StratChat: September 2014

Monday, September 29, 2014

Claudio Stroe 90 degree pushups

The Promises of God: 10 Powerful Bible Verses

by JOSH WILEY on FEBRUARY 26, 2011 ·

Print ·

Tagged as: bible

Snapshot of Digital India Sept 2014

Snapshot of Digital India - September 2014 from Ethinos Digital Marketing

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Why does Jeff Immelt personally manage the GE brand?

Every month I sit down with my advertising team to review all the ads they are proposing to support our overall company brand. I have been doing this since I became CEO and, in that time, have seen dozens of ads, most of which I love and a few, that I didn’t.

So why would I spend hundreds of hours over the years to review all of these ads? I would imagine that our advertising team asks themselves that question at every one of these reviews. The answer is that owning, protecting and nurturing the brand is one of most important jobs of a CEO.

I have strong views and occasionally suggest a few new lines, or shots or ideas. I am not particularly artistic, but I do know what we stand for. I have a great appreciation for our creative talent in GE and our agency and their ability to tell our story.

If it were up to me, I would make our products the hero of every ad. I think a locomotive is beautiful … but that is just me. Recently, my team convinced me that an ad called “Childlike Imagination” would register with the outside world. This is an ad of a young girl bragging about the wonder that her Mom creates at GE. They were right.

A new ad is called "The Boy Who Beeps" and it is terrific storytelling by our team and our longtime creative partners at BBDO. I won’t ruin it for you but it isn’t the typical story about industrial technology or people. It’s about what we call the “industrial internet” and the outcomes that companies like GE can produce for families, friends and communities. I think the ad team used the word “metaphor” about a dozen times during our screening.

So for a guy who grew up selling our products, it wasn’t what I usually look for in our ads – big, powerful GE turbines, engines or blowout preventers – that are invented, built and sold by our people around the world. I always ask myself in these reviews, what would one of our customers take away from this ad about GE? Would a utility executive, an airline CEO or a hospital administrator want to do business with us because of what he or she just saw on Thursday Night Football or on Squawk Box? Does it tell a deep industrial story of efficiencies, savings and productivity that usually get customers excited?

At first, The Boy Who Beeps didn’t check these boxes for me. But, in watching the ad and others over the years, I have come to realize that sometimes I need to listen to the team … I am not the audience. I have learned that a company like GE also has to put a human face on technology and demonstrate that our products are an important part of everyday life. And it helps to understand that our customers are people too. So an engaging, emotional story like The Boy that Beeps is another way to reach them -- and to say something larger about GE’s culture and people. Another new GE ad, "Ideas Are Scary", doesn’t show a single GE product or service. But it demonstrates that GE people are determined inventors and entrepreneurs who love good ideas, regardless of their source. For a company to stay relevant for 135 years, our ads need to make people think of GE in a whole new way. Both The Boy Who Beeps and Ideas are Scary do that extremely well.

Our brand is worth close to $50 billion. That’s real money. Every decision I make must support the long-term health of our brand, including which ads to run. It must trump other shorter-term considerations. Few others in the company have as broad, or as passionate, a point of view on this as the CEO. While I review every ad, I encourage our team to be different. Working together, we tell a meaningful GE story to the world.

http://www.equitorial.in/2014/09/leaders-own-brand-and-ads.html

Exposing Hidden Bias at Google

Google, like many tech companies, is a man’s world.

Started by a pair of men, its executive team isoverwhelmingly male, and its work force is dominated by men. Over all, seven out of 10people who work at Google are male.

Men make up 83 percent of Google’s engineering employees and 79 percent of its managers. In a report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, Google said that of its 36 executives and top-ranking managers, just three are women.

Google’s leaders say they are unhappy about the firm’s poor gender diversity, and about the severe underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics among its work force.

And so they are undertaking a long-term effort to improve these numbers, the centerpiece of which is a series of workshops aimed at making Google’s culture more accepting of diversity.

There’s just one problem: The company has no solid evidence that the workshops, or many of its other efforts to improve diversity, are actually working.

In some ways Google’s plan to fix its diversity issues resembles many of its most ambitious product ideas, from self-driving cars to wiring the country for superfast Internet.

As in those efforts, it has set a high goal in this case: to fight deep-set cultural biases and an insidious frat-house attitude that pervades the tech business. Tech luminaries make sexist comments so often that it has ceased to be news when they do.

Google is attacking the problem with its considerable resources and creativity. But it does not have a timeline for when the company’s work force might become representative of the population, or whether it will ever get there.

“I think it’s terrific that they’re doing this,” said Freada Kapor Klein, an entrepreneur who has long studied workplace diversity, and who is the co-chairwoman of the Kapor Center for Social Impact. “But it’s going to be important that Google not just give a lecture about the science, but that there be active strategies on how to mitigate bias. A one-shot intervention against a lifetime of biased messages is unlikely to be successful.”

Google says its plan isn’t one-shot. It points out that it has been trying to improve its diversity for years by sponsoring programs to increase the number of women and minorities who go into tech, and meticulously studying the way it hires people in an effort to reduce bias.

In May after pressure from civil rights leaders, the company published areport documenting the sex and race of its employees “to be candid about the issues,” Laszlo Bock, Google’s executive in charge of human resources,wrote at the time.

Google’s disclosure prompted a wave of similar reports across the industry, with Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and other tech giants issuing similarly dismal numbers about their work forces.

A Man’s World

The tech industry has a reputation for being a boys’ club, and recent diversity reports from several companies illustrate how men dominate their global work forces.

Company	Total Employees	Pct. Male Employees
Apple	98,000	70%
Facebook	7,200	69%
Google	48,600	70%
Twitter	3,300	70%
Yahoo	12,200	62%

Google’s diversity training workshops, which began last year and which more than half of Google’s nearly 49,000 employees have attended, are based on an emerging field of research in social psychology known as unconscious bias. These are the hidden, reflexive preferences that shape most people’s worldviews, and that can profoundly affect how welcoming and open a workplace is to different people and ideas.

Google’s interest in hidden biases was sparked in 2012, when Mr. Bock read an article in The New York Times about a study that showed systematic discrimination against female applicants for scientific jobs in academia. The effect was so pervasive that researchers theorized the discrimination must be governed by unconscious cultural biases rather than overt sexism.

Mr. Bock wondered how such unconscious biases were playing out at Google. “This is a pretty genteel environment, and you don’t usually see outright manifestations of bias,” he said. “Occasionally you’ll have some idiot do something stupid and hurtful, and I like to fire those people.”

But Mr. Bock suspected that the more pernicious bias was most likely pervasive and hidden, a deep-set part of the culture rather than the work of a few loudmouth sexists.

Improving diversity wasn’t just a feel-good goal for Google. Citing research that shows diverse teams can be more creative than homogeneous ones, Mr. Bock argued that a diverse work force could be good for Google’s business. Could Google investigate how biases were affecting people’s work — and, more important, could it change its own culture?

Google’s human resources group, which goes by the name People Operations, functions like a graduate school research lab, with staff scientists who are constantly analyzing the company’s internal operations. Mr. Bock asked one of these researchers, Brian Welle, to begin a project on hidden biases. After a few months, Dr. Welle came up with a 90-minute lecture targeted specifically at a skeptical, scientifically minded Google employee.

Laszlo Bock, Google’s executive in charge of human resources, has argued that a diverse work force could be good for Google’s business. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

The lecture begins with a dismal fact: Everyone is a little bit racist or sexist. If you think you’re immune, take the Implicit Association Test, which empirically measures people’s biases. Dr. Welle goes on to explain that some of the most damaging bias is unconscious; people do the worst stuff without meaning to, or even recognizing that they’re being influenced by their preferences.

The effect of bias is powerful, and it isn’t softened by Silicon Valley’s supposedly meritocratic culture. In the lecture, Dr. Welle shows a computer simulation of how a systematic 1 percent bias against women in performance evaluation scores can trickle up through the ranks, leading to asevere underrepresentation of women in management.

Finally, Dr. Welle points to research showing that we aren’t slaves to our hidden biases. The more we make ourselves aware of the role our unconscious plays in our decision-making, and the more we try to force others to confront their biases, the greater the chance we have of overcoming our hidden preferences.

Google offered several anecdotes that seem to indicate a less biased culture as a result of the training. Not long ago the company opened a new building, and someone spotted the fact that all the conference rooms were named after male scientists; in the past, that might have gone unmentioned, but this time the names were changed.

During one recent promotion meeting in which a group of male managers were deciding the fate of a female engineer, a senior manager who had been through the bias training cautioned his colleagues to remember that they were all men — and thus might not be able to fully appreciate the different roles women perform in engineering groups. “Just raising the awareness was enough for people to think about it,” Mr. Bock said. The woman was promoted.

Another time, in an all-company presentation, an interviewer asked a male and female manager who had recently begun sharing an office, “Which one of you does the dishes?” The strange, sexist undertone of the question was immediately seized upon by a senior executive in the crowd, who yelled, “Unconscious bias!”

Mr. Bock saw all of these actions as evidence that the training was working. “Suddenly you go from being completely oblivious to going, ‘Oh my god, it’s everywhere,’ ” he said.

But whether that will lead to a long-term change at Google and, in turn, the rest of the tech industry, remains an open question.

Brand Challenge: Is There a ‘Recipe’ for Going Viral?

It’s every marketer’s dream to see a campaign go viral. However, earning the engagement of a passionate audience can be difficult for many brands, and viral successes like Volvo’s “Epic Split” campaign featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme can be hard — if not impossible — to replicate. For brands looking to get an audience’s attention, is there a recipe for success? According to Kelli Wisuri, an evangelist at Google, and Gopi Kallayil, the firm’s chief evangelist for brand marketing, there is a simple answer to that question: “Brands that meet consumers on their own terms succeed in getting greater reach and engagement.” In the following opinion piece, Wisuri and Kallayil explain why that’s so.

Psy was a completely unknown Korean pop star until the summer of 2012, when he released his smash hit single, “Gangnam Style.” Since then, the music video has shattered all records by becoming the single most watched video of all time, reaching more than two billion views in May 2014.

Two billion is a huge number. There are more than two billion people on the entire planet with access to the Internet, so it’s the equivalent of every person on the Internet having watched this video once.

Whether you find Gangnam Style endearing or annoying, the reach of Psy’s video is a unique accomplishment in the history of humanity — and it’s not just rock stars like Psy and Justin Bieber who are achieving such astronomical numbers. Home videos like “Charlie Bit Me” have earned hundreds of millions of views. Video game commentators accumulate tens of millions of followers and billions of views. Even brand marketers are getting in on the action.

Last year, Volvo’s “Epic Split” campaign featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme racked up almost 75 million views. Meanwhile, the season finale of Game of Thrones, HBO’s most popular show of all time, had a total viewership of just 18.6 million.

Virgin Airline’s cheeky flight safety announcement video has been viewed 10 million times on YouTube, a feat that doesn’t sound impressive until you realize that all 10 million views happened not while viewers were strapped in their seats on a plane, but while they were sitting on their couches at home. Every marketer hopes that their next campaign magically goes viral, but successes like Volvo’s and Virgin’s aren’t easy to replicate.

Every marketer wants an engaged, passionate audience. Every marketer hopes that their next campaign magically goes viral, but successes like Volvo’s and Virgin’s aren’t easy to replicate.

Which begs the question: If you are a brand trying to get your audience’s attention, is there a recipe for success?

While there’s no magic formula, there is a simple answer: Brands that meet consumers on their own terms succeed in getting greater reach and engagement. In our experience, there are three fundamental changes in consumer expectations that digitally savvy brands understand.

By Invitation Only

The first change in consumer expectations is that consumers want to engage with brands, but only when they invite those brands into their life. The relationship between brands and consumers is becoming more intimate as brands get physically closer to the consumer. When a consumer experiences a brand’s ad on TV, that brand’s message is 15 feet or so away. On a desktop computer, the same message is three feet away from the consumer. On a laptop, the distance shrinks to a foot or two; the brand often literally sits on the consumer’s lap. And on a mobile phone, a brand’s message is inches from the consumer’s eyeball. It’s a very personal and intimate space, so it’s no surprise that consumers are saying to brands, “Do not market to me unless I invite you in!”

Digital media is quickly moving us from a world of ambush marketing to permission-based marketing. In the traditional model of brand marketing, advertisers waited for the pivotal moment in the big game or series finale to ambush consumers with their brand message, and consumers paid attention because they had no choice — if they wanted to see the rest of the game or TV show, they had to sit through the commercial break.

But in the digital world, consumers have increasing control over the media they consume. Every consumer is armed with a powerful new gesture called the “swipe.” If consumers don’t like a brand’s content or ad, with a flick of the finger, they can simply swipe it away into oblivion. And this behavior isn’t limited to the digital world. Consumers may not be able to “swipe” away a boring TV commercial, but they can turn their attention elsewhere, checking Facebook on their phone or watching YouTube videos on their second screen.

So what are savvy brands doing to thrive in this world of permission-based marketing? They’re acquiring permissions from consumers.

Starbucks, one of the world’s savviest digital marketers, acquires permissions in two ways. First, they’ve grown their social communities to include more than 50 million members. That’s 50 million people who have raised their hand on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, and said, “Starbucks, I like you as a brand. I give you permission to come into my life and communicate with me.”

Another way Starbucks takes advantage of permission-based marketing is through their mobile app. The app, which allows customers to order and pay for their lattes without waiting in line, is the most used mobile wallet app in America, beating out even PayPal. Starbucks’ app is a great way for the brand to engage with its audience, but to do so, customers must first invite the brand into their lives by downloading the mobile app. :

Every brand seeking to build a strong online presence should ask first ask themselves, “Do we have a strategy to gain permissions from consumers?”

Here We Are – Now, Entertain Us

Just because consumers invite a brand into their life doesn’t guarantee they’ll give the brand their attention. Consumers only pay attention to a fraction of the countless messages they receive from brands via email or Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest. Why? Because a consumer’s attention can’t possibly encompass the thousands of brand communications they’re exposed to each day. Consumers want to engage with brands, but only when they invite those brands into their life.

So what do brands need to do to earn consumer attention? The answer is simple: brands must provide value to consumers through their content, ads and campaigns. The most successful brands recognize that for consumers, value comes in three forms — entertainment, education, and utility.

Entertainment

Volvo’s wildly successful 2013 “Epic Split” YouTube campaign was so good at earning consumer attention that it received almost 75 million views. How did Volvo do it? After all, they’re advertising a highly technical B2B product, and the Volvo brand — which stands for safety and precision — doesn’t obviously lend itself to a viral hit.

Volvo hit the attention jackpot by applying an age-old advertising rule to the new world of digital brand marketing: Entertain, and they will come. And amplify your message like crazy.

Volvo created this gripping piece of content by taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the digital platform. The brand and their agency started by creating eleven roughly produced versions of their creative and publishing them to YouTube. Why? Volvo wanted to get real-time audience feedback to see which piece of content resonated best before investing large amounts of money in distribution. Data from YouTube revealed that Live Test 6 — the spot featuring Van Damme doing the splits — drove the most views, shares and buzz, so Volvo backed the campaign with additional paid media support to fuel its success.

Volvo’s novel, clever use of entertainment on the digital platform not only hit the attention sweet spot but also drove bottom line business results. One month after launching the campaign, Volvo announced a 31% increase in truck sales.

Education

Clinique faced a problem that’s all too familiar to most retail brands — diminishing traffic to their physical stores. How could Clinique educate customers about their products if they never visited Clinique’s makeup counters?

Clinique turned to digital media to solve the problem. The brand invited 10 beauty bloggers to join them in a live, online video chat with Julia Cox, a Clinique beauty expert. During the Hangout, participants had the opportunity to ask Julia questions they might typically ask at a makeup counter.

Viewers willingly tuned in, devoting more than 15 minutes of their attention, because Clinique provided their audience with value in the form of education.

But what’s even more interesting is what Clinique did to scale this content on the digital platform. They took the Hangout footage, sliced it into 10-15 second pieces of content, and then ran that content as permission-based, opt-in video ads. And guess what?

Because those ads were educational and authentic, they received 16 times higher view-through rate and ten times higher click-through rate than official product ads advertising the same exact product feature. Here Clinique hit two birds with one stone — permission-based advertising, and value through education — to drive real impact.

Utility

Toyota recognized that the car-buying process intimidates and confuses many people, especially Millennials. So they decided to put consumers back in control of the process by re-imagining the buying experience online.

The result, called the Toyota Collaborator, allows consumers to collaborate with friends online to build the car of their dreams, share their dream car on social networks, and most important, video chat with a local dealer to get their questions answered. Consumers can even take the car they’ve created on a virtual test drive using Google Street View.

The Toyota Collaborator takes advantage of digital technology to solve some of the most stressful parts of buying a car: exploring features, consulting with friends or family, and making decisions — all in a high-pressured sales environment.

As a result of the campaign, the time consumers spend on Toyota’s site has increased dramatically, and local dealers are clamoring to join the Collaborator pilot. If consumers don’t like a brand’s content or ad, with a flick of the finger, they can simply swipe it away into oblivion.

The Collaborator is a brilliant and successful piece of marketing, because it’s useful to consumers. By educating, or entertaining, or providing utility brands such as Toyota, Clinique and Volvo are earning the attention of large audiences and driving real business results.

Brands Ignite, Customers Amplify

In the digital world, consumers understand they have power to impact a brand’s success and reputation. If a brand delights consumers, they’re willing to amplify the brand’s message.

Ziploc is a utilitarian product that’s a staple of almost every household in America. It’s a useful product, but not the type of product you’d expect consumers to engage with and talk about online. And yet, a search for “Ziploc bag” on YouTube yields more than 16,000 videos, and not a single one of those videos was made by the brand itself. Instead, all 16,000-plus videos were made by consumers talking about the Ziploc brand. You can find videos demonstrating how to make ice cream and omelets using Ziploc bags, videos reviewing the product, and even videos that use Ziploc bags as a hook for entertainment.

Consumer-generated content like this is brand amplification, and it’s a tool consumers use not only to reward brands that delight them, but to punish brands that disappoint them (as Comcast recently discovered when adisastrous customer service call went viral).

So what are savvy brands doing? They’re harnessing the positive power of amplification (and minimizing the negative) by actively encouraging consumers to get involved.

GoPro encourages its customers to upload user-generated content online. As a result, customers post approximately six thousand videos per day on YouTube with the word GoPro in its title or description. GoPro rewards customers for their participation by curating and redistributing customers “best of” UGC on their YouTube channel. The brand’s digital marketing prowess and deep understanding of consumer behavior online has helped GoPro become the fastest-growing camera company in the world.

The Ultimatum

In the digital world, consumers don’t want to be ambushed by advertising; instead, they expect brands to advertise to them only when they grant brands permission to do so. Consumers expect brands to deliver something valuable in their messaging, whether its entertainment, education, or utility. And lastly, consumers know they have the power to amplify a brand’s message, and they expect to actively participate in doing so.

The message is clear — to be successful in the digital era, brands must listen to the demands of their consumers when marketing to them: “Meet our expectations, or become irrelevant.”

StratChat