This Week in Business & Brands: Venture Backing, Meat Packing, and More
In the Vivaldi weekly roundup, you’ll find everything you need to keep up with what’s going down in the world of marketing. Sign up to have it delivered to your inbox every week.
Happy New Year! We hope the holidays treated you well, and we’re glad to be back bringing you the latest news in business and brands as we launch into 2016. Hopefully, your first week of the year was a bit more interesting than puddle-gazing – but if not, there’s plenty to get excited about when it comes to innovation for the year ahead.
The Technology of Tomorrow…
From roll-up screens to laundrybots, the Consumer Electronics Show gives us an amazing look at the not-so-distant future. And advances like these are on the way for all industries:
- In automotive, self-driving cars are behind the wheel of GM’s new partnership with Lyft, putting both in a good position in the ongoing race for no-hands livery.
- For health and fitness, Under Armour will whip you into shape right through your clothes, providing wearable tech that measures key data while you sweat. And insurance companies embrace the idea by rewarding customers who incorporate wearables into their wardrobe.
- Even the meatpacking sector is prime to cut the fat by bringing in robo-butchers to speed up the works and lower the high cost of human touch.
…for the Consumer of Today
Innovations like these don’t just come out of nowhere – behind all this greater technology is a greater understanding of the consumer it serves. This week gives us a reminder of those businesses and brands that have been doing it right when it comes to comprehending customers’ needs.
- For Netflix, that means alleviating viewers’ frustration from late rental fees and fixed programming schedules, and the service-cum-studio continues to aid their audience by expanding its reach into 130 more countries this week.
- For Apple, that means making an app (store) for that, recognizing the rise of mobile computing early on and taking its $100 million arm of the brand and turning it into $20 billion today.
And yet, somehow, it seems as though not everyone is catching on to this whole “digital” fad: as Bain reports, nearly 90% of B2B Marketers are unprepared for their modern, digitized customers.
How to Break Out of the Past
If you and your business don’t want to get left in the virtual dust, then you’ve got to make sure to keep up a fast pace and change with the times. This week shows us how a few successful brands are going about doing just that.
- While it’s not always easy to see what the consumer needs, Pearle manages to stay at the top of the vision game by keeping customer health and well-being as its biggest priorities. Not to mention its use of big data to make the picture even clearer…
- Want to know how to best plan for 2016? This roundtable discussion with 11 B2B CMOs is full of good ideas, from “re-imagining digital presences” to “busting silos” with all the “data optimization” in between.
- For insights on an international level, this Q&A with the CMO of Singpore’sStarHub will do you right, offering tactics like “money-can’t-buy experiences” and “KISS – Keep it Simple and Sweet.”
One Last Look Over the Shoulder
With so much to look forward to in the new year, it can be easy to forget all the great work of 2015. Luckily this month-by-month review of the most engaging brand content is here to remind us what it was all about. 2016 certainly has big shoes to fill, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store!