Month: January 2022

DE&I has dominated most lists of important trends and developments over the last 18 months, as agencies and marketers poured efforts into attracting more diverse job candidates, and hiring high-level DE&I executives charged with seeing DE&I efforts carried out. Still, some in the industry have decried that more lip service than actual follow-through has led to a stalling of sorts with DE&I efforts. It merits noting, though, that earlier this week, Horizon Media hired Latraviette D. Smith-Wilson as its new CMO and chief equity officer.

Sheri Roder, executive vp and head of the WHY Group, explained why DE&I doesn’t stand out in the report. “DE&I isn’t a ‘trend’ per se,” she said. “It’s part of a new consciousness that is taking hold at a societal level, and that our Marketing with Consciousness work delves more into as part of a more enlightened ‘way of being’ for brands.”

As far as the bigger picture aim of the report, Roder added: “[It] builds on the trends we identified and defined in 2021, when we were coming out of a year of unending transition thinking about ‘The Great Rebuilding.’ A significant shift we identified for 2022 is a real focus on acting with agency in order to do better, be better, and build better.”

Looking ahead

Here’s a quick summation of five of those trends: 

Untact — The South Korean term for contactless innovations, the report points to:

• The resurgence of QR codes, as expected with Taco Bell’s Defy touch-less restaurant concept launching this year; 
• The rise of avatars across the entertainment spectrum (such as Fox’s Alter Ego contest show);
• Both VR and AR use in ad campaigns (such as the recent holiday ad from Walmart and Facebook.
• The recommendation to brands: auto advertisers could consider virtual test drives at interesting locations across the globe; dating and relationship apps make use of facial recognition technology to better understand users’ preferences.

Restivism — The report notes that in the era of the Great Resignation, people are putting their own mental health and relaxation needs and inching away from being workaholics, essentially refuting the “work hard, play hard” ethic of professional life. It cites: 

• Apple iOS 15’s Focus Mode that enables users to customize Do Not Disturb lists for several apps;
• Ikea’s Siesta napping pods that traversed the streets of Paris to encourage people to take 30 minute naps.
• The recommendation to brands: hospitality or hotel brands could partner with local businesses to offer discounted rates for micro-stays; coffee ordering apps could offer people maps of areas near the store to encourage walking and exploring local environments.

Empowered Privacy — As people’s time online has skyrocketed since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the report points to a subsequent “privacy awakening” of sorts, including the looming demise of the cookie, better consent and opt-in protocols in place and companies hiring more privacy officers. Those events have led to: 

• Facebook’s removal of face-recognition technology;
• Mobile users turning to new encrypted messaging apps; 
• TV shows that address the dark side of tracking (such as Netflix’s You: Season 3).
• The recommendation to brands: offer some return value to the customer when asking for their data and information; advertisers should also strive to work with vendors who are compliant with all the restrictions laid out in privacy regulation.

Carbon-Omics — The report notes companies will need to take their role and responsibility around reducing carbon emissions more seriously in 2022 and beyond. A few examples: 

• Visa’s FutureCard that offered cash-back rewards when customers bought things like used clothing or public transportation tickets;
• Google Maps introducing an option for people to take more fuel-efficient routes to destinations;
• The recommendation to brands: a gaming brand could create a game that either works only on renewable energy, or unlocks special elements when working off clean energy; a food or food store brand could inform alternative uses for food waste, from banana peels to eggshells.

Civic Integrity — Given how much attention has been paid by the news media and politicians about the dangers of social media firms, the report notes that viral product reviews and whistleblowers are trying their best to put power back in people’s hands (whether that’s actually happening or not is subject to some debate). The report cites: 

• Frances Haugen’s testimony and 60 Minutes appearance blowing the lid off Facebook’s nefarious behind-the-scenes practices;
• The social backlash hip-hopper Travis Scott received (along with hundreds of lawsuits) after the Astroworld concert stampede; 
• TikTok personality Anna Sacks’ exposure of the Coach brand’s misleading customers about its recycling of old bags.
• The recommendation to brands: quick-serve restaurants should work to improve the working conditions of their employees with regular surveys, and releasing those results in annual reports.

The report notes three other trends: the rise of NFTs, the growth of rescue tech in the face of environmental and political upheaval; and “Wonder-full,” or the embrace of the mystical and unknown such as UFOs or tapping into psychedelics.

Last year, the Collective doubled its number of clients from six to 12 brands, including Banana Republic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Advisory Council. Those clients paid between five- and six-figures for custom research, according to Aaron Braxton, general manager of Complex Collective. In 2022, he said there are already three times that amount committed to working with the Collective throughout the year.

“The expectation is that the insight layer of what we’re doing, both from a customer standpoint as well as an editorial standpoint, will continue to increase in volume and frequency to be the tip of the spear on our client outreach,” said Braxton. “It really can be an effective multiplier to both deal size as well as client satisfaction.” 

The Collective has maintained a cohort numbering about 30,000 community members between this year and last, all of whom organically came across the group and signed up while reading and interacting with Complex Networks’ content. While there is a high churn rate among the panel’s members, Braxton said there is still enough regular on-boarding to maintain that list size and the average response rate for all surveys sits at 61% (this includes sample pools of all sizes).

Complex does not pay people to become members of Collective’s panel, and none of the members have received any other incentive for signing up, such as gift cards or prize giveaways, said Nick Susi, Complex Collective’s head of strategy. He added that hearing their voices and seeing their opinions represented in the content and campaigns produced through the panel gives the audience a feeling of connection and community that incentivizes that on-giong participation, along with being given access to exclusive virtual events where they can learn about some of the takeaways from the research conducted in the Collective as well.

“This is a community, this is not a collection of folks that we dip into and dip out of whenever we please, with more transactional types of asks,” said Susi.

However, some brands are hesitant about relying on self-reported data, such as survey responses, to inform their ad buys. Basing a campaign around survey findings and achieving the anticipated results does not always go hand-in-hand, said Lily Johnson, senior media strategist at media buying agency Media Two Interactive. Therefore, brands and organizations paying for these insights have to be sure the target demographic aligns with the sample pool they’re surveying.

This is an “interesting branch off of first-party data,” Johnson said.

While Braxton said the goal is to keep the 30,000 number pretty consistent in the U.S. in 2022, Complex plans to establish panels in the U.K. and other international markets this year. The publisher also plans to hire about a dozen new dedicated Collective employees, including community management roles. Up to this point, the research arm has been run as a cross-functional business by the core Complex Networks team, he added. 

Additionally, Complex has formed an advisory council for the Collective. The council consists of eight executives, activists and company founders — such as Sharifa Murdock, chief impact officer at clothing retailer Kith, professional BMX athlete Nigel Sylvester, and footwear creator and curator Frank Cooker — who represent the different audience demographics as well as categories that the Collective is able to speak to, including social change, sports media, design trends, fashion, community and hype. The advisory council members are not paid for their participation.

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Members of the Collective Advisory Council | courtesy of Complex

The members of Collective’s advisory council will attend industry events and in-person experiences programmed for the Collective as well as participate in the Collective’s upcoming podcasts and audio products in the coming months. These offerings will be extensions to both the branded and educational content that the Collective team has produced for both commercial and editorial purposes over the past two years. That branded and educational content is distributed across Complex Networks’ publications, and some is white-labeled for brands to use and distribute on their own.

While this advisory council programming is meant to help with the retention of Collective members by giving them opportunities to hear council members’ opinions, it also gives brands access to insights from experts and executives in industries, like footwear and fashion, that they would normally only get if they had them as paid consultants, Susi said.

“Collective is becoming a vertical in the way that Complex is a vertical, in the way that Sole Collector is a vertical and the way that First We Feast is a vertical. It’s of a different nature, obviously, being insight and research led, but there is commitment from the company,” Braxton said. 

Real-tail media

The key hits:

• Retailers are looking to publishers for content to boost their retail media businesses.
• Advertisers want to see more custom-curated and custom-produced content on retailers’ sites to advertise against.
• Closer collaborations between retailers and publishers could help to close the path-to-purchase loop for advertisers.

Retail media is a tricky term. Typically it refers to retailers selling ads on their sites and other properties that can be targeted based on their customer data. Okay, but that’s not really referring to media in the guise of editorial content. Soon it may be, though.

In the wake of Best Buy debuting its retail media network earlier this month to join the likes of Walmart, Target and others, publishers are seeking out more opportunities to tap into the retail media trend, such as by striking content syndication deals with the retailers. This commingling of content and commerce could help each side to shore up some of the issues that ad buyers are bumping up against in today’s retail media market that blurs between retailers’ retail media networks and publishers’ affiliate commerce businesses.

“Every retailer is trying to act as a publisher, and every publisher now continues to kind of act as a retailer. You end up in this weird space of which way do you go?” said Andrew Ruegger, global president of commerce at GroupM. “Is the publishers’ scale and their data better than the retailers’ endemic inventory? Or do you use retailers’ data to then go through whatever [programmatic ad buying tools] they’re using to then buy publishers’ inventory?”

Putting the media in retail media

Publishers and retailers already have relationships. Media companies like BuzzFeed and Meredith have deals with Walmart to license the publishers’ brands for products sold by the retailer. And seemingly every media outlet has, or is in the process of having, an affiliate commerce business in which they embed links to products on retailers’ sites in articles posted on the publishers’ properties. But an area of opportunity getting increased attention is for publishers to publish those articles and other content on the retailers’ properties.

“Everyone who’s doing the retail media piece, what they’re learning is they need content. And we’re having a lot of those conversations of what does it look like for us to syndicate content to [the retailer] or make content specific for [the retailer],” said one media executive. 

Those content syndication conversations are still in their early stages, and details such as whether the publisher and retailer would split any resulting revenue or whether the retailer would pay a fee to syndicate the content have yet to be hammered out, said the media executive. But they aren’t the only ones having these conversations. 

In an episode of the Digiday Podcast that will be released on Feb. 1, Vice Media Group chief digital officer Cory Haik talks about conversations the media company is having with luxury retailers. A consideration for the publisher in these discussions — in addition to ironing out the financial arrangements — is determining how VMG’s content would be displayed on a retailer’s property, including whether that content would feature its publications’ branding.

“You have to be careful about that. But retailers are coming to us because they’re trying to figure out how to do content,” Haik said.

The attraction to advertisers

Retailers seem to be trying to figure out how to do content in order to appease advertisers. Retailers own the shopper data and point of sale, and that makes them attractive to advertisers. But they generally lack the content, like product recommendations and reviews, that can help to influence a purchase or even encourage potential consumers to make a purchase at all. 

Amazon’s Onsite Publishing program is a major exception, but it is also increasingly becoming a cautionary tale. What advertisers don’t want is retailer content syndication efforts that mimic content recommendation widgets.

“The number one problem with [retailers getting into content] is, in order to do it well, it requires a fair amount of resources,” said Elizabeth Marsten, senior director of strategic marketplace services at Tinuiti. “What we don’t want to see is how sometimes now you’ve got some publisher sites and you scroll down and they’ve got a Taboola free-for-all kind of thing going on down there. The problem is retailer websites are so busy right now with so many other things.”

Instead, what ad buyers are after is more custom-curated and even custom-produced content to be published on the retailers’ sites. This would reflect a stance among ad buyers in which they are not only looking to retail media for direct-response opportunities but also for chances to raise brand awareness and lift product consideration in order to condense the path to purchase.

“We know that people quickly go from an emotional to a transactional mindset,” said Jason Colon, U.S. head of commerce and growth marketing at OMD.

Putting the retail in media

If the rationale for retailers to work more closely with publishers is to shore up their content deficiencies, then the argument for publishers is to see to their shopping shortcomings.

“Most publishers that are in pursuit of a more meaningful affiliate business are finding it harder than they expected to be able to drive shopping behavior,” said a second media executive. “It’s one thing to write an article to show up in search and have somebody happen to click on it and buy something. It’s harder to build a daily habit that people come to with shopping in mind.”

Another challenge for publishers is determining when they did, in fact, drive a sale. “We know from our affiliate relationships if a user clicks on a link, but we don’t ultimately know if they bought anything unless the retailer shares that information,” said a third media executive.

All of that is to say, publishers’ commerce businesses are continuing to grow, but that growth is maturing into a challenging phase.“ The growing pains stage is a true assessment of where it’s at,” said the first media executive. “We learned a lot during the pandemic, and now how do we use the influence we have, the authority we have to continue to be that place where you’re learning about where to buy something?”

Fortunately for publishers, it seems, retailers’ retail media businesses are running up against their own growing pains. Their efforts to attract more ad dollars may necessitate them being able to satisfy not only direct-response demands — to which their shopper data is specifically suited — but also brand awareness and product consideration objectives, which has been media companies’ area of expertise.

“I’d like to see more collaboration between retailers and publishers to enable closed-loop sales measurement,” Colon said. — Tim Peterson

What we’ve heard

“We’ve done one month [for free trials], but there’s been some debate about whether to do two-week free trials. I’m emotionally against it. It seems so cheap and short.”

— Publishing executive

3 questions with The Root’s editor-in-chief Vanessa De Luca

Last April, Vanessa De Luca took the editorial helm of The Root, becoming the G/O Media-owned publication’s new editor-in-chief after Danielle Belton left to lead HuffPost. Coming from Medium, and before that Essence Magazine, De Luca brought with her a vision to tell stories about the Black community that were under-reported as well as free and accessible to all readers.

After almost a year of identifying the topics and themes most important to The Root’s audience, De Luca’s team set out to create new content packages and franchises that tell the stories and celebrate the subjects that have had the most impact on the community of 13 million monthly readers that The Root has cultivated.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. — Kayleigh Barber

What are you doing this year to specifically channel audience engagement and community building through your content?

In 2022, we’re really focusing on creators. Black people have been the arbiters of innovative creativity. We set trends; we drive influence in so many different sectors. We decided this year we would focus on that [and] we would speak to that cultural truth. We [want to] specifically highlight voices, places and things that showcase that truth, even in this time of a lot of turmoil, there’s still a lot of hopefulness.

One of our initiatives this year will be focused on Black-owned business success. We over-index on the number of people who start new businesses and so we want to highlight that to inspire other people who may be thinking about doing the same thing. We’re also looking at simpler things like how people are creative in the arts and entertainment fields [and] in lifestyle, beauty and fashion, but not so much from an influencer or celebrity viewpoint, but more from the ground up. What is that organic streetstyle kind of influence that goes viral and spreads worldwide?

Are you looking to translate this focus on creators to other franchises at The Root?

Yes. With the Glow-Up Style Awards, we want to make sure that we highlight fantastic, phenomenal people of style in every state. Because we know that there’s no better cultural icon or fashion icon than our audience, [who] tend to think of themselves as their own fashion icons. They’re not looking to the celebrities or the influencers to tell them what to do. We have our own unique sense of style. It’s organic; it’s homegrown. Last year was the first time that we had done it, and it was called the Glow-Up 50, [which] was focused primarily on celebrities and influencers. This year, we just decided why don’t we flip the lens and turn it on our audience and allow them to have a say in who they think the style icons are in their own communities.

With the challenges to critical race theory being taught in schools, do you feel like Black History Month will be more prudent than ever from an editorial standpoint?

Yes, absolutely. History is being whitewashed in schools with all the challenges about critical race theory, and as we see more of an effort [being] put behind the retelling of history, we want to be able to draw a line in the sand. This is actually what our history is, this is actually what has happened, what exists, and there’s no getting around that. This history deserves to be discussed and presented in full. It’s not just Black history; it’s American history.

[For] Black History Month, we have this amazing timeline that we’re creating, that will live on the homepage that’s scrollable and interactive. You’ll be able to go into the 1950s and see Brown v. Board of Education or you’ll be able to go into the 80s and see Oprah Winfrey’s show debuted. It’s a range of different types of moments of Black history, not just the typical ones that you see every year. There’s a lot of different, interesting and more modern moments that we’ll be spotlighting, [including] Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. You will be able to kind of click in and see a map of different events and see exactly where geographically all those things were happening. We really want to make Black history, not something that’s very stoic, but we want people to feel engaged and feel excited about learning more about Black history.

Numbers to know

20 million: The number of followers BBC has garnered on Instagram, making it the first news account to cross that threshold in the world.

100,000: The number of paid subscribers Bloomberg added in 2021, bringing its total to 360,000.

4.4 million: The number of viewers that BuzzFeed’s live shopping streams saw in 2021.

What we’ve covered

How Complex’s research arm turned into a 7-figure revenue stream:

• Complex Collective doubled its number of clients from six to 12 brands in 2021.
• Those clients paid between five- and six-figures for custom research.

Read more about Complex Collective here.

Google readies new interest-based advertising in next phase of Privacy Sandbox experiments:

• Google plans to roll out a new third-party cookie alternative called Topics that be based on broader contextual categories than its previous candidate FLoC.
• FLoC had come under fire for its potential to be connected with other data in order to identify people.

Read more about Google’s latest third-party cookie alternative here.

Industry experts sound off on 2022, the year of the ‘Shecovery’:

• Spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown that left women shouldering the brunt of housework and childcare, they have been exiting the workforce in droves.
• To get women back to the workforce, companies are prioritizing flexible work policies to better support overall employee health and wellness.

Read more about the efforts to remedy the “Shecession” here.

How The Newsette’s founder earned $40M for the media company in 2021:

• Daniella Pierson’s daily lifestyle- and business-focused newsletter, The Newsette, has grown to have a subscriber base of 500,000, and ended 2021 with a profit worth eight figures.
• Now Pierson is working with co-founders Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez to create Wondermind, a start-up centered on democratizing access to mental health care that operates a production studio, media arm and product business.

Listen to an interview with Daniella Pierson here.

Publishers use subscriber-only events to sweeten subscription pitches:

• As some publishers refrain from returning to in-person events for now, they are employing their virtual events to aid another direct revenue source: subscriptions.
• Events that provide subscribers with access to big-name guests, journalists and an opportunity to connect with one another can provide more value to paying readers, executives at both The Information and The Washington Post said.

Read more about subscriber-only events here.

What we’re reading

After two years of research, The Atlantic says it better understands what its readers want:
The Atlantic wanted to figure out what drives people to read the publication’s journalism and decided the best way to do that was to conduct survey- and interview-based research with current, prospective and former subscribers. Published in Nieman Lab, what the publication found was that its readers want to be challenged in their assumptions, discover new ideas, go deeper into the reporting and feel connected to the reporters whose work they read the most. 

A new New York Times top editor may be just around the corner:
Sooner or later the Times staff will find itself back in office, but their return may be met with the announcement that executive editor Dean Baquet won’t stick around for long. Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo wrote that staffers are anticipating this changing of the guard and are pointing to managing editor Joe Kahn or deputy managing editor Cliff Levy as two leading candidates to succeed Baquet.

Local journalism is on the rise and the Texas Tribune helped pave the way:
Since 2009, the Austin-based, digital-first nonprofit newsroom has grown from 17 employees to around 80, with more than 50 journalists on staff, all while raising $100 million through philanthropy, membership and events, reported The Washington Post. Now, dozens of digital newsrooms like this have sprung up around the country, as newspapers buckle under economic pressures.

California Consumer Privacy Act’s call for universal opt-out has the industry on edge:
A new 900-page set of comments has been submitted to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) after the agency made a call for feedback in September, looking for outstanding issues not currently addressed by the existing implementation regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). AdExchanger reported that most of the call-outs from those comments included automated decision-making, opt-out preference signals and setting a definition for “dark patterns,” which are user interfaces that are meant to trick users into sharing more data than they ordinarily would.

To mark Politico’s 15th anniversary, 16 media leaders predict where the industry will be in another 15 years:
The Politico magazine editorial staff surveyed the industry to learn what is likely to cause the most transformation in the industry over the next 15 years. Their predictions include a crackdown on technology platforms and the rebirth of local newsrooms. 

​​This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

What happened that made you question your last company’s sincerity about burnout and mental health?

I was really burnt out. It got to the point where I didn’t even care anymore. It was a race of ‘am I going to get fired first or am I going to quit’? They sent an email about mental health, burnout and all of the traditional things that they’re supposed to say, like “If you need help, tell your manager.” In my touch base with my manager, I said, “I am not Ok. We’re having challenges. I really need time, a vacation or extended time to regroup.” The next morning, I had a calendar invite with HR and my manager. I’m like, “Oh yeah, they’re about to fire me.” I was actually relieved to get fired because I had wanted to quit for so long. That email on burnouts that said talk to your manager, I thought that was genuine. But bringing that up to my manager was the last straw that she needed to get me out. It’s obvious that they don’t mean what they say. It’s just to look good.

Have you gone back to work since being let go?

I got a new job the same month. This job was interesting because we were [working] in person. But even though we were in person, I was able to quickly identify that the culture was not what I expected. What I found was that people were short [with you]. You could tell people were holding on by a limb, stressed. I started back on the job hunt in December.

Since starting back on the job hunt, so companies seem to be offering more to attract and retain talent?

I wouldn’t say they’re rolling out the red carpet. Companies are still very selective and operating in their normal way. What is happening is candidates are becoming more selective in what they’re looking for. They’re looking for that culture, that work-life balance that, from what I experienced at the big companies, especially with layoffs, it just comes with more workload. I was seeing people’s priorities shift from working at big companies with big titles to wanting more balance. I’ve even been applying to companies that I usually wouldn’t, and I have friends that are starting to do more freelance.

How did that change your outlook out your relationship with work?

I was in a therapy session and I said, ‘With each promotion and elevation that I’ve experienced, it’s come at the cost of my mental health, my well being.’ It came at the cost of less time to do things for me, like go to the gym or go grocery shopping. I felt guilty. I [was] in back-to-back meetings all day. So after five o’clock, that meant I needed to catch up on the work that I couldn’t do because I was in meetings. Or that meant many mornings waking up at five or six in the morning to try to get things done before work starts because the nine-to-five turned into meetings and catch up. Those meetings — It was just people going through the motions and transactions.

What should companies be thinking about when recruiting? 

It’s not as much about the benefits, but the balance, the humaneness of the company, the culture and the managers. It’s not that they expect you to work till 10 o’clock. But when you’re in meetings all day, and you have a heavy workload, you’re forced to work till 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock at night. I’m looking for where my job is actually done at five, a true nine to five. I’m looking for a culture where I can have balance and my work can be done at 5pm.

They still expect the work to get done. The issue is that these companies have too many priorities, and one person is doing the job of multiple people. You can do summer Fridays, you can do a day of rest and you can do vacation time. But the issue is when you get back to work, your workload is still there.