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pbacklinks · 4 years ago

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7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19

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7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19

Picture this: You were all set up with a brand new marketing campaign for the second quarter. Chances are, it was perfectly tailored to the idea of summer and all the fun that comes with it. Then March- and COVID-19- happened, and all your “best laid plans” went awry. Many of you can probably relate to this. But how do you react? Coronavirus has shown that it won’t be gone for quite some time; this makes it almost impossible to pick back up where you left off. Businesses have to change their strategies to work in the world we currently live in, not the world we wish we lived in. This is a tall order. To help with your adjustment period, we put together this list of 7 strategies you can use to change your marketing strategy to adapt to this tumultuous year.

Keep expectations realistic

I’m sure that all of our email inboxes have been crowded with countless emails from countless companies letting us know how they’re responding to COVID-19. Sometimes these emails can seem overwhelming, but they are worth looking at closely. This situation has continually changed, and as it has developed, supply chain breaks have become practically inevitable. Many companies have had to totally re-evaluate their business model in order to stay afloat in a shifting market environment.

It’s key that you keep your customers informed about your business. If you know that you will have to deal with delays in shipments or slowdowns in customer service and response times, make sure that you let your customers know. And be sure to use all the avenues of communication available to you; emails are a great standby, but don’t be afraid of using your company site and social media pages. If your customers know what is going on, they will be less likely to be upset.

Increase content creation

Every state is somewhere different in the re-opening process; some states are cautiously opening restaurants and a few other businesses, and some are still totally locked down. One thing is constant though- across the nation, people are spending more time online than ever.

And everyone is online for a different reason; some people are using this time to improve their marketable skills and resume, while others simply want to be entertained. No matter what the reason, the data is clear. In the first part of the year, social media usage increased by 20%, and outgoing traffic from Facebook to other sites as jumped more than 50%

Why not seize the moment? This is the perfect opportunity to provide content for your customers and use your social media pages to promote it. Not only will this increase traffic to your websites and social media pages, it will also improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and your brand’s name recognition. And it will certainly pay off more once the economy stabilizes.

Work on building leads

It can feel a little weird to sell products at a time like this. And that’s fine, but there’s no reason to simply sit on your hands and wait for the situation to stabilize. If you don’t work to increase your client base now, before we get “back to normal,” you will certainly feel the negative effects on your business.

And that return to normal won’t be like flipping a switch; it will be a long period of slowly opening up businesses, lifting travel restrictions, and cautiously walking back all the precautions we took because of the pandemic. And there’s no way to know when this process will start; the threat of a second wave seems to be pushing it back almost indefinitely

That means this is the perfect time to build leads and lay the groundwork for future sales. If you mostly use email newsletters to generate new leads, why not put together a new magnet to help you gather new email addresses? You could even use Facebook to bring in leads to join a mailing list, sign up for a webinar, or preview your products.

Stay active on social media

Since people have been so much more active on social media these past few months, it follows that you should keep your social media presence consistent. Even if you don’t have a physical storefront open right now, this is a great way to increase brand awareness among your followers, as well as keep your pages’ organic interaction consistent over time. Take a look at your pre-COVID posting schedule; at the very least, you should be maintaining this schedule. It might be good to even increase your posting.

If you’re finding it difficult to come up with things to post, don’t be afraid to post look backwards. You could post throwbacks to old product launches or company events. Or, you could look forward, and post about future products that are in the works in order to build buzz for when you are able to come out with new products. No matter what you post, try to maintain a balance of information and entertainment; that is the best way to keep your followers tuned in until we return to some sense of normalcy.

Consider a PPC campaign

Since our current uncertain economy is causing so many companies to scale back their advertising budgets, this could be a great opportunity to run a PPC campaign. After all, there will be much less competition and you will be able to get more bang for your buck.

As of early April, Facebook’s CPM (cost per thousand impressions) has sunk to a record low: $1.95. This is more than 30% lower than the past two years. A pay-per-click campaign that would have cost $0.11 at the top of the year will now cost you just $0.09 as of March.

Launch an online course

This is also a great time to think about putting together an online course, whether it is for professional development or for other skills. Many online learning and professional courses have reported huge jumps in the amount of time people have spent on their courses. For example, LinkedIn learning has tripled the time spent on their courses, and Cornerstone Learning, an employee training service, reported a 75% increase in registrations in the month of March alone. These are not numbers that you should be ignoring.

Think about it- if people are more willing to learn new skills right now, are there skills that you can teach them? You have a number of options if you do decide to host an online learning course. You could use a site like Teachable or Thinkfic to create your own custom course, or you could simply host a course on your company site. No matter which route you choose, offering education can be a great marketing strategy in this rapidly changing market.

Be conscious of your message

While these times are certainly frightening and hectic, that does not mean that you should stop advertising entirely. And customers do not expect you to; a recent survey shows that less than 10% customers think that businesses should cease advertising completely. So while you shouldn’t worry about halting your marketing campaign, you should still be carefully considering the message you put out. After all, we are in the middle of a global crisis, so it is important that you avoid being insensitive or even offensive to the public.

In fact, there are a number of topics that are probably best to avoid altogether. For example, you shouldn’t be using imagery of travel or exploration; people have been on lockdown for several months now, so images like this are fairly tone-deaf. Also be careful to avoid pictures of people touching or gathering in large groups; social distancing has taken a toll on everyone, and are naturally sensitive to that kind of imagery. And as a business, it is crucial that you take these sensitivities into account when crafting your ad campaigns.

When you advertise, make sure that you are working to relate to the public and focusing on ways to help them through this crisis. A little encouragement and support can go a long way, as long as it does not come across as patronizing. Don’t worry about making a sale right now; instead work to connect with potential customers on a deeper level. When we start to return to normal, they will be sure to think of you first when the time comes to make a purchase.

Maintain your pipeline!

When we see the economy begin to destabilize, it can seem smart to cut back entirely on your marketing budget. And while this is certainly tempting, if you carefully invest in your customer base and work to build new leads, you will find that you bounce back much quicker than businesses who who did not. It seems scary now, but now is the time to set the groundwork for what your company will be doing later this year and into the next. So don’t rush to cut your marketing budget! Rather, think about smart, cost effective ways to adjust your marketing strategy to these difficult times.

#COVID-19 #marketing #Marketing

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littlebizresources · 4 years ago

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Kibo Code Quantum Review Plus Dropshipping Overview

Kibo Code Quantum Review 2021 Plus Dropshipping Overview

I’m doing something a little different in this post. First, I’ll cover my review of Kibo Code Quantum and Bonuses.

After that, I’ll also include more information about dropshipping for those of you that are new to the eCommerce business model!

Plus, I’ll give you a little sneak preview of some additional “free” traffic methods you’ll get from me.

If you’ve made it here and already know about Kibo Code Quantum and just need the link, click here.

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code Quantum

Kibo Code 2021 vs. 2020

For some reason, it takes me less time to do a video – so I went ahead and started the Kibo Code Quantum Review with a video! In this review, I talk about some of the differences and challenges we had in 2020…and why Kibo Code Quantum for 2021 has solved almost all of those challenges.

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code Quantum

How Can Kibo Code Generate Such Great Sales?

Now, when I do the written part – I’ll cover all the things I forgot to mention or expand on some thoughts. There may be some ranting and extra videos as time goes on, too.

Back in the day, I used to see sales videos that promised tons of sales, roll my eyes and decide it was “too good to be true”. Usually, it was.

Thankfully, times have changed and most of the shady people get kicked out of their industry within a short period of time. Don’t worry – Aidan and Steve have been around for a LONG time (and I’ve purchased many of their programs).

Yet, because I remember how I felt, I completely understand why someone would question a business model that shows such great income shots.

Is It Possible To Really Make Those Kinds of Sales?

I don’t know this person, but all of the income shots you see in my video or in the sales webinar came from Kibo members. There are plenty of additional people who shared their success in the dedicated forum – and plenty of people that did NOT share their success (but still had success).

By law, no one can show you an income report and guarantee you will find similar success. And really…there is no way to get two people to do the exact same level of success. In Kim’s world (which is an interesting place), I look at an income screenshot like this and say “why not?”

Kim, Don’t You Have Experience?

Yes, and that’s part of why I now look at income screenshots differently. I know how to read these much better than other people. I know the good, the bad, and the hiding.

I look at the screen shot above and I see:

Gross income of $60,000

Most likely profits between 20%-50% (depending on advertising costs), but maybe a little lower if they were “new”

So, probably at least a profit of $6,000 in a month – which would be at least $72,000 to go towards my other adventures…or maybe pay bills

What if they didn’t make a profit? Then it was probably because of advertising costs, and with that much in sales, they have a pretty good customer list. That means lower advertising costs in the future with re-targeting/re-marketing, look-a-like audiences, etc.

I actually have a lot of additional thoughts, most of them aimed at “how can I replicate that?”

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code Quantum

What Kibo Code Quantum Does Differently

It’s hard for me, with my experience in a variety of eCommerce models, to look at Kibo Code truly objectively.

As I mentioned in the first video, 2020 definitely had challenges with the initial Kibo Code version. The most significant challenge was the supply chain disruption from anywhere. If you remember – we had our ports shut down for a while.

Even now – January, 2021 – suppliers continue to have problems! You can see a screenshot below from one of my suppliers (not for Kibo, but for another one of my stores).

Another one of my suppliers flat out told me that the reason they couldn’t get shipments out faster was because they couldn’t find people that wanted to work!

Thankfully, the world has figured out a way to keep the supply chain moving – even if it is a bit slower.

In addition to inventory issues, we also ran into additional costs with Shopify (I was paying about $100 a month and only had a fraction of the apps I needed). Then, our marketing method was paid ads through Google Shopping.

Kibo Code Quantum Eliminates Those Challenges

Even before the 2021 Kibo Code was announced, Aidan and Steve hinted at the change of removing Shopify. I was VERY pleased to find that they had created their own system for us to use – no need for Shopify!

Then, they mentioned using a free source of traffic. I’m always cautious when a system relies on free traffic because those channels tend to dry up rather quickly. Yet, when I heard about the free traffic source – I new it was true! (Sorry, you’ll have to watch the webinar to see what that traffic source is!)

In fact, my sister and I had been discussing that very traffic source. We work with a lot of other small business owners through our various businesses, and many people had reported their business had exploded with this free traffic source.

So, if I thought the Kibo Code in 2020 was great, but had challenges because of supply chain issues, using Shopify, and using paid ads – all of those are now corrected with Kibo Code Quantum!

While It Seems Perfect, I Do Have A Few Concerns

I will acknowledge that my concerns are not specific to Kibo Code – but about any system.

In my experience with many training programs – almost all of the times I would consider myself as “failing” was not because of the system. Instead, it was because of my lack of action.

With this system specifically, I do worry about the free traffic source. It could be limited. The good news is that I have spent the last 3 months setting up alternative free traffic methods and testing them – most likely, one or more of those could be a backup.

Really, the main concern is that if you get Kibo Code Quantum, but don’t take action – you could end up “missing out”. So, I guess the moral of my concerns is that you need to TAKE ACTION to make this work. *To clarify – the training will not go away! I just think that if you don’t take action, you’ll get overwhelmed trying to catch up (but if you do join through my link and get behind – reach out and I’ll help you get caught up).

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code Quantum

Kim's Kibo Code Quantum Bonuses

As with many of my reviews, I include bonuses for those that purchase through my link.

I have been a student of Aidan and Steve’s for several years, and I know they offer quality programs. As such, I’m willing to offer some excellent bonuses to help you succeed!

*Disclaimer: Most of these bonuses are only available after the refund period has passed.

Bonus #1 - Visibility and Publicity Campaigns ($3,000 Value)

These are campaigns I run for my clients, usually for branding. Even though you are not necessarily branding for this business model – you can still use this to drive MASSIVE buyer traffic to your products.

These visibility and publicity campaigns are where I get businesses (or even people) mentioned in top websites like USA Today. You can use this for this ecommerce business or any other business/website you have!

For the Kibo Code bonus #1, I run 2 campaigns for you. An actual real-world value of at least $3,000 (I charge $1500 per campaign). To see more about what these are, see the branding campaigns here.

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code

Bonus #2 - Personal Coaching Call With Me! ($2500 Value)

Everyone needs a little coaching. Even I get coaching from time to time! I hold a PhD in Business Administration and I specialize in systems and processes that improve traffic and SALES. I have extensive experience running my own businesses – local, eCommerce, and affiliate!

I do answer general questions (for free) in my Lead Generation Source Facebook Group, but this gives you a chance to get coaching specific to your needs and concerns. I have had clients finally start making sales after working with me and others increase their sales and traffic significantly. Of course, there are no guarantees, but this is a great way to get an “outside” perspective.

30-60 minute “call” – this can be by phone, or if you want to show me information on the computer, we’ll hop on my platform where you can share your computer and talk with you mic on your computer

You can also email me additional questions for 60 days after our consult. That way, you get to ask questions about any actions you put in place.

This is your time – so we can talk about whatever you want help with.

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code

Bonus #3 - Resell EP Laser Products (Priceless - I had to have at least one listed as this)

I don’t actually offer the opportunity for people to resell the EP Laser products. We tried it once, but the company we went through was a nightmare.

We’ve been talking about it for a while now, but it’s kind of a challenge to set up. I’ll overcome that challenge for anyone who purchases through our link.

We primarily offer ORNAMENTS, which means they mostly sell at Christmas…but we have a pretty good variety and they sell fairly well despite massive competition. We do have other products that we sell OFFLINE (custom order requests) that I’ll open up for you to sell if you choose.

*We may have to get creative on how we connect this, so plan on this being later – but let me know as soon as possible if you are interested!

Bonus #4 - Google My Business Workshop ($1500 Value)

Google My Business is primarily for local businesses that have a physical location or a service area. I use it as a sort of grey area for eCommerce.

I’ll run a Google My Business workshop that will give you details on how you can rank for local searches (and ecommerce terms are frequently showing as local search terms now).

You can decide if you want to run this as a potential source of traffic or not – either way, you’ll get some great information on marketing with Google!

Bonus #5 - Pinterest Pins for 5 Products, Tailwind Tribes Submissions ($1,000 value)

Pinterest is exceptionally powerful for eCommerce products that have good images. Since the Kibo code provides good images that are already known to convert – it’s a great place for your products!

Since most of my followers stumble with Pinterest, I’ve decided to add this on to help boost your traffic.

You will choose 5 of your products (typically 5 products you are selling fairly regularly so you know they convert well), and I will create a variety of pins. Then, I’ll share them to all my related boards AND I’ll submit them into all the related Tailwind Tribes.

Then, if you want to create more pins for other products, I’ll submit up to 5 more each month through the end of December! Maybe longer, just depends on how busy we get.

Bonus #6 - Email Help For Anything Kibo ($1,000 value)

Have you ever worked through a course and got stuck when on something, only to have to wait several days for a response from support on how to get past it?

I’m pretty good at Kibo setup (which is where most people get stuck), so I’ll be available to help you over any hurdles to help you get set up (or if you have other things you get stuck on).

I put “email”, but last time, I hopped on a Zoom meeting when people who bought through me got stuck on something. This is separate from the coaching call! If we can’t coordinate a time, I’ll probably just record the fix and email you a link to the video showing you how to fix it.

Bonus #7 - Manufacturer/White Label/Private Label Training ($297 value)

Get access to a special course that teaches you how you can manufacture, white label, or private label your own products. One of the biggest challenges with the Kibo Code business model is finding suppliers with enough inventory to support many sellers – but when you sell your own items, you control the inventory!

This is NOT mandatory to run Kibo code, but I’ve been manufacturing and reselling my own items for over 10 years now (profitably). I’ll teach you ways you can add on or pivot to your own products.

Bonus #8 - Lifetime Access To The 12 Week Master Marketing Course (or whatever it ends up getting named) ($3500 value)

This 12 week course starts shortly after Kibo Code closes. We’re going to build out multiple marketing channels and boost our traffic to just about EVERYWHERE (everywhere we set up at least).

All of the secrets to marketing to multiple channels, adding in automation, driving tons of traffic – you’ll get them all. This course is specifically designed to support Kibo members! We’ll work around webinars and adapt the course based on training available – since I’m doing Kibo, too!

The secrets shared in this course are the combination of multiple courses – each one worth thousands of dollars. I’m going to teach you secrets you probably can’t find elsewhere! But the best part is that when you implement all of the methods we cover, you’ll get your Kibo store(s) and products in front of LOTS of people!

Click Here To Get The Kibo Code

Set For Success

Clearly, no one can guarantee success, but Kibo code Quantum is the closest business model RIGHT NOW that will get you there. You still need to do the work and put in the effort.

You will get everything you need for success within the Kibo code training and the resources provided by Aidan and Steve! I just wanted to create bonuses that support you!

As you can see, my Kibo Code bonuses are set up to help you succeed with your marketing for your Kibo Code store(s). Don’t be shy about reaching out to me. I have two passions in business – digital marketing and eCommerce!

How To Claim Your Kibo Code Bonuses From Kim

The best way to reach me is through Facebook Messenger! When someone purchases the Kibo Code through my link, I do NOT get their information…which means you have to send me your transaction info!

You should get a receipt from Clickbank that provides that info. Copy the transaction number, then shoot me a private message through Messenger. Go HERE to see my personal profile and send me a message.

More eCommerce and Dropshipping Resources

Whether you get Kibo Code or not – I’ve got a free gift for you. It’s access to the Little Biz Resources membership area. I’ll keep adding more courses – for now, I have a course that walks you through various monetization methods and a course on affiliate marketing.

If you would like to join the free membership area, just go here.

The post Kibo Code Quantum Review Plus Dropshipping Overview appeared first on Little Biz Resources.

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jobsearchtips02 · 5 years ago

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Pay Cuts End Up Being a Tool for Some Business to Avoid Layoffs

” Shared sacrifice” in the white-collar ranks aims to avoid the expense of staffing up again. Without any end to the crisis in sight, it is a leap of faith.

Martin A. Kits van Heyningen, president of KVH Industries, chose to cut wages instead of lay off employees. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” he said. Credit … Cody O’Loughlin for The New York City Times

Might 24, 2020, 5: 00 a.m. ET

It was late and Martin A. Kits van Heyningen feared he was letting the group down at the company he co-founded, KVH Industries. Instead of lay off employees in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, he had actually chosen to cut salaries, and when he emailed a video describing his choice at 3 a.m. last month, he was prepared for a barrage of complaints.

Rather, he woke to an outpouring of assistance from staff members that left him elated.

” It was one of the hardest things I have actually done, however it turned out to be the very best day of my life at work,” said Mr. Kits van Heyningen. “I was attempting to keep their morale up. Rather, they kept my spirits up.”

Even as American companies let 10s of countless employees go, some companies are picking a various path. By setting up across-the-board income decreases, specifically at senior levels, they have prevented layoffs.

The ranks of those forgoing task cuts and furloughs include significant employers like HCA Health care, the hospital chain, and Aon, a London-based worldwide professional services company with a regional head office in Chicago. Chemours, a specialized chemical maker in Wilmington, Del., cut pay by 30 percent for senior management and preserved tasks. Others that handled to avoid layoffs consist of smaller sized business like KVH, a maker of mobile connection and navigation systems that uses 600 worldwide and is based in Middletown, R.I.

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KVH, a maker of mobile connectivity and navigation systems in Middletown, R.I., has up until now managed to avoid layoffs. Credit … Cody O’Loughlin for The New York City Times

The pattern is a turnaround of standard management theory, which held that salaries were sacred and it was better to cut positions and dismiss a minimal number of workers than to lower pay for everyone during recessions.

There is typically a real desire to protect employees, but long-lasting monetary interests are a significant factor to consider too, stated Donald Delves, a settlement specialist with Willis Towers Watson.

” A lot has occurred in the last 10 years,” Mr. Delves stated. “Companies discovered the tough way that as soon as you lay off a lot of individuals, it’s expensive and time-consuming to employ them back. Employees are not interchangeable.”

A recent research study by the Conference Board with Semler Brossy, an executive compensation research company, and Esgauge, an information analytics company, found that 537 public companies had cut pay of senior management since the crisis began. The study did not define whether any had likewise cut jobs, nevertheless.

To be sure, if the crisis lasts longer than anticipated and the economy keeps diminishing, it is possible these salary reductions will not be enough to fend off job cuts. Other big corporations have cut wages along with tasks to stem coronavirus-related losses.

Still, the unexpected nature of the financial threat has actually developed a different mind-set amongst some managers than existed during the last recession, Mr. Delves said. Some business did try to cut pay instead of tasks back then, however the impulse seems more extensive now.

” What we’re seeing this time around is more of a sense of shared sacrifice and shared pain,” he included.

When the pandemic hit, HCA was increasing revenue and including staff members, stated its chief executive, Sam Hazen, “and to put them out on the street due to the fact that of some virus just wasn’t something I was going to do.”

With stay-at-home orders covering much of the nation and prohibits on optional surgical treatment in numerous states, HCA’s medical facilities were entrusted an income shortfall. The business suspended its share repurchases and quarterly dividend to bolster its monetary position, and it decreased capital costs.

Mr. Hazen donated his salary for April and May to an internal fund for employees in distress, while senior management took a 30 percent pay cut. White-collar employees at lower levels saw their payment reduced by 10 to 20 percent.

All in all, about 15,00 0 workers were affected, out of an overall of 275,00 0. The company does not expect the pay reductions to extend beyond June.

HCA likewise produced a pandemic pay program that enabled more than 120,00 0 nonexecutive healthcare facility staff members to get 70 percent of what they made before the virus hit. Workers, consisting of union members, are likewise being asked to pass up a raise this year.

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KVH Industries used a tiered system for pay cuts. Staff members making less than $50,00 0 were spared any decrease. Credit … Cody O’Loughlin for The New York Times

” We needed our individuals to have as much comfort as possible,” Mr. Hazen stated. “Our culture is fixated taking care of our employees. This is a chance to additional differentiate our culture with our individuals and with our communities.”

Aon, with 50,00 0 workers worldwide, was a lot more aggressive about reducing salaries. Top executives there quit 50 percent of their pay, with a lot of remaining employees getting a cut of 20 percent.

” We wished to state no one would lose their task because of Covid-19,” stated Greg Case, Aon’s chief executive.

Mr. Case said he was heartened due to the fact that abroad employees, who had the right to turn down the income cuts, extremely accepted them. About two-thirds of Aon’s labor force is outside the United States.

However Mr. Case stated the business was bracing for long-term disruption. “The threat on the horizon is possibly much greater than 2008 -9,” he stated. “We are getting ready for situations that are multiples worse than that.” Aon says the requirement for the pay cuts will be reviewed monthly.

Preventing layoffs will leave Aon much better prepared for when the economy does rebound, Mr. Case said. “When clients need us most, we will exist,” he stated.

Definitely, for presidents and the highest-ranking officers, salary cuts are not as unpleasant as it would initially appear. That’s due to the fact that for many, the bulk of their settlement is available in stock awards, stated Amit Batish, supervisor of material and interactions for Equilar, a personal research firm that tracks executive pay.

” Incomes are a drop in the bucket for the majority of executives, however it does send the message that we are assisting the organization,” he stated.

Still, the fact that a few companies were able to avoid layoffs by minimizing salaries raises the question of whether more companies might have avoided task cuts in the last 2 months.

With federal government welfare offered for laid-off workers, lots of American business fasted to cut their labor force, said Kathryn Neel, a handling director at Semler Brossy. “In European nations, where wages were supported, they handled to keep more people on the payroll,” she included.

Sharing the pain more broadly in this manner might have avoided the joblessness rate from hitting its greatest level because the Great Depression while likewise better placing companies for the eventual recovery.

Firms that cut greatly in 2008 -9 were not all set when the economy eventually rebounded, according to Gregg Passin, a senior partner at the personnels seeking advice from company Mercer. “They lagged business that were more careful about cutting individuals,” he said.

A no-layoffs policy likewise builds loyalty. “No one wishes to be in a scenario where their salary is cut,” Mr. Passin stated. “However we really do think the way you treat workers today is the method they’ll treat you tomorrow.”

Upgraded May 20, 2020

What are the signs of coronavirus?

Common signs include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection tough, however runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has likewise added chills, muscle discomfort, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or odor as signs to watch out for. Many people fall ill 5 to 7 days after direct exposure, but symptoms might appear in as couple of as 2 days or as lots of as 14 days.

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

Over 38 million individuals have actually filed for joblessness since March.

How can I safeguard myself while flying?

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can require to secure yourself. Essential: Wash your hands frequently, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A research study from Emory University discovered that during influenza season, the best location to sit on an airplane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with possibly sick individuals. Sanitize tough surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are tidy, use decontaminating wipes to clean the tough surface areas at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seat belt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is difficult and impermeable or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could cause a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than eliminating them.)

Is ‘Covid toe’ a sign of the disease?

There is an uptick in people reporting symptoms of chilblains, which are unpleasant red or purple lesions that usually appear in the winter season on fingers or toes.

Can I go to the park?

Yes, but make sure you keep 6 feet of distance between you and people who do not reside in your house. Even if you just hang out in a park, rather than opt for a jog or a walk, getting some fresh air, and hopefully sunshine, is a good idea.

How do I take my temperature?

Taking one’s temperature level to try to find indications of fever is not as easy as it sounds, as “regular” temperature numbers can differ, but generally, keep an eye out for a temperature level of 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. If you don’t have a thermometer (they can be pricey these days), there are other methods to find out if you have a fever, or are at risk of Covid-19 problems.

Should I wear a mask?

The C.D.C. has advised that all Americans wear fabric masks if they head out in public. This is a shift in federal assistance showing new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread out by infected people who have no signs Previously, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has actually encouraged that regular individuals don’t require to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for healthcare employees who frantically need them at a time when they are in constantly short supply. Masks don’t replace hand cleaning and social distancing.

What should I do if I feel ill?

If you have actually been exposed to the coronavirus or believe you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or problem breathing, call a physician. They ought to give you recommendations on whether you ought to be tested, how to get tested, and how to look for medical treatment without potentially contaminating or exposing others.

How do I get checked?

If you’re sick and you believe you’ve been exposed to the brand-new coronavirus, the C.D.C. advises that you call your healthcare provider and discuss your signs and worries.

How can I assist?

Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities utilizing a numbers-based system, has a running list of nonprofits operating in communities affected by the break out. You can offer blood through the American Red Cross, and World Central Kitchen has actioned in to distribute meals in major cities.

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Ronda Vye, director of digital marketing at KVH Industries, stated the pay cuts were manageable. Credit … Cody O’Loughlin for The New York Times

” I ‘d much rather take a pay cut than see one of my fellow staff members lose a job, especially in this financial environment,” she included. Credit … Cody O’Loughlin for The New York Times

John Croy, a software architect, stated that he did not strategy to take the time off but that he felt it was worth losing pay to avert layoffs.

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/pay-cuts-end-up-being-a-tool-for-some-business-to-avoid-layoffs/

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personalcoachingcenter · 6 years ago

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Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/disruption-starts-with-unhappy-customers-not-technology/

Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology

Luis Diaz Devesa/Getty Images

For eight years I’ve visited leading companies in more than 20 industries around the world that claimed to be in the process of being disrupted. Each time, I’d ask the executives of these incumbent companies the same question: “What is disrupting your business?” No matter who I talked to, I would always get one of two answers: “Technology X is disrupting our business” or “Startup Y is disrupting our business.” But my latest research and analysis reveals flaws in that thinking. It is customers who are driving the disruption.

In the common scenario that executives think technology is trying to disrupt their business, they try to find a way to develop that technology internally or buy it from others. Major auto companies like GM and Ford are a good example: they have spent billions to buy and then build electric and autonomous driving technologies.

If the disruption threat is coming from a startup, then the incumbent often tries to acquire it — if the valuation is low enough. They can also try to compete with the startup on price, as a means to block their advance. In most cases I have seen, neither of these responses worked as intended.

For an example of the acquisition route, consider Yahoo. It was once the leader in the nascent search engine space, but lost the top position to Google and then lost the second position to Microsoft’s Bing. In response, then CEO Marissa Mayer went on a shopping spree to acquire technologies and startups in an attempt to regain the crown. As of 2016, Mayer had acquired 53 tech startups, spending between $2.3 and $2.8 billion, and countless hours of her top executives’ time with M&A due diligence. Yahoo eventually shut down 33 of these start-ups, discontinued the products of 11 start-ups, and left five to their own devices, failing to assimilate them. In all, Yahoo only fully integrated two of these companies: Tumblr and BrightRoll. In 2017, unable to grow, Yahoo was acquired by Verizon for $4.8 billion, a far cry from its peak valuation of $100 billion. (Verizon is now reportedly looking to sell Tumblr.)

What these companies seem to have missed is that the most common and pervasive pattern of disruption is driven by customers. They are the ones behind the decisions to adopt or reject new technologies or new products. When large companies decide to focus on changing customer needs and wants, they end up responding more effectively to digital disruption.

My analysis has grown from visiting or talking to executives of established companies and then having similar conversations with their challengers. In my book, Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, I talk about the incumbent-disruptor pairs in the list below. Based on the interviews and analyses of these industries I uncovered a common underlying pattern of customer-driven digital disruption. Disruptive startups enter markets not by stealing customers from incumbents, but by stealing a select few customer activities. And the activities disruptors choose to take away from incumbents are precisely the ones that customers are not satisfied with. Birchbox stole sampling of beauty products from Sephora. Trov stole turning insurance on and off from State Farm. PillPack stole fulfilling prescriptions from CVS.

Many of the standard ways of thinking about which new growth markets large conglomerate companies should enter revolves around the idea of “adjacencies” and “synergies,” at the firm-side. For instance, by manufacturing motorcycles and lawnmowers, two seemingly unrelated categories, Honda has gained production synergies that allowed it to become better and more cost-effective in both markets.

But if customers are at the center of disruption, companies need to understand how to offer customer-side synergies. Successful growth is dictated by benefits accrued to the customer, not to the company. After all, it is they who choose whether to adopt or acquire your new products or not. This is where a coupling strategy comes into play — it’s the concept of creating new products that create meaningful synergies with your original product. In other words, it makes it cheaper, easier or faster for customers to fulfill their needs as compared to using two products from different companies. One of the clearest ways to couple is to launch new products or services that are immediately adjacent to (i.e., occur before or after) the activities that consumers already undertake with the business.

Airbnb is an example. It started in the hospitality and travel industry by offering home-sharing. After considerable growth with the original offering, it moved into offering its users an online discussion forum and planning tool for travel—an activity travelers often perform before booking an Airbnb home—and then it moved into offering local leisure experiences for guests during their Airbnb stays. According to Brian Chesky, one of Airbnb’s founders, the goal is to eventually cover all the key stages of the customer value chain (CVC).

Alibaba’s customer side focus

Alibaba offers an excellent example of this type of customer-focused growth. By 2018, the company had become one of the world’s largest by market capitalization, with more than ten multibillion-dollar businesses in wide ranging sectors such as retailing, ecommerce, online cloud services, mobile phones, logistics, payments, content, and more. Between 2011 and 2016, the company’s revenues grew at an average compound annual rate of 87%. Profits jumped by 94% and cash flow by 120%. Such rapid growth was quite unique for such a large and established digital company.

So how did Alibaba do it? Founded as an online business-to-business marketplace, in 2003 the company moved into consumer-to-consumer ecommerce and in 2004 built both Aliwangwang, a text message service, and Alipay, an online payments service. The next year, it went on to acquire Yahoo China in an effort to provide consumers with content and web services. In 2008, it launched TMall, a business-to-consumer online retailer, followed in 2009 by Alibaba Cloud Computing, a cloud storage company. Other new business launches proceeded in turn: a search engine company named eTao (2010), a start-up called Aliyin that created mobile operating systems (2011), and a logistics consortium named Cainiao (2013). In 2015, Alibaba took a majority stake in smartphone maker Meizu. Note how many of these companies operated in non-adjacent industries. The synergies between retailing, cloud computing, payments, and electronics manufacturing are not immediately clear. Businesses in these industries require different resources and employees with widely varying skillsets in order to compete. So why didn’t the company stick with its original, business-to-business online marketplace and focus growth there in order to dominate the market and achieve competitive advantage by traditional economies of scale?

Alibaba’s expansion strategy focused squarely on customer-side synergies and CVC adjacencies. In 2016, around 50% of online shopping took place via mobile phones, with the rest occurring on laptops, desktops, and tablets. To shop online, consumers first had to decide which device to use to access the internet, and implicitly, which operating system and browser combination. After that, most consumers opened browsers and pointed at websites, accessing their communication services, email, social networks, chat apps, and so on. At some point, they identified a need to make a purchase and performed searches either outside ecommerce websites (for instance, on Google or Baidu) or inside them. From there, consumers arrived at the most appropriate ecommerce sites. In China, business customers went to Alibaba, while consumers went to Taobao to shop for products from other consumers or to Tmall to shop products from retailers.

To obtain more product information or to negotiate prices (a common practice in China), buyers communicated with sellers, usually by chat apps. Consumers then had to pay for their purchase and wait for a logistics operator to deliver it. This represented the extent of the typical online shopper’s CVC. Analyzing this CVC, we spot a clear pattern. Alibaba began growing by focusing on a single stage of the shopper’s CVC with its Alibaba website. It then moved outwards to capture other customer activities. Instead of using the traditional industry adjacencies approach (payment, mobile phones, and logistics are not adjacent industries), the company opted to move into adjacent CVC activities. By 2018, the company’s businesses were serving most of the CVC activities. Alibaba didn’t immediately pursue firm-side synergies. Its real win lay in achieving customer-side synergies. That, in turn, convinced its customers to couple.

The main hurdle of pursuing the coupling strategy is that this may lead your company into vastly different businesses that require vastly different people, skills, and capabilities than the ones your company possesses. In the case of Alibaba, it went from ecommerce to financial services, to search tools, to logistics, to hardware and to software. There is very little firm-side synergy in these businesses.

When I present coupling as a growth strategy to my clients, I warn them of this hurdle and ask them to fill out a table of the skills they think will be required to succeed in a new adjacent activity, whether they have that skill and, if not, how they plan on obtaining those skills. This exercise is simple, but essential. I ask them to list up to four activities they want the company to accomplish. Then, they list the required skills and their available skills. Finally, to get the skills they don’t have, do they need to build, borrow, or buy? So, borrow it from others via partnerships or buy it through acquisitions or recruitment? What they cannot do is disregard the need to bridge those skills gap.

Many established companies ‘pigeonhole’ themselves too narrowly in a specific industry. As a consequence, their area for exploring new growth is limited, not by their potential or their capabilities, but by arbitrary industry definitions. The fastest way to grow is to offer something that your current customers, those most loyal to you, would gladly pay for if you provided it and that, by virtue of them acquiring this new offering, it would make your original product or service even more valuable to them. And here is the catch: the new products that are launched do not need to be better than those of the established companies to be successful. As long as new products have synergies for the customer, they will likely get adopted.

Disruption is a customer-driven phenomenon. New technologies come and go. The ones that stick around are those the consumers choose to adopt. Many of the fast-growing startups such as Uber, Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest, and Lyft don’t have access to more or better innovative technologies than the incumbents in their respective industries. What they do have is an ability to build and deliver faster and more accurately exactly what customers want. This is causing the change-of-hands of sizable amounts of market share is relatively short periods of time. That is the basis of modern disruption in a nutshell.

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mentorup · 8 years ago

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2017 MentorUp | Session #5

Session Breakdown | 60 minutes

Introduction | 2 minutes

Mentee’s Perspective | 4 minutes

News | 8 minutes

Work | 8 minutes

Our Work | 8 minutes

Trend & Hot Topic | 10 minutes

Dialogue | 10 minutes

Flex-Time | 10 minutes

Introduction

Welcome to session #5 and more importantly, welcome to the second semester of MentorUp 2017! After taking a much-needed July break, it’s time to dive back in!

Although most of you are quite familiar with the purpose and goal of this program, let’s do a refocus of a) why we’re doing this and b) what our ultimate goal is as mentors and mentees.

The goal of MentorUp, simply put, is to inspire through education and informed discussion.

By equipping and empowering rising leaders (that’s you, mentors!) at The Marketing Arm with relevant and timely industry news, work, technology, and topics, they then cultivate valuable discussion with the senior leadership (that’s you, mentees!) of our organization focused on the provided topics.

The output is an increased spirit of innovation and knowledge, a relational and connected agency, and most importantly, an inspired and educated leadership staff that can then confidently steer our agency, our work, and our clients with an educated eagerness of what the future holds.

While it’s valuable to refocus a program’s purpose and goal, I find it equally inspiring to refocus your current role’s purpose and goals. Whether it’s making the time to honestly access the value in what you’ve set out to do in your 3x3 or simply learning a bit more about how you’re uniquely designed in an effort to understand how to motivate yourself and others towards greatness – take a moment, and think. I promise… your Instagram feed, your email, and those dishes will still be waiting for you on the other end.

Mentee’s Perspective

Before you begin your session, don’t forget to gain the valuable perspective of your mentee(s). Their mindset and perspective should be a guiding force in how you present this material.

For some starter questions on how to do this… here are a few.

1. What is going on with their clients and their clients’ business?

2. What are their focuses right now?

3. What are your initial thoughts on Influencer?

4. Has your client ever done an Influencer program?

5. Where is the Influencer opportunity with your client?

With their perspective in mind, let’s embark on this month’s session!

News

Keep in mind that we have 2 months to cover here – so being high level and efficient with time is key. Only deeply discuss news that has a direct implication to your mentee’s client or that they are specifically interested in. You’ve got this!

1) Disrupting Retail:

A) Amazon Buys Whole Foods

Just in case you’ve been in blissful vacation mode and have somehow missed this one… Amazon has indeed begun the process of buying Whole Foods!

Amazon initially announced the purchase decision in mid June with a reported price tag for the foodie haven being a whopping $13.7 billion. Amazon, of course, will be paying this in cash #nbd. If you’re wondering, “Amazon + Wholefoods? An unlikely pair indeed!” Think again.

With ventures such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, the innovation-obsessed company has many food ambitions for the future, but it doesn’t stop there. What about retail? As Forbes insightfully said, “when the news broke last week, critics saw it as a sign that the company had finally caved and made a large investment into physical stores in order to grow. What many didn’t see, however, is that this acquisition is, in fact, in complete alignment with Amazon’s view of the world of retail.” With the strategic use of data, Amazon has been disrupting retail ever since the company came into being. Have you ever thought about how data plays a huge rule in Amazon’s ability to disrupt retail?

A few other things that you should know while on the topic of Amazon is that they recently announced the creation of Meal Kits (bummer for Blue Apron) as well as a curious new tool called Spark, a shoppable feed of photos and stories.

B) Brandless

On to the second bit of disrupting retail news, let’s chat about Brandless. This fascinating start-up that received $50 million in first round funding is up and running, people!

What is it, exactly? A new cpg brand that’s essentially brandless and offers all its products for $3. How do they do this? An article from TechCrunch captured it perfectly by saying, “By stripping away what it likes to call the “brand tax�� — i.e., all the costs related to the traditional consumer packaged goods distribution model — and going straight to the consumer, Brandless can offer its goods at 40 percent less than comparable products on average.”

With the packaging being simple and straightforward, it’s an oddly comforting brand experience in that there’s no clutter, no cost confusion, and frankly no bs.

(Note: As to taste, first box has been ordered, received, and second box is en route bc OMG it’s good. #notsponsored)

How do these bits of news potentially affect our clients? Any thoughts in regard to the future of retail? Are these disruptions attractive to you? If so, why?

2) AirFrance Creates New Brand for Millennials

As generations change, so do preferences. How does a brand stay true to who they are while also reinventing themselves for the new generations to come? Most brands balance the two, while some, like Air France, just decide to create a whole new brand for their new market. This summer, the European airline announced their new venture, Joon, an airline brand targeting young adult passengers “whose lifestyles revolve around digital technology and who are spontaneous and keen on new experiences.” This is more than a mere concept in that flights on Joon will begin this fall with a scheduled roll-out plan of being in full operation by summer 2018. Now I know what you’re thinking… it’s low cost, right? Think again… this airline will offer “original products and services that reflect those of Air France.” Instead of an airline brand, they are striving to be a lifestyle brand.

Now, we know that Hilton very strategically has launched Tru, a brand of hotels specifically targeting young adults/millienials. What other brands are you seeing do this? Do you think it’s smarter to invent a whole new brand or simply balance the many differing generations you’re trying to reach?

Will we see more brands do this in the future?

3) Cryptocurrency 101

[@Mentors, if your mentee already has this base understanding of blockchain and crypto-currencies, then please spend a brief moment on the big news at the bottom. However, if they did not attend the Q2 ITK, below is a quick 101 course in crypto-currencies. You can then send the links in a follow-up note, there will not be time for both.]

The concept and initial discussion around crypto-currencies was covered in the Q2 In Tha’ Know (click here to download slides and notes). For those of you who missed the Q2 ITK, here’s a quick recap as well as a few updates on what’s going on in the cryptocurrency world.

Before understanding any type of cryptocurrency, you’ll need baseline knowledge of blockchain technology. This is the technology infrastructure that allows any crytocurrency transaction to take place. Think of blockchain as similar to a card inside a library book: it’s a digital ledger showing where that book has been. Rather than that digital ledger living in one place, it’s shared amongst computers all over the world. Instead of thinking of blockchain as an Internet of information, think of it as an Internet of value.

Now knowing that, let’s then move to how a transaction takes place.

Step #1: Transaction -> two parties, A & B, decide to exchange a unit of value (digital currency or a digital representation of some other asset, such as a land title, birth certificate, or educational degree) and innate the transaction.

Step #2: Block -> the transaction is packaged with other pending transactions thereby creating a “block.” The block is sent to the blockchain system’s network of participating computers.

Step #3: Verification -> the participating computers evaluate the transactions and through the mathematical calculations determine whether they are valid, based on agreed-upon rules. When “consensus” has been achieved, typically among 51% of participating computers the transitions are considered verified.

Step #4: Hash -> each verified block of transactions is time-stamped with a cryptographic hash. Each block also contains a reference to the previous block’s hash, thus creating a “chain” of records that cannot be falsified except by convincing participating computers that the tampered data in on block and in all the prior blocks is true. Such a feat is considered impossible.

Step #5: Execution -> the unit of value moves from the account of party A to the account of party B.

You’ve most likely heard of Bitcoin. That is one of many types of crypto currency (also can be called digital or virtual currency).

Must-know news:

1) The Bitcoin fork

2) ICOs for start-ups

3) Status ICO

Work

1) Royal Caribbean’s SeaSeekers

At this point, many of you have gotten to explore what Snap Inc.’s Spectacles can do for social content in TMA Lab’s Technology Experience that travels to the various TMA offices. A question that’s been asked again and again is “how can a brand utilize the technology of Spectacles strategically?” Royal Caribbean has done just that.

The popular cruise line created a snorkeling/scuba mask that has Snap Spectacles built into them, allowing underwater explorers to capture unique content. Calling them, “SeaSeekers,” Royal Caribbean is offering them for rent to guests onboard their ships. Such a simple idea with a creative twist!

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Is there a unique way your clients could utilize Spectacles? How does this simple, but innovate piece of work inspire you?

2) IKEA Cook this Page

Raise your hand if you’ve ever put IKEA furniture together? If you have, then you’re familiar with the simply white pages, black ink instructions, and an “assembly-required” style of product. Taking the same approach as they do for their furniture, IKEA created recipe posters that held the instructions for meals - which of course used the store’s selection of frozen food. Their goal was to inspire IKEA consumers to see how simple trying a new recipe actually is, by minimizing the stress/intimidation factor of a new recipe.

Calling the recipe posters, “The IKEA Easy Recipe Series,” they handed these clever instructions out at in-store events across Canada earlier this year. Now the best part of these posters was that the paper was actually parchment paper and the ink was cooking safe, allowing each recipe to end with folding the paper together and cooking the recipe in it! #brilliant

Featured recipes included a baked salmon, a pasta dish, and of course… Swedish meatballs. The design, the recipes, and the simplicity generated so much buzz that loyal consumers are now begging IKEA to make this a store staple.

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What do you think of this idea? Does it remind you of a personal Tasty video experience? How can you infuse simplicity and convenience into the consumer experience of your client or as we said in the last ITK, save them time?

Technology

1) KLM Care Tag

What if you could take a brand experience beyond where the brand’s normal end point of interaction is with the consumer? That’s exactly what KLM airlines did with their connected KLM Bag Tag. This smart, audio and GPS enabled luggage tag essentially keeps their helpful flight attendants with you as you explore the airline’s hometown of Amsterdam.

The tag will do things like alerting you of busy bikers to watch for, a potential pick-pocket heavy area, a low bridge to not bonk your head against, and of course, interesting historical information about the city. Cool detail about this? The voices that offer helpful and interesting information are actual KLM employees, making it even more personal.

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What are your thoughts on this? Have you ever thought about what it would look like speak to your consumer in a completely different setting? What about making sure the step before or after their interaction with the brand is simply better?

How is this inspiring to you?

2) Acura Embraces AR

The car brand live-streamed an augmented reality race on Facebook featuring a new sedan. They had four different drivers drive a real track all while wearing AR enabled helmets to create a virtual environment and experience for them. The Facebook live viewers were able to see the perspective of the driver.

With Apple’s ARKit being teased for this fall, understanding the technology that is going to be in the hands of all iPhone users is wise.

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Check out other brands that have been using AR here.

Trend

This month, we’re going to explore an insightful consumer report by the trusted resource, PSFK. Since this report is too lengthy to discuss in full, the key elements have been taken out to provide good discussion for your session.

Before beginning your session, please think about what business your mentee works on, and what clients are involved. After reading through this trend, present it for their capability and client(s)!

The 2020 Consumer

[Full report here]

Understanding consumers is tough! Although we can count on human truths to remain constant, consumer communication style and the ways they want to experience a product or brand are constantly changing, mostly due to innovation in the digital space.

Historically, brands have controlled most of brand engagement and experiences, but the future consumer is changing this.

With the onset of digital media, consumers gained power. This power is evolving though to a point where “ in more and more verticals we are seeing a significant shift, where the consumer takes control by acting as, or even replacing, the brands that have traditionally provided products, services, and experiences.”

Some insights and statistics that highlight this are,

Americans devote more than 10 hours a day to screen time – a rate that is growing. [The total Audience Report: Q1 2016. Nielson]

60% of travelers around the world say they would be unwilling to go on vacation without a mobile device. [Expedia/Egencia Mobile Index. Expedia, 2016]

Only 1 out of 10 of top Gen Z influencers are traditional celebrities. They favor Snapchat and YouTube stars and other people who look like them. [Anna Fieler. EVP of Marketing, Popsugar]

One third of U.S. social media users ages 16-34, or 25.5 million people, are social influencers. 1.61 million have already partnered with a brand online. [Yahoo Deep Focus. Shareablee and Ipsos, 2016]

With digital use increasing, consumers giving more power to peers than to brands, and consumers wanting and expecting to influence brands…

“Leading into 2020, our definition of consumers is changing: technology-driven shifts empower them to assume a greater, if not complete, role in designing and directing their own products and experiences. The consumer no longer simply interacts with a store, hotel, stadium or media channel; he or she possesses the tools and skillset to embody those roles independently.”

See this Consumer 2020 playbook below for what roles consumers can take on.

We’re going to take a quick look into each of these five roles. Put your thinking caps on folks… here we go!

1) Consumer as Platform

We all have a lot of data. We all use a lot of data. This data shapes our experiences, what we see, and what we do/decide. When brands encourage and reward consumers to share this network of data, “brands can build upon each consumer’s platform of personal information to offer hyper-relevant, flexible interactions tailored to in-the-moment needs and behaviors.” With technologies such as AI assistants, wearables, and real-time data collection tools, consumers acting as platforms enable this role reversal.

Example:

PartyBOT – an app that uses AI and facial recognition technology to give DJs real-time information on how the audience is liking or disliking their music selection. By capturing the mood swings with each song, DJs can make more informed decisions and therefore create a better experience!

2) Consumer as Studio

Quick delivery (Hellooo Amazon Prime!) and speedy supply chains have changed the game of customized products for consumers. Years ago, consumers would happily buy a standardized product, not worrying about any personalization other than their own preference in choice. However, now and in the future, customized products and creation studios offered to consumers by brands and manufacturers will be rewarded by consumers due to their “changing goals and preferences.” Technologies such as data collection, IoT networks, robotics, automation, and rapid prototyping are enabling consumers to more and more act as a brand studio.

Example:

Function of Beauty – a hair care line that lets you choose what your hair goals are and then build a personalized hair care system for you. The products are bought online in size options that work for each individual consumer and then are shipped. Easy, fast, personalized.

3) Consumer as Store

Mobile shopping (whose got the LTK app?!) and wearables have completely changed the way that consumers access retail channels. Whether selling, purchasing, or merely curating (Pinterest), consumers can access retail at any time. “These unrestricted, flexible purchasing channels help to establish consumer trust and brand credibility by reducing friction that may arise through purchasing limitations.” Statistics such as contactless payments will surpass $1 trillion by 2019, accounting for over 80% of payments [Juniper Research, 2017] further prove this.

Technologies enabling this role reversal are mobile payment networks, peer-to-peer platforms, and of course, omnipresent connectivity.

Example:

U.S. Bank Stadium App – the app within the stadium allows fans to order right on the app with in seat delivery or express pick-up both being options. This function is just one of many on the app such as checking into the venue, ordering souvenirs, directions to the stadium and locating their seats or bathrooms. Go Vikings indeed!

4) Consumer as CEO

With digital communication the way it is, consumers’ “ideas and feedback” can be given and heard very quickly, thus having the potential to quickly affect businesses. Any sort of platform that allows consumers to give brands feedback can be used as a tool by the brand to optimize. “By replacing legacy systems with adaptive technology and advanced

analytics capabilities, brands can fully connect and implement consumer evaluations, placing the consumer at the center of company decision-making.” Technologies that have allowed this role reversal are targeted communication, sentiment analysis, and of course… crowdsourcing!

Example:

Volition – this beauty company allows consumers to submit ideas for beauty products to be put on the company’s website. If the idea is approved by the company’s panel of editors, that consumer is paired with chemists and formulators that bring it to life.

In conclusion, 2020 isn’t far away, and there’s no time to lose. How are the brands you work on doing at incorporating consumers into roles normally done by the brand? What ways do you think this could be better?

Out of all the roles mentioned, which one makes sense for your brand strategy? Are you doing any already?

As these futuristic consumers continue to evolve, it’s important to be in tune with their attitudes, expectations, and behaviors in order to “empower, rather than stifle, consumer ability.”

App of the Month

Adidas: All Day

It’s always interesting when a brand jumps out of their vertical and supports other aspects of your life. Adidas has done just that with their new app, All Day. It’s focused on overall health, not just your workout. Things like diet, sleep, hygiene, meditating… it really does have it all.

92% of consumers are willing to hear from marketers if it increases their quality of life.

Powerful stuff people. Check it out!

Content Feature

Crowdsourcing is such a brilliant way to engage consumers, and our tech-crush Elon Musk knows this! Check out the winner of the Project LoveDay crowdsourcing competition that was just announced. Enjoy!

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Thanks!

Extra Resources for the curious TMA’er:

Cannes Trends 2017

3 Innovation Lessons from Jeff Bezos

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sierrajcortney2 · 5 years ago

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7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19

Strategy 1- Keep expectations realistic

Strategy 2- Increase content creation

Strategy 3- Work on building leads

Strategy 4- Stay active on social media

Strategy 5- Consider a PPC campaign

Strategy 6- Launch an online course

Strategy 7- Be conscious of your message

Maintain your pipeline!

The post 7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19 appeared first on Summit Protocol Digital Media.

from Summit Protocol Digital Media https://summitprotocol.com/7-tips-for-adjusting-your-marketing-approach-for-covid-19/ from Summit Protocol Digital Marketing https://summitprotocol1.tumblr.com/post/622539984124231680

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summitprotocol1 · 5 years ago

Text

7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19

Strategy 1- Keep expectations realistic

Strategy 2- Increase content creation

Strategy 3- Work on building leads

Strategy 4- Stay active on social media

Strategy 5- Consider a PPC campaign

Strategy 6- Launch an online course

Strategy 7- Be conscious of your message

Maintain your pipeline!

The post 7 Tips for Adjusting Your Marketing Approach for Covid-19 appeared first on Summit Protocol Digital Media.

from Summit Protocol Digital Media https://summitprotocol.com/7-tips-for-adjusting-your-marketing-approach-for-covid-19/

0 notes

marrincostello · 5 years ago

Text

'Can everyone mute?' Coronavirus means we must telecommute. We're not ready

On Thursday morning, as the number of new coronavirus cases in California climbed past 50, crates of telecommunications equipment and prefabricated sound isolation booths started arriving at the Playa Vista headquarters of ICANN, the organization tasked with overseeing the deepest levels of the internet.

ICANN, which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was originally set to hold its March meeting in Cancún, where policy and tech wonks from around the world would convene to hammer out the minutiae of global internet governance.

Instead, they decided to host in Los Angeles what might be the world’s largest-ever working conference call.

Nearly 3,000 people from 150 countries speaking three live-translated languages will participate for four days, with quick-turnaround transcriptions translated into all the official languages of the U.N. to make sure no one is left out of the discussion.

The operation is running on Zoom, the teleconferencing platform whose stock has surged nearly 70% since the beginning of the year in response to the virus-driven demand for telecommuting, augmented by software and systems that ICANN has built over the years to facilitate mass meetings and quick translation.

While Zoom can handle videoconferences at a large scale, the conference is defaulting to voice-only communications since many participants will dial in from countries with unreliable internet service. Zoom has committed to having its head of operations on standby to help work out any kinks.

When asked whether this emergency operation was guaranteed to go off without a hitch when it begins on Saturday, ICANN Chief Information Officer Ashwin Rangan let out a laugh.

“We are testing out a lot of things in real time,” Rangan said. “We are creating backup plans and plan Cs and testing them all as I speak.”

Translation: going virtual on this scale is a step into uncharted territory — and a step that more and more businesses are taking in response to COVID-19.

In the past week, companies across the U.S. have started canceling major conferences, halting most business travel and urging employees to work from home in response to the growing viral outbreak in the country. Few will require telecom operations as vast and complicated as ICANN’s, but as companies such as Twitter and Microsoft start shifting to virtual work en masse, the vision of a decentralized work world long promised by telecommuting evangelists is starting to materialize.

But is the technology itself — and the American workplace — ready to go fully remote?

Even as the tools have improved, with Zoom and the collaboration tools such as Slack taking the place of landline conference calls and endless email chains and telepresence robots offering remote workers a chance to amble around the office, the stubborn problem of human error persists.

Stories of getting caught out in pajamas on video calls, or mysterious heavy breathing on mass dial-ins, have become common parts of the work experience as part-time telecommuting becomes a standard feature of office life. Maybe the next generation of remote-work tech, which is likely to include full virtual reality, will solve these hiccups; almost certainly, it will bring new ones.

Shannon Engoian, an ad agency account director, got an unsettling glimpse of the future in the early 2010s, when her firm pitched the company that made the open-ended multiplayer video game “Second Life” — in “Second Life.”

Engoian recalled how her team had to make digital avatars to attend the in-game meeting with the company’s senior executives, then spent some time practicing how to navigate the virtual space.

But when the time for the big meeting came, things did not go as planned.

“This one particular meeting room that they teleported us to for the pitch itself was not a room at all, but was like a bonfire circle on a beach,” Engoian said. “It’s a high stress scenario, a real pitch with real people, so I’m like nervous I’m thinking about my speaking roles and stuff.”

The “Second Life” executives appeared in their virtual avatars — Engoian recalls an inflatable frog and a centaur, among others — and the assembled businesspeople sat down on the log benches around the fire to start their meeting.

“My avatar sits down backwards so that her back is facing the rest of the group,” Engoian recalled. Frantic, she tried getting up and sitting down two or three more times, each time with the same result, until her supervisor pinged her AOL Instant Messenger to tell her to give up. At that point, her computer froze. The last her colleagues saw of her was Engoian “flying up and away out of the meeting forever.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna be fired over this,’” Engoian said. (She wasn’t, and they won the account.)

While putting on a digital centaur’s skin to hang out in a video game may not seem like work, research has shown that working from home can yield a net increase in productivity.

A 2017 study out of Stanford Graduate School of Business conducted an experiment that found that remote workers at China’s largest travel agency, Ctrip, saw a 13% bump in productivity compared to their office-bound peers over nine months. A similar study from Harvard Business School looked at U.S. Patent and Trademark Office workers who were allowed to go fully remote, rather than having to check in at the office once a week, and found that they ended up 4.4% more productive overall.

Prithwiraj Choudhury, the lead author on the Harvard study, has continued to research remote work in the U.S. and thinks that employee demand, increasing real estate prices and solid technology are combining to make remote work more attractive today than ever. But the key to pulling it off, he’s found, is creating a new culture for remote work.

“You have to create new processes that support remote work,” Choudhury said. Two major problems are syncing over time zones and fostering a sense of camaraderie over distance.

At the patent office, managers brought remote workers into the fold by delivering personal pizzas to their home offices at the same time that they were calling into a pizza-fueled meeting at HQ.

“If you have a team where some people are remote, you need to recognize the pain that remote people go through,” Choudhury said. “Not just the communication loss but also in some ways the different self-identity.”

In recent years, a number of companies have sprung up to solve workplace problems unique to telecommuting.

One of them, Range, builds tools that help teams with no central office coordinate complicated projects, tracking productivity and progress from afar so that managers can shake the feeling that their direct reports are slacking off at home. Twitter, whichthis week advised all staffers to work from home when possible in response to the virus, is a major client.

“Initially, companies see a benefit when more people go remote, because people aren’t interrupted as much,” said Range co-founder and Chief Product Officer Braden Kowitz. “Then, they start to notice communication breaks down. Then the third thing is that the culture breaks down.”

To solve the communication problem, Range augments its progress-tracking tools with strong meeting facilitation practices drawn from design critiques and old-fashioned handbooks like “Robert’s Rules of Order” — opening with a round-the-table icebreaker to get everyone talking, sticking to clear agendas and only allowing people to speak in strict order so that everyone gets to talk.

To address the social issue, Range had to get a little more creative, building in features that replicate the kind of water-cooler socializing and team bonding that happens when people occupy a shared space.

The company offers a feature that includes 350 questions that teams can use as jumping-off points for non-work conversations, starting with anodyne questions like where people went on recent vacations and then ramping up to more thoughtful, personal questions like how people approach risk, and how they see their clothes reflecting their personalities.

“We looked at ways for teams to build psychological safety and trust,” Kowitz said. “if you’re a team you have to be able to ask each other for help, and in order to ask for help you need to be vulnerable.”

Zapier, a 300-person company whose software automates tasks between web apps, has been fully remote since its start in 2011. Its founders have become evangelists for remote working over the years, commissioning reports on the practice, publishing their Slack etiquette guide as a model and serving as informal advisers to companies considering that path.

“It’s allowed us to tap into a global talent pool in a way nobody else can,” said Wade Foster, Zapier’s chief executive.

The company has kept to its remote-work roots as the software for conference calls and office chatting has changed, and Foster chalks its successup to a few core practices. Zapier has a budget to set up all new hires with a kitted-out home office, requires all meetings to be full video calls, and has a strong onboarding process that teaches employees how to use their customized version of Slack. And it makes sure that everyone writes everything down.

“It takes a level of discipline to document what is going on in the org that many in-office cultures don’t have,” Foster said.

But even in a company that does everything right, not every tech worker is cut out for a fully remote life. Foster said that some potential Zapier recruits have balked at the lack of an office.

“More times than not they end up being successful in the company,” Foster said. “The few times where it doesn’t, I’d say it tends to be with folks who use work as their social outlet.”

And for those who prefer a compromise between the virtual and tangible worlds, there are always robots.

Double Robotics is one of the leading U.S. manufacturers of “telepresence�� robots, which display a video feed of a telecommuting worker on a screen attached to a Segway-like wheeled contraption that can be driven remotely. Double’s chief executive, David Cann, says the company has been seeing a surge in orders as coronavirus fears ramp up across the country.

“We’re trying to catch up on orders, we have a backlog now and we’re trying to build as fast as possible,” Cann said.

But the same virus that’s prompting an uptick in orders is posing some problems for the company. The broad shutdown in China, where the original outbreak took place, has squeezed the supply chains that Double relies on to build their products at their Burlingame, Calif., headquarters.

That technology, however, has improved. Until last year, the Double was still essentially a tricked-out ride for an off-the-shelf Apple iPad. Users had to manually steer the Double around the office, and inept driving could get its wheels stuck on a doorframe.

A Double telepresence robot.

(Chris O’Brien / Los Angeles Times)

“It wasn’t a big deal, but it’s a little bit embarrassing,” Cann said. But the 2019 model, the Double Three, comes with a built-in tablet screen, and has enough sensors that users can just point-and-click where they want to go within the robot’s field of vision. The Double will glide on over, avoiding objects and edges along the way.

As with other remote working technologies, Cann said that building an office culture around their robots is the surest indicator of a successful transition. Most importantly, the remote worker and all of their coworkers need to be on board with the robot concept.

“For the first day or two, it’s going to be a total novelty — you need to get everyone around and ask all the crazy questions and get that out of the way first,” Cann said. “The next day, it’s just like, ‘Oh, that’s Joe on the robot.’”

This content was originally published here.

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riichardwilson · 5 years ago

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Advertisers signal glimmers of optimism

Here we are at the beginning of May. Many businesses still can’t restock inventory, but the initial jolts to supply chains and fulfillment systems have somewhat subsided. The mortality rate attributed to COVID-19 declined in the U.S. last week, “but remains significantly elevated.” In late March, roughly half of small businesses said they could survive just two months, and the gradual reopenings by states are now “a source of uncertainty rather than confidence,” for many of them. Overall, business confidence in the U.S. plummeted 17 points in April.

The jobless rates are staggering, but U.S. consumer sentiment ticked up slightly for the second week in a row at the end of April. Yet, those consumers are nearly evenly split on how they envision economic recovery. There are the 47% who see the U.S. economy rebounding as restrictions are lifted. While among the 49% of consumers who don’t expect a quick economic recovery, sentiment is near the lowest recorded in the last 18 years.

Mix in consumer stimulus checks and the Paycheck Protection Program, and it’s even harder to find the signal through the noise. As with so much of this crisis, the business impact of COVID-19 is situational. It has gravely impacted some while other businesses have never experienced current levels of demand. That said, from an advertising standpoint, there appears to have been a sentiment shift over the past week — or even few days — with many advertisers starting to spend again.

Leading indicators. For example, with the travel industry among the hardest hit, it’s notable that several online travel agencies (OTAs) have resumed paid search advertising, as Conrad O’Connell of BuildUpBookings, a digital marketing agency agency focused on travel and accommodations, noticed this week.

Trivago and Booking Holdings’ Priceline and Booking.com are running paid search campaigns. Trip Advisor, AppleVacations, Omni Hotels, Norweigan Cruise Lines and Sandals Resorts are among the other travel businesses currently running ads on Google and Bing.

“For long term planning, cruises, vacations, conference centers, etc, we’re seeing some of them come back,” Brad Geddes of ad testing platform AdAlysis said by email yesterday. He noted the OTAs and larger companies seem to have made more of a return than the boutique businesses. For short term travel such as flights and hotels, Geddes said it appears several have resumed advertising, “but we don’t have enough data to understand how they are bidding yet and if these are limited campaigns/budgets or some companies trying to advertise through the virus in preparation for a return to normality later this year.”

What’s motivating these businesses to turn the marketing agency spigot back on is unclear. There is little indication of shifts in search behaviors trending in their favor, though searches for “vacation” began trending up slightly in the last week, according to Google Trends. But ,they may be seeing more granular improvements and signs of interest. (Booking Holdings and Expedia Group will each report their first-quarter 2020 financial results on May 7.)

Google Trends data for the search queries “cruise” and “vacation” between March 5, 2019 and May 5, 2020.

WordStream, a PPC campaign platform used predominantly by SMBs, reported Monday that search campaign conversion performance improved across verticals on both Google and Bing in April from March. “Specifically, starting the second week of April, paid search conversions rebounded to about 89% of their pre-COVID levels.”

And, as we reported last week, the quarterly financial reports from Google, Facebook, Snap and Amazon all indicated the worst might be behind us.

Curious if others are seeing indicators of optimism, I put a Twitter poll up yesterday asking whether businesses were starting to resume their PPC campaigns. The poll was open for just a few hours, but among the 72 votes, 50% said they or their clients are starting to increase spend and another 25% said they would likely do so soon. One-quarter said they were not planning to spend yet.

I spoke with and heard from many marketers about what they’re seeing yesterday. Several poll respondents said they have clients in each of the three buckets. “Very account-specfiic right now,” said Kirk Williams, owner of digital advertising agency ZATO, who added they are “doing our best to manage client expectations in that regard.” Yet, there is a relative sense of optimism. Here’s what I heard.

Regroup and transform. Many businesses that decided to pause or pull back on advertising, did so not out of panic, but to regroup and make a plan, said Jason Hartley EVP, head of search and shopping at 360i, by phone yesterday. “Because we know that sales are going to come online — obviously not 100%, but you know that’s going to happen.”

We talked about the quick shifts to digital transformation. “What it has done is made us see what was possible all along,” said Hartley.

A sense of the new (undefined) normal. “The panic and sense of everything doom is gone. It’s now time to go back to the original/new goals and improve performance,” said Andrea Cruz.

Ron Adams, owner of digital marketing agency agency Engage Media, seems to have captured the post-system shock of many: “Yes, we are starting to bring spend back. Most clients are beginning to accept where [we] are now as a new normal (even after govt restrictions are lifted).”

Others are starting to say things like, “let’s imagine a world where this is more the norm for the next several months, if not a year. And what can we do to maximize our position in that situation. Those are the [companies] that are going to be best prepared. … It’s hard to predict the future, but given that, I think the smart thing to do is to have a few different plans for different scenarios.”

Proactive rather than reactive. A client of digital marketing agency agency Page Zero Media experienced fulfillment challenges and paused ads for seven weeks. The agency’s president, Andrew Goodman, told me the company is now starting to resume roughly 50% of their advertising, knowing that its typical slow season starts in June. “The thinking likely was: can we afford to coast until late July? Instead, let’s push to capacity through May, because it will be slow for 6-7 weeks after that, and we have to be proactive now rather than purely reactive,” said Goodman.

Like Black Friday. “Every day since like the 15th [of April] has been like an unplanned Black Friday for my eComm clients,” said digital advertising consultant Josh Yates. “We have no idea how long it’s going to last.” For now, most of Yates’ clients have opened up their budgets are managing to ROAS targets.

Many companies that continue to struggle to meet skyrocketing demand continue to harness ad spend. “The most common problem is that they can only pack and ship so much,” Martin Roettgerding, head of SEM at Bloofusion Germany, said of his clients. “Some have strong enough brands and other channels so that they’re at capacity without PPC ads.” Roettgerding said companies are now seeing their investments in SEO Company and branding paying off.

Long-term behavior impact. Goodman expects “pure play online retailers will be permanently in a renewed mode of secular growth … a higher revenue plane, so to speak,” pointing to an e-commerce grill parts business and an online services company as examples of clients that are “expecting a permanent upward shift in demand.”

While many say they are seeing CPMs rising on Facebook, Goodman expects the paid search ad auction to continue to be discounted for some time to come. “I would say for the next year, ad spend won’t keep up with advertiser revenue. There will be more ‘free’ traffic. ROI will, therefore, be higher,” he said.

Agencies, CMOs are hopeful. In terms of his own business, Goodman said, “Agencies will see recovery but not rapid growth. We may be one of the lucky ones. Quite diversified and some big clients spending more than ever.”

It seems many other agency heads feel the same way.

“Agency leaders are surprisingly optimistic right now,” said agency consultant Karl Sakas at Sakas & Company. “Some have finally received their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, while others are seeing a strengthening sales pipeline. Many of their clients have cut back, but a few agencies are landing upsells, too.”

Sakas noted that his April 2020 global industry survey with SharpSpring found many agency leaders expected 2020 to be a record year until COVID-19 hit. Yet, in April, “among the 484 respondents, 57% of agency leaders reported feeling optimistic about business in 2020, while only 22% were pessimistic.”

“Agencies aren’t in recovery yet, as both small and large firms consider or implement layoffs and salary reductions. But I’m seeing optimism from chief marketing agency officers, too, as CMOs make plans to prepare for a strong recovery,” said Sakas. “Everyone might be practicing wishful thinking, but perception becomes reality.”

More about marketing agency in the time of the coronavirus

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, marketing agency Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing agency experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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source http://www.scpie.org/advertisers-signal-glimmers-of-optimism/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/617318573329793024

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laurelkrugerr · 5 years ago

Text

Advertisers signal glimmers of optimism

Google Trends data for the search queries “cruise” and “vacation” between March 5, 2019 and May 5, 2020.

And, as we reported last week, the quarterly financial reports from Google, Facebook, Snap and Amazon all indicated the worst might be behind us.

We talked about the quick shifts to digital transformation. “What it has done is made us see what was possible all along,” said Hartley.

A sense of the new (undefined) normal. “The panic and sense of everything doom is gone. It’s now time to go back to the original/new goals and improve performance,” said Andrea Cruz.

It seems many other agency heads feel the same way.

More about marketing agency in the time of the coronavirus

About The Author

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/advertisers-signal-glimmers-of-optimism/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/advertisers-signal-glimmers-of-optimism.html

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scpie · 5 years ago

Text

Advertisers signal glimmers of optimism

Google Trends data for the search queries “cruise” and “vacation” between March 5, 2019 and May 5, 2020.

And, as we reported last week, the quarterly financial reports from Google, Facebook, Snap and Amazon all indicated the worst might be behind us.

We talked about the quick shifts to digital transformation. “What it has done is made us see what was possible all along,” said Hartley.

A sense of the new (undefined) normal. “The panic and sense of everything doom is gone. It’s now time to go back to the original/new goals and improve performance,” said Andrea Cruz.

It seems many other agency heads feel the same way.

More about marketing agency in the time of the coronavirus

About The Author

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/advertisers-signal-glimmers-of-optimism/

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lesliecafferty · 5 years ago

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Correct.

The People (P): What is happening?

Answer (A): A virus has come.

P: Is it dangerous?

A: Very dangerous. But not dangerous to most. It strikes the elderly most viciously. But it can kill the middle-aged, the young, the thin, the healthy.

P: What should we do?

A: Stay away from others. Stay inside.

P: And then we won’t get the virus?

A: Absolutely you will get it. Everyone will get it.

P: Wait. No one told us this. They’re telling us to stay inside and we won’t get it.

A: Well, I’m telling you now. Almost everyone will get it. Seventy percent of you, give or take. Think about it. It’s everywhere, and there’s no vaccine. But we want everyone to get it at different times. Like on a schedule of getting it. At least five million people already have it in the United States.

P: Wait. Five million? Everyone says one million.

A: That’s the known, confirmed cases. We just started testing in earnest like, an hour ago. For every case we know, there’s five, 10, 50 that we don’t know. Maybe they got it and were asymptomatic. Maybe they got sick but not sick enough to go the hospital or get tested. Five million is an extremely low estimate of how many cases there are. It’s probably more like 20 million.

P: Twenty?

A: That’s good news! In a way. That means it’s less deadly to most people than we thought. And it proves the inevitability of you getting it yourself. So stay inside till it’s your turn to get it.

P: How long should we stay inside?

A: I’m thinking two months. No, three. Six? No, 12. Yes, 12!

P: Then it will be gone?

A: The virus? Lord no. It could be 18 months till we get a vaccine. But by then you’ll have already gotten it, so the date doesn’t really matter. Especially given that the virus will come back double-strong in the fall.

P: So it’s less potent in the summer?

A: Absolutely not. Who told you that?

P: You just said it’ll come back stronger in the fall. Which implies its power is dissipated in the summer.

A: Are you a doctor? No? Good. Then pay attention. The virus is everywhere, in every city and state, but we’re flattening the curve. Then it’ll very likely come back with a vengeance in the fall. Winter, too. Also, in the meantime, it’ll be with us all summer with probably no change in its potency. Capiche?

P: No one’s giving us this information.

A: Well, you know how we’re stretching out the cases over a longer period of time? Flattening the curve? We’re also flattening the truth. So just stay inside, and you’ll be fine. Order stuff online. Support your local restaurant.

P: Whew. OK. We can do that.

A: But do so knowing that you are putting the lives of everyone at risk — the cooks, the clerks, the delivery people. I’m actually a bit shocked by your selfishness and the cavalier way you’re sacrificing the lives of people who have no choice but to expose themselves to grave danger during a pandemic.

P: It sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t order stuff to be delivered.

A: You shouldn’t. Unless you want local businesses to die.

P: So we should support local businesses …

A: Absolutely. While risking their workers’ lives. Yes. Order food, eat it, watch the news about the pandemic that can’t be stopped. Get plenty of sleep, and start smoking. Turns out smokers are less likely to get sick. Which only makes sense! So remember to exercise. Go for a run!

P: Where should we go for a run?

A: Ideally some place where you can spread out, where you aren’t in close proximity to other people.

P: Like the beach? A park?

A: Sure. Beaches and parks are wide-open spaces. They’re about as safe as you can be.

P: We just went to the beach and the park. There were hundreds of other people there.

A: You went to the beach? The park? What were you thinking? There are hundreds of people there! Go home. Be with your kids. Do you have kids?

P: Yes.

A: Well, make sure they keep up with school. Keep up with their worksheets and Zoom, and check their work, and keep them off screens, and go outside, and don’t worry about school. It’s a pandemic, after all.

P: Um. Many of the things you just said sound contradictory.

A: Not at all. I’ll rephrase: Your kids are living through a crisis. It’s all right if they feel anxious, or if you can’t maintain routines or keep up with regular school schedules. Just make sure they don’t fall behind, and remember that kids thrive on routine. So stick to a schedule, but give them space, and stay inside, and go outside, and use technology to connect with teachers and friends, and limit screen time.

P: Wait. So …

A: But enjoy some downtime together! Relax and watch a movie. Cook some food! Just don’t go to the stores, because that’s dangerous to everyone. Order in! But don’t. Stay home. Move to the country. And stay in the city. If you get sick, go to the hospital. But don’t get too sick, because you wouldn’t want to be going to one of those hospitals now! They’re full of sick people!

P: When did you say this would all end again?

A: Eighteen months. That said, the soonest we’ve ever come up with a vaccine was four years.

P: But everyone’s talking about reopening stores and everything now. How does that square with 18 months?

A: That’s easy. People will die.

P: Wait. What?

A: Oh sure. So many more. Oceans of people. Even just 1,500 a day for eighteen months means 800,000 in the U.S. alone will die from this virus. That’s what the Minnesota scientist says. Osterholm. He’s one of the foremost experts in the world. He’s been right every step of the way so far.

P: What? 800,000?

A: That’s if things stay more or less steady. It could be higher, much higher. With the easing of restrictions and all.

P: But isn’t the rate of death declining?

A: Friday was one of the deadliest days yet! And that’s after everyone’s been inside for a month. Once everyone goes back to work, it’ll probably go up significantly. Total blood bath.

P: So why are we easing restrictions?

A: Something something the economy?

P: Excuse me?

A: Mumble mumble the economy maybe?

P: We don’t understand.

A: Listen. People are fatigued. They want to go back to work. They want to shop. More than anything, they want to roll balls toward white pins and make loud bang-bang sound. And then possibly end up with a tube inserted in their trachea, helping them breathe while their lungs cease to function, until they almost invariably die and die alone.

P: Why don’t we just freeze the economy? Just close most businesses and have the government give everyone a living wage while we wait until there’s a vaccine?

A: Hmm. First of all, ridiculous. Second, that would take significant coordination between local, state and federal governments.

P: Can we do that?

A: Well. I don’t know … I mean … OK. For starters, we’d need superadvanced ways to coordinate everyone. We’d certainly need phones. Maybe email. We might even need spreadsheets and/or computers.

P: Do we have all those things?

A: I think we … might? But there are still so many questions. Like, how would we know who to give money to? We’d have to have a national database with all the salaries of all the nation’s workers.

P: Don’t we have that? Seems like we could get that.

A: Here’s another plan: We promise money to pretty much every person and every business. We give this money to maybe half the people, and to a very small percentage of businesses. We let big banks control most of this money meant for small businesses, and the big banks can funnel it to their biggest clients.

P: That sounds terrible.

A: Those big banks sure know how to handle cash!

P: It seems it would just be easier to give people the exact salaries they had before they lost their jobs to one of the deadliest viruses in 100 years. Just freeze everything. Just mutually agree to pause, together, so we don’t have to lose 730,000 more souls.

A: First of all: boring. Where’s the intrigue? The drama? With our system, you have wave after wave of unemployment, with no end in sight. Every week brings something new: business closures, bankruptcies and ruptures of the supply chain — a never-ending, cascading, domino-orgy of lost savings, empty storefronts and shattered dreams. That’s much more exciting than some boring old guaranteed income that would allow everyone to simply ride out the pandemic knowing their jobs and businesses would be there when the virus was defeated.

P: So there’s no plan.

A: Having no plan is the plan! Haven’t you been listening? Plans are for commies and the Danish. Here we do it fast and loose and dumb and wrong, and occasionally we have a man who manufactures pillows come to the White House to show the president encouraging texts. It all works! Eighteen months, 800,000 deaths, no plan, states bidding against states for medicine and equipment, you’re on your own, plans are lame.

P: I’m going to lie down. I don’t feel good.

A: Should we sing a patriotic song? I feel like our forebears would be so proud of us now. It’s just like how we all pulled together in World War II, every element of society, from the White House to Rosie the Riveter, with common purpose and shared sacrifice. This is just like that, except instead of coordination, we have competition, and instead of common cause, we have acrimony and chaos. Instead of fireside chats, F.D.R. and Churchill, we have tweets, Lysol and Ron DeSantis. Other than that, it’s exactly the same. —Eggers

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preciousmetals0 · 5 years ago

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Danger Signs, Aurora Climbs, Morgan Stanley’s Fine

Danger Signs, Aurora Climbs, Morgan Stanley’s Fine:

IPOooo … Oh My God, We’re Going to Crash!

Hey, I heard you missed us … we’re back! (Yeah.) I brought my pencil. Gimme something to write on, man!

Sorry about the two-day hiatus, but life happens. While I was away, the market broke out to fresh all-time highs. The Dow is above 29,000, and market bulls are eyeing 30,000. Jeez, I’m out of it for a little while, and everyone gets delusions of grandeur!

But there’s one thing that didn’t change while I was out. As usual, with the advent of new market highs come the inevitable “the last time this happened, everything went to hell” articles. Today’s “clear danger sign” example comes from MarketWatch.

The article interviews AdvisorShares Ranger Equity Bear ETF (NYSE: HDGE) manager Brad Lamensdorf. It opens with the comical line: “When pigs squeal, feed them.”

Excuse me while I try not to have Deliverance flashbacks here.

The “pigs” comment refers to an age-old adage on Wall Street. When investors are craving overhyped initial public offerings (IPOs), investment bankers will feed those “pigs” with more overhyped IPOs. But, as Lamensdorf notes, this can be a “clear danger sign.” He elaborates:

Over-priced IPOs usually occur toward the end of a long bull run when stocks in general become very overpriced. Why does this happen? Generally because investors have lost their sense of reality. They are willing to buy stocks on hyped stories instead of the facts.

(It kills me that we can’t edit direct quotations. Why two different spellings for “overpriced,” Brad? Why?)

The last time we saw this kind of excessive exuberance and resurgence in failed IPOs was 1999, aka the dot-com bust.

The Takeaway:

The dot-com bust is the new “Black Monday” (which was the new 1929 crash, which was the new Panic of 1907, yada, yada, yada). It’s brought up every time a new indicator gives the impression that the current bull market run is ending. It’s the Godwin’s law of finance.

Now, I agree with Lamensdorf that many investors in the IPO market lost their ever-loving minds last year. Following the WeWork debacle, the IPO market all but imploded. Speculative venture capital investors became much more conservative after former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann took them for a ride.

The problem with screaming “the sky is falling” every time an indicator throws off a bearish signal is that, eventually, no one will believe you … Chicken Little.

This indicator is no different. Unlike 1999, the entire market isn’t driven by IPOs. Back then, investors were fixated on any and every internet dot-com company. It didn’t matter that most of those companies’ business plans were written on fast food napkins — if they had one at all.

Dot-com companies were the market back in 1999. IPOs are not the market in 2020, nor were they in 2019. If they were, we would be talking about WeWork like we talk about Bear Stearns and the financial crisis.

Is this explosion of losses in the IPO market concerning? Sure. Is it bad for speculative IPO investors? Definitely. Will it stop the current bull run? Nope.

The current market is so much more than just overhyped IPOs. It will take more than this one indicator to give a “clear danger sign” for the market as a whole.

In the meantime … you know what to do after you feed the pigs, right? You make bacon!

I can think of no better way to bring home the bacon than by joining Paul Mampilly’s True Momentum research service.

Paul sifts through the stock market’s scruff so you don’t have to. Instead, he recommends standout stocks that are primed to soar higher.

And as this bull run continues, you’ll need stocks with true momentum to keep the bacon — er, gains — rolling in.

Click here to see why Paul’s True Momentum is your perfect companion for the 2020 bull market.

Good: It’s All About the Benjamins, Baby

What you wanna do, be traders? Investment bankers? Gains-makers?

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) just made bank on earnings … we’ll call it money for short. The investment banking giant blew Wall Street’s expectations away, posting a profit of $1.30 per share in the fourth quarter. The consensus was looking for $1.02 per share.

Revenue soared 27% to $10.86 billion, bro. Now that’s some green. Know what I mean?

But Morgan didn’t make its money wheeling and dealing in equities and trading, no. Morgan got paid in the fixed-income market, where revenue surged 126% to $1.27 billion.

It’s certainly an unexpected turn of events, given that we’re 10 years into a bull market, but being less aggressive paid off big-time for Morgan Stanley.

It’s also a nice contrast to the woes plaguing the IPO market right now. A word to the wise from Morgan Stanley: You don’t need to be aggressive across the board to grow your wealth.

Better: Lifting the Cannabis Haze

Dude … wait … what happened? Oh, we were running a business! I guess we should, like, fix it or something.

I’m not sure if the cannabis market has fixed itself yet or not, but investors certainly think the sector has baked long enough.

Pot stocks have made a comeback in the past week, and former Great Stuff favorite Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB) is showing signs of life … thanks to Cowen analyst Vivien Azer.

Azer reported on the ICR Conference this morning, telling clients that Aurora’s management was working with creditors to restructure its debt.

She also noted that the Canadian cannabis firm looks to control spending and focus on sales. (Focus on sales?! Duuude … that’s a great idea! We should totally sell this stuff.)

As part of her note to clients, Azer reported that sales of Aurora’s Cannabis 2.0 products (such as gummies and chocolates) exceeded expectations. Azer then reiterated her outperform rating with a $4.61 price target on the stock.

So far this week, ACB shares are up nearly 40%. While this is good for investors, the stock remains down more than 70% in the past year. What’s more, Wall Street may not be convinced to buy back into ACB until the company reports earnings next month.

Best: Squeezing Mr. Robot

iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) is about to go on a rampage, and there’s nothing Will Smith can do about it this time.

Beaten down by an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, iRobot finally got some relief this week when both sides signed the “phase 1” trade agreement.

Doing so lessened tariff pressures on iRobot, which has an extensive supply/manufacturing chain running through China.

With a sigh of relief, investors returned to this outperforming home-robotics specialist in droves. The stock is up more than 15% in the past two weeks, with bullish sentiment driving IRBT above psychological resistance at $50. (And you thought psychology and robots didn’t mix!)

While the rally has investors excited, short sellers are more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. According to ShortSqueeze.com, more than 46% of iRobot’s float (i.e., shares available for public trading) are sold short. In other words, nearly half of all IRBT shares on the market are shorted.

This is a powder keg just waiting to explode for IRBT. All it’ll take is one little spark to send the shares skyrocketing as short sellers rush to avoid potentially heavy losses. (Just look at what happened to Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), which more than doubled in just a few months due to short sellers covering their sold positions.)

The catalyst for such a move could be something as benign as IRBT shares moving above technical resistance at $55. Or, it could be next month’s quarterly earnings report. Either way, IRBT is primed and ready to run.

You Marco. I Polo.

It’s Reader Feedback time!

It’s been a bit of a rough week, and I feel like we could use some encouragement around here. (I know I could, at least.) So today, I’m going to be a bit shameless and share some of the great things you have to say about Great Stuff.

Let’s start with this short-but-sweet email from Barbara M.:

Thanks for all the laughs! Love, love your writing! Keep it up. Get your mind out of the gutter, as someone just said.

Thank you, Barbara! But I’m afraid that if I took my mind out of the gutter, there wouldn’t be anything left of it. (My mind or the gutter … I’ll let you decide which.)

Next, we have this delightful feedback from Dawn B.:

OK, I admit, I just read my first Great Stuff email — love it! But tell me again, what happened to the little boy who said the king had no clothes on? (Isn’t that what the derivatives excuse was all about? “Don’t worry, I can’t explain it and you wouldn’t understand it anyhow, just the brainiacs in the financial markets, the nerds!”)

Love your sense of humor and your no-nonsense assessment of the information. What I’m curious about is all this information and misinformation — some of it coming from the president himself! So, how do we know what’s real and what’s Memorex?

Thanks again for a refreshing, witty, delightful read!

I completely forgot about those commercials! “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” Here’s a little Ella Fitzgerald commercial for those who don’t remember.

(For you young’uns out there: Back in the day, we had to record music and videos on these things called cassette tapes and VHS tapes. It was barbaric, and we liked it.)

I’m glad you love Great Stuff, Dawn! And if you’re worried about all the misinformation out there, just keep it dialed in to Great Stuff and BanyanHill.com. We’ve got you covered.

If you wrote in and I didn’t get to you, it might be because you cursed too $%*?@#! much. I still really appreciate the feedback, even if they won’t let me publish it.

And if you haven’t written in yet … what’s stopping you? Drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know how you’re doing out there in this crazy bull market.

That’s a wrap for today. But if you’re still craving more Great Stuff, you can check us out on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

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goldira01 · 5 years ago

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