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Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor

Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor
 


How do you say "innovation" in French?

The role of the CMO in the culture wars, the future of customer experience, new search and targeting features on Instagram, Facebook wants you to stay on Facebook, "liberté, égalité, fraternité" does not apply to the sharing economy, speed listening, the numbers can lie, the evolution of a Truffle Pig, raising your digital quotient, the interplay of algorithms and humans in curation, Cannes in is the can and more, it's This Week in Digital.

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week, we compose a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, business, digital communications and marketing in order to keep leaders up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in your job. Please subscribe - either to the full feed or just to this newsletter to keep up to date on developments.

If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links - and additional ones - by subscribing to the This Week in Digital Magazine at smonty.co/flipdigital.

News items are in regular text; additional commentary has been added in italics.

Industry


Platforms

  • Snapchat
  • Twitter
    • Jack Dorsey shouldn't get too comfortable in the CEO office at Twitter. The microblogging platform only wants a full-time CEO. Dorsey is currently the CEO of Square as wel.
    • Facebook
      • The future of Facebook mobile ads will keep you on the Facebook app or site, interacting with advertising content directly within Facebook instead of clicking through to the advertiser's website. Brands - particularly those that are accustomed to measuring web traffice - need to get comfortable with this idea now and to think about how to create engaging experiences that make users want to interact with their ads.
      • Also, the company is expanding its desktop video ads to have more features similar to mobile video ads, and mobile video will now have a carousel option, similar to desktop video.
      • Mondelez has renewed and expanded its global strategic partnership with Facebook, which gives it access to beta testing programs in 52 countries and will drive "impulse snack purchasing online." Not sure I would have purchased Oreos online after that dunk in the dark tweet - particularly because I was stuffed from the Super Bowl smorgasbord I had just inhaled.
    • Great news for real-time video junkies: if you missed a live video on Periscope, you can now catch the replay on Periscope's website.
    • Engagement with brand content on social platforms rose 52% in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same time period a year prior. Segments that performed best include media and sports verticals. It could also be that this is a result of more paid promotions, which elevates the content.

    Collaborative Economy 




    Audio

    • Speed reading has always helped readers skim through content in order to make best use of time. But when it comes to audio, can you really speed listen? Shouldn't be a problem for me - I grew up listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks.
    • Edison Research and Triton Digital released their assessment of the podcast consumer in 2015 based on some 2,000 surveyed individuals. There are some fascinating takeaways in the report, including the debate of podcasting as a digital or audio medium and the revelation that podcast listeners are more educated and more affluent than non-podcast listeners.

    The Podcast Consumer 2015 from Edison Research




    Time is running out. Tickets for Content Marketing World 2015 in September are selling quickly. Join your colleagues to get the best information about the content marketing industry.

    [Disclosure: affiliate link]

    Content

    • WPP is partnering with the Daily Mail and Snapchat in the creation of a new company to help brands who are grappling with content marketing, and will offer Snapchat's video production space to help with vertical-oriented videos. The new agency, Truffle Pig, will be open to working with any media company or platform - not just the two aforementioned ones. Don't know about you, but we've always found truffles to be quite expensive. And if you can't figure out how to shoot vertical video, you've got bigger problems.
    • It could turn out to be a wise strategy, as it seems that every company is becoming a media company - from Red Bull's legendary lifestyle content to Coca-Cola's Journey website, and magazines like Airbnb's Pineapple,  Uber's Momentum and Marriott Traveler, among others. The real coup will come when they can sell advertising to other brands.


    Metrics / Measurement / Data



    Privacy / Security / Legal


    When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading 

    • If you read nothing else in this edition, read this. If you want to raise your digital game, focus on the organization, culture and a strategy that fits. Some key elements:
      • Get the strategy right by creating a smaller-scale disruption of your own business model to enter a new space or redefine an existing one; fast-following to ride the wave and capture some of the value created by an industry’s evolution; aggressively reallocating resources from digitally threatened assets to more digitally interesting ones; boosting the effectiveness of existing business models through digital approaches and tools.
      • Create capabilities at scale by leveraging data-empowered decision making, connectivity to help companies establish deeper connections between a brand and its customers, automating well-defined processes, and having a two-speed IT system that supports infrastructure and can operate at high speed to deliver rapid results.
      • A fast, agile culture that is externally oriented (many companies are too busy being in love with themselves that they miss external factors), has an appetite for risk, tests and learns at scale and collaborates internally.
      • Organization and talent are essential elements to your digital success, such as having executive and mid-level talent connections, real-time monitoring to determine the success of digital initiatives, and nontraditional structures to support the speed at which digital changes.
    • Here are two on the juxtaposition of human editors versus algorithms:
    • The Cannes Lions wrapped up this week. In case you missed the advertising & PR industry nearly breaking its arm trying to pat itself on the back, here are a few highlights:


    ICYMI, I opened a consultancy to help companies with their corporate and digital acumen. Please get in touch if you'd like to put my experience and digital smarts to work on a project or to advise your group.

    Image credit: Buzzfeed


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