history, but was a 7 percent drop from the previous year and a nine-year ratings low for the game.

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Unlike some companies that do little more than talk about brand purpose, Nike is walking the talk with the rollout of Colin Kaepernick in its new “Just Do It” campaign.

Advertisers say Nike’s decision to include Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who ignited a movement for athletes to protest police brutality and inequality after kneeling during the national anthem, is one the fiercest displays of purpose-driven marketing they’ve seen and possibly one of Nike’s best marketing decisions to date.

“Nike is not new to making bold statements, but this has to be one of, if not, the boldest moves,” said Yadira Harrison, co-founder of marketing consultancy Verb. “Knowing this is a campaign and not a one-and-done ad makes this all the more sweeter.”

Making this move as one of the NFL’s biggest partners with a reportedly billion-dollar deal in place, is also quite a feat, said multiple marketing experts.

“They are walking the walk,” said Chris Allieri, founder of public relations branding firm Mulberry & Astor. “It’s one thing to say you support freedom of expression, but it’s another to showcase it, laud it and promote it with a multimillion-dollar campaign.”

Nike’s move is already paying off, at least in terms of publicity. In less than 24 hours since Kaepernick tweeted out his Nike ad with a tagline reading: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” Apex Marketing Group told Bloomberg Nike had already received more than $43 million worth of media exposure. Kellan Terry, data manager at data analytics firm Brandwatch, said the spike in Nike mentions on Twitter between Sept. 2, the day before the tweet went out, and the day of the announcement saw more than a 1,300 percent jump in online mentions of Nike.

There’s no doubt that using Kaepernick is a risk. The football star, who remains unsigned by an NFL team, hasn’t appeared in a large campaign with a major brand since the 2015 football season. Advertisers have claimed he was too polarizing for any brand to take a chance on.

By the end of day Tuesday, Nike’s stock had dipped by more than 3 percent from the news that Kaepernick would be featured. The campaign garnered considerable backlash on social media as well, with some customers posting about cutting up or throwing out their Nike merchandise. By noon, the trending hashtag #BoycottNike had over 188.4 million impressions on Twitter, according to data analytics firm Brandwatch.

Allen Adamson, assistant professor of brand strategy at New York University and co-founder of consultancy Metaforce.co, said Nike knows it cannot appeal to everybody. Otherwise, it would come off as inauthentic or unclear of its direction, a common problem with companies when they try to pursue purpose-driven marketing. “The marketplace is so fractured and polarized today that if you try to keep everyone happy all the time, you will become invisible,” he said.

With all the attention Kaepernick is receiving, it might seem like he is the face of the entire campaign, but Nike isn’t placing the entire campaign on Kaepernick’s shoulders. A Nike spokesperson said he is one of a number of athletes who are being featured. Nike launched the campaign last week with a spot featuring tennis star Serena Williams entitled “Voice of Belief.” Other athletes, like Seattle Seahawks linebacker Shaquem Griffin and Odell Beckham Jr., wide-receiver for the New York Giants, are also part of the campaign that celebrates inspirational athletes who have chased dreams no matter the obstacle or outcome. (Griffin has one hand.)

“This is the kind of advertising that has helped build Nike to what it is today – and exactly what we should be seeing from the Just Do It campaign,” said Katy Wellhousen, account director at influencer agency RQ. “The campaign has lasted three decades because of Nike’s ability to weave it into powerful and personal stories.”

The backlash shouldn’t last too much longer than another day or two, said Terry. Even with cringe-worthy cases like the Pepsi Jenner Kendall fiasco, social media comments died down within days of the controversy, he said. “Nike is no stranger to taking a stance for what they believe to be right, and one can certainly assume they knew the reaction they’d receive.” Nike would not comment on how much backlash they expected.

“In an era when most politicians and brands are ossified into inaction by fear, a lone voice of opposition can be heard that much more clearly,” said Anthony Cospito, head of strategy at digital creative agency Moving Image & Content.

Nike’s relationship with the NFL doesn’t seem to be on shaky ground either, even though Nike is partnering with an athlete who filed a grievance alleging the league of not signing him to a team because of his political views.

On Tuesday, the NFL released a statement. “The National Football League believes in dialogue, understand and unity. We embrace the role and responsibility of everyone involved with this game to promote meaningful, positive change in our communities,” said Jocelyn Moore, evp of communications and public affairs at the NFL. “The social justice issues that Colin and other professional athletes have raised deserve our attention and action.”

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Last spring, the Guardian remodeled its content studio Labs to align more closely with the rest of the newsroom, in order to make its campaign output more efficient. The goal: to remain competitive in a consistently cluttered paid content market and increase its financial contribution to the publisher on its road back into the black.

So far, so good. Although the Guardian doesn’t break out what slice Labs revenue contributes to the overall £108.6 million ($140 million) digital ad revenue pie, content studio revenue has risen 66 percent in the first half of this year, compared to the first half of last year, according to the publisher. The average value of its larger deals, which are over £100,000 ($130,000) have also increased by 36 percent, according to the publisher. Client retention rates have also increased, though it wouldn’t give a a specific percentage.

Instead of its former agency-like model, the restructured 62-person Labs team resembles a commercial features desk that more closely mirrors the publisher’s editorial desks in terms of structure and project execution.

Ensuring the Labs team has the skills to deal with changing client expectations — and establishing a structure to cope with fast brief turnarounds — has led to outsourcing less work, and relying less on off-site paid distribution, according to its two leaders executive director Imogen Fox and director of sales and strategy Adam Foley.

“The honeymoon period branded content had from having to drive hard metrics is over,” said Foley. “I worry that branded content can be very vulnerable on the media plan because it’s seen as a luxury. When we lose business, it’s not often to competitors; it’s because budget just gets pulled from branded content completely.”

Every Labs project is designed to resonate with and target readers wherever they may expect to see a type of content. That’s partly thanks to the commercial team getting access to in-house data-analytics tools, like Ophan, long used by the Guardian’s editorial team. But also adding staff in the right places: Campaign discoverability is now the job of three commercial audience editors who analyze data to determine sweet spots for where, when and how content should appear in order to be of interest to the right target audiences, on and off site.

Last year, the Labs team published 1,199 text articles, 65 videos, 12 interactives and 55 image galleries on behalf of clients including Natwest, Spotify, Google and Airbnb. On average, an individual spends 2.3 minutes with Guardian Labs content per campaign, according to the publisher. In some campaigns, this has risen to six minutes.

Each brief is assigned a core, four-person team spanning sales, strategy, editorial and project management skills. They receive input from across Labs where necessary, but they are the point of contact. “People are often braver with their ideas when there are fewer of them. There’s no danger of decisions by committee,” said Foley.

This leaner structure enables the team to juggle 40 campaigns simultaneously and respond to the average 16 weekly briefs, according to Fox. “It’s more efficient now. As a news brand, you’re used to producing something within the hour. Having a commercial features desk that is stacked with that level of editorial experience means no one is scared by the speed,” she added.

This structure has helped Labs win awards for campaigns like The Chain — devised collaboratively with Google, Essence and OMD agencies. Google’s brief was to increase the desirability of its Pixel 2 mobile handset. The Guardian recruited 10 top fashion influencers — including model and activist Adwoa Aboah — and asked them to film their responses to how they challenge the status quo in their own lives on the Pixel 2 handset. The Labs team then created a glossy print magazine from the content produced, which was distributed at fashion outlets around London. The six-week campaign also involved short-form video spin-offs from influencer content, which ran on the Guardian site and on Instagram and Facebook, generating 430,000 video views during the campaign, according to the publisher. More importantly, purchase intent for the phone rose 40 percent, according to the Guardian.

Publisher content studios aren’t without their challenges. Producing high-quality content and distributing it at the necessary scale makes for tight margins. Foley said making Labs content more on a par with what people expect from Guardian editorial, in terms of style, tone, and stance, has helped it protect its margins. While paid content is clearly labeled, it has better visibility on the Guardian site. “It means we can deliver our targets without having to spend so much [on paid social],” he added.

Agency demand for deep publisher audience insights that can shed light on which topics are shaping audience behavior and how they can tap into that on behalf of clients, remains high. “Any content studios that invest in insights are therefore a cut above,” said Laura Wade, vp of content and innovations at Essence. Guardian Labs is further ahead on this than most, she added.

“I’d be wary of signing off a branded content piece for a client if ROI was their core metric — there are other channels that can guarantee that. It’s difficult to guarantee that ROI with branded content because it is so subjective, and there are so many moving parts in terms of the execution — even though the sales results can be phenomenal,” said Wade.

Guardian Labs’ repositioning to a commercial features desk more closely tied to editorial has been welcomed by agencies in general, who say it is an easier sell-in now for clients.

“Content partnerships are difficult, expensive and can divert money from media — through content production for example. So on the surface, they often don’t look like the best investment,” said Graham Martin, head of publisher at Total Media. “However, if they are underpinned by a sound strategy and everyone is honest about the outcomes expected, then they can be very powerful.”

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After the success of “Game of Zones” and House of Highlights, Bleacher Report wants to build more content franchises centered on personalities.

On Wednesday, Bleacher Report is debuting a new weekly NFL-centric video series called “Simms & Lefkoe: The Show,” which will recap that week in football. The show will be hosted by former NFL quarterback Chris Simms and longtime Bleacher Report host Adam Lefkoe and feature studio banter, interviews with athletes and irreverent field segments covering various aspects of the NFL and its athletes. The show is a key part of a new NFL-focused content franchise for Bleacher Report, which also includes three weekly podcasts hosted by Simms and Lefkoe.

The show follows in the footsteps of other talent-led content brands from Bleacher Report, including House of Highlights, which is overseen by Omar Raja, and animated shows such as “Game of Zones” and “Gridiron Heights,” which are overseen by brothers Craig and Adam Malamut.

“We want to develop original programming that mirrors the interest of our audience,” said Joe Yanarella, svp of content for Bleacher Report. “We have front-facing talent that connects with them in an engaging way, so we want to build communities around that.”

Each episode of “Simms & Lefkoe: The Show” will run 15 to 20 minutes and will be available on Bleacher Report’s site and mobile app and YouTube. Clips and segments will be distributed across Bleacher Report properties, YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. For now, the show is scheduled to run through the Super Bowl.

The show is designed to be a football-centric talk show in the vein of Kimmel and Fallon, with segments that could include doing off-the-field activities with players, such as taking two close teammates and testing their knowledge of each other, or going with rookie Jets quarterback Sam Darnold on a bus tour of New York City with local Jets fans.

“The core value statement of the show is not to be HBO’s ‘Real Sports,’” Yanarella said. “We’ll cover serious topics in player interviews, but this is more in the entertainment genre. We want to do stuff that has some fun and bite, which tends to be more social and viral.”

The show will also mark Bleacher Report’s first foray into sports-betting content. “Simms & Lefkoe: The Show” will have segments where fans get to bet on games with Lefkoe’s money. The idea is to normalize gambling among viewers as more states legalize sports gambling.

“It’s still very territorial right now in terms of legality,” Yanarella said. “We want to get everyone emotionally invested in the idea of betting without having them actually place bets.”

For the show, Bleacher Report has hired a new showrunner and several production staffers as part of an overall team of 20 people, the publisher said. The centerpiece will remain the two hosts, Yanarella said.

“Short-form news and analysis is kind of overproduced these days — everyone does it, so it’s difficult to stand out,” Yanarella said. “Now, developing front-facing talent that connects with an audience and [through which] you can build a community around is what will differentiate you. So we’re making more investments in that category.”

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For apparel retailers, 3D body scans were once thought to be a cure-all for the customer fitting process. But they’re now coming to terms with the reality that these machines can’t do everything humans can. They’re good at acquiring data but not quite ready to make tough decisions yet. For now, they’re tools that allow humans to do their jobs better.

At Acustom Apparel, where customers can buy custom-designed suits with the help of body scanner, CEO Dan Norcross acknowleged that the dream was an “airport-style walk through and you’re done.” But after years of practice, brands like Acustom are realizing that 3D body scanning can’t capture the entirety of the fitting experience — the subjective feel of the right fit, variations in posture and other customer preferences.

“We’re aware of how complicated and detailed it is,” Norcross said.

Custom menswear brands like Acustom Apparel, Alton Lane, and Hong Kong-based Gay Giano Tailor use 3D body scanning technology to collect data on body shape and fit that can create digital avatars to assist designers and producers to craft a tailored suit based on precise measurements. It’s meant to standardize an element of the measurement process, and avoid inconsistencies of tailor-determined measurements.

Norcross, who acquired Acustom Apparel two years ago from founder Jamal Motlagh, said the company was founded on the principle that 3D body scanning technology could potentially replace humans, but the company has adapted to the limitations of technology by deploying humans to figure out what “best fit” means for each customer.

“Over time, our experience was that it augments and facilitates the experience, but having good fitting clothes requires an expert eye,” he said.

After customers get scanned by the 3D device, which Norcross said has 14 cameras, another piece of software interprets the scan and, together with human input, the information is sent to design and production teams offsite, and the item is delivered to a customer’s home in 3 to 6 weeks. Beyond the hundreds of thousands of data points collected by the machine, a critical part of the fitting process is learning about the person, including their lifestyle, habits and posture patterns — information that can only be collected by observing them and interviewing them.

“[In the machine] the person is in a static pose, it’s a bit of a forced pose, so you get some posture out of it, but a lot of [information]  you get comes from interacting with the person, watching how they walk and stand when they’re not in the scanner, what’s their [walking and sitting] position like?” he said.

Beyond the body-scanning machine, a critical part of making the process work is the software that interprets the data from the scan — technology that still has a ways to go before it replaces a human’s assessment.

Alton Lane, a nine-year-old custom menswear brand, also incorporates body scanning into a fitting ritual that includes a sit-down at a bar where customers can talk to associates about their apparel purchase. Founder Colin Hunter said after using scanners for a year (it’s used them since the company was founded), it offered sample garments to customers as part of the fitting process. Alton Lane also takes around 10 manual measurements, a way of assessing the subjective “right fit” according to the customer’s preferences.

“[The body scanner] is not a not a magic box; sometimes customers think it’s going to pop out perfect,” said Hunter, who added that education on the body-scanning machines’ capabilities is key because some customers may overestimate the scanner’s ability.

The scanner, however, does offer advantages over measuring tape, by standardizing certain measurements that often vary when they’re entirely left up to humans, he said. But the results from the scan are double-checked with in-person measurements, and customers have the option of coming to the store to assess fit issues post-production.

Norcross and Hunter said they see future evolutions of technology that interpret the scans to incorporate machine learning and personalized recommendations. Acustom is investing in developing proprietary technology aimed at doing this; for now, it’s focusing on offering human support where needed.

Indochino, which also specializes in custom fit menswear, said it doesn’t use body scanners because they can’t replace the human element.  Instead, it uses a try-on program in its showroom where customers try on standard template sizes in three silhouettes to determine the closest fit; staff members apply a series of fit tools through a proprietary app to address any fit issues prior to construction.

“Body scanners can’t talk to the customer — they can’t ask how snug they want their garment to feel, their preferred length or if there is any discomfort at all,” said Drew Green, CEO of Indochino.

Scalability to a broader audience is also a major challenge. Bloomgindale’s, for example, phased them out after a couple of years. Costs alone, make it impractical for most retailers, said Forrester principal analyst Sucharita Kodali. Amazon, which recently acquired 3D body model startup, Body Labs, is experimenting with consumer applications of the technology, and recently rolled out its Echo Look Alexa fashion assistant that combines automated as well as human input to advise customers on fashion choices. Finding a way to put the technology into the hands of consumers could help grow its reach more broadly.

“Right now, we’re on the precipice of body scanning technology, but external hardware is clunky for retailers and consumers alike to install either in stores or at home, making it extremely difficult to scale this tech,” said Maya Mikhailov, founder of mobile commerce platform GPShopper. “However, as mobile phones are getting more sophisticated sensor technology and better optics, including depth sensors, the device itself can become a scanner, opening a wealth of opportunity for retailers.”

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