When Maya Shankar was a young girl, she never dreamed that she would become senior director of behavioral economics at Google, lead the White House Behavioral Science Team under President Barack Obama, or host her own podcast, A Slight Change of Plans.
On her way to becoming a world-class violinist, she was accepted into the prestigious Juilliard School and studied under the legendary Itzhak Perlman. But an acute hand injury cut her promising career short at the tender age of 15.
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Gaming is no longer all about achieving objectives. The popularity of social games and virtual landscapes have resulted the advent of the metaverse and given rise to games-as-a-platform. As part of our deep dive into all things gaming, we look at the opportunities these online social spaces present for brands wanting to reach the billions-strong gaming audience.
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Vision: the ability to “think about or plan for the future, using intelligence and imagination”, an “idea or hope of how something should be done, or how it will be in the future” and simply the “ability to see”- MacMillan Dictionary
The pandemic has taught that foreseeing can be more useful than forecasting. Hindsight is literally 2020 and as for 2021… Well, you have a choice to make: be a hapless passenger relinquishing responsibility for your emotions, feelings and outcomes to other people or choose to be a leader every single day, making a positive impact on those around you and taking accountability in every moment for your own beliefs and actions.
Consumers expect brands to listen, and quarantine isolation has intensified their desires for meaningful personal connections and immediate responses from brands. Meanwhile, marketers are challenged with recalibrating their strategies and messaging to meet new consumer behaviors and demands without a clear roadmap or precedent.
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Those of us in ad tech didn’t even have to read Google’s announcement about deprecating user tracking to know that cookies and cross-site tracking were a big problem for the industry.
Governments around the world have been relentlessly tightening user privacy rules for years. Those rules mean users are now warned about cookies on every website they visit and, if they choose to “accept” the cookies, they are creepily followed around on the Web for weeks after they do so. Accordingly, users seek refuge in browsers and apps that block cookies—along with the ads and monetization those cookies enable.
“I think technology is starting to lap us. It’s exceeding our ability to even keep up with what’s going on. It’s very troubling for those of us who care about democracy. And I think it’s a consequence of our turning technology into our culture, our primary religion, and turning to it as the one thing we all trust in blindly. The consequences of this manifest in our ability to trust each other and our inability of our old institutions to function the way we hoped they could.”
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We know that success at work depends on being—and being seen as—both competent and likable. You need people to notice your growth and accomplishments while also enjoying your company. But this puts you in a predicament. If you draw attention to the value you’ve created—to ensure that managers and peers recognize it—you risk coming across as a shameless self-promoter. Not to mention the “icky” feeling that many of us get when we self-promote (narcissists excepted).
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The Content Marketing Institute describes content marketing as a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable consumer action.”
Winning WARC Media Awards campaigns highlight the opportunity for brands to use AI to learn and predict customer behaviour patterns, enhancing the entire customer journey.
No one will have been surprised to see Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a solution across a number of marketing campaigns in 2020. By using AI, brands can communicate hyper-targeted, personalised content at scale and improve customer experiences.
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Business as usual is no longer an option and the future is being shaped by uncertainty. Marketing leaders often struggle to effectively measure and prove the value of marketing’s performance to key stakeholders. This erodes confidence and credibility with executive management and causes a lack of awareness of how marketing supports sales growth, customer retention, and customer experience. That is why it’s important to figure out how to provide clarity about marketing contribution to the business, it should not be overlooked.
