Want to make sure your business is really ready to face the future? Better start taking notes from the MIT Platform Strategy Summit, where the modern model took center stage to show off its huge growth potential. While Uber still provides a textbook example of a platform’s power – harnessing both driver and passenger data to conduct 5 million supply/demand forecasts every minute – companies of all kinds are moving into the model for its robust growth opportunities. Using technology in tandem with scale, API services like MuleSoft are reducing service times from days to mere seconds. And Airbnb is devouring data and encouraging employees to do the same, building an internal university for its staff of 3,000 to help them make dynamic decisions daily. Platform principles may even help to solve problems of diversity, as Opportunity Hub uses the model to connect underutilized demographic groups with emerging enterprises seeking top talent. So, leaders: how will you tap into the power of platforms to prosper?

Search Bar Success: Google Turns 20

Has anything shaped the internet – and the world itself – more than Google? Launched 20 years ago, the technology behemoth has a lot to celebrate, from the simplest search to the most complicated car that drives itself. But even a thorough review of the company’s past can’t predict exactly what’s next for the firm’s future. Still, that won’t keep its advertisers from guessing, as Google’s 8 billion users continue to transform their tactical trends. From assistive computing in the form of voice-based searching to actual completed commands (“Hey Google, deliver me a pizza”), it’s time to listen when 1 in 5 queries are conducted without striking a key. The next novelty to nurture may be “machine learning as a service,” providing advertisers with terrific automated testing in minutes that once took men many hours to compute. No matter what the future holds, it seems certain that the tech innovator still has plenty in store to get through the next 20 years with classic Google gusto.

Industry Inquiry: Is Purpose All-Powerful?

Our marketing world is full of compelling contradictions, as something important to some can be considered insignificant to others – take targeting, net promoter scores, or pricing for example. But industry pundit Mark Ritson is now taking purpose itself to task: is it really necessary for brands to have an activist ethos in order to achieve earning excellence? When several of Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands around the globe haven’t let their questionable ethics get in the way of powerful profits, it begs the question whether purpose-driven companies always do grow faster than those minus the mission. As a top Unilever exec calls for the replacement of brand managers with “brand activists,” it could seem as though all other tenets of marketing are subjected to second seating – at best. Perhaps purpose shouldn’t be placed on such a pedestal – after all, products still need their proper price for prime performance. So, marketers: where do you stand on the purpose pyramid?

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Dispatch from Dreamforce

With Salesforce’s massive conference in San Francisco this week, there’s plenty of brains to pick about the current state of marketing and branding. So take a tip or two from Wunderman’s Global CMO Jamie Gutfreund, who shares some secrets to success:

• On creative’s role in connection: “Agencies need to act as a bridge between the cloud companies that mostly provide the tech and the clients who don’t know how to efficiently use the tech while delivering the consumer experience they want to provide.”
• On tempering client’s tactics: “First take a step back, as undertaking such an effort is not only expensive, but requires significant personnel trained in using a cloud company’s technology. It’s important for the brand to first identify what it wants the consumer experience to be like, what its strategy is and what creative it wants to share with their audience.”
• On the crux of comms: “Brands must have first-party data. Companies such as Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for that exact reason. They had to know who their customers are. You are f***** without first-party data. Getting it is hard enough, but what do you do with it once you get it?”

Startup Success: Founder’s Fantasy
That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with this astounding look at the 24-year-old college-dropout who just booked $1 billion to fund his global hotel empire.

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Platform Prosperity, Billion-Dollar Babies, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

Want to know what it really takes to predict great leadership? According to a 10-year study of more than 2,500 executives and C-suite leaders, it all boils down to four key abilities. First, they can distill the complex to the simple: by both learning and teaching fast, they can bring their teams up to speed and inspire others to operationalize their forward-thinking plans. On that note, they also drive ambition for all, stepping outside the silos to encourage enterprise-wide collaboration. That means they must also be a stellar team player, even (and especially) on teams they don’t lead, leaning more into strategic contributions than getting in the weeds of tactical maneuvers. Finally, the very best leaders are the ones who take the time to build more leaders: they see employees not as mere assets for their own career, but as powerful human capital with great potential for development. So aspiring leaders take note: be sure to fully forge these four formidable factors.

Retail Review: Death to the Deficient

Laggard retailers, ask not for whom the bell tolls: looks like it’s time to smarten up or simply shutter the doors. In an age when once-esoteric tools and strategies like AI and personalization are increasingly becoming table stakes, there’s just no more room for those retailers reluctant to revamp. When Amazon is estimated to take a whopping 40 percent (about $38.8 billion) of holiday sales this year, any retailer who hopes to compete must adapt to the new normal of complete customer obsession. That means mining data to deliver tailored services, upping shipping times to breakneck speeds, and making even more moves into the mobile experience. Machine learning is becoming par for the course in retail: take Etsy, who uses the technology to match 35 million customers with its 2 million sellers. Let these facts be a lesson to the luddites: better evolve or else go extinct extinct.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Articulate Like Aristotle

Looking for the keys to compelling communication? Take a page out of Harvard instructor and brand advisor Carmine Gallo’s book, which shows the ancient Greek art of persuasion is alive and well for the top business minds:

–       On the weight of words today: “In this age of artificial intelligence, globalization, automation — the one skill that can separate you not only from the technology that we create but from your peers is mastering the ancient art of persuasion. Combining words and ideas to ignite people’s imagination.”

–       On story selling software: “What [tech companies] are finding is that they cannot compete by giving you engineering terms and talking to you about business software that is so complex that it’s hard for the average person to understand. They use the vehicle of story, of narrative to better sell those products.”

–       On the success of solid speakers: “The difference almost always comes down to the fact that they are better leaders. But what does that mean? They are more persuasive. They’re better communicators. They can connect with people on a much deeper, powerful level.”

(Re)Building the Brand: Restoration Sensation

Speaking of retailers avoiding death’s door, there’s a story of successful revival to be found in the comeback of Restoration Hardware, the once-ailing home goods chain that’s now booming with business. How did the company go from clunky (17-pound!) catalogs to a new 90,000-square-foot RH Gallery in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district? It might have less to do with comfy Cloud couches placed front-and-center, and more to do with the back-end operations behind the scenes: by introducing a membership model like Amazon Prime, the brand now has 405,000 subscribers paying $100 a year for 25% off all sales – and they’re driving 95 percent of the revenue as a result. Then there’s the successful strategy of diversification, as the brand offers more than mere merchandise: from restaurants and an “art compound” to its forthcoming RH Guesthouse hotel in NYC, there seems to be no aspect of hospitality that’s off-limits for the reinvigorated brand. Even though “retail has a shelf life,” it looks like Restoration Hardware is only just getting started in its respectable resurgence.

Fan Favorites: Gen-Z’s Popularity Poll

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with this look at the Top 100 brands ranked by marketers’ newest demographic: those born after 1997…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Comfy Couch Comebacks, Compelling Communication, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

In the age of dynamic disruption and constant change, it might seem like slow and steady strategizing will only leave your organization drenched in dust. But how can you make sure your firm’s heading down the right path without a practical and purposeful plan? The answer lies in agile planning, a new organizational framework to face our nimble times. To achieve that modern strategic speed, individual teams must operate with more autonomy, allowing them to quickly making decisions on the fly while still dedicated to company-wide objectives. Consider ING Bank, whose 3,500 employees are divvied up into 9-person “squads” within 150-person “Tribes.” These multiple layers of operational independence ladder up to synergy throughout the enterprise, strengthening alignment while fostering agility. By also digging into the data – both “soft” and “hard” – that dynamic decision-making is all the more informed from the wealth of 21st-century information at hand. For companies looking to get ahead in today’s ever-changing landscape, better stick to the plan: be as flexible as possible.

Reorganization Recovery: Fixing the “Front Page”

Controversial trolling, an user interface likened to “hot garbage,” and the clunky code behind it – the problems facing Reddit, the “Front Page of the Internet,” were certainly no easy fixes for returning CEO Steve Huffman. So how did he grow a team of 75 to over 400 in just 3 years? The first hurdle was in hiring: not only did he have to convince engineers of the potential for personal impact, but the Silicon Valley staffing syndrome – having mostly white, male talent – also had to be remedied. Bucking traditional hiring tactics of filtering resumes by academic name recognition, Reddit went straight to the source of coding bootcamps, especially Hackbright Academy, known for helping women land jobs in tech. As Huffman noted: “You can’t build a product that appeals to a diverse set of people without having a diverse set of people designing the product.” Adding in an “anti-evil” team to weed out controversial, hate-filled content, the site also revamped its design to make a better home for every visitor. And with $200 million in new funds in 2017 from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, it looks like this might just be the beginning of the “Reddit Renaissance” after all…

Talking Tactics, Tête-á-Tête: Google’s Grand Designs

It’s certainly come a long way from its simple search bar. But according to CEO Sundar Pichai, Google’s deep design-thinking has been there from the very beginning. Take a tip or two from the man at the helm of Fast Company’s “Design Company of the Year”:

• On the key to customer-centricity: “One element is a focus on the user—not trying to call attention to a product. It’s approachable, you feel comfortable interacting with it. You could be a Nobel laureate using it or you could be in an emerging market getting internet access for the first time. We want things to be intuitive.”
• On the next big opportunity: “Computing is in the middle of an exciting transformation. Today you use a single-purpose computer, your laptop, or your phone. Over time, computing will be there ambiently for you, when you need it, in the context of your life, and increasingly it will help you with more things.”
• On the biggest challenge: “Users still feel that getting technology in their lives, setting it up, configuring it—all of that is a hassle. We want technology that’s super easy to use and is personalized and thoughtful in a privacy-sensitive way. Those are hard design challenges that we are constantly working on to make better.”

Fashion Forward: Making the Hype Real

When a brand goes from personal blog to international media mammoth to publicly-traded company, what’s the next move for the digital dynamo? For Hypebeast, it’s putting on an old-fashioned, real-world festival, bringing all the virtual content of streetwear into the street itself. But according to 36-year-old CEO Kevin Ma, the festival is strictly experiential and educational, not aimed at any amount of profit – after all, its 10,000+ tickets “sold” will be completely free.While fully immersed in the world of secondhand reselling for the most fashionable limited-edition gear, the festival is flipping the script on merch and marketing, having none of the special sartorial styles available on site, but only online. With large labels like Adidas and Diesel setting up their own booths throughout the fair, the event could serve as a big brand-awareness opportunity. But without a penny to be profited, the question remains: will the couture convention really be worth the hype?

Rebrand to Rebuild: Uber’s New Drive

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with this look at Uber’s new look, sleek and sans-serif to seduce new supporters…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Front-Page Fixes, Pliable Planning, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

In today’s politicized world, the biggest brands are facing a tough call when it comes to activist messaging: Just Do It – or not? Nike made their position clear this week with their ad featuring NFL’s controversial Colin Kaepernick, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their ethos while making a statement of strong support for those aligned with the quarterback’s sentiments. It’s a big bet for the brand, as not all audiences reacted with cheer – the “#JustBurnIt trend of lighting the footwear on fire shows how the other half really feels. But as Mark Ritson contends, perhaps targeting is the true strategy here, intentionally focusing on one powerful consumer group to strengthen and grow their loyalty, even as it risks losing whole swaths of disgruntled others. It’s never an easy decision for a brand to enter into a political arena outside of their bread and butter, but making a statement is certainly one way to get back in the spotlight. Only time will tell whether the purpose-driven tactic will prove better than staying on the sidelines in silence…

Built for Behavior: Disneyland’s Design Delights

Looking to create an ideal interactive experience that brings joy to consumers and keeps their wallets happily open? Take a page out of Disneyland’s book on beautifully crafted urban and experience design and all your dreams will come true. Long before VR, the theme park was already tapping in to customer truths about keeping the consumer at the center of the story, living it through the architecture and rides and costumes. On top of that customer-centricity, the purposeful “neighborhood” layout of the park itself gives visitors a subtle nudge to explore with either intention or abandon, leading them past “Main Street” stores that are much more approachable than those found in a mall. Today, Disney is innovating for even more ways to put visitors at the center of their own story, providing a MagicBand wearable to make both pursuits and purchases all the more seamless. With that unparalleled level of service, the brand invites everyone to “be their guest” and with an experience fit for a princess.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Bezos’s Next Big Bets

When a company hits the $1 trillion market cap mark, it’s certainly not too late to take a tip or two from its founder about how to win in the world of business and brands. Here’s a sampling of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s latest thoughts about the future of his big baby:

• On the keys to new concepts: “1) We have to have a differentiated idea. It can’t be a ‘me too’ offering. 2) We’re gifted with some very large businesses we’ve built over time, and we can’t afford to put our energies into something that if it works, it’s still going to be small. 3) Even at substantial scale, it has to have good returns on capital.”
• On unifying corporate navigation: “What you want is those [various] groups to have infrequent meetings and set a road map of the future. If you organize correctly, people do not have to be in the same building or the same city or even the same time zone, because you can work off a road map. That road map is pretty much all I work on.”
• On future focus: “I very rarely get pulled into the today. I get to work two or three years into the future, and most of my leadership team has the same setup. Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, ‘Good job, great quarter,’ and I’ll say, ‘Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago.’ I’m working on a quarter that’ll happen in 2021 right now.”

Leadership Lessons: Less is More

It’s easy to get excited about new initiatives in your organization. But where you do draw the line between an enterprise’s effective productivity and unrealistic ambition? What’s not easy is letting bad projects die out, recognizing when cutting losses is better for every aspect of the business than hanging on to an unprofitable venture. So what should leaders look out for as signs of overzealousness? Impact blindness is one cause, stemming from a lack of mechanisms to measure actual progress of the abundance of new projects. Band-aid initiatives are another, mistaking multiple stop-gap solutions as sufficient for deep-rooted issues that need a unified, long-term strategy. Cost myopia also contributes to the crises, removing manpower without lessening the workload. The big fix to these and other causes? Two simple questions: 1) Does the initiative have a positive impact on the business? 2) Does it have a positive impact on the culture? Nothing less than two affirmatives should grant the green light to your next grand idea.

Video Victory: Retail That Rocks

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with this amazing look at the latest ad from UK retailer John Lewis, offering a middle school musical performance like no other…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Bezos’s Big Bets, Disney’s Design Delight, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

This week HBR revists the eternal debate over which is best: to provide more options or to curate a simpler selection. We learn that McDonald’s customers made it loud and clear that it’s better to stick to the basics than to expand for an unwanted demand. When the golden arches tried improving sales by putting more lunch and dinner items on the menu, the abundance of choice only overwhelmed and thus under-delivered on speed – a real no-no in the Fast Food space. By instead offering their beloved breakfast staples all day long, that genuine outside-in approach fed the true hunger of their customers, and the reward was a 40% increase in sales. Lesson learned: when 64% of customers say they’d pay more for a simpler, more convenient experience, it may be best to listen to their core needs instead of looking for some flash in the fryer, hoping something new will stick.

Outside the Box: Barking up New Trees

On the other hand, taking a true customer-centric approach can reveal new opportunities that have real bite. As a subscription-based service already disrupting an industry, Bark did just that in order to keep on innovating and to grow beyond the delivery box. For the purveyor of doorstep doggie deals, the latest move is to take it outside, creating a VIP outdoor park where dogs are the members. Opening next month in Nashville, the scenic space will offer more than just a place to run for our four-legged friends: their human companions will also enjoy Open Bark Night comedy, Okto-Bark-Fest beverages, and Downward Dog Yoga – not to mention free Wi-Fi. Tapping into the true trend of consumers seeking experiences above material goods, the canine company knows that the age of Instagram insists on providing more photogenic potential whenever possible. Combining beauty with best buds, the pop-up park just might not be so far-fetched.

Metrics at the Movies: The Affluence of Asia

If that doesn’t sound lavish enough, the recent box-office smash “Crazy Rich Asians” certainly paints a pretty picture for the present state of ultra wealth in the East, from Bugattis to infinity pools. Going by the real-world numbers, this is no mere movie magnification: the real rising affluence in the continent has major implications for the global luxury market. Take a look at the stats:

• 70,000: number of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in Asia Pacific region (the U.S. has 90,000; Europe has 70,000)
• 20%: growth rate of UHNWI – fastest of any region on the planet (Europe’s is just 10%)
• 1 in 34: people in Singapore who are millionaires
• 32%: Chinese consumers’ share of global luxury market in 2017
• $305 billion: 2017’s record high global luxury goods market, which could grow 5% year over year until 2020

Looks like the movie’s Hollywood ending is really just the beginning for a whole new era of young wealth in the region. How will firms around the world tap into this booming market in the years to come?

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Insuring the Upside

Want to make sure your company’s well-insured against the future? Take a tip or two from Deanna Mulligan, President and CEO of Guardian Life Insurance, for sound advice about leading with strength through difficult changes:

• On investing in human capital: “We’re treating people as corporate assets. I have actually clawed back the career decisions about certain people and said that person is a corporate asset, because they’re either so talented, or they’re in a position that generates so much economic value for us, that we have to think of them as a corporate asset.”
• On the social side of strategy: “It’s hard to take resources away from powerful business-unit heads, even if you’re the CEO. Because there is a social component when you say to somebody, ‘Sorry, you’re either not getting enough return on the money we’ve allocated to you, or your business isn’t as important as we thought it was when we allocated it to you.’ Thinking through how to deal with the people part of that is going to be important.”
• On making big changes: “It’s hard to burst onto the scene with a new strategy and say, ‘We’re going to do things totally differently.’ Even if you have the data to back it up. It’s easier to do if you have been delivering on what you’ve said you’re going to deliver on over a long period of time.”

Repartee Rewards: Fashionable Farmers

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with this clever look at the way one pork producer showed Supreme why imitation is the highest form of fashion flattery…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Pup Park Pop-Ups, Mega-Money Metrics, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

Forget B2C: from Dollar Shave Club to Casper, the savviest startup move has been D2C – direct to consumer, that is – and it’s evolving the entire state of marketing as we know it. That’s because traditional codependent relationships between brands and retailers are making sales grow at a merely glacial rate – while brands like makeup maven Glossier are owning the relationship with the customer and seeing sensational success. And the benefits aren’t only to the bottom line: with that direct connection to each and every purchaser, those D2C brands get access to a wealth of demographic data and insightful info on their customer base. That allows for the constant adaptation and tailoring of both products and messages while they learn how to leverage their loyalty even more. Even when the company evolves full-circle – like suitcase-supplier Away, whose awareness-building pop-up shop turned brick-and-mortar into the cornerstone of their business – it’s clear that moving aside the middleman provides the most direct way forward.

Retail Revolution: Creativity in Concepts

Speaking of retail: how can brands adapt that time-tested traditional space for the tech-fueled 21st century? It looks like effective evolution can come from eager experimentation, rethinking the very ideas about what a physical location can provide to the customer. Just ask Nordstrom, whose latest innovation is to isolate the inventory, opening up empty “Neighborhood” stores for quick delivery of online orders, accelerated alterations, and 24/7 pickup availability. Creativity can also come from a source of competition. Facing the immediacy and ubiquity of a drop-shipper’s advantage, some retailers now bring the tactic right into their stores: a RevCascade tablet now allows in-store customers to order out-of-stock items direct from the wholesaler, thinking it’s simply coming from another location of the brand. From selling wares in others’ houses to shifting the offering from product to service, there’s no shortage of new ways to answer the big question: “What else should be happening in stores besides selling stuff?”

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Growing Up with GDPR

With the new international digital privacy regulations now months in effect, what have we learned about the new landscape of online marketing? Take some tips from Gartner VP Andrew Frank, who knows how growing pains can lead to profitable pleasure:

• On the optimist’s opportunity: “It’s going to clean up a lot of bad behavior in the marketplace. And I think for companies that are already sensitive about protecting privacy and data security, this is an opportunity for them to have less competition that is not as committed to those kinds of values and policies.”
• On re-shifting the focus: “The movement away from third-party data toward first-party data…is part of a realization that marketers are having: Maybe there is a lot more value in looking at the customers they have rather than focusing so much on customers that they don’t have or might be able to reach.”
• On the pursuit of personalization: “There are a lot of companies and innovators that are looking at the relationship between GDPR and blockchain. There’s a whole movement called “self-sovereign identity,” which aims to decentralize the management of personal data and provide consumers with controls around things like consent that could be shared or accessed by companies that are trying to manage these things.”

Brand New Recipes: Häagen-Dazs’s Flavorful Refresh

What does a tad too much luxury taste like? Ice-cream-of-the-crop Häagen-Dazs found out the hard way when exceptional started feeling unattainable, and the Millennial’s tongue turned toward other creameries’ concoctions. To spruce up the brand’s image from one “for older people” to one that’s “Instragrammable,” the aging label gave itself a facelift well beyond a logo redesign. Streamlining the interiors of its physical shops, adding a dollop of color to its somewhat sterile packaging, and swirling in more stories about its craftsmanship, the brand is hoping to appeal to that desirable demographic’s affinity for the authentic. It’s also moving away from the traditional when it comes to relaying their message of newfound attainability, embracing the digital realm of delivery through mobile platforms to keep up with digital-native competitors like Halo Top. Time will tell whether these new splashes of youthful flavor will be enough to keep the seductive scoop on top…

Video Victory: Couches Against Conformity

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with IKEA’s humorous and poignant look at the way your home can bring out your humanity…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Ice Cream Identity, Reimagining Retail, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

Many companies are experimenting with AI, but is there a robust framework for AI integration into business practices? The effort will be lead by AI-committed leaders that embody these seven key traits: First, they learn the technologies, understanding the difference between easily implemented automation and complex deep-learning networks. Second, they establish clear business objectives, identifying which type of AI is relevant for process optimization or product improvement. Third, they set an appropriate level of ambition, balancing “moon shots” and quiet improvements. Fourth, they look beyond pilots and proofs of concept to assess long-term scalability. Fifth, they prepare people for the journey so that all employees are equipped to work with smart machines. Sixth, they get the necessary data, understanding that disciplines like machine learning only work with high-quality information. Seventh, they orchestrate collaborative organizations whereby teams work agilely to maximize the potential of new technology in all business aspects.

A New Way Forward for Netflix

As Netflix’s stock plunged after posting disappointing Q2 subscriber growth numbers, it might have to expand beyond its current offerings to keep its engine running hot. One way to do that is by becoming a multisided platform, one that allows third parties to sell their products within Netflix’s service but outside of Netflix’s subscription. It wouldn’t have to generate new content itself, and external content creation could be valuable for its own core acquisition and production efforts. Netflix’s big subscriber base (130 million worldwide) and content-delivery infrastructure make it attractive to video content providers, marketers, cloud gaming developers, and more; a new revenue stream also means it doesn’t have to fight the blockbuster battle over content acquisition and creation that will only get more expensive as more players with deep pockets (Apple, Amazon, Disney, Google) join. If by shifting to a platform business model it can preempt competitors and open up new sources of growth, Netflix has little to lose and a lot to gain.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Spotify’s Playlist for Success

Four months after Spotify’s IPO, Founder and CEO Daniel Ek shares extensively on healthy competition, the future of music, and Spotify’s mission to make a positive impact on the world.

• On consumer conscience: “Consumers are waking up and asking very different questions than just a few years ago, particularly of consumer tech companies. What does this company do with my data? What kind of brands do I associate with?”
• On robust rivalry: “Competition really drives development. But everything we do is about providing a platform for musicians and fans around the world…One of the largest challenges right now is about platform neutrality. I don’t care as much that [other companies] have a music service. All I care is that we’re fighting on equal playing ground, that we have access to the same customer.”
• On untapped potential: “The market is much bigger than most people think. If you build something that is valuable to people, then you’re going to build a valuable company. The value of a company is the sum of all solved problems.”

Industry Spotlight: Millennial Money Management

With a reported net worth of $24 trillion by 2020, the millennial demographic is a key market for all industries, including, unsurprisingly, financial services institutions (FSIs). However, digital natives have concerns and pain points that FSIs should take note of, for example, housing and long-term investment for old age are key stressors for millennials, with many believing they will never be able to fully retire. With this information, FSIs should offer engaging, personalized content, ditching generic calls and instead offering compelling narratives about managing finances in young adulthood; for instance, stories about rectifying mistakes and finding workarounds for saving slip-ups will resonate strongly. Furthermore, as research shows that 41% of millennials chose to bank with the same institution their parents use, and 51% have never switched companies, FSIs should tap into this rare brand “stickiness” and build upon existing loyalties. Lastly, tech-savvy millennials will expect to be delighted with technology, be it through integrated digital wallets or AI that identify gaps in users’ financial knowledge and make recommendations to help them reach better decisions.

0s and 1s: Decoding Data

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with a deep dive into what data scientists really do….

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Millennial Money, Netflix’s New Way Forward, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

Even with Uber as ubiquitous as it has been in the last few years, it’s been dealt a huge blow as New York City, a key market, votes to halt new vehicle licenses for rideshare services for a year, capping the number of for-hire vehicles on the streets. Uber is now warning riders that a supply freeze could produce higher prices and longer wait times if the company cannot keep up with growing demand. However, drivers hope the cap will halt the flood of new vehicles clogging the city and allow them to complete more trips efficiently. More broadly, the new rules set a precedent for other cities seeking to rein in Uber; they might now have the leverage needed to get more from Uber, for example, valuable traffic data, in exchange for lax regulation.

Studying Science Startups: Starting With the Problem

This week we’re taking a page out of science startup organizations that successfully turn scientific discoveries into real-world solutions. Instead of trying to make a business case for hyper-specific research to bring to market, organizations like Deep Science Ventures and the Thought for Food Foundation start with the issues that already exist in the world, like problems within Alzheimer’s, and follow that with science. This problem-first approach can be adopted by any business that wants to go beyond incremental gains and into the realms of revolutionizing industries, as it starts with the core needs of people. By placing need before method, it can leverage the diverse communities that naturally form around big issues as opposed to speciality technologies. Curating a broad network of experts, partners, and stakeholders is key to matching niche but critical problems with rogue, diverse pieces of information which come together to solve them. By spotting opportunity in market gaps, businesses can engineer serendipity while staying grounded in meeting real-world needs.

Leadership Lessons: Finding a Method in the Madness

If you’ve ever been stymied by subpar planning sessions, you might need a strategy for your strategy. Start with this six-step technique: First, recognize your dependencies, i.e. your key stakeholders, by identifying stakeholder roles (which a stakeholder group can occupy more than one of). Second, find your “target customer” — not your potential pool of users but the specific subgroup you are speaking directly to. Third, identify what your organization wants from each key stakeholder group, thinking strategically about your return volley instead of thinking operationally about how to please everyone. Fourth, identify what these stakeholder groups want from you by honing in on their point of view instead of your own, using focus groups, interviews, and surveys. Fifth, strategy design involves deciding what your firm’s positions will be on the identified strategic factors for each stakeholder group; here, you should co-create with these groups to cover all bases. Sixth, respect the need for continuous improvement using dynamic feedback. With these steps, there’s a method to the madness of strategic planning.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Beautyrest Reboots

Tossing and turning over how to update your business? Michelle Montgomery, the VP of Marketing Communications for Beautyrest at Serta Simmons Bedding, reveals the winning digital transformation strategy that helps her sleep better at night.

• On building brand trust: “Beyond working with our retail partners, [educating them about] consumer ratings and reviews, and significantly shifting paid media to digital, we’ve learned the importance of working with influencers and [utilizing] our social channels as a place where consumers can find reasons to believe content about not only our products, but about sleep.”
• On experiential exercises: “We have done several experiential events with our target audience that tap into their passion points. We wanted to be in places where we knew our target consumer would be and to create events that not only stood out in a brand-relevant way, but also went beyond being a one-and-done event via all of the positive earned media from social sharing.”
• On scaling sleep: “As IoT emerges, we are thinking about the “connected bedroom.” We don’t want to just be the leading seller of mattresses. Our goal is to be the No. 1 brand in the sleep industry, and therefore we continuously think about innovation and what’s next.”

Fintech Frenzy: Hype or Reality?

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with 6 key sectors to watch in fintech investment….

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Rideshare Regulation, Studying Science Startups, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.

MoviePass took U.S. filmgoers by storm, but now marketers are heeding lessons on the startup’s mishaps. For starters, the service seemed ignorant of the adverse selection at play in the economics of movie-watching, whereby MoviePass would be most attractive to (and therefore most used by) those who bled the most money from it. Second, it fundamentally misunderstood consumers’ mindsets: unlike gym memberships, going out to the movies was fun, not tedious, resulting in rising, not plateauing, usage. Third, MoviePass severely miscalculated its finances: it didn’t have pockets deep enough to weather its inevitable losses in early adopter markets, failed to negotiate deals with theater chains, and underprojected its user base. While plenty of disrupters operate at a loss, this one’s just way too much to stomach.

The Demand for Data Dexterity

The dream team of tomorrow will be able to fuse brand curation and analytical firepower. Yet a new study by Marketing Week and MiQ reveals that for a quarter of marketers data dexterity is their biggest perceived skills gap. As game-changing technology alters the business landscape, both individuals and management need to take a big-picture view to understand what they are looking for and know the right questions to ask. To do that, marketing departments must step out of their silos, from creative vs. analytics to above-the-line vs. digital. Instead of narrowly defined roles, people must be able and willing to stretch across all functions of a team. Marketers should be agile adopters of new technology who can also translate data findings into business actions. For companies to attract this top talent, they must replace legacy solutions with upgraded tech platforms and be careful not to do so at the expense of brand.

Brand Spotlight: Banking on Brandless

Need a boost when it comes to packaging? Going Brandless could be the showstopper strategy. Of course, this is branding in and of itself, with the Muji-inspired e-commerce start-up selling only no-label household staples with understated, minimalist packaging and upscale-sounding variations: it is the highly curated collection to Amazon’s everything store. What is crucial for the firm now is converting on-the-bubble customers to generate enough volume to make the shipping of its low-margin commodity goods profitable. With each item priced at $3, Brandless is currently successfully competing with Amazon product for product, but it will need to build consumer loyalty and scale its delivery logistics smoothly if they want to win on more than just price.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: Mastercard’s Master of All Trades

With the democratization of digital and data-driven tools and techniques today, take a tip or two from Mastercard’s CMO Raja Rajamannar on weathering the existential crisis facing marketers today with a winning mindset:

• On a level playing field: “The small companies are able to effectively compete against the large companies, which is brilliant, it puts everyone on their toes and innovation grows in leaps and bounds. But that puts a lot of pressure on the big companies because the competition is a lot more intense.”
• On understanding both sides: “Many CMOs have bigger budgets than the CTOs, so unless you understand and know technology how are you going to manage it? You need to understand data because it is proving to be such a crucial part of market, if you’re not number savvy again that’s an issue.”
• On masterful marketers: “They need to be digitally savvy, technologically savvy, data savvy, business savvy. In a sense you are not looking for a marketer anymore, you are looking for a general manager with a strong grounding, experience and understanding of marketing.”

What’s Up with WhatsApp?
That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with WhatsApp’s first money-making move….

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Planning next year’s budget and business objectives? Take note of Nielsen’s 2018 CMO Report on navigating digital transformation. As marketers must now report marketing ROI and delivered value to the C-suite, they are struggling with the tools, technology, and measurement analytics to do so, despite — or because of — the huge amount of data available. Furthermore, media fragmentation has created siloed processes where data is not used in a holistic and consistent way. To remedy this, firms should invest in the right technology to better integrate their marketing stack and create a true omnichannel, customer-centric approach, as well as customer data acquisition and management capabilities so they are not locked out of vital direct relationships. As the line between digital and traditional blurs, implementing a more unified, channel-agnostic media strategy will simplify measurement and improve behavior tracking — essentials for any 21st century marketer trying to make meaning out of the madness.

The It Factor: IT Intensity

Why do some companies pull ahead while others fall behind? New data suggests that the secret to success is not just top talent or advanced automation, but investing in information technology. And it’s not just any kind of investment, but IT spending that goes into hiring developers and creating proprietary software owned and used exclusively by the firm, weeding out the competition. Tech companies like Google and Apple, as well as other giants like General Motors in automotive and Pfizer in pharmaceuticals, build their own software and hardware, inventing and optimizing their own processes instead of adjusting their business models to fit external developers’ infrastructure. While in the past new technologies, like Adobe’s desktop publishing software, were easily co-opted by other firms, today, diffusion has slowed down with the increasing complexity of new IT, like Amazon Web Services, and its inextricable link to the engineers, systems, and business models built around them. This might explain the current mania for mergers and acquisitions: when companies cannot just license or copy someone else’s IT, they must either create their own from scratch — a costly and time-intensive endeavor — or simply buy firms that have already developed these critical technologies. Only time will tell if modern IT has built in a kind of natural monopoly into our business landscape…

Leadership Lessons: Lead with Local Know-How

When it comes to platform businesses, winner-takes-all dynamics seem to dominate, with household names like Google, Facebook, and YouTube ruling their respective sectors. However, when underdogs’ offerings mix the digital and the physical, their local know-how can topple global giants. In the physical world, where customers can’t just click through to a country-specific website, local customization of services across different markets is a lot harder — and more crucial — to implement. Uber understands this all too well, pulling out of China, Russia, and most recently, Southeast Asia, when they failed to adapt to compete with local players. For example, their rival, Singapore-based Grab, understood that going cashless in Southeast Asia was not frictionless, but frustrating, for drivers that needed daily income and for riders who often didn’t carry credit cards. Unlike Uber, it demonstrated that local adaptation is essential for platform businesses, sometimes more so than the allure of quick scaling and general network effects.

Talking Tactics, Tête-à-Tête: McDonald’s Maneuvers

When society today is obsessed with wellness, healthy eating, and premium experiences everywhere they go, QSR incumbents like McDonald’s can find it difficult to align with these new consumer expectations — but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying. After a stellar round of second-quarter results, CEO Steve Easterbrook shares what the future holds for the fast-food chain.

• On broadening the base: “There isn’t a conscious effort to take the brand upmarket…When you invest in quality, provenance, technology, you broaden your customer base. We want to appeal to a broader range of customers on more occasions more often.”
• On driving demand: “‘[The partnership with UberEats] is a meaningful contributor to sales. Delivery is contributing to our success now, and offers untapped potential in the future.”
• On all-round excellence: “We remain focused on delivering the most enjoyable experience for every customer, every visit. Whether that is when they visit a modernized restaurant with inviting hospitality or through the convenience of having delicious food delivered to their home, we know that our fundamental day-to-day commitment to our customers is running great restaurants.”

Keeping Corporate Power in Check: Consumer Resistance

That’s all for this week! We’ll leave you with a take on how consumers can resist companies’ market power, especially when faced with infinite choice…

The post This Week in Business and Brands: Secrets to Success, Info-Tech Intensity, and More appeared first on Vivaldi.