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The Big Stories

Millennials favor companies with activist CEOs—I reported last week about the American Petroleum Institute’s advertising push to make the industry look cool to Millennials, whom oil and gas companies need to hire but who are inclined to look elsewhere for work. Oil companies may want to consider convincing their leaders to speak up on social issues. More than half of Millennials are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO speaks out on issues they agree with. that’s a 5% increase over the first Weber Shandwick survey on attitudes toward CEO activism. Nearly 60% of Millennials say business leaders have a greater responsibility to speak out these days. While the numbers aren’t so strong among Gen Xers and Boomers, Millennials represent a big enough part of the marketplace and the workplace to take this preference to heart. The takeaway: Those same Millennials will be more likely to work for a company whose top leader speaks out on issues, and the Gen Zers following right behind them will probably feel even more strongly about the role they believe business should play in addressing society’s woes. If your CEO hasn’t considered some level of activism as part of her job, maybe it’s time to have a heart-to-heart with her. There’s more data supporting CEO activism than just this Weber Shandwick study. Read more

The experience matters—I keep hearing how quality and price are the only factors that really matter. I just read that again today in a post noting that United Airlines’ quarterly earnings were healthy despite their never-ending stream of widely-reported customer service issues. But a CMO Council study finds that almost half of North American and European consumers say they will abandon a brand and take their business elsewhere unless companies address their poor, impersonal, or frustrating customer experiences. Customers expect to have access to a company website, a phone number, and a knowledgeable salesperson. Top of the list of what makes an exceptional experience are fast response times and knowledgeable staff ready to assist wherever and whenever needed. Customers are frustrated when prices go up without a related product improvement and when they’re not treated like the loyal customers they are. The takeaway: United may very well have had much higher earnings without the customer service issues; they’re probably also losing out to competitors on some very desirable new hires who don’t want to work for United. Delivering an experience is just the price of admission these days. Read more

Alexa attracts audiences to NPR—When Amazon first started selling the Amazon Echo, NPR was one of the first brands to jump on board with its Flash news briefing, the default news source of the Alexa line of smart appliances. Hundreds of thousands of people listen to the briefing whenever they ask for the news, which has led more and more people to become listeners of even more NPR programming. An NPR spokesperson said, “We’re seeing our audience growth across the board go up in all our categories, but we’re seeing our strongest growth in Millennials and various diverse markets that we’ve been going after.” The takeaway: Brands that find a way for Alexa users to do something important that’s not already available, they could find new customers as well. That has certainly been the case for radio, with more people listening to radio because of ease of access, and suddenly radio listening—once believed to be on its last legs—is surging. Give it some serious thought: How can you make people’s lives easier or more satisfying by letting them simply ask and then listen? Read more

Pokémon Go Fest fizzles—Remember the Fyre Festival? It was touted as an experience for influencers but deteriorated into a disaster. Add to this new list of failed experiences the Pokémon Go Fest. From Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs, the event was supposed to be the first big event where players could gather, work together, capture elusive Pokémon characters, and earn unique awards. Instead, there were overloaded servers and cell networks, leading to complaints and refunds. The takeaway: There’s a lesson here. Yes, experiences are important, but if you don’t take steps to ensure they live up to expectations, they can backfire in ways you never imagined. Once again, I see the need for an additional step in the planning process: Envision it’s six months later and the event failed. Ask yourself, “What went wrong?” You may predict issues that will prevent the failure. Read more

News

Farewell, Flash—Adobe Systems is hammering the final nail into Flash’s coffin. The company announced that support for Flash will wind down over the next three years; no new updates will come after 2020. Adobe and its partners—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Mozilla—are urging developers to migrate their software to newer standards Read more

Twitter is testing a subscription model—Want more reach for your tweets? A monthly $99 subscription could get it for you. Pay the fee and Twitter will promote your tweets onto the timelines of people who don’t follow your account. If you use Twitter’s ad products, you already get that kind of broader reach, but the subscription is for people who don’t want to go to the trouble of figuring out the ad service. The test is currently in private beta. Read more

Google prepares to roll out news feed to desktop—Already part of Google’s flagship search app, the personalized news feed will soon also be part of the desktop browser version. The news feed provides the kinds of information once delivered through Google Now, including sports scores, viral videos, and news. The push to get people using the feed is meant in large part to protect Google’s market, given that search—its primary business—is due to decline precipitously as AI better predicts what you’re looking for and bots and smart speakers turn to “one true answer.” Read more

One-third of the world uses social media—According to an eMarketer report, 2.46 billion people will access social networks at least once a month during 2017, up 8.2% from last year. That’s about one-third of the world’s population and 71% of all Internet users. Growth is coming from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Growth is marginal in the U.S. and Europe, where high-speed networks are leading Facebook and Twitter to focus on video. More video, though, won’t mean more users in the developing parts of the world where most of the growth is occurring.  Read more

More than 1 million Americans quit Twitter in three months—Remember hearing how U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweets would attract more people to Twitter? The Trump Bump isn’t happening. Twitter lost more than 1 million U.S. users during the second quarter of 2017, along with $116 million. Twitter’s user count remains a paltry 328 million. Read more

Twitter adds new features—Twitter has added a feature to the notifications tab designed to show you want people you follow are up to, including “whether they’re tweeting about a particular Twitter trend, sharing a link to a buzzing news article, or even following another user’s account.” Read more

Google introduces SOS Alerts to help in a crisis—The current focus for Google’s new SOS Alerts is large-scale global emergencies rather than local incidents. The idea is that when google identifies an event as a crisis, it will push details to those within the incident’s vicinity, including “relevant news stories, a feed of instructions from local authorities, a map of the affected area, links to shelter information, and phone numbers for reporting details or listening to updates.” Meanwhile, Google maps will display an icon for the incident with links to pertinent information, like road closures. Read more

Facebook looks to video for ad revenue—Facebook is squeezing all the ads it can into news feeds. With video on its way to becoming Facebook’s biggest business driver and messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger surging, the company is looking to these channels as new platforms for ads. Read more

Verizon responds to accusation with a somewhat inaccurate lesson in WiFi—Accused of throttling Netflix, Verizon responded with an interactive website that takes a shot at explaining how WiFi works. It was a cool-looking site that featured some inaccuracies. You have to wonder what Verizon hoped to accomplish; some thought the company would adjust the site to align with its anti-net-neutrality positions. It matters little; the company removed the site “for maintenance” and hasn’t put it back up yet. Read more

Company invites employees to get chipped—Three Square Market is offering employees the opportunity to have microchips implanted in their hands. They can use the implants to open doors (replacing security cards), log into computers, make purchases, use the copy machine, and other work-related activities. The program is optional and the company expects some 50 employees will take them up on it. Read more

Estonia seeing more new e-residents than births—Estonia’s e-residency program is getting more applicants than new births in the country. Open to people of any nationality, the digital identity lets you set up a company in Estonia. All Estonians already have the digital identity. Read more

Trends

Flipboard among the top mobile drivers of traffic to news sites—According to data from a media analytics firm, Flipboard is fast become one of the biggest mobile drivers of traffic to news stories, trailing Facebook, Google, and Twitter by a lot by leading everyone else. Read more

Brands are paying to promote articles—If advertising and marketing aren’t working well for you, you might want to game the system by paying Facebook and other social networks to promote favorable articles about your brand, product, or service. That’s what Blind did. The workplace gossip app promoted a Mashable article about the app, driving more than 11,000 visits to its app download page. Mattress company Casper repurposed a BBC story as a Facebook ad and a plumber in Texas used an article about a water main break to promote its service. Essentially, companies are paying to promote their services using somebody else’s editorial copy as the creative. Some media companies have begun to complain. Read more

Think fake news is bad now?—Wait until its purveyors get their hands on CGI and AI. Some people allege that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is dead and that recent images of videos in which he appears were computer-generated. That particular charge may be ridiculous, but we have seen some jaw-dropping technologies in recent months, including one that can create lip-synching on a video (words President Obama said in informal situations were put into his mouth when looking into a camera), one that lets you apply facial expressions and gestures to an existing video, and one that will let you feed the system a few words of someone speaking and then have that person’s voice say anything you want. When video looks completely authentic but could be fabricated, what will happen to already low levels of trust in media? Read more

AR and VR will change the way we make decisions—Cool games and marketing gimmicks are getting a lot of attention when it comes to Virtual and Augmented Reality, but eventually they will change the very way people make decisions. We’ll be able to choose homes or offices remotely, make purchases (by using tools like IKEA’s AR app to visualize what a piece of furniture will look like in the space you have available), get athletic training, obtain healthcare and get medical training, and that’s just scratching the surface. Look at the decision path your customers take and try to envision how AR and VR will change it. Read more

Influencer collusion affecting follower engagement numbers—A lot of Instagram influencers have taken to spending time in comment pods, groups of up to 30 Instagrammers that work together to comment on each other’s posts every day, leading to increased engagement. Instagram’s algorithm results in the app favoring pods, with influencers who participate in them appearing in the Explore tab, producing greater visibility. As a result, the numbers brands see for these influencers are wrong. “If you had hoped to get your message in front of X number of people, if you subtract other pod members, that number is dramatically reduced,” said one critic. Read more

Research

The most satisfying social network is…wait, what?—You probably haven’t used it in some time—I haven’t—but Google+ earned the highest score among social networks in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That’s right. Both people who use it like it a lot. (Kidding.) Pinterest finished second, followed by Wikipedia, Instagram, and YouTube. Twitter had the largest percentage gain, taking sixth place, Facebook remained unchanged, Tumblr jumped a little, and LinkedIn held steady. “All others” fell steeply. Read more

Most emails read on mobile devices—The number of email messages read on a mobile device has nearly doubled in the past five years, with 57% of emails reviewed between May 2016 and April 2017 opened on a mobile device, up 29% from a similar study conducted in 2012. Quadruple the number of emails are opened on iOS compared to Android devices. Emails opened on a web browser, on the other hand, dropped 26% over the past five years, accounting for only 28% of emails opened. Six out of every 10 web mail happens on Gmail. Read more

Only 1% of Facebook videos go viral—An analysis of 5,000 Facebook videos found only 1% are likely to go viral. Characteristics of viral videos: They’re square rather than horizontal or vertical; people engage with them beyond likes (which are dropping) but rather with reactions, comments, and shares; and appeal to Spanish speakers (the only countries that view and share videos more than the U.S. are Spain and Mexico). Read more

Facebook releases video findings—Facebook has published a research report focusing on overall video consumption trends on Facebook and Instagram. The study finds 45% of those surveyed expect to watch even more video on their smartphones than they already do; 60% of Instagrammers said they expect their video consumption on the platform to increase significantly in the next two years. The growing consumption is based largely on convenience: The videos are short and can be viewed anywhere, anytime. By watching videos on these platforms, people get a greater sense of connection to community. Social video also has a greater emotional pull than traditional video content. Read more

Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

VR meeting app is shutting down—Altspace VR—the social VR app where Robert Scoble and Shel Israel hosted the virtual launch party for their latest book, is closing its doors after running out of cash. The company, which had raised nearly $16 million in funding, said it had only 35,000 monthly active users. Read more

AI coming to HoloLens—When HoloLens, Microsoft’s mixed reality goggles, gets a 2.0 release, Artificial Intelligence will be part of it.” Onboard AI also potentially means that the HPU, and therefore the HoloLens, could recognize new visual information more quickly and create even more impressive augmented reality interactions.” Read more

Brands are starting to bet on AR—Acura asked four influencers to race around a track as quickly and safely as they could while wearing augmented reality helmets that displayed HD graphics to make it appear as if they were driving through a jungle and snowstorm. The race was live-streamed across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, grabbing the attention of half a million people in real time and more than 3-1/2 million afterward. L’Oreal, meanwhile, has launched several branded AR apps, including Makeup Genius and Style My Hair “that let users apply makeup and hair looks to their selfies before trying a product.” The company is also installing AR at beauty counters in retail stores. Estee Lauder lets users upload a photo of themselves to a Facebook Messenger bot called Lip Artist, recommending a shade by applying it to the photo. Adoption of AR by Apple, Snapchat and Facebook is motivating more brands to develop uses to drive business. Read more

VR ads are almost here—The world’s largest VR development company has announced Virtual Room, ads from which will surface across a vast array of VR apps just like display ads you see now on your computer or smartphone. Read more

Smart Audio

Facebook is building a smart speaker—Facebook’s competitor to the Amazon Echo will be available early next year and feature a 15-inch touchscreen. Read more

Voice is the future—So proclaims ZDNet, noting that IT heavyweights like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have invested heavily in it and Gartner estimates by next year, 30% of our interactions with technology will be through conversations with smart machines. ZDNet advises CIOs start exploring options, find a great business use case, identify partners quickly, and consider how to embed voice into business processes. Read more

Voice-activated purchases set to surge—Almost 20% of consumers have bought something using an Amazon echo or other smart audio device in the past year and 33% plan to do so in the next year. Since 77% of consumers believe the online customer experience will surpass the in-person experience sooner or later, it’s time for companies to get in on the voice-activated purchase game. Read more

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots

Customers want chatbots, but that won’t put people out of work—There’s no doubt that the number of chatbots used in customer service will explode. 71% of consumers want to be able to solve their own problems and 65% feel good about themselves and the company when they’re able to resolve an issue without talking to a live person. Sixty-one percent believe chatbots allow for faster problem-solving. But when the issue gets complicated, they want a real person and they want companies to make it easy to transfer to a human being. This makes sense, since 70-80% of customer service requests are easy ones that chatbots could handle even though customer service representatives feel it’s the best use of their time to deal with more in-depth and complex calls. In fact, according to a poll of customer service agents and customers, being able to focus on those kinds of calls would improve their commitment to the company and their job satisfaction. Read more

eBay lets you find products based on image—Applying machine learning functionality, eBay is introducing Image Search, which will let you take a picture or used a saved image and search for similar eBay listings. Find it on eBay will let you share a URL with eBay; the app will search for listings of the product shown in the image. Read more

Chatbot will book your hotel—What will the Trivago guy do when people start booking their hotel rooms using a chatbot? SnapTravel aims to find out. Accessible via SMS texts and Facebook Messenger, the bot will let users find and book rooms without having to call up a site or load an app. Human agents step in when interactions get more complex. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

WhatsApp joins the 1 billion club—Remember when people wondered what Mark Zuckerberg could possibly be thinking when Facebook bought WhatsApp? The mobile messaging app is now accessed by 1 billion people every day, one out of every seven or eight people on the planet. Another 300 million use it every month. In total, they send 55 billion messages and 4.5 billion photos every day. (One of the sources I count on for material to use in this update comes from a daily newsletter delivered via WhatsApp by a UK PR firm. When are you going to figure out a way to take advantage of those billion daily users?) Read more

Messenger gets Natural Language Processing—Messenger Platform 2.1 includes built-in natural language processing from Wit.ai, which will detect the use of common phrases, letting a chatbot carry out an automated response. Other enhancements include a payments SDK (software developer kit) and a global beta to make it easier to switch between a bot and a live support person. Read more

Messaging app Telegram now features disappearing photos—Telegram’s main appeal is encryption, but it’s jumping on the bandwagon with features popular on other messaging apps. It now supports disappearing photos and videos added to any private chat. Actually, that fits well with its privacy mission, since you would worry even less that your photo might get leaked to the public. Read more

The Values-Driven Marketplace

Consumers want brands to challenge gender stereotypes—Sixty-five percent of women and 59% of men like it when brands use their typical media channels to challenge stereotypes, according to research from Universal McCann. UM’s insight director suggests brands toss their templates for portraying women in advertising. Among the channels that people associate with sexist content and think worse of the brand advertising, there are top newspapers, reality TV, comedy platforms, young women’s magazines, fashion magazines, and Facebook. Read more

Execs think corporate ethical behavior has improved—Among C-suite and other executives, 52.4% think global corporate ethical behavior has improved since enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. Responding to a Deloitte poll, execs say a lot of challenges remain and only 41.3% say their organizations’ global ethics cultures are strong. One important number to consider: Only 32.5% are highly confident their organizations’ employees will report unethical behavior. Companies lack ethics training and communication, incentives and repercussions around ethical and unethical behavior, and more. Read more

Study reveals the CorpSumer—New research from MMWPR has revealed a powerful and growing segment of the population labeled the CorpSumer. A third of Americans fit this category, basing their behaviors on companies reputation rather than just its price and features. CorpSumers act on a company’s reputation “going beyond brand advocacy to brand activism, whether for your or against you.” Sixty-seven percent of CorpSumers would pay full price for a product that supports a cause they believe in, and more than half have stuck with products they weren’t satisfied with because they supported other efforts made by the company. Read more

Want more on the values-driven marketplace?—Follow my Values-Driven Marketplace Flipboard magazine.

New Tools

GIF Maker lets you create GIFs on smartphone without an app—From Giphy comes GIF Maker, which lets you create GIFs without downloading an app. The mobile website lets you import images or video clips or take new pictures within GIF Maker. You can add text to your GIFs as well as animated stickers from Giphy’s library. Read more

Case Studies

Volkswagen rebuilds trust among employees—Employee trust in Volkswagen plummeted after its emissions scandal. The company’s culture had always focused on trust, integrity, and reliability, all of which were thrown into chaos by the scandal. To earn back that trust, the company kept employees in the loop, including letting them know what would happen next. They delivered the same direct, face-to-face communication with employees that characterized their external efforts. Management was available and ready to talk to lower-level employees. Internal ratings have moved up in categories including teamwork, culture, working condition, autonomy, and social awareness. We’ll have to see what happens now that they’re facing charges of collusion on technology, costs, suppliers, and strategy. Read more

Wendy’s snarky Twitter feed lures young customers—The Wendy’s approach to Twitter wouldn’t work for most companies, but it has made the burger chain a standout among young customers who have taken to the snark and quick wit. New Twitter followers are becoming customers, the company says, and its brand perception scores have risen dramatically among 18-21-year-olds. Read more
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This week’s Wrap image comes from the Flickr account of Naval Surface Warriors. The image, taken July 26, features Logistics Specialist 3rd Class Dylan Smith preparing cargo for offloading from the guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup.