Grunts and groans in the e-mail sector.

Phillip Nones Business, Employment, Marketing, Media , ,

Want to work as a drone for middling pay? Then a job in e-mail marketing may be right for you!

There’s an oft-repeated axiom that success in business is 20% inspiration and 80% perspiration.

If that’s the case, then the field of e-mail marketing is proving the rule – in spades.

Recently, e-mail service provider MessageGears surveyed workers in the business-to-consumer e-mail enterprise space. All survey respondents worked in companies that deploy 10 million or more e-mails per month.  More to the point, two thirds of the respondents worked in companies that send more than 50 million e-mails monthly.

So, we’re talking about companies that are on their game when it comes to the e-mail discipline – presumably aware of the latest operational and analytical tools to make their businesses as efficient as possible.

Here’s what MessageGears discovered in its survey:

  • More than 90% of respondents that have purely strategic roles in e-mail marketing are “very satisfied” with their jobs … and ~81% would again choose the e-mail discipline as a career.
  • More than two-thirds of respondents who are unhappy with their jobs spend 50% or more of their time on operational work tasks … and half of those would choose a different career if they were starting over.

Clearly, the creative and strategic parts of e-mail marketing are more popular than the operational aspects. Indeed, respondents rated the following job tasks the most fulfilling ones personally:

  • Designing customer-centric e-mails
  • Creating e-mail content
  • Devising new ways to engage with customers via e-mail communications

On the other hand, the lowest marks were recorded for these tasks:

  • E-mail testing
  • Analytics
  • Data segmenting

Unfortunately, it’s these latter types of tasks that take up the majority of daily job responsibilities for many workers in the e-mail sector: According to the survey results, nearly half of the workers spend more time on testing, analytics and data segmenting than they do on anything else.

MessageGears claims that there’s a direct link between the heavy proportion of operational tasks and the lack of creativity and strategic thinking in the field of e-mail.

Whether this linkage results in a loss of efficiency may be open to question … but what it does suggest is that working in e-mail isn’t the most personally fulfilling path for a marketing career – at least for most people.

More about the MessageGears survey results can be accessed here.

Keeping law enforcement on the level.

Phillip Nones Government, Security, Social Commentary , , , , , , , , ,

Let’s go to the videotape … or not.

Video is supposed to be the “great equalizer”: evidence that doesn’t lie — particularly in the case of chronicling law enforcement events.

From New York City and Chicago to Baltimore, Charleston, SC and dozens of places in between, there have been a number of “high profile” police incidents in recent years where mobile video has made it possible to go beyond the sometimes-contradictory “he said/she said” statements coming from officers and citizens.

There’s no question that it’s resulted in some disciplinary or court outcomes that may well have turned out differently in times before.

In response, numerous police departments have responded in a way best described as, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” They’ve begun outfitting their law enforcement personnel with police body cams.

The idea is that having a “third party” digital witness on the scene will protect both the perpetrator and the officer when assessments need to be made about conflicting accounts of what actually happened.

This tidy solution seems to be running into a problem, however. Some security experts are calling into question the ability of body cameras to provide reliable evidence – and it isn’t because of substandard quality in the video footage being captured.

Recently, specialists at the security firm Nuix examined five major brands of security cameras … and have determined that all of them are vulnerable to hacking.

The body cam suppliers in question are CEESC, Digital Ally, Fire Cam, Patrol Eyes, and VIEVU. The cameras are described by Nuix as “full-feature computers walking around on your chest,” and as such, require the same degree of security mechanisms that any other digital device operating in security-critical areas would need to possess.

But here’s the catch: None of the body cameras evaluated featured digital signatures on the uploaded footage.  This means that there would be no way to confirm whether any of the video evidence might have been tampered with.

In other words, a skilled technician with nefarious intent could download, edit and re-upload content – all while avoiding giving any sort of indication that it had been revised.

These hackers could be operating on the outside … or they could be rogue officers inside a law enforcement department.

Another flaw uncovered by Nuix is that malware can infect the cameras in the form of malicious computer code being disguised as software updates – updates that the cameras are programmed to accept without any additional verification.

Even worse, once a hacker successfully breached a camera device, he or she could easily gain access to the wider police network, thereby causing a problem that goes much further than a single camera or a single police officer.

Thankfully, Nuix is a “good guy” rather than a “bad actor” in its experimentation. The company is already working with several of the body cam manufacturers to remedy the problems uncovered by its evaluation, so as to improve the ability of the cameras to repel hacking attempts.

But the more fundamental issue that’s raised is this: What other types of security vulnerabilities are out there that haven’t been detected yet?

It doesn’t exactly reinforce our faith in technology to ensure fairer, more honest and more transparent law enforcement activities. If video footage can’t be considered verified proof that an event happened or didn’t happen, have we just returned to Square One again, with people pointing fingers in both directions but with even lower levels of trust?

Hopefully not. But with the polarized camps we have at the moment, with people only too eager to blame the motives of their adversaries, the picture doesn’t look particularly promising …

3D printing: The newest market disrupter?

Phillip Nones Business, Employment, Manufacturing , , ,

3D printing was in the “popular press” a few weeks back when there was a dust-up about plans to publish specifications online for the manufacturing of firearms using 3D technology.

Of course, that news hit the streets because of the hot-button issues of access to guns, the lack of ability to trace a firearm manufactured via 3D printing, plus concerns about avoiding detection in security screenings due to the composition of the pieces and parts (in this case, polymer materials).

But 3D printing should be receiving more press generally. It may well be the latest market disrupter because of its promise to fundamentally change the way parts and components are designed, sourced and made.

3D printing technologies – both polymer and metal – have been emerging for some time now, and unlike some other technologies, they have already found a highly receptive commercial audience. That’s because 3D printing technology can be used with great efficiency to manufacture production components for applications that are experiencing some of the hottest market demand – like medical instrumentation as well as aerospace, automation and defense products.

One the baseline benefits of 3D printing is that it can reduce lead times dramatically on custom-designed components. Importantly, 3D printing requires no upfront tooling investment, saving both time and dollars for purchasers.  On top of that, there are no minimum order requirements, which is a great boon for companies that may be testing a new design and need only a few prototypes to start.

Considering all of these benefits, 3D printing offers customers the flexibility to innovate rapidly with virtually no limitations on design geometries or other parameters. Small minimum orders (even for regular production runs) enable keeping reduced inventories along with the ability to rely on just-in-time manufacturing.

The question is, which industry segments will be impacted most by the rise of 3D printing? I can see ripple effects that potentially go well-beyond the mortal danger faced by tool and die shops.  How many suppliers are going to need to revisit their capabilities in order to support smaller production runs and über-short lead-times?

And on the plus side, what sort of growth will we see in companies that invest in 3D printing capabilities?  Most likely we’ll be seeing startup operations that simply weren’t around before.

One thing’s for sure – it will be very interesting to look back on this segment five years hence to take stock of the evolution and how quickly it came about.  Some market forecasts have the sector growing at more than 25% per year to exceed $30 billion in value by that time.

Like some other rosy predictions in other emerging markets that ultimately came up short, will those predictions turn out to be too bullish?

Are there fewer (but more relevant) ads in our future?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary , ,

A new theory in the MarComm field is the notion that the future of advertising is one where people are confronted by less advertising – but the ads that are presented to them will be more relevant to their interests.

I’m pretty sure about the second part of that … but not so sure about the first bit.

Certainly, “fewer, more relevant ads” don’t appear to be what’s happening at the moment.

Think about the plethora of digital screens these days – not just smartphones and tablets and such, but also the ones on gasoline station pumps, in taxis, on airline seatbacks, in kiosks and on the sides of buildings – and it’s pretty clear that many more ads are being displayed to more people in more places than ever before.

Of course, many of these ads are selling products or services that are of little or no interest to most of us. Some people respond by blocking ads on their own personal devices, doing what they can to mitigate the onslaught.

As well, people seem to like the idea of commercial-free TV to the degree that quite a few are willing to pay for video-streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video that provide content to them without all of those pesky ads embedded within.

It’s also true that advertising and media platforms are becoming ever “smarter” and more data-driven, giving them the ability to replace mass-reach ads with ones that are customized to some degree so that different people see different ads. It isn’t a stretch from there to the notion that because these ads will yield better results for media platforms, total ad loads can be reduced while still increasing consumer engagement.

This idea is leading some people to predict that in the coming few years, consumers will experience significant change in how many ads they see and how relevant they’re likely to be.

In response to that, I have two counter-thoughts. The first is that with all of the buying choices that people have today — more than ever before — brand loyalty is being eroded.  And with less brand loyalty, advertisers need to stress “recency” – being the last message a consumer sees before purchasing a particular product or service.  This leads to the compulsion for advertisers to “be everywhere all the time” so that theirs is the last message the consumer sees before taking action.  It’s hardly in line with “fewer, more relevant” ads, unfortunately.

The other issue pertains to the basic economics of advertising. Fewer ads will happen only if their increased relevance is accompanied by a commensurate increase in their price.  I don’t see that happening anytime soon either, unfortunately.

Besides, heightened ad “relevance” isn’t really enough to overcome the issue of audience aversion and avoidance. On that score, fundamental attitudes have never changed:  The consumer’s relationship with advertising has always resided somewhere between “passive ennui” and “managed hostility.”

Today, of course, consumers can do more to “manage their hostility” to advertising than ever before, creating even more of a challenge on the ad revenue front.

What do you think? Are we indeed moving to an era of “fewer, more relevant” ads … or will we continue to deal with merely a more contemporary version of “all advertising, all the time?”  Please share your thoughts with other readers below.

The latest newsroom employment stats aren’t pretty — and unfortunately not “fake” either.

Phillip Nones Human Resources, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing, Social Commentary , , , , , ,

For people who might be hoping for a turnaround in the news industry that could take us back to a world more like the one we once knew – you know, with actual journalists writing primary-sourced stories and conducting formal fact-checking – those days seem less likely than ever to return.

In late July, analytics firm MediaRadar reported on the latest stats for print advertising in the United States – and they’re continuing a long slide by falling another 13% between January and April of 2018.

Even worse:  Most of the companies that stopped their print advertising during the period didn’t migrate their ad dollars over to digital. Instead, they stopped advertising altogether.

This by now numbingly-familiar trend in advertising is directly related to the financial well-being of the news media, as advertising has traditionally bankrolled the lion’s share of newsroom activities.

But with revenues dropping relentlessly, it’s having an outsized impact on newsroom employment. The Pew Research Center has just released stats on the number of employees in American newsrooms – and those figures aren’t pretty, either.

According to Pew, in 2008 America’s newsrooms collectively had approximately 114,000 reporters, editors, photographers and camera personnel on staff. As of 2017, the number had plummeted to around 88,000.

That loss of ~27,000 people represents nearly 25% of all the newsroom jobs that were existed in newspaper, radio, TV/cable and other information services in 2008.

Not surprisingly, the biggest decline was experienced in the newspaper segment – down a whopping 45% to ~39,000 jobs. The digital-native sector was something of a bright spot, with job numbers increasing by nearly 80% over the same period to reach a level of ~13,000 jobs in 2017.

But digital news personnel growth hasn’t been nearly enough to make up for the job losses suffered by the other newsrooms.

What’s more, even digital newsroom jobs aren’t particularly secure, with frequent restructurings being the order of the day thanks to the unsettled nature of the industry as it attempts to adjust to ever-evolving news-consumption preferences.

How are news media organizations responding? Give them credit for trying all sorts of gambits – from membership programs to paid newsletters, premium news paywalls and in-house content studios.

But how many of those efforts have proven to be financially robust enough to shoulder the costs of running a “legitimate” newsroom?  Whatever the number, it hasn’t been sufficient, because whether we like it or not, most people have become conditioned to expect their news and information delivered free of charge.  And while many may lip service to favoring traditional journalistic practices, most aren’t willing to put up their own money to pay for it as part of the bargain.

Meanwhile, the hollowing out of traditionally structured newsrooms continues on, with no end in sight.  I wonder if there even are other financial or business models that could stop the hemorrhaging of jobs in newsrooms.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Declining DUI arrests: What’s the cause?

Phillip Nones Demographics, Security, Social Commentary , , , , , ,

Looking back over the past eight years or so, something very interesting has been happening to the arrest rate statistics for people driving under the influence.

DUI arrests have been dropping – pretty steadily and inexorably.

The trend started in 2011, in which year an 8% decline in DUI arrests was experienced over the prior year. In 2012 the decline was 4.1% … in 2013, it was another 7.2%.

And arrest rates didn’t plateau after that, either. DUI arrests have continued to decline — even as police departments have continued to put plenty of cops on the beat for such purposes.

One of the most dramatic examples of the continued decline is in Miami-Dade County — the highest population county in the entire Southeastern U.S.  The Miami-Dade police force made DUI arrests in 2017 that were 65% fewer than four years earlier.

Look around the country and you’ll see similar trends in places as diverse as San Antonio, TX, Phoenix, AZ, Portland, OR and Orange County, CA.

There are common thread, in what’s being seen across the nation:

  • DUI arrest levels are down in major metro areas — but not necessarily in exurban or rural areas.
  • DUI arrest levels have declined the nearly all of the metro areas where ride-sharing services are prominent.

This last point a significant factor to consider:  The increasing popularity of ride sharing services has coincided with the drop in DUI arrests.

A 2017 University of Pennsylvania analysis found that in places where ride-hailing services were readily available, in most cases DUI arrests had declined upwards of 50% or more compared to just a few years earlier.

Ride-hailing services are particularly popular with younger adults, who like the smartphone apps that make them pretty effortless to use.  They’re also popular with people who are looking for more affordable ways to get about town compared to what highly regulated taxi services choose to charge.

Plus, the “cool” factor of ride-sharing leaves old-fashioned taxi services pretty much in the dust.

The few exceptions of locations where DUI arrest declines haven’t been so pronounced are in places like Las Vegas and Reno, NV – tourist destinations that draw out-of-towners who frequently take public transportation, hail taxis, or simply walk rather than rent vehicles to get around town.

With the positive consequences of fewer DUI arrests – which also correlate to reductions in vehicular homicides and lower medical care costs due to fewer people injured in traffic accidents, as well as reductions in the cost of prosecuting and incarcerating the perpetrators – one might think that other urban areas would take notice and become more receptive to ride-sharing services than they have been up to now.

But where taxi services are well-entrenched and “wired” into the political fabric – a situation often encountered in older urban centers like Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Baltimore — the ancillary benefits of ride-sharing services don’t appear to hold much sway with city councils or city regulators – at least not yet.

One might suppose that overstretched urban police departments would welcome having to spend less time patrolling the streets for DUI drivers.  And if that benefits police departments … well, the police also represents a politically important constituency, too.

It seems that some fresh thinking may be in order.

Social Media Mashup — 2018 Edition

Phillip Nones Demographics, Marketing Research, Social Commentary, Social Media , , ,

One thing you can say about social media platforms – their world is invariably interesting. Or as a colleague of mine likes to say, “With social media, you drop your pencil, you miss a week.”

The Pew Research Center makes it a point to study the topic twice each year in order to stay on top of the latest shifts in social media usage trends. Pew has just completed its latest report, and what it shows are some findings that confirm longer-term trends along with several evolving new narratives.

One thing hasn’t changed much: Facebook and YouTube continue to dominate the social landscape in the United States.  Facebook remains the primary social media platform for most Americans – with two-thirds of U.S. adults reporting that they use Facebook, and three-fourths of those saying that they access the platform on a daily basis.

What this means is that half of all U.S. adults are going on the Facebook platform every day.

If anything, YouTube is even more ubiquitous – at least in terms of the percentage of people who access the platform (nearly 75% of the respondents in the Pew survey). But the frequency of visits is lower, so one could say that the platform isn’t as “sticky” as Facebook.

No other social media platform is used by more than 35% of American adults, according to the Pew survey:

  • YouTube: ~73% of U.S. adults report that they use this platform
  • Facebook: ~68%
  • Instagram: ~35%
  • Pinterest: ~29%
  • SnapChat: ~27%
  • LinkedIn: ~25%
  • Twitter: ~24%
  • WhatsApp: ~22%

The chart below shows social media usage trends based on Pew Research studies going back to 2012:

Taking a closer look at social media behaviors reveals some stark differences by age group, and they portend even greater changes in the social media landscape as time goes on. In terms of being involved in “any” social media usage, Pew finds significant differences by age cohort:

  • Age 18-29: ~88% use at least one form of social media
  • Age 30-49: ~78%
  • Age 50-64: ~64%
  • Age 65+: ~37%

So, as the current population ages out, social media participation should go even higher.

But what about the composition of platform usage? Within the 18-24 age group, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter are used significantly more when compared to even the next oldest age group.  Most dramatically, for Snapchat the participation level is ~78% for the youngest group compared to just ~54% for those age 30-49.

Other notable differences among groups include:

  • Pinterest is much more popular among women (~41% use the platform) than with men (just ~16%).
  • WhatsApp is particularly popular among American Hispanics (~41%) compared to blacks (~21%) and whites (~14%).
  • LinkedIn’s niche is upper-income households ($75,000+ annual income), which correlates to higher education levels. Half of American adults with college degrees use LinkedIn, compared to fewer than 10% of those with a high school degree or less.

More detailed results from the Pew Research study can be found here.

Is the future of printed books written in disappearing ink?

Phillip Nones Content Creation and Content Management, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing, Social Commentary , , , ,

Considering the spread of digitization into seemingly every nook and cranny of our lives, how are book-reading practices changing?  The Pew Research Center looked into this question recently, and it found that those behaviors are definitely changing.

First, what hasn’t happened is a wholesale flight from printed books.  According to Pew’s January 2018 survey of ~2,000 American adults age 18 and older, fewer than one in ten respondents reported that they’ve pulled the plug completely on reading printed books.

But it turns out that ~30% are reading both digital and printed books.

As for the rest, nearly a quarter of the respondents reported that they don’t read books at all – in any format.

That leaves around 40% who report that they read books in printed form only.

It seems that we’re in the midst of a technologically driven change in behavior. A few short years ago the percentage of Americans reading any books in digital format would have likely been in the single digits.  But now just about half the population of book readers are doing so at least in part using digital technology.

I suspect that we’ll see continue to see a shift towards digital books – and likely at an accelerating pace.  Even though speaking personally, I tend to read “better” when I’m not in front of a screen because I find it easier to absorb the more extensive paragraphs that are more typical to long-form writing.

But that’s just me.  What about you? Are you still reading printed books exclusively, or have you gravitated to digital?  And do you see yourself going 100% digital eventually?  Please leave a comment for the benefit of other readers.

For brand loyalty … follow the money.

Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Marketing Research , , , , ,

When it comes to brand loyalty, are we mercenaries? Loyalists?  Cultists?

Or maybe we’re just lazy?

With major brands spending billions of dollars each year using various strategies to build and keep brand loyalty, these questions are important.

Recently-published consumer research by Maritz Motivation Solutions and Wise Marketer Group seeks to get to the nub of the issue.

Maritz/Wise surveyed nearly 2,100 American adults age 18 and over via online questionnaires and consumer research panels. The respondents were filtered to include purchase decision-makers or key influencers within one or more of six major consumer categories:

  • Airline travel
  • Banking services
  • Credit card services
  • Hotels/lodging
  • Restaurants
  • Specialty retails

The results of the research reveal that brand loyalty isn’t one monolithic mindset, but consumers tend to fall into one of four categories, as follows:

  • “Mercenaries” – Loyal to brands that pay them to be loyal: ~55% of respondents
  • “True loyalists” – Stay true to a brand because people connect with it above and beyond any explicit incentives to do so: ~30%
  • “Sloths” – Can’t be bothered to switch brands due to inertia: ~8%
  • “Cultists” – The brand represents their personal identity: ~7%

What the Maritz/Wise research also tells us is where people come down on brand loyalty attributes is based more on attitudinal characteristics than something that can be segmented easily based on conventional demographics.

In other words, brand loyalty characteristics aren’t driven by age, gender or income level; mercenaries and cultists are found in their expected proportions across the spectrum of loyalty.

In another finding, when it comes to the “transactional” nature of brand loyalty, the research discovered that the “art of the deal” is based on money.

Gift cards, cash-back and credits are overwhelmingly preferred forms of reward for brand loyalty – and these apply to everyone no matter where they may land on the brand loyalty spectrum.

So, the next time we hear the old saw that “money can’t buy love” … we all know that the truth is a bit more nuanced.

Social media platforms navigate the delicate balance between free speech and censorship.

Phillip Nones Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media , , , , , ,

Everyday Americans weigh in with their views.

The past few months have seen people like Mark Zuckerberg doing mental acrobatics attempting to explain how social media platforms like Facebook intend to control the spate of “fake news” and “hate speech” posts, comments and tweets that are so often the currency of interactive “discourse” online.

And now the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute is weighing in with the results of a survey in which ~1,000 Americans were asked for their opinions about the challenges of monitoring and controlling what gets published for the world to see.

The survey, which has been conducted annually since 1997, gives us insights into Americans’ current attitudes about censoring objectionable content balanced against free speech rights.

Asked whether social medial companies should remove certain types of content from their pages in certain circumstances, sizable majorities agreed that companies should do so in the following cases:

  • Social media companies should remove false information: ~83% agree
  • Social media companies should remove hate speech: ~72% agree
  • Social media companies should remove personal attacks: ~68% agree

At the same time, however, when asked whether the government should require social media sites to monitor and remove objectionable content, those opinions were decidedly mixed:

  • Strongly agree with having government involved in these activities: ~27%
  • Somewhat agree: ~21%
  • Somewhat disagree: ~20%
  • Strongly disagree: ~29%
  • Don’t know/not sure: ~3%

So the key takeaway is that Americans dislike objectionable content and think that the social platforms should take on the responsibility for monitoring and removing such content. But many don’t want the government doing the honors.

A mixed result for sure — and one in which governmental authorities could well be d*mned if they do and d*mned if they don’t.

More information about the survey findings can be accessed here.