Brands would be well-served to do far more cultural analysis of their advertising. Here, Dove managed to offend and create headlines with a three-second GIF intended for social sharing. It was shared, alright, but for the wrong reasons, from the brand’s perspective. Unfortunately, brands must recognize other perspectives, looking up from their internal perspective before unleashing creative work that offends.

A cultural audit practice would be a solid step toward consistent awareness of the implications of an advert (Dove and Pepsi), campaign (Tory Burch), or company mission (Bodega).

Soap company Dove has apologized for a racially insensitive Facebook ad it said “missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully.” The advertisement, apparently for some sort of soap but which has since been deleted, showed a black woman wearing a brown shirt removing her top to reveal a white woman in a lighter top. A third image shows the white woman removing her shirt to show a woman of apparently Asian descent.

Source: Dove Apologizes for Racially Insensitive Facebook Advertisement – NBC News

A sign that the signal-to-noise ratios in media are declining. Merely finding something to watch in the scroll-and-click/tap user interface is a burden that reduces actual engagement. Note, too, that the article mentions that by 2020 “only one in 10 consumers will be stuck watching TV only on a traditional screen.” Other data released today reaffirms this projection. This doesn’t mean people will watch only on the mobile screen. When they want to share an experience, a net-connected big screen is more useful and, though the data isn’t here to prove it, may be the actual destination for sports and entertainment consumption.

Mobile searching may lead to big-screen binge watching.

The total average time viewers spend searching for content increased by 13% to 51 minutes per day over the past year, the 2017 Ericsson ConsumerLab Media Report found. Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/overwhelmed-viewers-spend-51-minutes-per-day-searching-shows-watch/

Source: Overwhelmed viewers spend 51 minutes per day searching for shows to watch – The i newspaper online iNews

One elemement of media that needs to be disclosed consistently: When is the media reading you to target your cognitive biases? It’s a practice that reinforces the impact of fake news and deceptive marketing.

Russian operatives set up an array of misleading Web sites and social media pages to identify American voters susceptible to propaganda, then used a powerful Facebook tool to repeatedly send them messages designed to influence their political behavior, say people familiar with the investigation into foreign meddling in the U.S. election.

Source: Russians took a page from corporate America by using Facebook tool to ID and influence voters – The Washington Post

Bias in artificial intelligence is more pernicious than threats to labor, according to Google AI lead John Giannandrea argues. Storytelling, as a practice of deconstructing complex technology to expose the underlying assumptions driving algorithms, is a potential remedy.

Many of the most powerful emerging machine-learning techniques are so complex and opaque in their workings that they defy careful examination (see “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI”). To address this issue, researchers are exploring ways to make these systems give some approximation of their workings to engineers and end users.

Source: Forget Killer Robots—Bias Is the Real AI Danger – MIT Technology Review

We live in the midst of our own creation, a hurricane of information that threatens to overwhelm useful knowledge, cultural values, and cognitive abilities. It is also the greatest opportunity for humanity to share the stories of life, personal and social needs, great ideas, inspiration, and so much more.

“One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before,” Rosenstein says. It may or may not be relevant that Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls.

Source: ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia | Technology | The Guardian

Once price becomes secondary, values become the primary driver of purchases. Gen Z is tuned into how their spending impacts the world. They hate the inauthentic. Storytelling will be the key to moving their intentions.”Personalization” here means that the story must be connected to their individual values.

The challenge is to develop stories that bridge trivial differences of opinion while engaging the audiences about important issues. The environment, economic equity, and health, for example, will serve as important themes in marketing as a result.

“It is clear that Gen Z will be different from Millennials and the generations before them on many levels — on top of being the most culturally diverse shopper population to date, Gen Zers are already forming unique purchase motivators and preferences,” said Robert I. Tomei, president of consumer and shopper marketing and core content services for IRI. “It will be critical for manufacturers and retailers to have a deeper understanding of these young shoppers as they gain influence and purchasing power, and leverage the power of personalization to reach them.”

Source: Price is not the biggest driver for the first native digital generation | Chain Store Age

DIY storytelling for small business. Everyone can get into the storytelling marketing. The challenge is telling the story well, being consistent with the business’ customer experience, and listening carefully to how the audience responds. Stories will be continuously delivered in the narrative era, like software on the cloud is today.

Adobe is adding a new paid feature to help small businesses create branded media content. The feature, called Branded Stories, lets you make graphics, web pages, and video stories. You can set one consistent template or theme to be present across every piece of media. Adobe lets you easily lets you change a font or color throughout all of your creations and templates at once, while notifying you of how many places are being changed. Adobe Spark only offers a small selection of fonts, like Calluna, Raleway, and the very Pinterest-friendly Wanderlust Shine. It also offers font suggestions to pair your selected typeface with another that Adobe thinks is aesthetically complementary.

Source: Adobe’s free visual storytelling tool Spark adds premium features – The Verge

The opportunity now is to use less prominent channels, such as short pre-roll videos on YouTube or influencer-shared links to get your brand in front of an audience at the right time. Then, extend the relationship with deep content and customer experience that keeps people coming back until they’ve purchased, and beyond. It is not always necessary battle for attention during the Super Bowl, because the active purchaser is seeking information — and helpful insight — in many channels.

Slice and dice your own audience in myriad ways in order to understand their attributes and path to purchase: researchers vs. intenders, sedan vs. SUV seekers — what makes each of these customers tick? Where do they research online? How can you, reach them earlier and speak to them better?

Source: 1 Brand, Many Audiences: 3 Levels Of Intent 09/19/2017

YouTube kills paid content in its game streaming channels, opting for revenue splits among producers based on viewership. The company may extend this to its other programming channels on YouTube, which would be a significant change in the economics of creativity.

YouTube is getting rid of one of its first paid content models: The Google-owned video site announced Tuesday that it is discontinuing its paid channels initiative, effectively killing the option to sell the content of individual channels to paying subscribers. Instead, YouTube is expanding its sponsorship model, making it available to all YouTube Gaming creators and testing it with some creators within the main YouTube app.

Source: YouTube Kills Paid Channels, Launches Sponsorships Across Gaming App | Variety

Facebook’s rapprochement to the ad industry includes clear warnings that the company cannot control everything it publishes. It is introducing tools to pre-screen influencers whom a brand may engage through Facebook.

Carolyn Everson, is on a mission to make Facebook safe for brands. Everson, the Facebook vp of global marketing solutions, has made the twin issues of transparency and brand safety a cornerstone of her talks with the advertising world for much of the past year.

Today, at the technology conference Dmexco, outside Cologne, Germany, Everson released an op-ed outlining the path forward for Facebook to address problems on both fronts, giving marketers reliable data about their ad campaigns and establishing content ground rules for the social network, especially in its new video hub called Watch. That’s where any video creators can host a channel for their show, and share in ad revenue just like on YouTube.

Source: Carolyn Everson’s Brand Safety Manifesto, Translated | Digital – AdAge