Episode 6:🔮 D2C brand values
Data+AI+5G+AR+IOT+D2C+Alexa= the Get Customers Productive Formula, by Robb Hecht
🔥 🏄♂️ D2C brand values, 🚴♂️ The Peloton Effect, 📴 Instagram eComm, 🏋️ A.I. Trans; 🇨🇳 China/Facebook; 🙌 Stay human
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👀 The Week’s RoundUp Trends & Insights]
👉Hello automated marketer. From the Peloton effect of innovation, to D2C being much more than just a marketing label, but actually an ‘operating system and set of aesthetic beliefs’ that startups are applying to take marketshare from legacy brands through ‘admirable front-end branding, vertical integration and high customer retention’. It all goes back to that first party data at the center of the D2C business model. And while we continue to cover the D2C movement here in the States, its increasingly being played out first in China. China as a data & AI ‘first’ nation is beginning to lead digitally (note: world’s most innovative company, taking the lead in scientific research from the U.S., now a creative superpower, global large tech giants, launching global viral algorithm driven apps like TikTok that ‘learn you’). But while we in democratic/capitalist countries may have been led to the water by Facebook innovations, our representative are now buckling down on Big Tech. While we need certain privacy approaches reworked, it’s still as Mark Zuckerberg said - that if Congress buckles down too harshly, we stifle innovation and basically hand digital ‘leadership’ to China. China, a mobile first country, is taking dramatic new approaches to marketing to its citizens. The implications are real that as it continues to build relationships with the ‘developing’ world and Africa (also mobile first countries) - via Facebook & One Belt Road, we’ll see the ‘Chinese marketing model’ flourish in those countries (stay tuned for next issue). Net: let’s monitor marketing trends coming out of China. For, it’s likely those trends will be applied to the rest of the world. In which case, we got some schoolin’ to do (read constant connection strategies via the BAT). - Stay human 🙌 (by going to sit at Starbucks versus sitting alone at home with your headphones on).
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👯 Spotlight:this Week’s Influencers
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@JimStengel, @P&G, @mediapost @LaiNikhil, @fastcompany @LizSegran, @mp_joemandese, @TheEconomist, @msuster, @Dezeen, @DragonSocial, @jenvidetta, @mikemallazzo, @GaryEllis @teamremesh, @Adweek , @CNBC, @arjunkharpal, @sarafischer @axios, @LSudakov, @NYTimes @superwuster, @TimWu, @Digiday @shareenpathak, @Forbes, @michelleruiz, @Bloomberg @KyleStock, @BrandonVerblow, @BretEastonEllis, @Natalie_Berg & /@mazzaknights, @profgalloway
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🛍️ How to be D2C & Subscription First]
The D2C insurgents...each build a brand from within and often from a place of empathy and personal pain. Around this personality they assemble a tribe, united in their belief in how the product or service connects them to their individual lives and communities - @JimStengel @P&G
👉The true value of D2C brands. Link via @mediapost @LaiNikhil Net: Instagram-hued aesthetics, topical brand narratives, and personal relationships with customers based on first-party data. Effectively, the D2C label signals admirable front-end branding, vertical integration and high customer retention. “D2C,” however, is more than a label. It’s an operating system and set of aesthetic beliefs. #D2C
👉This startup built its brand on Facebook: now it can never leave. Link via @fastcompany @LizSegran. Net: Facebook gave Quip great bang for its buck - but little data on the consumers it targeted. With a Facebook backlash brewing, how will small [D2C] advertisers fare? Do you want this to be you? #D2C #Facebook #Quip
👉Challenger brands are shaking up product marketing: by actually listening to consumer needs. Net: that first party data you capture in social platforms (if Facebook shares it with you) tells you a lot about your customers, doesn’t it? Link via @Adweek by Leonid Sudakov @LSudakov #challengerbrand #D2C
👉Why do D2C brands watch Casper so closely? Link via @Digiday @shareenpathak Net: Casper embodies what you could call the 1.0 model of the DNVB industry, which saw the 1) playbook of launching a brand online, 2) selling primarily through e-commerce, then 3) going fast, and quick into a physical retail expansion. #D2C #Casper #DNVB #eCommerce
👉 D2C brand growth will boost paid social. Link via @Forbes Brandon Verblow @BrandonVerblow. Net: Forrester forecasts that online spend by D2C enthusiasts will grow at a compound annual rate of 18% from 2018 to 2022. #D2C #paidsocial #challengerbrand
👉The Peloton Effect. Link. Via @michelleruiz. Net: CEO John Foley told Strategy+Business that Peloton is neither an indoor bike nor a treadmill company, but an “innovation company.” As such, it’s part of the historical tradition of an “evolution in media technology pushing fitness forward”. #Peloton #innovation
👉The shift toward handheld retailing. Link via @Bloomberg @KyleStock. Net: the future of retail isn’t e-commerce or omni-channel or pop-up shops or geo-fenced flash sales. The future of retail is palm-sized. As social media consumerism cultivates a growing crop of scrappy brands, retail entrepreneurs are skipping the computer altogether (let alone brick-and-mortar shops), instead displaying and selling products exclusively via smartphone. And the phenomenon is accelerating. #mobilecommerce #socialcommerce #mobilefirst
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🧬 Improving AI, Marketing Automation & the Engineered Algorithms Incentivizing Us]
Salesforce.com says 5 percent of digital retail traffic now flows through social channels -Bloomberg
👉4 ways AI can improve your marketing strategy. Link @business2community. Net: think deep customer understanding, optimized content creation, more efficient customer service, improved ad performance. #AI #Artificialintelligence
👉Did Capitalism betray privacy? Link via @NYTimes @superwuster @TimWu; Net: At the rate we’re going - in the future the wealthy may have private/protected data with personalized content experiences; while the poor may be an open market of surveillance capitalism. #surveillanceadvertising
👉13 ways AI will be transforming your agency business. Link via @Forbes. Net: AI as lead force generator, creative amplifier, intelligence chatbot interface, providing personalized content, automation, data organization, website automation, paid social optimization. You get the picture! #AI #artificialintelligence
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🦁 eComm Everywhere: Amazon Prime, Alexa, Shopify]
Amazon now takes $.40 of every $1 spent online. - @Natalie_Berg & /@mazzaknights in “Amazon, how the world’s most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionize commerce” #socialcommerce #ecommerce #amazon
👉eCommerce is upending Madison Avenue. Link via @sarafischer @axios Net: mobile eCommerce is colliding with digital advertising and forcing traditional ad agencies to embrace data and distribution around specific platforms like Amazon and Google. #ecommerce #datastrategy #amazon
👉How AI powers Amazon. Link via @economist Net: It’s more than you know. #ai, #amazon #economist
👉Amazon marketplace closes down in China. Link via @CNBC @arjunkharpal. Net: with a marketshare falling to 1% via Alibaba, Taobao and JD, customers turned away. Why? Reportedly because these Chinese competitors have more items. They also do huge promotions around Chinese Singles Day. #amazon #china #chinafail #amazonfail
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♘ Building A Marketing Strategy for the 4th Industrial Revolution]
In January, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the Android and iPhone stores, according to research firm Sensor Tower Inc. - Bloomberg
👉Marketing technologies capture 29% of CMOs budgets. Link via MarTech Today. Jennifer Videtta @jenvidetta. Net: human employees < robots. #riseoftherobots #stayhuman #CMO #martech
👉No longer in control, CMO's must think differently. Link via @Mediapost. Net: P&G has created 130 internal startup teams organized around three or four people who “[fall] in love with [a consumer] problem and make things happen,” says Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, noting P&G’s creative brief process is to form a “constant connection with consumers.” #customerconnection #P&G #innovation #CMO
👉How will branding survive when ads disappear? Link via @adexchanger @GaryEllis @teamremesh Net: Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Marc Pritchard has shared his prediction that [due to the rise of technology] we’re evolving into a "world without ads." The key will be to translate traditional advertising insight into new engagement tactics so advertisers can fit themselves organically into their customer’s experience, rather than disrupting a customer’s experience. #nondisruption #brandutility #P&G
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🧬 Surveillance Advertising]
Huawei spends more on R&D than Apple - Johan Nylander - Author, Shenzhen Superstars
👉Mad Men or Math Men? Omnicom is now the outlier in Madison Avenue’s ‘big data transformation’. Link. Via Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese Net: Omnicom says wait a a minute, we’re betting big on people-based insights (vs. more data-based ones). #stayhuman #omnicom #bigdata
👉The shameful state of online advertising? Link via @mikemallazzo Net: Is advertising effectively supposed to be a tax that we all pay to enjoy free services -that have no business being free? #surveillanceadvertising
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🇨🇳 China BAT Innovation: Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu]
Today there are twice as many Starbucks shops is Shanghai than in NYC - Johan Nylander - Author, Shenzhen Superstars
👉How Meituan Dianping became the world’s most innovative company. Link Via @DragonSocial Net: FastCompany recently named Meituan Dianping, one of China’s shining stars, as the world’s most innovative company. #meituandianping #innovation
👉China is becoming a creative superpower in design says Marcus Fairs, chief editor of Dezeen. Link via @Dezeen #creativity #innovation
👉Mapping China’s tech giants. Link via Australia Strategic Policy Institute. Net: “The CCP (Communist Party of China) has made no secret about its intentions to export its vision for the global internet. Officials from the Cyber Administration of China have written about the need to develop controls so that ‘the party’s ideas always become the strongest voice in cyberspace.’1 This includes enhancing the ‘global influence of internet companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu [and] Huawei’ and striving ‘to push China’s proposition of internet governance toward becoming an international consensus’. Also: Digital authoritarianism is being promoted as a way for governments to control their citizens through technology, inverting the concept of the internet as an engine of human liberation. #China2025 #taketechseriously
👉TikTok: An algorithm that ‘learns’ you. Link. Via @bloomberg David Ramli and Shelly Banjo. Net: a MUST READ: The video-sharing app by the Chinese-owned Bytedance, the world’s most valuable startup, has a younger audience than Facebook, an algorithm that learns you, and different ideas about free speech. Awesome; but wait: a massively fun and popular Chinese app taking over the world by storm with a super powerful algorithm? OK - if Facebook and Google aren’t allowed in China, still curious why does America let this app freely ‘learn’ from American citizen data? #TikTok #China2025 #taketechseriously #algorithmarketing
👉China’s internet model gaining global acceptance. Link via @GlobalTimes. @AiJun. If targeting Beijing's internet regulation is the new US strategy to wrestle with China in an imaginary cold war, Washington will be disappointed. Because China's continuously improving management over the internet is becoming a trend in other countries and regions.
👉China is using Facebook to build a huge audience around the world. Link via @TheEconomist. Net: Or you can look at it this way: Facebook is letting China use it to spread propaganda to the third world while economically re-building it. Stat 1: China now runs five of the six media outlets with the biggest Facebook followings in the world. Stat 2: If their current growth rates continue, by 2022 China Daily and CGTN will overtake the page of Cristiano Ronaldo, a footballer, who is Facebook’s most followed celebrity. Need any more? #Facebook #China2025 #globalpropaganda #developingworldrecruitment #mobilefirst
👉Why should the U.S. be concerned about China’s embrace of AI?. Link Via Fortune @JonathanVanian. Net: in China, grade school children are taught #AI fundamentals. Wait, a massive population being educated ‘at birth’ to empower AI? #taketechseriously #innovation #china2025 #embraceAI
👉U.S. has surrendered to China on scientific research. Link via By Ezekiel Emanuel, Amy Gadsden and Scott Moore - Summary: America’s lead in science and technology have been significantly eroded since the curbing of Cold War threat. Meanwhile China opened 1,800 universities and has produced 10X more science & technology graduates than the U.S. #taketechseriously #digitalauthoritarianism
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🤖 Our Automation Nation]
👉Artificial intelligence and the future of marketing and advertising jobs. Link
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🦄 Unicorn Life]
👉The truth about the Scooter Economy. Link via @msuster BothSidesofthetable Net: Insights on the story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth.
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🤡 What’s On my Amazon Wishlist?]
👉FOUR, by Scott Galloway. @profgalloway Link Net: “The Four is an essential, wide-ranging powerhouse of a book that, like Scott Galloway himself, marries equal parts incisive, entertaining, and biting. As in his legendary MBA lectures, Galloway tells it like it is, sparing no business titan and no juggernaut corporation from well-deserved criticism. A must read.” —Adam Alter, author of Drunk Tank Pink
👉WHITE, by Brett Easton Ellis. Link @BretEastonEllis. Net: Book review description: Combining personal reflection and social observation, Bret Easton Ellis's first work of nonfiction is an incendiary polemic about this young century's failings, e-driven and otherwise, and at once an example, definition, and defense of what "freedom of speech" truly means.
👉AMAZON, by @Natalie_Berg & /@mazzaknights. Link. Net: How the world’s most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionize commerce
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🎧🐱💻 Got a Brandhacker Story?
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👉Do you have a developing D2C Brandhacker Story? We want to hear it.
Submit Your Story Now @brandhackers. Brandhacker Stories is a launching carpool karaoke type resource of marketing influencers. Care to be in the spotlight? Our podcast is work in progress (iTunes, Stitcher, Google, Overcast).
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🤙🏻 Who The Heck Am I & How Do I Help?]
👨I’m @robbhecht - your host and Get Customer Productive modern marketing coach -I’ll chronicle, curate and explore our new consumer technology driven marketing 4th Industrial Revolution we’re experiencing on business, consumer and government policy levels...developing insights with the goal of helping you navigate the connected future so you can get your customers successfully productive. For your brand, for your customers, for your career - for our society, hey gang - we can keep it whimsical - but our challenge is: it’s time we get Get Customer Productive.
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🎙️ Got News? What Are You Working On?]
👉Got Feedback or news? Hey. Thank you for reading. Fancy sending us some feedback? I’m honored that you’re reading, and delighted that I am learning from you all. Now, tell me what you’re working on! Please get in touch. Have a great week! Robb
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