Month: June 2021

Having both an in-person and virtual event will allow Apartment Therapy to gain insights on both kinds of consumers through QR codes at the physical event as well as the virtual rooms on the Apartment Therapy website. The site launched their own first-party data solution, Blueprint, in April after seeing bumps in site traffic and revenue during the pandemic. Now, those event interactions and purchases can help build out Blueprint, as well as partnerships with brands involved in Small/Cool Experience.

“First party data has become an increased priority across the board as we look to get a deeper understanding of our readers, their interests and shopping habits,” Apartment Therapy’s vp of brand innovation and strategy Media Lauren Murphy wrote in an email response to Digiday. 

“In terms of the event, we’ll be sharing back a broad range of data with our brand partners around audience behavior and interaction with the rooms and products, in addition to some opt-in information shared by our audience via sweepstakes and email lists.”

Finding the balance in a virtual and in-person event required some adjustments. At the start of planning, Apartment Therapy wanted to launch a custom app, but realized that would be a big lift on the back-end for event partners. 

“We opted to take it online, and all we require from brand partners is a link to each product page on their site (or an e-commerce partner of their choice),” wrote Murphy. Brand partners include Behr, Overstock and Tuft and Needle.

The pandemic had Americans across the country rethinking how their homes needed to work for them, especially those living in smaller spaces. That had folks turning to sites like Apartment Therapy for ideas and products. Since the pandemic, Apartment Therapy has seen an increase in site traffic and revenue. The site’s unique visitors were up 56% year over year in March according to Comscore. Registered users have increased 150% year over year and e-commerce revenue was up 100% year over year, according to Murphy, who declined to give exact figures. 

The event is catering to buyers who want to see products in-person, as well as the growing number of consumers who have warmed to shopping for big-ticket furniture pieces online. The result has been an uptick in home furnishings sales.

“Customers’ preferences definitely shifted. Rather, they were forced to shift. They had to be ok with purchasing furniture online,” said Dave Nielsen, president of Overstock.com, which is sponsoring Apartment Therapy’s event. “That was just what the category needed.”

Furniture and home furnishings are forecasted to generate nearly $106 billion, or 11.7%, of all U.S. retail e-commerce sales this year, up 12.3% from 2020, according to an April 2021 report by eMarketer.

“The days of needing to go to a big retail location to buy furniture are over,” said Nielsen.

That’s no longer the case now. Everson, Facebook’s global ads chief, announced via a Facebook status update earlier this week that she had left the company. It’s unclear what Everson’s next move will be. Her departure follows a shakeup with Facebook’s c-suite: chief revenue officer David Fisher is slated to leave Facebook later this year. The company announced it would not fill his role but instead create a new position, chief business officer, tapping vp of global partnerships Marne Levine for the new gig. 

Advertisers and agency execs said that Everson’s departure was unexpected and likely a result of being passed over for the role. At the same time, they believe it’s likely that Everson had grown tired of dealing with the company’s controversies, i.e. being on the “clean up squad,” and that she is likely ready for a new chapter. In the interim, head of the EMEA region for Facebook’s global business group Nicola Mendelsohn will take over Everson’s duties. Representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for clarification or comment; Everson did not immediately respond to a Facebook message.

Everson’s relationships with major CEOs and CMOs, where she was known for listening and being an advocate for advertisers, helped build Facebook into the advertising juggernaut that it is today, according to advertisers, agency execs and ad buyers who say that losing Everson is a massive blow for the company. That’s not to say ad buyers expect an impact in advertising revenue for the platform with Everson’s departure — major advertisers account for less than roughly 20% of total ad revenue anyway — but that losing Everson as the face of the company for the ad industry will be difficult.

“Carolyn has been such a huge part of Facebook’s success over the last decade and will be a big loss for the company,” said David Jones, founder and CEO of You & Mr. Jones, who was a member of the original Facebook client council. “She was incredibly well-liked and trusted by the world’s largest global advertisers. Nicola [Mendelsohn] has big shoes to fill but if anyone can fill them she can.”

Bill Koenigsberg, founder, president and CEO of Horizon Media, echoed that sentiment: “Facebook is all about connecting communities, but no one was better at connecting Facebook to our industry than Carolyn. She has the trust and the transparency of agencies and marketers.”

Everson joined Facebook in 2011 year as vp of global ad sales after holding c-suite level roles at companies such as Microsoft Corporation and Viacom.

“She was the ultimate schmoozer and that’s reflected in the outpouring of support from CMOs following the news of her exit,” said an agency planner who requested anonymity. “She’d take clients out, send them expensive gifts on birthdays and send a clown to the hospital their sick kid was in. If Carolyn was in Hollywood, she’d be a super agent for someone like Will Smith.”

Aside from her schmoozing abilities, advertisers, ad buyers and agency execs say that losing Everson’s ability to manage public controversies like the Cambridge Analytica scandal (in which user data was secretly shared by the company without their consent) as well as inflated video metrics that some ad buyers seemed to shrug off at the time, will make it a particularly difficult loss. Despite a mass boycott of big-name brands last summer, Everson and the team retained the core strength of its ad business in small business dollars.

“In a world when Facebook has stumbled a few times, they’ve now lost the one person who best-cleaned things up,” said Koenigsberg. “I think they’ve underestimated just how important that is. Having led not one but three apology tours for the company, she’s proven that she’s a woman of integrity. She simply can’t be replaced.” 

Despite her close relationships with CEOs and CMOs of major advertisers as well as a reputation as a public persona for the platform, agency execs and ad buyers believe that there won’t be an impact on ad dollars flowing to the platform as middle managers work with major advertisers and small businesses likely weren’t dealing with Everson.

While some believe Everson will be able to land any job she wants next, others believe she has been an obfuscator of some of Facebook’s scandals and an expert deflector after being the face of apology tours for years that could be a ding to her reputation.

“She’s responsible for one of the top two global ad revenue growth stories,” said Matt Prohaska, CEO and principal, Prohaska Consulting. “But she’s also had to handle something like 15 mistakes of over-reporting video measurement and performance that resulted in having to credit advertisers. That’s part of the push-pull, love-hate so many of us in the industry share about Facebook and its continued unchecked growth and power.”

And being able to work from anywhere is one of the top benefits of remote working that 32% of the 8,000 respondents in Kaspersky’s Securing the Future of Work study say they want to keep post-pandemic. 

Online travel agency Loveholidays has created a ranking of top working vacation destinations, scoring countries on average temperature and rainfall, as well as the number of beaches, restaurants and shopping malls. But it is now also showcasing accommodation, activities and discounts for remote workers along with information on how long they can stay without a visa.

Its Maldives destination promotes a “Work Effectively” package which promotes the pairing of work and wellness and offers an “oceanfront workstation” with a strong WiFi connection. It will even provide a personal assistant to help with day-to-day duties like checking flight information, organizing work and social schedules, printing and admin. 

Meanwhile the Seychelles is promoting its “Workcation Retreat” packages which include discounts for anyone using its resorts to stay longer and work remotely, with the ability to extend workcation permits to family members and access to healthcare facilities also provided.  

Loveholidays’ top 10 features are Dubai, Aruba, Thailand, Mauritius, Antigua, Turks & Caicos, St Lucia, Bermuda, Seychelles and Namibia. U.S. visitors can stay in these countries between 30 and 90 days either with no visa or a tourist visa on arrival. It’s a similar story for U.K. visitors, although they need a visa for Thailand.

Holiday havens like Barbados and Bermuda have of course pioneered digital nomad visas, allowing people to work and live freely there for up to two years (conditions and fee permitting). But for those able to commit to that length of time in one place, the working vacation could be the solution.

Thailand is high on Texas-based Australian entrepreneur Sarah Hawley’s list, who is an advocate of blending work and travel. For now, road-tripping around the U.S. in a campervan with her husband, former NFL player Joe Hawley, and their baby son, is fulfilling her travel fix. Hawley, who is the CEO and founder of remote jobs matching platform, Growmotely, said they often travel with their family nanny, but otherwise she and her husband divide childcare between themselves as her husband also runs his own business, The Hart Collective, which helps former male professional athletes find a purpose beyond sports.

“The main reason I work while I’m away is because I like to travel and adventure most of the time. Usually you wouldn’t find me in one place for more than three weeks. I get bored easily, and feel more creative with movement and adventure in my life. Because of this, I just work wherever I am,” said Hawley, who believes more companies will now embrace this way of working.

Working while traveling does blur the lines between screen time and genuine down time, but Hawley makes sure to switch off completely around three times a year.

While Hawley doesn’t mind “what people do, or from where, as long as their work gets done”, making the best of this means individuals taking responsibility for how work gets covered when they are truly offline, as well as setting and enforcing those boundaries. 

Once travel restrictions fully ease, a working vacation to Hawley’s native Australia is a priority, making the most of the 20-hour flight time from Austin to Melbourne.

Similarly, fellow Australian Hannah Wickes, CMO at carbon-positive search engine Ecosia, is looking forward to taking up the Berlin-based company’s new policy of a four-week working vacation around Christmas and Easter.

“A huge amount of the team is from North and South America, so to make the most out of a trip like that, it makes sense to work remotely plus have a holiday,” said Wickes.

Closer to home for those in the U.K., Portugal is styling itself as a remote working hotspot, with hubs in the Algarve and on the island of Madeira. At the time of publication, the country was recently moved to the U.K.’s ‘amber list’, meaning a quarantine period and testing is required on return.

While Loveholidays initially only analyzed U.K. long-haul destinations, its on-request scoring of Portugal put it on par with St Lucia on its original list. U.S. and U.K. visitors can stay up to 90 days without a visa.

According to Algarve Evolution president Miguel Fernandes, the Algarve Digital Nomads Facebook group has doubled its membership over the past two years to over 5,000, 70% of which he estimated are working vacationers and the remainder remote workers who have permanently relocated.

Investment entrepreneur Marc Peterzens, a Finnish expat who was based in London, began visiting the Algarve frequently from 2019, but now has plans to stay permanently there with his wife (a consultant for a U.S. firm) and two school-aged children. The plan was to be closer to his ageing mother, who was already based there, while escaping the big city.

“As an entrepreneur you can have the choice of where you want to live. The Algarve is the best of both worlds, with a fantastic climate and excellent infrastructure,” said Peterzens. “If you can work close to where you want to spend your leisure time, then when you have free time, you’re already there.”

Peterzens is keen on future working vacations, potentially leaving the Algarve during its peak summer season to visit Finland, the U.K. or even Asia. But, he noted, working holidays for families with working parents would only be viable if short-term childcare was available, so they don’t become the sole domain of people with no dependent children — something travel providers and tourism destinations will need to seriously consider.