Mediaboss Marketing

Take a look at Kleins new website, and youll notice clear section headings, consistent text colors and fonts, concise information and a comprehensive tool to help prospective students find the majors they are interested in. These features enable easy navigation and access to information, creating a seamless user experience.

In a vast internet landscape it can be difficult to establish a distinct digital presence. Thats where Temples web collaboration center (WCC) comes in. Since 2016, it has been tasked with improving the infrastructure of the universitys web presence by ensuring it contains accurate information, displays a consistent brand identity and uses a single content management system (CMS).

You know youre at a Temple site no matter what school youre looking at, said Rhoda Charles, associate director of web content in Strategic Marketing and Communications. Temple has a great presence here in Philadelphia, and going forward people beyond our region can use our site as the key to getting to know us.

Prior to the existence of the WCC, Temples web presence consisted of hundreds of independently operated websites, which meant millions of web pages published using dozens of different CMSes. Important academic information appeared in multiple places with sometimes inconsistent or outdated information, creating a headache for all members of the Temple community.

The WCC is a collaborative effort of teams from both Temples Information Technology Services (ITS) department and the universitys centralized communications department, Strategic Marketing and Communications. ITS creates web services; the web technology team codes and develops tools; the user experience (UX) team conducts user research; web content producers write web page copy; and project managers organize it all.

It's great that we are leveraging core Temple systems and data to drive real-time information on the web, said Joshua Wharton, director in Information Technology Services. This collaboration between Strategic Marketing and Communication and Information Technology Services led to an immediate and substantial jump in interest in Temples programs and is setting the university up for future success.

One of the WCCs most important projects has been to transition degree program information to a university degree search tool to make it easier for prospective students to find it. In partnership with Temples 17 schools and colleges, the WCC is in the process of migrating academic content from roughly 100 sites to this one centralized tool and hopes to complete the migration by November 2023, with Klein College of Media and Communication and Fox School of Business having recently made the shift.

Drupal 9 is the central CMS being used. It is an open-source CMS that allows users to directly log in, manage their content in a user-friendly interface and publish real-time changes. Working with a few schools and colleges at a time, the WCC has assisted these campus partners through increasing the visibility of programs in search, ensuring programs are properly vetted through the universitys data hub, and benefiting prospective students by providing web-friendly, easy-to-read, actionable content.

Weve established a foundation that allows Temples digital presence to speak with the same voice and visual language thats reflective of Temples broader brand expression, said Tom Cassidy, senior director of web technology in Strategic Marketing and Communications.

The WCCs work has significantly improved the universitys online presence and user experience. Temple ranks high in search results for many different keywords, as well as for schools and colleges and certain topics.

How all these pieces work together and look alike creates continuity and a great experience for users, said Olga Dressler, associate director ofUX strategyin Strategic Marketing and Communications. Theyre finding us more easily and feeling more confident that theyre getting the information theyre looking for. Research shows that people before were having trouble finding information because of the inconsistent and differing sites, but now users can complete the expected tasks and see we have a modern, consistent experience.

Schools and colleges benefit from the WCC as well by eliminating the cost of an external vendor to build and update their webpages, playing an active role in the development of their content and presence and maintaining their individual look and feel while still falling under the general Temple brand.

This spring, a new financial aid websiteFinancing Your Educationlaunched, creating more transparency early in the enrollment cycle around financial aid types and the financial aid process for prospective students and their families.

In addition to finishing the degree program pages and continuously updating the content and framework, the WCC is working with Temples various administrative units to get them on Drupal. The teams ultimate goal is to bring every Temple page onto it.

What we do on the web enhances what we do elsewhere within our marketing and advertising, Dressler. The way we make decisions based on data and research is not how a lot of other universities approach similar work. Were a unique presence in higher education.

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Temple's web collaboration center strengthens brand and user ... - Temple University News

By Jennifer Weiss

How Matt Choon, the founder and CEO of Bowery Showroom, turned his interests into revenue

Matt Choon got his first taste of investing with sneakers.

He started trading them for fun when he was around 12. As a teenager, he didn't have much money, and he recalled the rush of taking $200 in birthday cash to SoHo to buy a used pair of statement sneakers from a stranger on Facebook.

"Teenage Matt definitely was obsessed with the internet and looking cool," he said.

When he came home with his 2003 Nike SBs, his mom "flipped out" at the price he'd paid, he recalled. But as he bought more sneakers to resell or trade for a profit, "she realized it was me becoming an entrepreneur."

Choon, 26, went on to found multiple businesses: Potion, a CBD brand; Bowery Showroom, a retail space and hub for creatives in Lower Manhattan; and Bowery Agency, a marketing firm. The showroom and agency are part of Choon's Lower East Ventures LLC and have pulled in five figures of revenue per month in recent months, according to records provided to MarketWatch. Choon said all three businesses are consistently profitable and gross five to six figures per month combined.

A native New Yorker, Choon grew up on the Lower East Side and went to elementary school in Chinatown and middle and high school in Chelsea. In middle school, he met his best friend Takeshi Fukui, now his business partner and roommate in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

After high school, Choon got into CUNY's prestigious Macaulay Honors College, which allowed him to study tuition-free at Baruch College. He switched gears there from studying finance to entrepreneurship, and got his feet wet starting an app and hustling through business competitions.

He tried and failed at day trading, and recalled the pain of losing a hard-earned $3,000 by the time he closed his Robinhood account.

His luck changed with crypto. Choon told MarketWatch he sold stocks and put the cash in his bank account into Ethereum -- most of what he had at the time. He saw the low five figures he invested soar to more than $100,000 and then fall, he recalled, still landing, at the time, at more than double what he'd invested. He went on to earn much more.

He worked as an economics tutor during college and said he took $1,000 of his earnings from that job to start his CBD brand, Potion. The brand started in fall 2018 when he bought a bunch of CBD gummies from a local deli, which he repackaged, rebranded and resold for a profit at the Hester Street Fair.

He went on to get a 9-to-5 digital marketing job at a crypto firm and sold CBD gummies on the weekends at parties and street fairs, growing the business. He was earning enough from Potion that he decided to leave his full-time job in August 2019.

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic era. Choon owned a pair of vintage Air Jordan 4s that he took to a shoe repair shop in Bushwick. He recognized the owner as a shoe designer who used to have a store in the East Village. After a conversation, Choon said the man took him to the back, where he had a slew of vintage designer clothes, and told him there were even more in a warehouse. Choon bought a black garbage bag stuffed with clothes for $300.

"We're talking about like $500 T-shirts that are crumpled up, smelled like bleach, dirty, disgusting," Choon recalled. "But to me it was like a treasure." He bought many more bags from the seller, and washed, ironed and tagged them to get them ready for sale. He posted what he was doing on TikTok.

He returned to the Hester Street fair with cannabis products and this time, vintage clothes. Interest exploded thanks to his TikTok posts.

"So now I'm this micro influencer overnight," he said.

As he continued to buy more clothes to sell at fairs, he needed a place to store them. He found a store on Craigslist, "really cheap because it was still during Covid," and in serious need of repair.

He used some of his crypto earnings to get the space ready for a sample sale, and at that sale, he sold enough to fund renovations.

These days, the Bowery Showroom is a retail space for clothes and cannabis products, and Choon is CEO. Brands pay to have their clothes displayed in the store, which attracts creatives and influencers. A tattoo artist and a direct-to-garment printer add to the offerings.

Through his marketing agency, Choon offers services from concept ideation to completion, employing videographers, editors and social media writers to make content. There's also a hospitality component.

Looking back, Choon noted he never had business plans for his businesses before he started. He learned as he went along.

"My biggest teacher is the experience itself," he said. "Understanding what my customers wanted, what I wanted, what performed well, trial and error, those are all things that got us to this point. But my professional background, things I was interested in when I was young, provided me the foundation."

Julia Barrett-Mitchellcontributed to this story.

-Jennifer Weiss

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-05-23 1538ET

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This 26-year-old went from trading Air Jordans to starting three ... - Morningstar

The following article was written by Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow at Wharton, adjunct professor at Penn Engineering, and chief digital officer at EVERSANA; and Hamilton Mann, group vice president, digital marketing and digital transformation at Thales.

In recent months, the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), exemplified by OpenAIs software ChatGPT, has propelled AI into the global spotlight. However, amidst the fascination with the new super-human capabilities offered by AI, there is an emerging algorithmic divide fueled by both disparities in technology access and literacy, along with cognitive biases inherent in AI models trained on available data. Bringing these challenges to the forefront will allow us to openly manage them across industry, creators, and society.

While the ubiquity of AI in our lives is evident, it is important to acknowledge that its impact is not uniform across the globe. Beyond the well-known digital divide, the development and proliferation of AI have given rise to an algorithmic divide. This divide separates regions where AI thrives from those where it remains largely unexplored. Brookings Mark Muro and Sifan Liu estimate that just 15 cities account for two-thirds of the AI assets and capabilities in the United States (San Francisco and San Jose alone account for about one-quarter). As humans increasingly interact with algorithms, we are bound to undergo adaptations that could reshape our thinking, societal norms, and rules. And while new AI technologies such as large language models are poised to disrupt white-collar jobs maybe even more so than blue-collar jobs, professionals from underserved communities face a major gap in access to broadband and computing technologies that are vital to upskilling ahead of this shift. The algorithmic divide needs to be front and center for business and political leaders as we navigate this new wave of AI-driven transformation so this disparity does not get worse.

As AI becomes an integral part of our lives, its imperative to examine the ethical and responsible principles associated with its presence in society. While the focus often rests on biases transmitted from humans to machines, it is essential to recognize the vast array of biases ingrained in human cognition. These biases extend far beyond our individual or collective awareness and include confirmation bias, survivor bias, availability bias, and many others. Acknowledging these biases is crucial because attempting to eliminate them from the intelligent systems we develop is an unattainable goal for humanity. Just as data privacy has become more of a universal right for citizens, proposed legislation like the European Unions AI Act and The Algorithmic Accountability Act in the U.S. are attempting to add transparency and protect consumers against AI bias.

Eliminating one bias often introduces another. The impact of AI on human existence becomes a paramount concern, surpassing the issue of biases themselves. Creators of artificially intelligent entities bear the responsibility of continuously auditing the societal changes caused by these systems and optimizing positive effects while minimizing harm. As cognitive biases can have profoundly negative consequences, their amplification through AI raises critical questions. What are the potential negative effects of artificially augmented cognitive biases when computing power acts as an amplification factor? Are companies prepared to take responsibility for the unintended consequences that AI-based agents may impose on humans as we rely more on machines to augment our decisions? Can AI aid in reducing biases in datasets, and how do we determine which biases are tolerable or dangerous?

The algorithmic divide needs to be front and center for business and political leaders as we navigate this new wave of AI-driven transformation so this disparity does not get worse.

A vital concept for AI creators to grasp is that the introduction of one AI in society inevitably gives rise to another a counterpart or alter ego. As AI advances and achieves unprecedented efficiency, a complementary AI emerges to restore equilibrium. This Dual-Sided Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) effect ushers in an era of machine-to-machine interaction and competition. It is crucial for AI creators to ensure that human agency remains central in this landscape. The defects and qualities of AI, which derive from their human creators, present a superhuman challenge due to the often-invisible biases inherent in these systems. OpenAI has developed its own classifier to allow users to understand if a written response was generated by a human or AI and also the ability to reference where the underlying data was sourced from.

As the new wave of AI technologies propels us towards a new paradigm for work and life with both promise and peril ahead, what can leaders do now to head off the looming algorithmic divide that will grow if left unchecked?

The algorithmic era, already unfolding in various parts of the world, necessitates contemplation of humanitys role in the face of AI-driven machine-to-machine interactions. Developing responsible practices that prioritize humans is not merely a competitive advantage or a localized endeavor. It is not a competitive advantage that would be the exclusive property of any specific company. Any other practice could not, and should not, be contemplated.

Just like any other disruptive tech wave like the internet, it will be critical for society to guide the evolution of generative AI in a direction where the benefits are available to the full spectrum of innovators and end-users who want to leverage this powerful technology, especially those with the least access today.

Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and notable scientists are asking for a break on the development of artificial intelligence superior to version 4 of ChatGPT. Now is the time for leaders to define the fundamental and universal principles to guide their organizations use of powerful AI technologies in the future, to ensure we shape an ethical AI landscape that serves humanitys best interests.

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The Looming Algorithmic Divide: Navigating the Ethics of AI - Knowledge@Wharton

Stuff

Ikea held a ceremony last week to kick off construction of its first Auckland store in Sylvia Park.

Ikea has acquired a 12.5% stake in an Auckland company that turns plastic waste into roading and resins used in the creation of flooring and furniture.

Six-year-old start-up Nilo and a subsidiary of the Swedish furniture giant have entered into a development and access agreement that will see Inter Ikea able to use Nilos patented plastic waste-derived adhesive in the production of wood-based boards.

Nilo converts waste plastics into commercial resins that replace harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, still commonly used for engineered timber.

Andrew McIntosh of Ikea Innovation Ventures has joined Nilos board of directors to help accelerate the technology, as part of the buy-in arrangement.

Nilos team of chemists and engineers were motivated to create technology that repurposed plastic waste after finding just 9% of the 350 million tonnes of plastic waste generated every year is recycled.

Nilos approach to the creation of this adhesive shows real potential, and we are hopeful the collaboration will be mutually beneficial, McIntosh said.

Ikea is committed to our strategy of being people and planet positive. The investment in Nilo shows our commitment to working with innovative startups that can support and help accelerate the Ikea material innovation agenda.

Ikea last week held a groundbreaking ceremony in Auckland to mark the start of construction on its first New Zealand store in Sylvia Park. The 34,000m store is set to open at the end of 2025.

Nilo won financial backing from Sir Stephen Tindalls K1W1 fund and Icehouse Ventures Sustainable Technology Fund two years ago.

At the time Icehouse commented on how Nilo was making an impact by transforming waste streams into wealth.

Supplied

Waste plastic like this can be turned into resins and roading by Nilo.

The business was founded by internet marketing entrepreneur Tim Williams, who currently serves as managing director, and is led by chief executive Glen Willoughby, an adviser to the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and virtual CIO for San Francisco-based Singularity Labs.

The companys original investor was an indigenous tech company which invited First Nation Canadian and Mori investors on board, including a collective of more than 50 Mori whnau.

Chris McKeen/Stuff

Ikea madness has building in New Zealand for almost three years now. This clip of the announcement that Ikea is committed to New Zealand is from 2021.

McIntosh said the performance and physical qualities of Nilos technology showed promise. We want to support Nilo and help develop the adhesive with a mutual ambition to get it into scaled trials. From our position as a shareholder we can support the path forward and look forward to working closely with the management and board.

Nilo chief executive Glen Willoughby said Ikeas investment in Nilo was a fabulous moment.

Our team has worked tirelessly on this, and to have our technology recognised by one of the worlds leading firms with deep expertise in the wood-based board market provides huge validation of what Nilo has created. The knowledge and expertise Inter Ikea will bring will help Nilo progress our technology immensely.

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Ikea invests in Auckland plastics deep tech firm Nilo - Stuff

To varying degrees and from varying perspectives, news media cover many boilerplate issues: the economy, immigration, abortion, racism, foreign policy, defense, crime, gender identity, parental rights, election integrity, and bureaucratic meddling in the political process among them.

These and other issues impact our lives to varying degrees, but the way they are covered - or not covered - often exposes media bias that fuels the debate and brings the nation's political temperature to a rapid and perilous boil.

An October 2022 Gallup Poll reported that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed have little or no trust in the media to report "fully, fairly and accurately." Of those, 38 percent said they have "no trust at all" in the media while only 7 percent expressed "a great deal of trust" in the media.

Before conservatives nod in agreement, however, it should be noted that media bias exists at both ends of the political spectrum. Fox News is at least as guilty from the right as any liberal outlet like CNN or MSNBC is from the left. Both sides abandoned objectivity and subtlety a long time ago, and they're not likely to ever go back.

Witness Thursday night's political "town hall" with former President Donald Trump and Fox News pal Sean Hannity. The only unknown coming into the event was whether Hannity would bring roses or a box of Godivas to the one-hour lovefest. Hannity and, later, Trump supporters in the audience lobbed soft questions at their favorite candidate and teed him up with criticism of incumbent President Joe Biden. Hannity couldn't resist showing a replay of Biden falling down earlier in the day during his commencement appearance at the Air Force Academy.

It was a far cry from CNN's 90-minute "town hall" on May 10 when interviewer Kaitlan Collins grilled the former president but got run over by him any time she tried to dispute his false claims about a stolen 2020 presidential election.

Last year, Hannity was an on-air cheerleader for Trump-endorsed Senate candidates, including football star Herschel Walker, the GOP nominee in Georgia. Just before the election, Walker appeared on Hannity's prime-time show with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who not only rooted for Walker but urged viewers to contribute to his ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

And this is what passes for political commentary on Fox News.

However, liberal media - a redundancy if ever there was one - have nothing to be proud of, either. Their bias is almost as conspicuous and as much omission as commission.

Once upon a time, objective media would have pounced on evidence that the FBI had pre-emptively hoodwinked media into blocking news coverage about Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop. Instead of investigating even a little, most media willingly believed the FBI's pre-election lie that the laptop story was merely Russian disinformation - nothing to see here.

Real and social media either panned, ignored - or in some cases outright censored - the story shortly before the 2020 election when it first appeared in the conservative New York Post. They made little if any effort to verify its authenticity, even after the election. Such verification and subsequent coverage of what the laptop supposedly contains might have changed the election outcome, but the FBI left nothing to chance. A year later, CBS News quietly acknowledged the laptop does in fact belong to Hunter Biden. Better late than never? Not really.

However, there has been no sense of urgency outside of the New York Post and its corporate partners Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, to report what the laptop contains and its possible links to the president himself.

That Trump lies is a foregone conclusion, and media are justified in pointing that out. But when President Bill Clinton looked the nation in the eye in 1998 and said he hadn't had sexual relations with Monica Lewinski, his lie was rarely if ever called that by the media. It was, instead, called a "denial," "a claim," or at worst a "false claim," as was Hillary Clinton's simultaneous insistence that the scandal was merely a "vast, right-wing conspiracy."

More recently, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, past-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was "plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight" between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. Outside of Fox, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, no one in the mainstream media has said Schiff lied after a lengthy federal investigation turned up no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. That the investigation even originated under false or flimsy circumstances has also been largely ignored by most of the mainstream media, most conspicuously the major television networks.

Some media bias is less tangible. It's often not difficult on Sunday mornings, for example, to determine the political persuasion of guests on NBC's Meet the Press. Liberals/Democrats are greeted like close friends by host Chuck Todd, and the questioning more resembles an amiable lounge chat than a news interview. Conversely, conservative/Republican guests often spend most of their air time on the defensive, often interrupted and challenged during Todd's more pressing interrogation.

During his record 16+ years as host of Meet the Press, the late Tim Russert would affably grill guests from all persuasions. Russert was a liked and respected newsman whose interviews could take guests to hell and back, but most of them enjoyed the ride. Despite having worked for Democratic officials before joining NBC, Russert never showed his political stripes on the air.

At ABC, the Sunday morning news program is anchored by George Stephanopoulos, who served as communications director and senior advisor during Clinton's first term as president. Like Todd, Stephanopoulos often comes off as an attack dog with Republican guests and a lap dog for Democrats.

In fairness, though, they at least invite differing political views. On Sunday mornings, Fox's Maria Bartiromo all but waves pom poms for her exclusively Republican guests while chiming in to advance their conservative views. You won't see many Democrats on other Fox News programs, either.

American viewers, however, seem to be voting with their cable boxes. CNN, which long ago lived up to its claim as "the most trusted name in news," is now a shell of its former self. Having veered hard left with its commentators and content, CNN now ranks a distant third in ratings behind Fox and MSNBC.

It would be nice to find a TV network that simply reports the news, the way Fox once claimed it did with those "fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide" schticks or the way CNN did when it really was "the most trusted name in news."

We know that a house - and a nation - divided cannot stand. Sadly, however, if we're waiting for any media to heed and adhere to that by simply reporting instead of editorializing and taking sides, it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

The time for some very intensive news media introspection is at hand, but don't hold your breath waiting for that, either.

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Right or left, the media doesn't hide its bias - theday.com