Digital Marketing Has Arrived (to Healthcare)

For the past few years, the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January has been been serving as the unofficial bellwether for the latest trends in the healthcare industry. The title of a January 27th podcast episode that I subscribe to, "HEALTHCARE IS HARD: A PODCAST FOR INSIDERS" caught my attention: The Biggest Surprise at JPM 2022 Is What Wasn’t Being Discussed: COVID (https://www.lrvhealth.com/podcast/?single_podcast=3024). Working in the healthcare industry for a company that provides software services to hospitals and healthcare systems, I too found this to be the case. Though we're caught in the midst of the Omicron wave, our customers seem to be picking back up more strategic conversations once again. According to the podcast, healthcare systems presenting at the conference agreed. "Digital transformation" was one term that kept being repeated throughout the conference. With telehealth being a trend that exploded during COVID, it appears that it is here to stay; before the pandemic less than 5% of all care was delivered via telemedicine but now is about 40-34% ("https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality"). With that, the approach for finding a doctor has dramatically shifted, and traditional hospital systems recognize a need to modernize their approach towards patient acqusition.  As the podcast episode noted, many hospitals are rebranding themselves from "healthcare systems" to "healthcare companies." The difference is that they are looking at people coming into the doors of their hospitals not as "patients" but as "customers." As part of this process, I see that hospitals are investing in all sorts of new technologies that are categorized as their "digital front door." This digital front door is intended to lower the barrier of entry for consumers to schedule appointments with new and existing providers. I am seeing healthcare companies elevate their VP of Marketing who are now driving forward a strategy that pushes consumers digitally to their companies' digital front door. As these hospitals build up the infrastructure to make it easier to enter their healthcare systems digitally, I expect that we'll see a doubling down in digital marketing spend as well.

 

HOW TIKTOK, TWITTER, SNAP ARE UPGRADING AD TOOLS TO HELP DRIVE BRAND SALES

As it has now become a standard for brands to leverage Apps to reach their customers and increase sales and conversion, Apps, on their end, are continuously releasing updates.

Snapchat introduced augmented reality filters that links to brands’ product catalogs.  These are Snap Lenses that users use to create videos.  Snapchat improved lenses by linking them to product catalogs and inventory data from the brands. Nike, Dior, Prada, to name some of them, have built Snap Lenses so consumers can virtually try on products through the camera.  

Twitter adjusted the back end of its ad platform to accommodate more performance marketing goals.  One adjustment consists of “site visits optimizations” which allows brands to set a goal of driving traffic to their websites.  An additional enhancement (still in progress) is the ability to add items to a digital shopping cart through Twitter ads.  Finally, Twitter is also working on measurement which will report anonymous stats to brands.

TikTok launched fast-loading pages, which are landing sites within the App where brands can show more product details.  Instant Page allows brands to share their story by highlighting products, services and promotion to users.

This shows how the customers shopping experience will become all-in-one within the apps millions of people communicate with every day.

https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/how-tiktok-twitter-snap-are-upgrading-ad-tools-help-drive-brand-sales/2395611?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D92205925052410395790251963175014700268%7CMCORGID%3D138FFF2554E6E7220A4C98C6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1643559191&CSAuthResp=1643559259891%3A0%3A5543919%3A0%3A24%3Asuccess%3AE5A9981434E0321DBE0C444EA77AE376

 Additional Advertising Implications of the Metaverse

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/miller-lite-skirts-super-bowl-ad-block-with-metaverse-bar/617653/

The article summarizes how the Molson Coors beer company is partnering with the Metaverse company Decentraland to circumvent Anheuser-Busch’s advertising exclusivity that started in 2010 and which is currently expected to extend until 2027. Within Decentraland, Miller Lite will have a unique booth that patrons can visit to view Miller promotional offers and interact with other patrons.  Although this marketing tactic will not generate the number of impressions and awareness that a superbowl ad would today, it provides another interesting use case for how metaverse advertising could compare to traditional mass media, and specifically to the holy grail of mass media – the television Super Bowl Ad. Since consumers are glued to their smartphones, it seems at least plausible that they can be enticed to engage with a digital medium during Superbowl or television downtime. Such mediums can potentially strengthen the impact and relevance of advertising by providing a social platform for users to engage with one another. What if you could join the Miller lite booth in Decentraland and “politely” debate the merits or flaws of the two teams currently competing with other patrons? In the same way that streaming on-demand television has become favored in many contexts to traditional ‘scheduled television’, could we one day expect on-demand interactive experiences to at least partially dominate how advertisers reach consumers?

It’s also interesting to consider the attribution challenges posed by executing parallel marketing tactics at the same time. If many viewers are distracted or engaging with their smartphones or metaverse activities during a super bowl ad, then the advertisement becomes much less effective or useful. Mass media is already more difficult to determine the ROI of marketing dollars than a digital medium, but if consumers have yet another reason not to view the television during commercials, the economic value of those commercials is further diminished

Google Pivoting to new Cookie Replacement Strategy

Earlier this week, Google announced plans to forgo it's previously committed 'FLOC' proposal which was expected to be the centerpiece of its move toward removing 3rd-party cookies from Chrome. The original proposal was announced in 2019 and expected to be finished in 2021. Early in 2021, Google came out and suspended the change for an additional 2 years, until sometime in late 2023. FLOC was a cohort-based solution designed to bucket users into groups that share similar learnings. This would give advertisers some control over who they are targeting and with what products, however it would not allow for individual cookie-based targeting that exists today. The new proposal, called Google Topics, does move further in the direction of being more privacy centric as it only allows for users to be bucketed under 6 'topics of interest' which will then be available for advertisers. These topics instead of being based on purchase behavior, they will be based on site content - not dissimilar to contextual advertising which has seen a resurgence in the past year with so much volatility around 3rd-party cookies. What will be interesting to see is first, will the timeline in 2023 still remain for this industry change - after all, google owns 55% of the display advertising market today. Does this change mean that ad tech companies and media agencies will lose their efficiency even more, thus causing more people to bring dollars through Google's search products? This will be a really interesting development to follow and will surely have huge implications on the online advertising space as a whole. 

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/google-floc-cookies-chrome-topics/

Optimizing Email Marketing

Today, email marketing is one of the most popular forms of marketing. Email marketing relies on emails to promote businesses and its products and services while also incentivizing customer loyalty. However, due to the overwhelming prevalence of email marketing, marketers need to invest time and money in understanding how to design campaigns that resonate with target audiences. To best appeal to customers, Forbes recommends implementing the following attributes into an email campaign:

1. Personalization: Personalized emails draw consumers’ attention and increase the perceived relevancy of a message. Simple personalization techniques, like adding a customers’ name to an email, can inspire increased interaction, strengthening open rates and quality of communication.

2. Interactive Features: To enhance engagement, interactive features, such as, quizzes, games, surveys and call to action buttons, can be added to emails to increase consumers’ curiosity, engagement and genuine interest. Companies can also offer special discounts and deals for those who interact with these messages.

3. Appealing aesthetic/email design: Emails should be visually pleasing and easy to read. Emails should be designed with layouts, fonts, formats and visuals that complement content; the better an email looks, the better received an email will be. Companies should stay on top of industry design trends.

4. Appreciation: It is important to thank your customers for their support. A simple thank you is a breath of fresh air for many consumers who are typically sent too many promotional emails. Thanking customers for support instead of pushing a product may help an email stand out. Some opportunities for customer appreciation: anniversaries, holidays, birthdays, etc.

To implement the above, email marketers should consider automation. Automation can help with personalization, design and enhancements, significantly lifting the manual burden off of companies (and saving companies time and money).

Article of reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/09/22/optimizing-your-email-marketing-in-2021/?sh=1909eb45e52a

The Covid Impact - The Value of the In Person Experience

DTC native brands such as Glossier and Away have thrived in the digital era. As Facebook and Instagram ads took over our IG feeds, these brands capitalized on already having a strong social media presence and were able to organically create engaging campaigns and continue to boost followers through their catchy digital presence.  And yet, they all ended up creating strong in-person shopping experiences to round out their campaigns and give people the chance to experience their products in real life. They saw the value in creating an in person experience to engage their community in a way that social media didn't allow. And then the pandemic hit. 

Brands tried to quickly pivot from in-person shopping events to strategize on the digital marketing experience, from live shopping events, to sponsored influencer posts, and more.  Many retailers appeared to struggle to adapt and figure out how to tell their brand story without being "on the ground" and news of store closures splashed over TVs.  And even with the pivot for many of these brands who had already had a strong digital presence, they struggled to engage with consumers and drive brand awareness without the catchy in person experience. As mentioned in one article about the value in retail stores, Warby Parker's CEO highlights the importance of retail stores, saying "We deliberately design our stores to serve as billboards and have found them to be highly effective in driving brand awareness, new customer acquisition and in serving our existing customer base." Now that stores are open again and more and more consumers feel comfortable shopping in real life, I will be curious to see how brands like Warby Parker continue to grow their brand's in person presence. I think we're about to see more in person events, more highly engaging and niche product assortments, and we will see store growth pick up, even during a time when digital is outperforming its growth. It will be very important for brands to make sure they see the value in the in person experience to fully round out their brand as the digital space becomes highly competitive and over saturated. 

Article: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/store-closures-slowed-in-2021-as-retailers-got-creative-seized-cheaper-rents.html

TikTok for Influencer Marketing

Article: “Marketers increasingly turn to TikTok for influencer marketing” -https://www.emarketer.com/content/tiktok-influencer-marketing

eMarketer makes it clear that TikTok is becoming an unquestionable force in a marketer’s toolkit. 

As a novice in the digital marketing space and someone who a) does not have TikTok and b) is trying to minimize social media use, I was unaware of the importance of TikTok in marketing.  That said, I am also no expert in influencer marketing, and to understand the significance of this article, looked more into the broader industry.  Per “influencermarketinghub.com,” influencer marketing was a $13.8B industry in 2021, with businesses seeing a $5.78 ROI for every dollar spent on influencer marketing.  These numbers provide a compelling argument for why I should understand this! 

Two-thirds of U.S. influencer marketers plan to use TikTok in 2022.  At this point, only Instagram and Facebook are ahead of TikTok in terms of popularity among influencer marketers, with Youtube, Twitter, and Snapchat forecasted to lag behind TikTok in popularity in 2022.  In just 2020 alone, there was a 33% increase in US marketers using TikTok for influencer marketing, at 36%.  That number rose to 42% in 2021 and is forecasted to rise through 2025 and close the gap with Facebook. It is predicted that by 2025, 54.9% of marketers will use TikTok influencers and 66.4% of influencer marketers will use TikTok.

Currently, Instagram and Facebook are viewed as stable platforms vs TikTok as an experimental platform and thus marketers are utilizing TikTok in conjunction with a more stable platform.  I am curious how the TikTok platform will evolve against the market leader, Instagram.  I'd also like to understand the demographic reach of various social mediums, and will explore this in a future blog post.

What are the top challenges of digital marketing transformation?

 

https://www.thedrum.com/profile/leadfamly/news/what-are-the-top-challenges-of-digital-marketing-transformation

If digital marketing transformation was that simple, every business in the world would have undergone it already. And yet, in spite of all the talks about how digital marketing plays a vital role in order to succeed in the new digital world that we are now living in, many brands and retailers are still in the nascent stage of digital transformation, or nowhere at all. It took a global pandemic to force many of them to finally embark on their digital transformation. What is so challenging, you may ask? This article points out a few. 

First, it requires not only an investment of time and money but also a change in their ways of thinking. Technology change is one thing but in order for it to work, it’s imperative that the staff become engaged and welcoming of the transformation as well. Second, it’s much harder to compete for the attention of customers who are increasingly busy and receiving a variety of marketing messages and calls to action. 

This article also discusses how brands need to rely on accurate customer data to truly understand what their customer wants and be able to effectively respond to it. When they use the right data, they can send the right message that will get the customer’s attention. It is an important pillar of digital transformation.  

Waterproof Jackets Show Their Strength Not in the Rain, but in the Shower

Arc'teryx, a 33-year-old outdoor gear company, usually relies on traditional channels to advertise like print or paid media, and for many years has hidden in the shadow of its bigger competitors like Patagonia and NorthFace. More recently though, the company has found their share of newfound brand loyalists and even celebrity endorsers.

Their jackets are high-high quality and relatively expensive as far as jackets go, but that cache helped put them on the shoulders of celebs from Drake to DiCaprio, which slowly helped build and cement their brand as a pseudo luxury and utilitarian clothier.

While celebrity endorsements are are known to be one of the strongest signals of success for a seemingly under the radar brand, becoming a TikTok trend is now the holy grail.

Over the past year, hundreds of users began posting videos of themselves wearing a $599 Acr'teryx Alpha AR jacket, which is promoted as a premium waterproof hooded jacket with Gore-Tex fabric, not in any sort of picturesque adventurous location, but instead, in their showers, showing off the mesmerizing visual of water droplets falling off the fabric and on to the shower floor.

These original shower videos then causes a string of challengers where other TikTok users would show how the fabric would repel other liquids in other odd venues (e.g., pouring liquor down a coat while at a club) and even had some showing how their non Arc'teryx jackets faired (horribly) in similar conditions. All of these videos amounted to millions of views and impressions for the brand.

Though the company struggled to directly link impressions to sales, it clearly demonstrated that social media trends can come in the strangest of places

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-are-all-these-people-showering-in-their-arcteryx-jackets-11642422998?st=ikw67aundjsav06&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Progress Over Product

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Wants Gender-Equity Ads From Brands—Not Product Pitches

https://adage.com/article/media/sports-illustrated-swimsuit-wants-gender-equity-ads-brands/2394276 

https://swimsuit.si.com/swimnews/sports-illustrated-swimsuit-announces-pay-with-change-initiative 

There’s a new standard to advertise with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (SIS) in their coveted annual print magazine. Only brands “who are helping drive gender equality forward will be featured”, period. To qualify for this new platform, “Pay With Change”, brands will have to prove how they are creating change for women and define the specific progress they are driving by May 2022, which is when the magazine will be released. The approved brands will then have access to SIS’s print and digital media properties to promote their product or service. 

This is a great example of a company owning the societal standard they’ve created (i.e. beauty standards for women) and actively using their massive voice to create a new, more inclusive standard. While I’ve seen plenty of companies preach inclusivity, I’ve rarely seen them implement a platform to uphold inclusivity, which could ultimately impact their revenue growth. This is a bold move for SIS and frankly, it is unclear how they are measuring success and determining which brands are worthy of a seat at their table. This pilot year of the program will be telling and SIS will be held accountable for who they chose and why. 

Assuming all goes well and this platform continues, I wonder what would happen if this became the standard to advertise with any major media company. What role would ethics play in advertising and digital marketing moving forward?

Finding the right medicine on the App Store

Pharma companies are perhaps most well-known for cheesy TV ads where the lists of side effects is longer than the medicines’ actual descriptions. It may feel like these companies have not changed anything about their marketing strategies in decades. That said, more and more pharma companies are finding ways to connect with potential or existing patients digitally through mobile health apps. Apps can help patients learn about their disease, monitor their symptoms and explore potential interventions. For patients already on a specific treatment, apps can augment patient experience, improve patient compliance on therapy and possibly help them seek payment assistance.

Overall, these apps provide valuable data to drug developers and drastically narrow the population that they need to target their marketing towards. However, the majority of health apps independently developed by pharma companies have had mediocre success, primarily because they are poorly developed and simply do not attract enough patients to reach useful scale. No one needs yet another app just for medication reminders and, most definitely, not a separate app for each different medication.

But what about tacking on to an existing app that patients already use? Companies that have partnered with a health app or medical device that already has a strong user base have seen far better success. For instance, Novo Nordisk is working with diet management app Noom to market its weight loss drug and Pfizer has created an app in conjunction with device maker Striiv for hemophilia patients. We will likely see more similar partnerships arise in the near future and you can bet that every health app from Fitbit to WeightWatchers will eventually be selling aggregated data to healthcare companies. This is still very much an evolving space and certainly raises questions about patient data protection but, as a silver lining, the shift to digital might mean that we’ll all have fewer awful TV drug ads to endure.

The Covid Effect: Why CEOs Must Adapt to a Digital Marketing Mindset

            The pandemic has changed many aspects of everyone’s lives, and consumer behavior has been affected as a result. This article states that four main factors have driven the shift in consumer behavior.

1. Shift to digital buying

2. Virtual selling replacing in-person

3. Slower sales cycle

4. Covid market dynamics

At the beginning of the pandemic, when only critical businesses remained open for in-person shopping, consumers were forced online. This quickly and drastically shifted the way that customers interacted with businesses. We are now two years into the pandemic and this is clearly a long-term shift, and it’s unlikely that we will return to pre-pandemic levels of in-person shopping. 

As a result of this shift to virtual commerce, businesses need to increase digital marketing efforts to compete and to provide their customers with the engagement and level of service that they expect. This article mentions several ways to engage with customers in the covid world.

The first is through the company’s website. The article discusses the importance of companies’ websites and its role as a virtual storefront. I strongly agree with this assessment. I rely on a company’s website to answer any questions I may have about their products. In the absence of an in-person sales experience, through which customers can ask salespeople questions and experience products first-hand, consumers need to have as much product information available through the web as possible. Any missing information or unanswered questions could lead to missed opportunities for businesses, ultimately hurting their brands and bottom lines.

Another suggestion from this article is for companies to focus on customer touch points through the use of social media. I think it’s important for a company’s social media strategy to be aligned with their website messaging and other marketing campaigns, I think I would deprioritize social media and put a higher emphasis on customer service.

Customer service was another aspect that this article recommended as a focus point for companies given the covid effect. It’s critical that companies can provide reliable customer service and support. Since consumers are engaging less with in-person salespeople, online or telephone customer service representatives have become the primary customer-facing employees for many businesses. It’s critical that the customer service representatives are knowledgeable, aligned with the company’s values, and empowered to truly help solve customers’ problems.

https://www.inc.com/joe-galvin/the-covid-effect-why-ceos-must-adapt-a-digital-marketing-mindset.html

What 2021 Tells Us About 2022

The year 2020 posed unprecedented challenges for marketers, but 2021 was even more challenging. Not only has the pandemic stuck around, but changes in privacy policies shaped and impacted key metrics in search, paid social, and online retail. As we enter into 2022, the story continues, but the good news is we have the benefit of experience and information from the past two years to help us prepare better.

In 2020, the e-commerce business grew 32.4%. In 2021, we saw extraordinary growth in CPC as advertisers fought for the attention of consumers on limited digital real estate. As we look forward to 2022, we need to keep in mind some key trends that we saw in 2021 to match key indicators with probable behaviors that consumers will likely display.

First, organic and paid search will continue to grow as consumers are making purchasing decisions mostly online and basing those decisions on online research as we expect the pandemic to continue to affect in-person gathering.

Second, marketers can more easily predict which device consumers will use based on the COVID case numbers.The higher the case numbers, the more people will work from home and stay indoors, increasing the usage of desktop over mobile. This will help us to predict when to increase mobile vs. web type of marketing.

The biggest challenge is going to be from the updates to privacy policies that affect consumer data collection. Businesses will have to spend more money and resources on organic and paid marketing. Those who view this challenge as an opportunity will get ahead, opening up for new marketing tactics to emerge. 

Resource: https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/guest-authors/three-factors-that-influenced-q3-2021-digital-marketing-performance/

New Proposed Regulations for Digital Advertising

https://martech.org/google-and-marketing-industry-predictably-hostile-to-proposed-surveillance-advertising-ban/

The article above begins to explore the implications and corporate response to the introduction of the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act in Congress.  Should this specific bill be passed and implemented, advertisers would no longer be able to target consumers based on digitally collected personal information, except for contextual advertising based on what the user is interacting with, and general location advertising at the city or state level (note: these additional details came from a similar article here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/18/banning-surveillance-advertising-act/)

The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has used this opportunity to praise the bill for promoting principles which emphasize user privacy.  The article further describes that the bill does not offer leniency in the event the personal information is provided by the user voluntarily. Industry experts comment that while they appreciate the motivates of the bill, the suggested actions are too restrictive, would not necessarily produce the outcomes congress seeks, and would have detrimental consequences for marketers.

Google describes that the bill would actually limit the following functionality for it's search engine:

Showing directions from Google Maps in its search results. 

Providing answers to urgent questions.

Highlighting business information when someone searches for a local business.

Integrating its products (e.g., Gmail, Calendar, Docs). 

I tend to have mixed feelings on this issue, but ultimately lean towards permitting advertisers to continue leveraging my data. Organizations like google have been able to effectively target me in a way that I don’t find too frustrating, and each feature listed in the bullet points above is one that I value. Furthermore, if I were the proprietor of a website, I don’t necessarily feel that tracking information about the user is necessarily immoral. Those individuals presumably didn’t have to visit my website, provided they had options. The challenge with a firm like google is that there really is no comparable site that’s as effective, although DuckDuckGo has received some impressive reviews from the tech industry based on my own cursory searches in google (lol). I therefore find myself revisiting a much bigger question continually asked in our society, which is the extent to which we are willing to tolerate the market power of big tech? 

Human Nature and Why Free Covid Tests Went Viral

This week the US government launched the website to order free at-home COVID tests, and it was basically impossible to not hear about it. Someone shared it on the EMBA WhatsApp class of 2022 chat and immediately many students chimed in with a note of thanks. After placing my own order, in under a minute, I quickly passed it onto my husband, to tell him to share it with his uncle. He had just complained he was having trouble finding tests after an exposure. It’s easy to see why and how so many folks wanted to share this link with friends and family. In a time when there isn’t a lot we can do to support one another on the logistics of the pandemic, this feels like an easy win. NYTimes journalist Shira Ovide shares that human behaviorists believe “the test kit website may have gone viral for some of the same reasons that a Black Friday sale can spread quickly: It makes us feel good to tell others something that may be helpful — especially if the information feels like secret knowledge — and we tend to trust people we know more than experts.” The virality of help is addicting – it feels good to share good or helpful news, especially with those of whom we care most deeply. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/technology/free-covid-tests.html?searchResultPosition=1

How do we meme stock our way out of social media?

Over the course of the last year, I've watched all common sense go out the window and people pile into a trend that just makes no sense. AMC, GME, valuations through the roof. I'm all about people's willingness to "stick it to the man" but, how do we harness the droves of people who are doing this to stick it to someone more influential? I'm a geek of sorts, farm animal geek, sea creature geek, Settlers of Catan geek, Game of Thrones geek... heck, I'm even a NARP! I am not, however, an internet geek but, I do know a thing or two about stocks AND I've seen Mr. Robot. If individuals are able to organize to rock the financial markets... why are they only focusing on Uncle Sam? Don't they know that he's so yesteryear and Zuckerburg and his cronies are the ones to shake-up? As everyone and their mothers' and grandmothers' (UGH) brains are melting like a Mister Softee in August... people are getting there sh*t together enough to make AMC look more like MSFT than the sticky sad rat den on your neighborhood block. Why the heck aren't they out there to save Granny and their teenage brother's body image? What will it take for people to organize and quit the mind-numbing stupifier that is social media? Your guess is as good as mine but, I would put my money and what's left of my PTON stock on the folks in these gaming chat rooms who are manipulating the financial markets.  

Keeping Up with Digital Marketing

As someone who's known to dabble in some pretty questionable TV shows, I take it as a point of personal pride that I've never watched an epsiode of Keeping up with the Kardashians in its mindblowing 20-season run. My wife's not ashamed. She is the first to argue that the Kardashians are brilliant, so when I saw on my podcast feed that Kim Kardashian was a featured guest on one of the podcasts that I listen to regularly (Honestly by Bari Weiss), I decided to listen. It's impossible to be a Millennial and have not seen Kardashians in a wide variety of setting and contexts, but I had never listened to Kim speak, completely unscripted, for almost an hour straight. Here's a link to the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb2AUKOqQUE After listening, I came back with my tail between my legs. I found Kim to be extremely impressive, thoughtful, funny, and brilliant. It really shouldn't be a surprise. With 240M Instagram followers (https://www.statista.com/statistics/421169/most-followers-instagram/), Kim makes it in the top six of all accounts followed worldwide. She's behind her half-sister Kylie Jenner; her sisters Khloe and Kourtney, and other half sister Kendall, all make it in the top 20 (Statistica). That type of attention and interest is made, not given. Aside from her life aspiration and her politics (and those of her ex-husband Kanye West), what I found very interesting about the interview was the transformation of how she leveraged digital marketing during the lifespan of the show, represented by the comparison between her and her youngest sibling Kylie. Born in 1980, Kim is technically Gen X, while Kylie was born in 1997, making her Gen Z. During the interview with Bari, Kim makes the point that in a recent conversation with Kylie, she realized that Kylie had never heard of Jay Leno. It was shocking to Kim, but it was representative of how much had changed in the world of television and what is popular with Gen Z and Millennials too. Television's impact on our culture had shifted dramatically, and it was something that the Kardashians were able to capitalize on. When Keeping Up with the Kardashians launched in 2007, Kim saw an opportunity. She recognized that this budding world of social media could be leveraged as a way to get attention promote her show. That's what her initial foray into digital marketing was about. Yet over time, everything flipped, and she recognized that the digital marketing itself could be so much greater than even the show. Kylie on the other hand came on the scene later. She never had to make the switch. Instead, the show was always a conduit for her to promote herself and her own brands, and it has paid off tremendously. According to Forbes, both Kylie and Kim have a net worth exceeding $1 billion (https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2021/04/06/kim-kardashian-west-is-officially-a-billionaire/?sh=6345929321bb). What got Kim over the billion-dollar threshold was the success of her beauty company KKW Beauty, which she founded in 2017. Similar to Kylie's Kylie Cosmetics, KKW Beauty used a direct-to-consumer model that relied heavily on social media marketing. KKW Beauty's first launch of 300,000 contour kits sold out within two hours. Kim cashed out 2020 when she sold 20% of her company to cosmetics conglomerate Coty for $200 million, a deal that valued the company at $1 billion.

Automatic content recognition: Your TV is listening. And watching.

 

https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/wtf-is-automatic-content-recognition/

“And by 2026, 51% of households worldwide are expected to own a smart TV…”

The increasing demand for smart TVs is resulting in more viewership data for targeted ads and personalized content recommendations. This article covers automatic content recognition, a tech process that enables a smart TV to listen to or watch content with us. ACR is used across linear, streaming, digital videos, and any device connected to a smart TV. This type of tracking was under fire in 2016 when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Vizio for tracking and collecting ACR data without a viewer’s consent. But, even after a class action lawsuit settlement in 2018, 90% of Vizio smart TV owners still opted in to ACR tracking. Millions of people with LG, Roku, and Samsung smart TVs have also opted into this tracking, too. Why? As a Samsung smart TV owner, I find personalized recommendations helpful especially on streaming platforms (go Netflix!); I save time and avoid searching / scrolling through the noise. But truthfully, the main reason is because I didn’t read through my privacy policy nor terms of use carefully enough when setting up my TV. I am interested to see if there will be another backlash as more ACR data is available to marketers and as more smart TV owners are becoming aware of this tracking. We will also see which companies can successfully ingest this data for personalized marketing.  

How NFTs Are Used by Marketers

https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/how-brands-are-using-nfts-continually-updated-list/2376086

With the rise of crypto currencies and blockchain, NFTs are one product that are becoming more common in marketing ideas and strategy, and I assume they will only continue to grow. NFTs are non-fungible tokens and can be used to monetize brands/marketing imagery, and can also help create a community of people invested in the marketing and branding of the product. While NFTs are just beginning to gain traction, I believe the application will only continue to transform, and the scale at which they will reach from a marketing perspective, will only continue to grow. In this article, they begin to allude to how NFTs are specifically growing increasingly accessible and are also continuing to gain traction. They site a series of various articles and business moves that indicate how NFTs are growing increasingly intertwined with business branding and marketing. I believe that NFTs, and the marketing work that is being done surrounding them, are just reaching the tip of the iceberg in terms of how blockchain will fit into marketing and business strategy, and I am excited to continue to follow it into the future. 

AI & the Digital Marketing Game

 5 Ways AI Will Change the Digital Marketing Game in 2022

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/401518

There is more data available to marketers than ever which has increased the need to manage and utilize it. Marketers are turning to AI to help them leverage that data and work smarter not harder. AI helps drive targeted marketing through personalization. AI is also being leveraged to predict what a user might like and share that content with them.

Personalized content is great and can help drive conversion but it also poses risks. A user is no longer served the ‘whole picture’ but instead the part of the picture AI thinks they will like. Marketers will have to be careful not to look like ‘big brother’ and not to limit users' ability to have a sense of discovery and be inspired by something new.

AI’s role in CRM will be instrumental in increasing revenue as it will help marketers to better understand user behavior and meet their needs. The challenge will be how to use it effectively while respecting users' trust. Marketers will need to ensure their content is value-added so users continue to come back.