13th January 2018
‘There is a famous story about the great 19th-century statesman Gladstone on the campaign trail. During one of his trademark three-hour speeches, a little girl posed a question to her mother. “Mummy,” she supposedly asked, “what is that man for?” Since Twitter appeared in July 2006, people have asked the same question about it. Now we know the answer. This is how Trump helped Twitter find its true purpose.
Great chart from @BenedictEvans who tweeted this graphic showing how technology is connecting all of humanity. With reference to this graphic, a nice observation from @neilperkin – ‘whilst mobile will still grow, we seem to be approaching the top of the S-curve, indicating that the next period will be about shifting to the next technology S-curve (take your pick from AI/ML, voice assistants, AR).’
A summary of the recent CMO Insight Summit in Frankfurt from (friend of the Filter) @BrilliantNoise. The key themes are Content, Collaboration and Commerce.
How Amazon is aiming to use Alexa, to energise its digital advertising business. ‘Some of the early discussions have centred on whether companies would pay for higher placement if a user searches for a product, such as shampoo, on the device, similar to how paid searches work in Google.’
From @Adweek. What 3 Marijuana heavyweights are doing to become the P&G of Pot.
From The Daily Beast – ‘Facebook and Google’s Dirty Secret’ : They’re Really Junk Mail Empires. ‘While industry insiders and major media companies have started to see through the shiny “we’re-a-free-service” veneer of these tech giants, consumer awareness and regulatory threats are just beginning to catch up. This means that Google and Facebook may no longer be able to default to requiring consumers to allow web-wide monitoring and selling of their personal activities, as a condition of using…their social networks.’
Marketing Week, sees brands shifting from efficiency to effectiveness. ‘As brands dedicate more resource to marketing effectiveness they are looking to shift strategy, to instil a learning culture rather than wield a stick’.
Too much TV to watch? Struggling to find something you will like amongst all the options and recommendations? The solution to the problem, unsurprisingly, is Artificial Intelligence.’AI can help consumers find more content to fit their taste. AI can assist in content curation by organising content by themes. It can also use consumer insights to classify and target consumer segments to test recommendations.‘
Interesting video piece from Nike China. It shows how Nike are attempting to appeal to this massive, developing market and, as this region is still a nascent opportunity for Nike, they are using a very direct exposition of their brand positioning; an approach last used in the Occident, many years ago.
Love this piece from The Economist on how technology ruins storytelling. Have you ever noticed how connected devices are curiously missing from otherwise contemporary stories? This could be why – ‘Film remakes that should stay on the storyboard; when modernity mucks things up.’