Month: March 2019

Conversations around tech policy and consumer privacy were undoubtedly going to dominate SXSW. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate helped steer the conversation to solutions, rather than just knee-jerk reactions, with her proposal to break up the tech giants just ahead of the 10-day conference. Warren elaborated on the plan during her SXSW keynote on March 9.

“With giants like Amazon and Google and Facebook, do you know how venture capitals talk about the space around them? They call it the kill zone because they don’t want to fund businesses in that space because they know Amazon will eat them up, Facebook will eat them up, Google will eat them up,” Warren said.

Throughout SXSW, panelists in media, tech and politics were asked to comment on Warren’s proposal and the broader topic of regulation. The general consensus was that the tech industry did need some type of regulation in order to improve competition and protect consumers.

Warren’s proposal includes eliminating the ability for a platform to control a marketplace and then also participate if the company has an annual revenue of more than $25 billion. It will also split up companies like Amazon, which also sells its own, competing private-label brands on its own site.

Roger McNamee, the Facebook investor-turned-critic who recently published a book about Facebook’s impact on society titled “Zucked,” highlighted that idea of rebranding those companies as platform utilities.

“I think Warren’s proposal is brilliant. There’s a behavior that’s rampant in the industry of people owning a marketplace and then participating in it. They do so in the detriment of competitors,” said McNamee.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder and executive chairman of Foursquare, said on a March 9 panel that his company has been anticipating regulation and paying attention to how it relates to their business of location technology. Crowley said Foursquare has been proactive about preventing data abuse and does not categorize itself with “bad actors” who sell data in a sketchy way.

“We feel like there are good actors and bad actors. Yeah, someone should probably step in and deal with the bad actors. It’s becoming clear that Foursquare, as a leader in that space, we have a seat at the table, to go down to Washington and share what we do,” Crowley said.

But when asked specifically if these companies would be broken up as Warren proposed, Crowley cautioned that there are some benefits to the interconnectivity of the services.

“They might be. For me, I’m a big fan of Google’s services, and I understand how they have to be connected,” Crowley said.

Regarding regulation of the tech giants, there is debate on how to categorize the companies within the industry. Mike Dossett, vp and director of digital strategy at ad agency RPA, said there has been a tendency to think in universal terms that do not apply to all facets of the tech industry.

“There’s a tendency to lump all of ‘big tech’ together and propose universal standards that have vastly different implications depending on which company in this tech bucket they’re applied to. On the other side, there’s some overconfidence in the potential for effective self-governance or an unwillingness to assume sufficient responsibility for some of the unintended negative consequences,” Dossett said.

Crowley, who returned to SXSW this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of launching Foursquare at the conference, said he credited his company’s continued success in part to being proactive about responsibility to consumers.

“There’s this idea that you have to keep shareholders happy so you have to do sketchy things. But I don’t think that’s true. For us, we’ve been doing this for almost eight to nine years, why would we screw it up now to speed up revenue growth?” Crowley said.

The post ‘There is an unwillingness to assume sufficient responsibility’: Tech regulation takes center stage at SXSW appeared first on Digiday.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Feed The Beast Some VC-backed digital news startups are taking a more businesslike approach. “I think we’ve seen a shift now toward more austerity [in digital media] because the focus now is not ‘can you outrun everyone,’ it’s ‘can you outlast everyone,’” BuzzFeed CEO… Continue reading »

The post BuzzFeed’s Peretti Hails New Age Of Austerity; Who Benefits From Brand Conquesting (Google) appeared first on AdExchanger.

By James Kirkham, chief business officer at COPA90

If you think you know football fans, think again. There is a growing expectation among 16 to 24-year-olds for the players they follow to speak out on the socio-cultural and political issues of today.

In a world that’s considered short on political leadership that resonates with culturally-aware younger minds, some modern fans are turning to superstar footballers to show them the way. They’re no longer taking tabloid-style news headlines or shock stories about players at face value. In fact, when a fan is confronted by such stories today, they are more likely to question the source or leap to the defense of a player.

A belief in the unifying social power of football is the striking theme to emerge from the second edition of COPA90’s The Modern Football Fan — a deep-dive investigation into a new generation of young football fans. The report, based on interviews with 2,110 16 to 24-year-old fans in the UK, US, China and Brazil, reveals growing calls for greater moral authority and community values to be re-instilled around the consumption of the game.

Fans in the US and UK, for example, report their sense of connection with Manchester City player Raheem Sterling — who recently spoke out against institutionalized racism — and former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s stand against inequality and social injustice. Young fans who respect Sterling’s mature and measured response subsequently get behind a cause they see as ‘just’ — actively eschewing an old and outdated mentality in sports. They demonstrate their support organically via social media — effectively acting as a marketer for that player or any associated brand. This, in turn, is empowering players to be brave and speak their mind.

There is also clear evidence of a growing shift among 16 to 24-year-old fans away from poisonous, micro-blogging debates; some have disengaged fully with the conversation, opting instead for social safe havens, such as WhatsApp. The members of this virtual clubhouse-style environment can be hand-picked, creating a natural safety net.

Others are lending their support to growing criticism of clubs and media outlets that favor extreme views as clickbait. And there is a shift towards brands, businesses, clubs and players who harness the power of positivity.

As modern football fans react against negative comments and abuse that have proliferated on social platforms like Twitter and look in large numbers to promote positive discourse, brands need to shake the perception that all online football chatter is toxic and embrace these more positive debates.

There is also rising interest and support for clubs and fan groups that take an active role in addressing issues, such as diversity, in the hope and expectation that greater community cohesion and a more tolerant and open-minded society can be achieved through football.

As LGBTQ and other marginalized communities grow their voice in society, today’s young fans increasingly want to see this action reflected in football. They see football as a microcosm of society as a whole, which means they expect to see a variety of identities represented in this space. Without this shift, they see the sport as unrealistic. Soon they will demand players and clubs to act on other important issues and ‘taking a stance’ will become the new normal.

There’s clear enthusiasm among the three billion fans that football touches every day for greater levels of respect, both towards the players and other fans too. And there is an appetite to seek out forms of football entertainment to bring joy and make good.

The message for brands from all of this is clear: it’s time to re-think outdated notions when it comes to football and the new generation of fans that will shape its future.

Brands need to act fast if they’re to connect with this new generation of fans’ expectations of football’s broader influence and cultural impact. Effectively leveraging this impassioned audience can yield huge rewards — for brands and beyond.

The post Young fans turn against social toxicity and see football as a force for good appeared first on Digiday.

Affirm’s tempting pay-less-upfront-now proposition is popping up on more and more retail product pages. Instead of forking over a full $250 for a new rug, pay just $25 a month for 10 months, with 0 percent APR. That sounds a lot better on the surface, but Affirm’s loan system has broader implications for retailers.

A fin-tech company that positions itself as an alternative to credit cards, Affirm is moving closer to becoming a mainstream payment option for more people. Earlier this month, Affirm announced a partnership with Walmart, its largest partnership with a brick-and-mortar retailer to date. Walmart customers can make purchases through Affirm — which allows customers to pay for a single item like a mattress or a handbag through a series of installments, with interest — at any of Walmart’s 4,000 stores. Customers will also be able to pay for items on Walmart’s website using Affirm in the coming weeks.

Affirm’s earliest partnerships were with direct-to-consumer companies that sold the types of big-ticket items that most people associate with using a credit card to buy, like Wayfair, Casper and Peloton. Today, 2,000 merchants allow customers to pay using Affirm. And as the Walmart partnership shows, consumers can now use Affirm to pay for more than just luxury times — they can use it to finance items they might have previously paid upfront with cash or a debit card, or with another credit card.

It’s layaway for the modern age.

Merchants who use Affirm say that it helps them reach lower-income customers who might not otherwise have been able to pay for some of their items, and that it’s especially appealing for younger consumers who might not have as much disposable income and prefer paying less upfront for items like mattresses or plane tickets. But it’s still unclear whether most customers are using Affirm as a substitute to or in addition to taking out a credit card. If the latter’s the case, then customers might find themselves in more trouble come a recession — which could also hurt retailers, even though Affirm tries to downplay how much risk retailers are taking on. Although Affirm takes on the burden of the loan and pays retailers upfront, taking on too many credit cards or loans through Affirm can limit their ability to make other purchases.

“I think it’s really important to note that most of these types of solutions [like Affirm] weren’t available during the last economic downturn,” Leslie Parrish, a consumer lending analyst with Aite Group, said. “And we know that unsecured personal loans is one of the things we first see defaults in if there’s a change in the credit cycle.”

Affirm’s origin story has been much repeated at this point by founder and CEO Max Levchin — when Levchin was in college, he opened up a department store credit card, thinking that he was going to save 10 percent on a pair of jeans with no catch, unaware that he would end up paying more than the jeans initially cost thanks to late fees and compound interest.

“Across all industries — whether it’s travel or retail — customers are no longer all that interested in adding another purchase onto their credit card, or even using their debit card,” Affirm’s vp of partnerships, Sara Wyman said.

So Affirm presents itself as a fairer, more transparent competitor to department store credit cards: It doesn’t charge late fees or compound interest, and Affirm tells customers before they enter their payment information how long they have to repay the loan, and how much interest they’ll owe — anywhere from 0 to 30 percent, though Affirm says that the average interest rate is 17 percent. That’s about the same as the average APR rate on a credit card. Affirm works with Cross River Bank to underwrite loans.

Affirm said that the average order value today is $800 and that the average Affirm customer takes around 10 to 11 months to repay their loans. Affirm does not share how many customers end up defaulting on their loans — if an Affirm customer is over 90 days late on a payment, they have to report the customer to credit bureaus.

Merchants who use Affirm — many of them DTC companies — say that they wanted to add a financing option to their websites instead of their own branded credit cards, and decided on Affirm because they felt it was more transparent than other financing options and was easier to integrate with their website. Wayfair has its own credit card, but most online startups don’t. Affirm also gives merchants aggregated data about how old customers are, what type of credit score they have, and other customer demographics.

David Kalt, the founder and CEO of Reverb.com, a secondary marketplace for instruments, said he wanted to add Affirm as a financing option, because “musicians tend to have less traditional career paths and lifestyles. They’re not bad lending candidates, but they’re underserved by banks and credit card companies because of unpredictable income streams, disinterest in credit cards, and more. Affirm’s creative approach to determining credit-worthiness helps us serve those customers.”

Sash Catanzarite, the chief product officer and co-founder of women’s fashion resale marketplace Tradesy, said that the average order value of a customer who uses Affirm to finance their payment is about 45 percent higher than those who don’t use Affirm.

“We see people using it as an alternative to a credit card. And anecdotally, it’s hard for us to measure — but we even see people using it who could probably purchase that thing outright but for whatever reason have decided that they would prefer to make a monthly payment rather than laying out the cash upfront,” Catanzarite said.

When asked whether they were worried about purchasers taking on too much interest through Affirm or financing purchases they shouldn’t have, the merchants who spoke with Digiday say that that hasn’t been a concern for them.

“I think that, yes, there’s a risk if people were all of a sudden to start financing everything that they purchase [through Affirm] and trying to pay that out over time,” Catanzarite said. “However, I think that the thing that historically has been an area where people get into a huge problem with credit on, is not being able to pay off the bill and then having the rate go up really dramatically, and that’s where I think Affirm has the potential to do differently.”

As Affirm’s gotten bigger, it’s had to find ways to market itself to a broader variety of companies, some of which might not have immediately thought to add a financing option like Affirm. It made a big push into apparel, last year for example, with a three-month interest-free offering. Affirm’s been able to do this because it’s taken on $450 million in equity funding, as well as a $100 million credit line from Morgan Stanley. The company declines to say what percentage it takes of each purchase made through Affirm, saying that it varies by merchant.

Many of the companies that Affirm partners with right now are DTC companies that never offered their own branded credit cards in the first place. So, in order for Affirm’s vision to come to fruition — to replace the traditional department store credit card with a more transparent option — it’s going to have to partner with more traditional retailers and convince them to ditch their credit cards once and for all.

The post How Affirm is pitching point-of-sale financing to digital retail appeared first on Digiday.

Already the market leader in over-the-top advertising, Hulu is prepping for another big year as viewers continue to flock to connected TV screens — and advertisers chase after them.

For instance, Hulu has grown its revenue from direct-to-consumer and performance marketers by 85 percent year over year, the company said. Peter Naylor, Hulu’s svp of ad sales, did not say how much of Hulu’s overall ad business, which totaled $1.5 billion in 2018, is coming from DTC companies; but the streaming video giant is already working with more than half of the DTC companies listed in the IAB’s list of top 250 DTC companies, Naylor said.

“The estimate is that there are about 3,000 of these companies who are disruptor brands and DTC brands — we are chasing that,” said Naylor. “The growth is coming, and we like it.”

Hulu has more than 50 million ad-supported viewers per month, according to Comscore. Naylor spoke about the growth of Hulu’s ad business, how the company has been taking advantage of brand-safety issues on social platforms and other areas of growth. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

“Budget safety” was a big part of Hulu’s pitch last year: that the industry needed to come together on the definition of brand safety and focus on issues such as viewability, third-party verification and domain spoofing. Has any real progress been made?
Brands have a very good understanding that the social platforms carry an amount of risk. And brands need to decide for themselves what they are comfortable with. There is definitely a spectrum: There are advertisers who say that if even one impression is served against something that’s hateful or awful, it’s one impression too many and they just have to retreat. There are other brands where it’s a little bit more than a shrug; it’s a calculated balance of risk and reward for them. There has been some progress such as with ads.txt, which publishers have embraced and is consistent.

Advertisers love to act concerned when a brand-safety issue is brought to life. But how much of that is just posturing? Some of them will leave YouTube and will be back a few weeks later.
Some people really do take it seriously. During this most recent issue, we had people calling in and saying, “Can I give you more of my budget?” They are shifting budgets. Is it a tsunami of people rushing away? No. But does our phone ring? Absolutely.

The nice thing for us is there is increasing scale in our [OTT] market. And advertisers understand that while all of the platforms are very different, if you’re trying to figure out how to redeploy video impressions, we’re a wonderful alternative. We have a risk-free place to put media.

You have to admit that this is a great position to be in for a company like Hulu. You have movies and TV shows. And pre-rolls and mid-rolls. Is it even possible for an ad to not be viewable on Hulu?
To be totally transparent: 80 percent of our viewing happens in the living room, and it’s app-based. Fourteen percent is happening on tablets, and that’s app-based. The app viewers are 100 percent viewable. The only area that might be a modest challenge is desktop — where we are 99.6 percent viewable. We only sell on completion rates. It’s a bit disarming to a media buyer who wants to find an objection during negotiations.

But that’s what I mean: Not everyone can be Hulu or in OTT.
The OTT space enjoys some unique attributes, which is why I am bullish on the entire space. TV is the most powerful form of advertising ever created, but conventional TV has hit its ceiling and the ceiling is coming down. Marketers want TV alternatives and OTT does that. It’s also the superior alternative because it’s on demand, and the audience is more digitally native than on linear. Everything we’re doing today is inevitably where everything [in TV] will be sometime in the future.

What’s a real challenge for you then?
We have half of television’s ad load, but we recognize that’s still an interruptive ad model. We are embracing new models, complementary ad models. One of our stated goals is to have 50 percent of our ad revenue be non-intrusive in the next three years. It’s kind of a moonshot statement, but I think the pause ad will be one of the things that gets us there.

How much are these new types of ad units just a way to open up inventory? The narrative on Hulu is that there’s usually more demand than supply, right?
But we have to be viewer-first. People will be tolerant for as long as the ads are thoughtful and relevant. When you go too far, when you start jamming ads, that’s when you risk people leaving. And we have an ad-free version, which is just one click away. So we do have to be careful of the ad load.

How much ad revenue are you expecting this year?
It’s growing sharply. I don’t know if I should give you a number. Last year, the year-over-year growth was 45 percent. Look at our subscriber growth, which has been well documented [Editor’s note: 25 million subscribers]. Engagement and time spent is up by 77 percent. All of that means there is more inventory and more audience that we can bring to marketers. We’re expecting extraordinarily handsome growth — without putting a number on it.

The post Hulu’s Peter Naylor: ‘Conventional TV has hit its ceiling and the ceiling is coming down’ appeared first on Digiday.

Nearly three years while working at a big ad agency, Ollie Olanipekun, who is black, often found himself being wheeled out as the “cultural guy” for clients.

“I was sick of being that person because of the way I looked,” said Olanipekun. “It felt like a gimmick they rolled out. Every time we had a brief about youth culture, the creative director would ask, ‘Is Ollie free?’ as if I was the only person in an agency of 160 people who had a view.”

Things got worse for Olanipekun when the same creative director would ask him to “say hello” to clients whenever they were in the office so that the agency appeared more diverse than it actually was.

Fed up, Olanipekun left to set up his own agency Superimpose Studio.

For agency professionals like Olanipekun, racial microaggressions have become a staple of their working lives and in many instances have become a source of stress that’s pushed some to the periphery of the industry or out of it entirely. While overt examples may have declined, employees report it’s likelier to be issues like being the defacto “diversity voice” in the room just because they’re minorities.

How racial stereotypes still impact young ad execs
Life as a young minority executive is tough, according to the nine who were interviewed for this article, and in many ways demoralizing and depressing. What their stories show is that in advertising, as in other industries, people from ethnically diverse backgrounds who aspire to carve out a career for themselves face far more racial discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, than they thought would be the case by now.

“I wanted to work at an ad agency since I was at college, and when I finally got a job at one of the biggest ones, I felt blessed,” said a former agency executive on condition of anonymity for fear of harming future career prospects. “No one tells you how easy it is to become the black poster girl in these businesses. I never felt like I could be my best self. My employer wanted to appear diverse but refused to put the hard yards in.”

Like Olanipekun, the executive pushed back against this abuse that was more furtive than blatant discrimination. And yet whenever she raised the issue with management, she felt pressure to fix it herself from HR executives. The executive left the agency after a year and hasn’t worked at another since. “If that’s what it was like at one of the larger, supposedly more forward-thinking creative shops, then it won’t be much better elsewhere,” she said. Looking back, the executive is convinced that being a black woman hurt her career prospects.

“I’ve seen the disappointment in an interviewer’s eye when I walk through the door and they see someone who isn’t what they expected,” said a black junior freelance creative.

That’s a hard pill to swallow when it means conforming to stereotypes to get ahead. As another agency exec revealed on condition of anonymity: “Someone decided I wasn’t confident enough and blamed it on the fact that ‘Indian girls aren’t allowed to be confident.’ One of my managers said I wouldn’t get any further in my career unless I re-educated myself in this area.”

“I’m not going to quit my choice of career because some people haven’t learned how to handle difficult diversity problems yet,” said the executive. She has, however, moved to a larger agency in the hope of teaming up with similar ethnicities to educate and change the system around them. “I’ve only worked in small boutique agencies, so I guess they aren’t held to quotas or anything,” said the executive.

When it comes to diversity, the industry isn’t as far along as it thinks 
While things aren’t quite as bad as they once were, it’s a fact that the progress made has been largely concentrated at entry level. “If you come to the media agency I work at and see all the black and brown execs here, you’d think it was a great reflection of diversity and inclusivity,” said a mid-level executive at one of the network groups who was not authorized to speak to Digiday. “But when you get to a certain level, everyone is white. How is that possible?”

Advertising does not have a heritage of diversity and shifting workplace culture is the hardest thing to do because shortcuts just don’t work.

According to Digiday Research, 39 percent of agency professionals have experienced discrimination, and a fifth of them say it’s been racial.

There is currently a lot of work being done to address imbalance for gender in leadership roles, but not so much to address imbalance for BAME individuals.

The numbers bear this out. People from BAME backgrounds (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) filled less than 2 in 10 (13.8 percent) of all agency jobs in 2018, up from 12.9 percent the previous year, according to trade body Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s study of its members in the U.K. The progress is even slower in the C-suite where just 5.5 percent of roles are filled by people from BAME backgrounds, up from 4.7 percent the previous year.

The problem is agency bosses hire “clones” who are usually Caucasian men and white women, said a senior executive from a BAME background at a network media agency. “Just because a bunch of white women are hired, that is not a positive check for diversity; it’s changing absolutely nothing,” said the executive.

There are, however, initiatives such as BAME2020, Culture Heroes and the Advertising Diversity Taskforce raising awareness of the issue by recruiting role models and mentors for BAME employees, while Creative Equals has data on what people from BAME backgrounds feel about how they are being treated.

“It’s frustrating when organizations place the responsibility on to HR teams — this is a senior leadership issue and needs to be driven top down,” said Leila Siddiqi, head of diversity at the IPA.

It’s equally “annoying” when BAME minorities are all put into the same box even though they are radically different, said Siddiqi. For Siddiqi, the concept of intersectionality is key here. “For example, we can’t talk about the problems of all women as if they are a singular group — black women face different challenges as white women or disabled women,” she said.

A culture of intolerance
Not everyone can afford to turn advertising’s discomfort with diversity into an opportunity for striking out on your own the way Olanipekun did. For agency employees, what ends up being rewarded is conformity, which is reflected in how people behave, dress and their mannerisms.

To some young minority executives conforming to the industry’s expectations is essential for survival. So much so that some of them “act white,” said the BAME exec at the network media agency. “Own the fact your accent might not be from a cut-glass public school environment, own the fact you may have been brought up on a council estate or that you were poor; just own it, don’t act like something you’re not.”

What diverse talent is being found isn’t being nurtured enough to progress through to the mid- to senior-level echelons of the industry. And on rare occasions, they do get there, BAME executives don’t always feel like they can use their position to help others.

“We had some senior execs that were [minorities,] but they did not seem to be bothered by the layers underneath,” said a former senior marketer now working in the fin-tech space. “I actually noticed some BAME employees favoring white staff and ignoring or limiting people of their own color. Diversity groups that were supposed to be a priority, ended up vanishing.”

But whereas previous generations have seen paths beyond agencies blocked, the current crop of talent can take their skills to startups and tech companies. It’s left some marketers concerned for a lost generation of talent they may not get to work with.

“Even if the numbers are improving around diversity in advertising, I don’t think inclusivity is being addressed as part of that,” said Tanya Joseph, a former agency executive who now heads up external communications at building society Nationwide. “If all we’re going to do is make people believe they need to think in the same way and behave in a certain manner because they work in advertising, then the benefits of diversity are completely lost.”

As much as it’s an HR issue, Nationwide’s Joseph believes marketers must drive the agenda as they’re the ones holding the purse strings. Diageo has started to insist that agencies share their strategies for creating more inclusive workplaces, for example. Marketers need to be much more “explicit” in the expectations they have of what a diverse and inclusive business looks like, said Joseph, who suggested devoting extra time during the pitch process to visit agencies to see their work culture up close. She is also working with advertiser trade body ISBA on a series of initiatives designed to help marketers tackle the same problems in their own teams.

“There aren’t many agencies where I feel you walk in and you think everyone gets to be their best self today,” said Joseph. “I get why some people get fed up and leave to set up their own startups, but I want us to help to create businesses where they don’t have to make that choice.”

The post ‘I became the black poster girl’: Racism remains an issue within agencies appeared first on Digiday.

Talent is a hot topic at agencies, especially as they come under fire for not having diverse-enough workforces. One of the most tried and true ways of breaking into the business has always been internships. Highly coveted, these give younger people the chance to work on multiple bits of the business and gain valuable experience. They’re also seen as a good way to diversify the employee base, by hiring outside the usual portfolio schools and bringing in a variety of perspectives. But as an advertising agency executive confesses this week, internships are often more about nepotism than diversity, with many agencies reserving them for clients’ kids. Here’s what they had to say:

So how do internships work at agencies?
So every agency has an internship almost. But every agency I’ve worked has had internships that are basically earmarked for client kids.

How come?
One big holding company agency I worked at had a formal program. It was great. You applied for it eight months before, and interns came to New York and were put up in a hotel property and worked on a ton of clients. It was close to impossible to get into.

Why?
Because all the slots were taken up were clients’ children. Nepotism at its finest.

Did they ask you for it?
Depends. It also used to happen when I was at a smaller, boutique agency, where we had an internship program. So and so client would call you and say, “Do me a favor: My son is graduating from UMass in May, wants to get into advertising or media or PR. Can you help him figure out where to intern?”

And you would do what?
With the agency thing, you can’t say no. Our global CEO used to come to me and say, “Meet with our client’s kid.” When this girl came in, we rolled out the red carpet. She was escorted to meet with HR. She met everyone. If this was a regular person, it would have been coffee at best. After we met with her, she’s a lovely kid, but then it was like we had to report back to the CEO and tell him. CMO called CEO, she got the internship.

Then?
You’re like, “Jeez, OK.” Then you meet with the kid, and he’d tell you what he wants to do. And I’d say, depending on a few things, maybe I’ll introduce you to my friend at a brand or another agency. Or, more likely, I’ll slot him in an internship with us. I remember getting client kids top-notch internships because those clients now love me for life. And I did it because I knew they would love me for life. The challenge is when the kid is stupid or an asshole.

Did you think you were doing something wrong?
Look, I do believe in helping people. If they are total jerks, then I won’t. But for the most part, I do. The problem with client kids in your own internship program at a smaller agency is that its client kids see your inner operations. I mean, once we had a client’s kid come in for an internship who just heard everything we would say about his dad.

You mentioned being put up in hotels.
It’s funny because you used to have clients asking for so much, tickets to the Super Bowl. That culture is changing. Now they’re asking for stuff for their kids. That program at big agencies is structured and honestly, it was run as a business. CMO kids flying into New York, working at a Madison Avenue agency for a month, going from group to group. These are coveted internships.

What’s the effect?
Hard to say, but when I first got hired at agencies I had to cold call people, met people one on one, people would tell me they can’t hire me because I had no experience. When a powerful parent calls, it changes the game. It comes from the top. When you have an intern program filled with privileged kids, you can’t get a kid from a community college or from a different background. It has effects on diversity. It’s impossible to break into this business.

The post Confessions of an agency exec: Clients ask us to give their kids internships appeared first on Digiday.

As podcast listening in the U.S. continues to grow, marketers and publishers are racing to capitalize on the opportunity.

Ninety percent of marketers currently buying podcast advertising plan to grow their investment in the medium this year, according to a Digiday poll of media buyers conducted last week.

The post Digiday Research: Marketers and publishers boost podcast investment appeared first on Digiday.

Edible Arrangements, the Atlanta-based fresh fruit bouquet brand, is embarking on a digital reset to drive more traffic to its stores.

The 20-year-old company, which has 1,200 store locations in 11 countries and an e-commerce capability since the early 2000s, wants to grow its digital presence beyond one-off interactions with customers. To do this, it’s updating its app and website to better harness customer data and encourage customers to visit stores. In doing so, it hopes to target and personalize outreach to customers based on their behavior.

For example, a customer who orders online and picks up an item in a store could get tailored suggestions for additional products.  Customers could also receive offers and promotions within the app or through personalized emails. To make this happen, Edible is upgrading its digital infrastructure to get a better understanding of who its customers are and what products appeal to them.

“We want to make sure our customers are converting, and what are the least amount of steps required to get them to transact and place that order,” said Somia Farid Silber, vp and general manager of Netsolace, the technology arm of Edible Arrangements. “Right now the app is very transactional.” It’s looking to integrate loyalty and rewards within the app, and based on what the company knows about the customer, offer tailored product suggestions in-store.

Edible’s digital revamp is part of a broader brand refresh started by CEO Mike Rotondo, who took on the job last July. Rotondo set to evolve the brand, which generated an estimated $600 million in revenue last year, beyond special-occasion gift baskets to a smoothie and snack business. Its physical store strategy is also moving past online fulfillment centers to retail shops where customers can buy everyday prepared food products. The company brought on a new chief marketing officer in November of last year and hired digital agency T3 to rebuild its digital presence earlier this year. The hope is that Edible can use its physical stores as anchor points to retain a local following, complemented by data-driven personalization that’s built off of a customer’s unique order history and profile.

“It’s an opportunity to connect what’s going on in digital and activate that at the store,” said T3 president Ben Gaddis. “[Right now] they do a good job of in the digital space of capturing orders, but what digital can do is go out and find customers close to their stores; we can leverage the data and help [suggest] products and become a good traffic driver.”

An upgraded digital experience is part of an effort to turn stores that were initially seen as order delivery preparation points to places where customers can spend time and enjoy other products. “We’re right there, but it’s one of those things, if you’re not looking for us for that, we’re just part of the scenery,” said Rotondo, speaking in a recent interview about plans to reposition stores as retail sales hubs in addition to delivery fulfillment centers.

“What people want is a relevant product — they’re going to take action and we’ll use time, weather and location to target the experience, whether through advertising, email or through the app,” said Gaddis.

Edible Arrangements’ transition from a transaction-focused e-commerce model to one that’s based on relationships is emblematic of the shifting paradigm in recent years, said Alice Fournier, vp of e-commerce and digital at Kantar Consulting.

“The early e-commerce capabilities were very much anchored in the transaction — there’s a need to update the experience,” she said. “The companies that are winning are leveraging online and offline in a very powerful way that you give one view of the customer, and Edible Arrangements has an edge in having both online and offline capabilities.”

But while broadening the product assortment is an important part of the company’s store strategy and rebrand, it’s important to stay true to its uniqueness of product selection, said Fournier: New products at lower price points open the up the company to new competition.

“When you expand, that’s when you might encounter price pressure and different expectations from shoppers,” Fournier said.

Despite the competitive field, Edible Arrangements said the experience and infrastructure it’s built up through in-house delivery centers gives it an edge over newer entrants.

“The advantage we have is that we’ve been doing it for so long,” said chief marketing officer Jill Thomas. “Our infrastructure is well suited to [e-commerce] and our products and pricing already accommodate it — for us, it’s a takeoff moment because we’ve figured all that out.”

Photo credit: Flickr/slgckgc (image has been cropped)

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The latest industry talking point: We don’t care where customers shop.

Being “channel agnostic” is the new “omnichannel.” Retailers are recognizing not only do they have to be everywhere — with e-commerce, mobile commerce and in-store strategies — but they have to make it as easy as possible for customers to shop through any of those channels, regardless of whether it’s less profitable for the company or a harder customer experience to figure out.

The post Retail Briefing: As retailers go ‘channel agnostic,’ internal politics stand in the way appeared first on Digiday.