https://digiday.com/marketing/gallery-furniture-used-ai-boost-sales-270000/
Artificial Intelligence
By Ben Van Neste
There's been a lot of talk about the future of technology lying in AI, Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of computing systems that are able to do tasks that humans could do. With this technology high on the rise and growing increasingly advertisers are looking at how they can utilize the new tech. One advertiser specifically who thought creatively and made good use of AI is Gallery Furniture. They have created an AI robot called Albert who systematically runs A/B tests and dynamic ad targeting. They say the machine can run more creative possibilities than a human being. There is already a big increase in digital sales due to the success of Albert.
Gallery Furniture's use of AI is an incredible example of how businesses can take advantage of new technologies to better themselves in their advertising. Being that AI is still a fairly new technology, Gallery Furniture is making a bold step to use the tech so soon but can also give high payoffs as they will likely be among the first-movers putting them ahead of the competition.
SKEMA Digital Marketing
Tuesday 31 October 2017
Generation Y's behaviour on Social Media : A gap of generations
The article, taken from the blog "lovesocialmedia" by Marc Campman is related to the behavior of the people we call "millennials", the ones born between the early 80"s and late 90's, on social media.
This generation is the one who uses the most social media nowadays, most of them are born with them, they have evolved, just Lucie and I did actually, and witnessed the birth of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram for example.
But what do millennials do on social media ? Well it is important to note that the article tells us that most of them use social media on smartphones and then on tablets. Several statistics show us how brands should use social media to perform their communication with the millennials. Indeed, it is said that on smartphones, 45% of millennials watch Youtube videos, 39% watch facebook videos. Those results show us that millennials watch a lot of videos on their smartphones and so brands could adapt to this type of communication and branding, like add's before a Youtube video for example. The results also tells us that 40% of them possess an Iphone, knowing that the average daily time spent on it is 2,6 hours it is worth it for brands to invest heavily on those platforms and devices through a specific social media branding and marketing.
Marc Campman easily showed us that the Generation Y has a specific behavior which is to use different devices, smartphones, laptops and tablets and for different uses. They are pretty much doing everything on social media, they life is exposed and so are the brands. This is why companies should, with efficiency, use those social media to target their consumers more easily and directly.
We still think with Lucie that they should be a point where all this will stop and something new will happen, just like a "Digital revolution". Consumers will not allow brands to "play" on the ground of social media if people don't want them to, the example we have is the annoying fact of having brand commercials before our Youtube videos.
Lucie Bornier & Henri Vesalainen
Link below for the article of Marc Campman :
http://www.lovesocialmedia.com/generation-ys-consumer-behaviour-on-social-media/
Connected speaker Google Home Mini spied on its users
Google is forced to review its
new home assistant who suffers a bug allowing him to spy on its owners. A
journalist was thus recorded for several days without his knowledge.
This miniature domestic
assistant can answer questions, roll out agenda or even give the weather of the
day. A few days before its official release, on October 2017, it was loaned to
several journalists for a test phase. One of them, Arthem Russakovskii, realized
that the Google Mini was actually listening to him 24 hours a day due to a bug
activating the recording function.
To confirm his intuition, the
journalist connected to the interface that lists all activities recorded on
devices connected to Google. Then he understood that almost all his
conversations had been transmitted to Google without asking his agreement.
This failure from Google is a
real trouble in a world where data’s privacy is everything. They start to
implement their ‘home assistant’ machine into houses with Google Home and the
very first issue with this product is that it recorded everything the owner was
saying inside his house. Even if this was a bug is it normal that Google
implement this kind of function on its device ?
After this issue it’s tough
for Google to settle a great and trustful relationship with consumers. While
Amazon has already implemented its Amazon Echo device into a lot of American
family houses, the implementation of Google Home into European countries could
be way harder with this kind of issues because people will start to fear for
their datas. With this spying issue, the message sent is ‘Our datas are not
safe with Google introducing its products in our house’.
That’s why Google reacted in a
few hours to this problem, preferring to "permanently remove" the
option responsible for this disfunctionment of its Google Home Mini. The
manufacturer has indeed placed a touch button at the top of the speaker that activates
the slightest vibration and Google just straightly removed it after the privacy
issue.
How European people should
react to this Google Home case and how it will change our life as consumers?
Should we afford to let Google access our datas in order to get a
‘technological house’?
Arthur Philipon & Julien Fraysse
Sources:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/2017/10/12/32001-20171012ARTFIG00207-l-enceinte-connectee-google-home-mini-espionnait-ses-utilisateurs.php?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#link_time=1507822271
The news consultancy firms specialized in marketing digital: Why students should work as a digital marketing consultant ?
Currently studying in Digital Business and looking for an internship as
a digital marketing consultant, I decided to write an article on this new job.
Why? This kind of job is difficult because digital marketing is changing very
quickly and people constantly have to adapt to changes.
Today, when people think about consulting firms, they
commonly think of big corporations specialized in strategy like McKinsey &
Company, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company or even the Big Four
(Deloitte, Ernest & Young, KPMG, Pricewatherhouse Cooper). Even if strategy
is the most famous and also the most profitable sector for the company, firms
specialized in organization and management, in transformations, in big data and
in purchasing also exist. However, during the last few years), the consultant
job has emerged a new consulting area: the digital transformation. In this
area, we will specifically speak about the digital marketing consulting.
Indeed, the digital marketing is
one of the fastest growing sectors in the consulting industry. This rise is due
to the new digital and marketing tools. More than ever, the marketing service
becomes more important in lot of organizations in order to maximize and
optimize return on investment (ROI). Companies want to know their marketing
spend is delivering bottom-line results by identifying, reaching, engaging,
converting, and retaining more customers. Companies understood that marketing
is a central key to develop their business.
The digital marketing world is recent and constantly evolving. It is
therefore very useful to know and understand how it works. Facing this fast
development, lots of companies, services and employees are neither skilled nor
fast enough to adapt their companies. They make the decision to outsource the
service by using consulting companies. The different reasons companies might
opt to pair with digital marketing consulting firms: create a plan, save
valuable time, understand innovative techniques..
In order to
meet with the increasing demand, lots of firms created new area in Digital. For
example, Accenture created Accenture Digital at the beginning of the year 2014.
In 2016, PWC created a new digital platform to help the companies who would
like to develop or accelerate their transformation through innovation and
digital marketing. Even if these companies attempt to capture this new market,
it is not easy because they always have to adapt their tools to advice
companies. It is sometime difficult to adapt quickly for big companies due to
infrastructure, management or organization.
Contrary to big ones, lots of small consulting companies specialized in
Digital Marketing. All these companies have a better reactivity and adapt
themselves faster. Indeed, small organizations are more innovative, ready to
capture new opportunity with new approach and new vision. Often, new consulting
firms specialized in Digital Marketing are created by former consultants from
big companies like McKinsey, Accenture, Atos consulting…
Even if smaller consulting firms are really competitive and offer
interesting solutions, big companies are the winner and take most of the market
shares. According to the “Advisory HQ” website, the six best marketing
consulting firms are Bain & Company, CMG, L.E.K Consulting, Nielsen, PwC
Digital and ZS Associates.
What is the digital marketing consultant job?
Marketing consultant has to be highly skilled in understanding what
motivates digital consumers. He also has to help clients use analytics,
technology to explore their business and understand how consumers encourage
over the long term. Additionally, a marketing consultant goes beyond simply
advertising or public relations and instead takes a more holistic view of a
business based on analytics and the development of strategic objectives. He do
not work on the marketing strategy, he has to measure the effectiveness of
strategies to refine marketing plans over time.
Is it difficult to target the best consulting firm for an internship
(gap year)?
It is difficult to target big consulting firms for two reasons:
- First: lots of consulting companies are looking for students who have
just finished their studies.
Indeed, student work 6 month as an intern and 70% of them are hired by
the company for their first job
- Second: the top consulting firms hire the best students (from business
schools such as HEC, ESSEC, ESCP, EM Lyon) and do not target students from
SKEMA Business School for their first internship. Even if it is hard to have an
internship it is still possible if students have experiences in Digital
Marketing in a famous firm such as L’Oreal or as a consultant is smaller
consulting firm.
If I decided to make an article on the digital marketing consulting
firm, it’s because I am convinced that this kind of company/job are the future
of work. Lots of companies are already looking for people with a marketing
profile specialized in Digital.
Sources of documentation:
Written by: Pierre Lemonnier
HBR: What creativity in marketing looks like today
What creativity in marketing looks like today
 |
| Source: Harvard Business Review |
What does it mean to be a creative marketer today and which strategies deliver real business result in nowadays digital marketing world? We all know about the importance of Social Media Marketing, a well-designed website and Search-Engine Optimization. But what are the underlying business mindsets, which make your digital marketing strategy a success? These are the main questions, which Bonchek M. and France C. raised in their interviews of senior marketing executives of top brands for the Harvard Business Review (2017). They identified five trends of today’s creative marketer.
1. Create with the customer, not just for the customer
Seeing customers as creators and not just consumers is a crucial change in the marketer’s mindset. An exemplary case would be Intuit (financial software company), which made their marketing team engage with the customer world. As a result, they diagnosed a pain point for the customer in the tracking of gas mileage, so that they implemented a new feature in their app to automatically track mileage. This enabled their clients to hand in more easily their yearly tax plannings.
2. Invest in the end-to-end experience
What distinguishes the normal marketer from the creative marketer today? Being able to have a holistic view on the entire customer experience makes a marketer creative. The case of the US healthcare company Kaiser Permanente illustrates the payoff of a good customer end-to-end experience. After realizing that their most powerful differentiator is the digital experience for their customers, they introduced a “welcome program” for guiding their new members through the platform. Consequently, 60% of their new members registered within the first six months and these members were also 2.6 times more likely to be a customer of Kaiser Permanente two years later.
3. Turn everyone into an advocate
Turning customers into advocates with the mantra “inspire creativity in others” is the key term for a successful marketer. In practice this means, that everyone in your company should be treated as an extension of the marketing department. The authors use the case of Old Navy (US clothing company), because they used digital content to engage and connect kids with their brand. This resulted in an exceptional brand recognition through 32,000 kids participating, 60% increase in social media engagement and 600% increase in more likely recommendations.
4. Bring creativity measurement
Everything is about performance for today’s management in businesses. Therefore, the performance measurement is also a key tool for marketing in the digital era. Operating and steering marketing activities based on real-time data is extremely powerful as the case of OpenTable (app for online reservations at restaurants) demonstrates. This company analyzes the restaurants performance (e.g. unused capacities) and equips them with the possibility to react quickly with marketing campaigns to low bookings.
5. Think like a start-up
It is not about being a manager working within budget for quarterly defined goals in marketing departments. Today, marketers need to act entrepreneurial and innovative to secure the product and market fit of their firm’s portfolio. In short this means, that they need to employ the business practices of lean startup and agile development for their competitive advantage. The case of Checkr shows that an agile method with customer tests and quick iterations helped them to create a new market, which resulted in reaching early 2017 revenue targets.
These five trends represent a radical shift in the strategy for marketers, mainly caused by the arrival of the digital technologies. It is crucial to in the fast-paced marketing world to have key strategies. They enable the marketers to create value through engaging the entire firm, planning the whole customer experience and using data based decision making. The stated strategies represent a good framework for marketers not to get overwhelmed by the possibilities of digital marketing and to focus on the key drivers for real business results.
Gerard Galindo & Marcus Pernegger
References:
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