Archive for May, 2020

Human-To-Human Marketing: 6 Steps to Cracking the Consumer Code – AiThority

If you want to study somebodys beliefs and perceptions, study their behavior, especially when they are alone.Despite moments of despair and fear during this unique moment in history, I find myself incredibly inspired by how this experience offers an opportunity to understand human behavior in ways we never have before.Social distancing, isolation, and quarantine, provide a rare some may say, once in a lifetime unobstructed portal into the human experience. An opportunity for marketers to acquire a higher level of customer loyalty and advocacy than ever before.For example, what content do customers like to watch when they have no distractions? How do they engage in personal relationships when no demands are pulling them away? What do they want to eat when their regular workout routines are disrupted? How do their private personas differ from their public personas? How does isolation create visibility into the core of who your customers are?These points of view offer a look into a new Marketing paradigm.

Brands that can tap into and implement these insights into their Marketing strategies will come out of this pandemic stronger and more resilient than ever. They will be the ones with a clear competitive advantage the ability to transform the way they engage their audiences forever.

Read more:4 Best Video Game Marketing Strategies

Everything today is about COVID. And the current conundrum among marketers is how do we communicate during this time? How do we connect? How do we balance the need to remain relevant and top of mind, while demonstrating compassion and empathy? Should we sell? Should we hold back? Its a hard balance.Some are getting it right.Some are failing miserably.

Marketers, by their very nature, focus on the problems directly in front of them. Driven by economic demands, they utilize machine-based connections and historical data to inform reactive, immediate decision making. With a heavy reliance (or rather addiction to) machine-assisted audience collection platforms (the walled gardens of the world), marketers are often too focused on short-sighted gain. Short-sighted gain almost always comes at the sacrifice of genuinely understanding the causal relationship between the customer and the data.

The uniqueness of this pandemic is making machine gathered and historical data less actionable. Marketers are being forced to take a more holistic view of data and the humans behind the data, in real-time. Marketers are also being forced to think through multi-faceted Marketing strategies that address the needs of today, in ways that build long-lasting brand resonance tomorrow.

This means marketers will need to use human engagement, not machines, for collecting customer insights; take more proactive risks (in this less reactive climate) and do more things that connect directly with their customers.

Human nature dictates that people tend to only accept, believe and surrender to the thoughts and actions that are equal to their emotional state.

And right now, people want empathy. They are asking for it. According toKantars COVID-19 Barometer, 70% of consumers are seeking reassuring messages from the brands they trust, and 77% want guidance for navigating the new normal. Not surprisingly, social media consumption has skyrocketed 61%, but what is surprising is the content and tone of the conversations. They are becoming less superficial and getting more personal.

To communicate with consumers in todays COVID landscape, marketers must focus on identifying their audience(s) current need states and understanding their emotional drivers.

Heres how.

Marketers have lots of historical online and offline behavioral data on their audiences. But now, thanks to captive content consumption brought on by COVID-19, marketers also have direct insight into how their audiences work, engage in content, and consume tangible or digital products while in isolation (or while practicing social distancing).

Mapping historical data with real-time behavioral trends of today gives marketers a more robust unified view of their audience(s). Marketers can then leverage this information to define distinct cohorts and build future-based predictive models, unlocking limitless opportunities for enhanced value exchange.

Read more:How Precise Location-Based Advertising is the Future of Mobile Marketing

The process illustrates a six-step blueprint for deriving customer intelligence signals in the current landscape.

Work with your agency or data partner to align what data you currently have in your arsenal. What online and offline data points can you see today? Are you able to combine and normalize this data, or is the data in silos? What media signals can you access? Do you have a DMP where you can unify this data against media signals?

Once you have a more unobstructed view into your dataset, run a correlation analysis to establish what data points are trending and align with the use cases most relevant to your brand.

This enrichment process can be done with your brands customer data platform, or with your agency/consulting partner in a data clean room. Use the correlation analysis gathered from step one to build your high-level cohorts. Refine these cohorts once first-party customer data is introduced.

Establish a direction on how to define need states for your brand a work back process that aligns brand positioning, creative and qualitative data. These needs states should then be validated in a quant methodology using context-based definitions from past media engagement.

Where are there glaring opportunities that your brand has not yet considered? Is there an opportunity for rapid messaging and creative changes? Work with your internal creative teams to pull through these opportunities, insights, and recommendations.

This is a data, creative and psychological intense process using the derived insights from step four to develop two to three loyalty triggers per cohort. Map your messaging to these cohorts. It will be essential to lead with empathy; weave in comfort, entertainment, and responsibility, and focus on a non-traditional value exchange for your audience(s) (less selling, more giving and helping).

Lead with a digital-first strategy. Ride the streaming wave (OTT and CTV). Enrich data with a messaging resonance score for ongoing media execution.

COVID-19 has created uncertainty for marketers who rely too heavily on walled gardens to tap one-dimensional audience data. Marketers who use this pandemic as an opportunity to create a new, higher level of empathic value exchange and consciousness will be the ones to better connect with their customers today while preparing for the new normal of tomorrow.

Read more:Time To Get Social: Prioritizing Social Marketing Strategies

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Human-To-Human Marketing: 6 Steps to Cracking the Consumer Code - AiThority

Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Marketing Automation Solutions Market – GlobeNewswire

New York, May 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Marketing Automation Solutions Market" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891685/?utm_source=GNW

MAS serve the small- and medium-sized business segment and the enterprise segment.MAS are a global technology, and this document focuses and analyzes trends in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific for the MAS market.

There are more than 30 vendors for global MAS.Through primary and secondary research, this document explores the drivers and restraints to the adoption of MAS for businesses during the global COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2025.

The virus originated in China in late 2019 and has spread globally in the last four months, resulting in national lockdowns, shelter-in-place declarations, social distancing, and an increase in remote working for businesses and educational institutions. The document presents two likely scenarios in the conservative and aspirational forecasts from 2020 to 2025 with the COVID-19 pandemic causing a market slowdown and a recovery period of 18-24 months for the conservative forecast, and an assumption that the COVID-19 virus is contained by August 2020 and the global markets will be able to fully recover by the end of 2020 for the aspirational forecast. Each forecast examines drivers, restraints, and trends that will lead to more businesses investing in MAS during the pandemic and the likelihood of future growth past the pandemic. The document also touches on a unique growth opportunity within the market and enterprise solutions industry as a whole with a predicted opportunity size in five years and a timeline for action. The document seeks to answer the following questions: What will be the effect of the global pandemic on global MAS adoption? What technology trends will be focused on during the global pandemic? How will the drivers and restraints impact the growth of the market? What are the conservative and aspirational forecasts for the MAS market from 2020 to 2025? What are customers looking to do with MAS adoption in the wake of the global pandemic? How will MAS help the global pandemic effects? What unique growth opportunity is in the market today? What are select MAS vendors doing to help their customers in the wake of the global pandemic? What is the future outlook of MAS adoption after the pandemic?Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891685/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Marketing Automation Solutions Market - GlobeNewswire

The pandemic exposes realities of failing to combat global censorship | TheHill – The Hill

When Americans watch White House press briefings on the latest COVID-19 updates, we can check and double-check the information were given against multiple online sources. Most of us living in the U.S. can take to social media to share information, get answers to important questions such as where to get tested, or even crowdsource where to go for certain supplies. In short, we are empowered to access information that helps us make informed choices. This power becomes even more vital, and the internet becomes a lifeline, when forced to shelter within our homes.

Now imagine the position of the 12 million people living in Wuhan, China. Every piece of information Chinese citizens receive about COVID-19 is filtered through the Chinese government on the internet or on state-run media outlets. They cannot double-check that information or share it with their communities. A cyber wall, in essence, cuts them off and this likely puts millions of people in mortal danger. Though China claims to be providing accurate data about the virus, a recent U.S. intelligence report shows that China not only knew about the outbreak long before the rest of the world but has consistently under-reported their total cases and deaths.

Vice President Pence recently said, The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming. This is just one example of how Chinas censorship of the internet endangers us all. The lack of information can be a death sentence for those living in closed societies, but it also hampered the rest of the world from containing the viruss global spread.

In the United States, we have known for more than a decade that lack of internet freedom poses a serious threat to the global community. For this reason, Congress has continually increased funding to support proven, large-scale firewall circumvention tools capable of providing uncensored internet access to millions of people living behind government firewalls.

Since 2012, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the Open Technology Fund (OTF) have been the two primary vehicles responsible for ensuring these tools are funded. Unfortunately, they have withheld sufficient funding from these technologies for nearly a decade. They may talk a good game, but in a town where money does the real talking, the truth is clear: the U.S. government continues to spend the vast majority of internet freedom funding on conferences, fellowships, research and development, and incubator funds.

The impact of that lack of funding is being felt more than ever today. Our research with leading circumvention developers has shown that, while average daily attempts to use their circumvention tools have more than quadrupled in countries hit by the coronavirus, there just is not any money to provide the additional bandwidth and processing capacities to serve demand. Without funding, these freedom fighters are unable to provide access to uncensored information that could very well mean life or death for the people who seek it. It is difficult to calculate the human cost on societies left in the dark.

It is folly to think that the 2019 re-establishment of OTF as an independent nonprofit and the sole grantee of the USAGMs internet freedom funds will lead to any meaningful change. There was hope that OTFs new status and more funding might have meant that government funds would finally flow with nimbleness, focus and determination. However, in the face of the deadliest global health pandemic in over a century, OTF seems intent on repeating past mistakes. Our recent plea that they rapidly fund these proven circumvention tools on an emergency basis was met with bureaucratic obfuscation.

Clearly, the internet is the most powerful tool for disseminating accurate information, opening minds and making informed choices. It is painfully clear that the safety of millions of people behind digital walls as well as those living in open societies depends on their getting uncensored, unfiltered information to protect themselves and those around them. Chinas spreading of disinformation during a global crisis demonstrates the urgency of tearing down these walls.

We must not give a pass to the USAGMs abysmal track record on oversight of its grantees. Nor should we excuse the shortcomings of an organization that has been sharply criticized by the Office of Inspector General and others for its handling of internet freedom funds. We must prevent the passage of H.R. 6621, the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act, in its current form and stop funding an organization that has proven it is not up to the task of aggressively combating global internet censorship. It is time to identify new and better ways to spend valuable U.S. funds that could effectively support internet freedom.

Katrina Lantos Swett, Ph.D., J.D., is president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice, which leads a coalition of human rights groups committed to opening the internet in closed societies. She is a human rights professor at Tufts University and the former chair of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.

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The pandemic exposes realities of failing to combat global censorship | TheHill - The Hill

This top VPN has a nifty new feature to circumvent censorship – TechRadar India

One of the world's top VPN providers has boosted its offering in an effort to help its users bypass state and corporate censorship

ProtonVPN has added a new feature to its Android app called Smart Protocol Selection, which the company says will likely be required when a network administrator, either a nation state or a telecom, wants to restrict access to parts of the internet. This is often done to prevent users from accessing social media, news sites or other information sources.

In these situations, there have been document cases where state actors have also blocked transmission protocols to prevent their citizens from using VPNs to circumvent these restrictions. Thankfully though, ProtonVPN's Smart Protocol Selection can now help circumvent this kind of censorship.

Transmission protocols are the underlying rules that govern how data is sent and received via ports on a device. As most mobile VPNs use a protocol called IKEv2, network operators that want to prevent people from using a VPN will block this protocol.

ProtonVPN's Android app now has the ability to automatically detect if IKEv2 is being blocked and switch to the OpenVPN protocol. It can also automatically search for unblocked ports in order to increase the likelihood of successfully establishing a VPN connection.

The majority of other VPN only use one protocol and can easily be blocked by network operators. ProtonVPN however, supports multiple VPN protocols and a wide range of ports to enable more reliable service in the face of censorship.

Founder and CEO of ProtonVPN, Andy Yen explained why the company decided to introduce its new Smart Protocol Selection feature, saying:

We believe the Internet should be uncensored. Open access to information is a bedrock of democratic society, and our mission is to create online tools that make digital freedom possible. Features like Smart Protocol Selection help our users get free access to the internet, even in the face of state or corporate censorship.

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This top VPN has a nifty new feature to circumvent censorship - TechRadar India

To the Algonquin Township Clerk: Censorship never works. Enjoy this video – Edgar County Watchdogs

Algonquin Township (ECWd)

We had previously written about Algonquin Township paying its attorney to try and censor a video obtained from Township cameras (here), which at the time did not work very well for them. According to their attorneys invoices, several communications were had between him and YouTube and are still the subject of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which the township will end up losing.

A National Press Freedom Organization even highlighted Algonquin Townships censorship efforts in their article (here).

Our original article with the video in it is (here).

Apparently someone, we believe either the Township Clerk, her family member, or the township attorney kept complaining to YouTube.

In March of 2020, YouTube sent us a message stating they had taken the video down because of a privacy complaint.

What YouTube apparently was not aware of, was this video was eventually obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, albeit after we posted it online, and is no longer subject to any privacy concerns with it being a public record of the township.

In the interest of full disclosure, we provide the video as it was received under the Illinois FOI Act from the McHenry County States Attorney Office.

To the Algonquin Township Clerk Karen Lukasik, or whomever finally succeeded in censoring and taking down a public video from YouTube, you should be ashamed for promoting censorship.

Try taking this one down. The other censored video of the Clerk and her family in the basement file storage room will be in an upcoming article.

From the previous article:

Why would Jennifer Curtiss, a Village of Fox River Grove Trustee, be going through files and a persons desk in the Algonquin Township Supervisors Office? Not only is this trustee from another community going through Algonquin Township records, she is left alone in an office she has no business being in.

At the 12:17mark of the video, Curtiss asks the Clerk: Karen, do you have the authority to be going through this stuff? Lukasik responds with:I can do whatever I want. Then, as if the Clerks authority is all encompassingto her, she admittedly starts going through Township employee Ryans stuff. She even tells Clerk LuKasikat the 13:16 mark of the video that she is going through Ryans stuff, which generated a response of;I dont give a shit.go through it all. By asking if the Clerk had authority to go through stuff you would think she would understand that the same authority question would apply to her.

This video provides clear indicators that the Clerk was not honest with her responses to our FOIA requests and is not a trusted keeper of the records. Additionally, as statutory custodian of the records, her response of I dont give a shitgo through it all, is sufficient to call for her immediate resignation in our opinion.

Any Clerk that brings in another person from another community and allows them to have free access to records to include leaving them in that office alone with those records is not protecting the records of the Township.

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To the Algonquin Township Clerk: Censorship never works. Enjoy this video - Edgar County Watchdogs