Mediaboss Marketing

Our mission is to democratize access to marketing talent and create economic opportunityon both Operator and Publicist, say Lara Vandenberg Operator founder and CEO.

Not a day goes by when Kieran Hannon isnt asked for marketing advice or mentorship on LinkedIn. The 58-year-old CMO of Belkin, OpenPath and WellAir rarely responds, not because hes opposed to helping strangers, but because doing so has added little value to his life. If anything, time spent discerning legitimate queries from scams has taken away from the time he needs to manage teams in the thousands. But he will lend his expert advice on Operator, a platform that enables people to hire marketing executives for an hour.

Its like MasterClass meets Cameo, says Operator founder and CEO Lara Vandenberg. Its about providing never-before access to marketing talent.

The platform, which launched Tuesday, features marketing leaders including Hanon, as well as Anisha Raghavan, CMO of Walgreens Boots Alliance; Wen Zhou, cofounder and president of Philip Lim; and Eric Toda, global head of social marketing at Facebook and 96 others. The talent sets their own rates, which ranges from $200 to $1,000 per hour.

Vandenberg, 29, came up with the idea while working at her marketing and public relations freelancer marketplace, Publicist. Since founding the company in December 2019, many of its 100-plus clients, including Amazon, FedEx and Grail, have asked Vandenbergs six-person team to provide mentorship on marketing, product development, market outlook and operations. Meanwhile, executives have asked to offer their services on a freelance basis. Until now, the answer to both groups has been no. Operator, Vandenberg says, is meant to meet that demand in a way thats complementary to Publicist.

Everyone weve spoken to has this pain point: they get inundated with requestswhether it's LinkedIn or email, says Vandenberg. There hasnt been a way to consolidate the serious buyers versus people who just want to pick their brain.

Originally from the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, Vandenberg first moved to the U.S. in 2014 for a consulting gig with the Westfield World Trade Center in New York City. From there, she moved into senior marketing roles at Archetypes and Knotch before raising funds to start Publicist in 2019 from Shannon Brayton CMO of Bessemer, Outcast Agency founder Margit Wennmachers and former Forbes CEO Mike Perlis, among others. She has used these funds and cash from profitable Publicist to launch Operator.

Not just anyone can brand themselves as an executive-for-hire on Operator. Experts must be nominated to join the network before being vetted by the Operator team. Once on the platform, they can choose what projects they work on and when. On the other hand, anyone can join Operator as a prospective customer at no cost. They only pay after an expert accepts their project.

I love knowledge sharing. As a marketer, youre a perpetual student, says Hannon. This is a way of giving back.

Vandenberg, who relocated from New York City to Puerto Rico during Covid-19, says Publicist has grown its revenue by 15% every month, as its 4,000-plus users increasingly seek out short-term gig workers. So, why start a second company?

Covid has really accelerated the move to contract work. These leaders have become a lot more available and open-minded to being flexible and accessible, the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 Marketing & Advertising alumna says. And were really trying to keep Publicist and Operator as complementary platforms.

According to Statista, 57 million people work as freelancers in the United States. If the gig economy continues to grow at its current pace, freelance laborers will make up the majority of the American workforce by 2027. Gig platforms like Fiverr and Upwork have grown in lockstep, their revenues increasing by over 100% and by 37% in the first quarter of 2021.

Vandenberg has seen similar growth, noting a handful of gig workers have made $100,000 on Publicist and consider the work they do through the platform as their full-time jobs. Our mission is to democratize access to marketing talent and create economic opportunityon both Operator and Publicist, she says.

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Execs For Hire: The CMOs Of GoFundMe, Mansur Gavriel And Madison Reed Will Give You Advice On This New Platform - Forbes

As it looks to continue to expand its ad business, and maximize its commercial opportunities, Reddit has announced the launch of its own in-house creative strategy agency, which will provide assistance for businesses looking to tap into Reddit for promotions.

The new agency,called KarmaLab,will be made availableto all of Reddits ad partners "via a scaled offering dependent on campaign objective and need".

As explained by Reddit:

"KarmaLab is a team of best-in-class creative and strategic minds -those who know the ins and outs of Reddit and are backed by media, marketing and ad industry experience that make them uniquely positioned to guide and collaborate with brands as they find their home on Reddit and in culture."

The team will be led by Will Cady, Reddits former Head of Creative Strategy, and will provide social listening and trends reports, community management assistance, creative workshops,campaign development and more.

"KarmaLab is a full-service creative strategy agency delivering campaigns that resonate with and add value to Reddit users, while driving meaningful results."

The announcement adds to Reddit's growing ad offering, which now includes a range of video ad options, including Trending Takeover placement, providing engaging, impactful ways to reach the platform's highly engaged communities.

Which is Reddit's real strength in this respect. While Reddit's audience reach is lower than what you can see on other platforms (at 52 million DAU), Reddit hosts thousands of highly active, niche subreddit communities, which enables advertises to reach people based on very specific interests.

Of course, Reddit users have not traditionally been overly receptive to ads, but that is changing over time, and through the assistance of KarmaLab, Reddit will look to help businesses create more native-looking ad campaigns that will drive better response, and help to maximize reach.

It's the next step in Reddit's ad expansion, which has seen the company put more focus on cleaning up its platform, and providing a safer place for ad placement.

Indeed, last June, Reddit removed thousands of its most controversial communities as a result of an update to its rules around hate speech. That change came in response to the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US, and that has also made the platform a more secure, open option for brands who may have hesitated on Reddit promotions in the past.

With the assistance of KarmaLab, it could become an even more powerful promotional tool for many brands, while Reddit also recently established a newenterprise partnership agreement with Omnicom Media Group(OMG) that will see OMG's thousands of ad clients gain access to a range of strategic and commercial benefits in order to enhance their Reddit advertising efforts.

Reddit's ad system is growing, and that could mean new opportunities. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate your Reddit marketing potential.

See original here:
Reddit Announces New Creative Strategy Agency to Help Brands Maximize their On-Platform Campaigns - Social Media Today

AR is set to become a much bigger focus in the coming years, with the big tech companies investing big in AR tools, and new devices like AR wearablesset to hit the consumer market in the near future.

That will open up whole new possibilities in regards to marketing, communications, discovery, etc.

And Snapchat is also looking to be a key player in this next shift - as Snap notes:

"Now is the moment for Augmented Reality. Consumers are excited about it, and brands have a unique chance to boost engagement, elevate consumer experiences and increase revenues. Today, there are more than 100 million consumers shopping with AR online and in stores."

To get a better understanding of the potential for AR,Snapchat recently teamed with Deloitte Digital to interview over 15,000 consumers across 15 nations, in order to measure the top consumer AR trends, and what they might mean for the future of gaming, shopping, communication,media and entertainment, and more.

And there are some important insights of note - you can read Snapchat's full 'Consumer AR Global Report 2021'here, but in this post, we'll take a look at some of the key highlights.

First off, Snapchat notes that AR usage, based on current adoption trends, is set to become hugely influential over the next few years.

As per Snapchat:

"AR adoption is tracking with the mobile usage boom we saw in the mid 2000s: By 2025, nearly 75% of the global population and almost all smartphone users will be frequent AR users."

That underlines the significance of AR development. While it still feels like a way off, and it may not seem like the technology that we primarily use, right now, to add digital masks and dog's ears to our faces in video clips will eventually become a major influence over how we interact, in a huge range of ways, the data shows that it is indeed moving in that direction.

AR will eventually play a key role in how we do almost everything, in a connectivity sense. And that will be the next major shift for marketing.

In more specific terms, Snapchat's research shows that AR is already influencing people's shopping process, with more than 100 million people currently shopping through the use of AR-enabled processes.

The expanded potential of these tools, including virtual try-on options and digital product placement (like 3D visualizations for furniture) in the home, will build on this, making AR an even bigger consideration for more businesses over time.

That becomes even more significant when you also consider the rise of eCommerce, which has seen a significant boost as a result of the pandemic. Indeed, Snap's research also shows that more consumers are now finding value in AR as an assurance and demonstration tool.

Which adds another wrinkle to the growing use of AR for digital product promotions and display, again pointing to broadening utility, for many, many brands.

In essence, based on these trends, it's not hard to see AR becoming the essential add-on component for online shopping, which will then help to form habitual behaviors that leads to increased AR adoption in even more applications and processes.

As Snap notes:

"Consumers continuously expect more personalized and engaging experiences that enable them to interact with the world. The companies that embrace change can become dominant industry players those that dont, fall behind competitors and sink."

And if you can't see the potential rising as yet, you soon will. Snapchat has also shared this timeline for the growth in AR adoption - going from 'Tech' to 'Toy' and eventually 'Totality', in regards to its expanded usage.

There is a heap of potential here, and Snapchat's AR report outlines it in an easy-to-follow way, with the added insight of consumer usage and interest rates to underline each point.

Again, it may not seem like AR will become an all encompassing tool, but the trend notes do point to this next stage, and when fully-functional AR glasses become available to consumers, that next shift will happen fast.

Best to get ahead of the game now, and ensure you're prepared.

You can read Snapchat's full, 74-page 'Consumer AR Global Report 2021'here.

Excerpt from:
Snapchat Publishes New Report on Rising AR Adoption Trends, and What They'll Mean for Marketers - Social Media Today

Jackson, Mississippi April 30, 2021 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on April 29, announced $31 million in funding to advance restoration work and improve water quality in the Gulf Coast states impacted by theDeepwater Horizonoil spill. The funds will support three priority programs and related project work approved by theGulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration (RESTORE) Councilas part of a multi-year process of collaborative planning and public engagement throughout the Gulf.

USDAs Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), along with state forestry agencies in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi will leverage the funds to restore forest health, improve coastal ecosystems and provide technical and financial assistance to private landowners.

For more than a decade, the Forest Service and NRCS have worked side-by-side with private landowners and state agencies to support Gulf recovery efforts through an all-lands approach, said Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen. Our continued support in these collaborative projects will help to generate lasting ecosystem improvements and ensure clean water for millions of Americans downstream.

Most of the land in the Gulf Coast is privately owned, so working lands are pivotal to restoring habitat and improving water quality, said Mississippi State Conservationist Kurt Readus. Working side-by-side with farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to improve their operations enables us to take better care of our natural resources, including our coastal ecosystems.

Healthy forests improve water quality and quantity by refilling groundwater aquifers and filtering rainfall and flowing water, said Joe Fox President of the National Association of State Foresters and Arkansas State Forester. Nationwide, and in the Gulf states, forested land is primarily owned by private landowners who are most likely to manage their forests with technical and financial assistance provided by state forestry agencies. To enhance the health of the Gulf watershed, the Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi forestry agencies will use proven social marketing techniques to double their outreach to private landowners, who will in turn, implement best management practices that sustain healthy forests for decades to come.

The investment in these priority projects is part of theFunded Priorities List (FPL) #3bannounced Thursday by the RESTORE Council.

The USDA funded activities through FPL #3b include:

Read this article:
USDA, RESTORE Council to Invest $31 Million for Priority Restoration Work in Gulf States Impacted by The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - Picayune Item -...

This is slightly unexpected.

According to a new report from Axios,TikTok is currently testing a new tool that would enable brands to recruit employees on the platform, and promote their internal workplace culture to potential candidates via TikTok clips.

As explained by Axios:

"The pilot program is designed to help people find jobs on TikTok and connect with companies looking to find candidates. It's also meant to help brands use TikTok as a recruitment channel."

Axios says that the new recruitment platform, as it currently stands, is not integrated within TikTok itself, but is accessible via a separate web page, which can then be linked back to the TikTok app. Through this process, brands are able to post jobs that can be shared through their TikTok clips, while users are able to share a TikTok video resume to apply, rather than a traditional document.

The company is currently testing the tool with a beta group of companies.

It's an interesting development, a sort of new take on LinkedIn for younger users, which provides direct connection via the medium that they're increasingly comfortable with.

And it actually aligns with broader usage trends, because as reported by The Washington Post back in March, TikTok is already becoming an active space for career guidance and advice.

As noted by The Washington Post:

"TikTok, widely known for 15-second videos of cranberry juice-drinking skateboarders andgroup dance challenges,is fast emerging as a force in the job search ecosystem at a time when unemployment remains high, a new generation looks for their first jobs and pandemic isolation leads to hours of mindless scrolling."

Which seems unlikely, but also somewhat logical at the same time, particularly for those organizations that are seeking candidates with social media skills. Which, given the rise of eCommerce over the past 12 months, is a lot.

Indeed, according to a recent survey SkyNova,TikTok is the social platform that business owners currently want to crack the most, with the rising app still leading the download charts, and on track to become the next billion-user app. With that in mind, it makes sense that businesses would consider utilizing TikTok for recruiting for such roles - yet even beyond that, users are increasingly engaging with career development-related posts within the app.

According to TikTok, videos using the hashtag #careeradvice generate more than 80 million video views a day per day, while career advisers like Tessa White are making use of the short, engaging clips to provide actionable tips.

Really, it's just speaking the evolving language of modern web users. Digital consumption trends clearly show an ever-increasing adoption of video content, and short video content, in particular, is on the rise, be it via Snapchat Discover's episodic, vertically-aligned presentation, and now, TikTok clips, which enable creators of all types to condense a lot of info down into easily digestible, engaging posts.

But what's particularly interesting here is the expanding use case for the app. When TikTok first began, it was all goofy dance clips and Vine-like visual gags, or responses to internet memes that served little value outside of shallow entertainment. Which may well be enough within itself to sustain the app over time, but newer usage trends like this show that TikTok's user demographic is changing, and that people are finding increased value, and opportunity, via the app's quick, creative clips.

TikTok's own data underlines the same, with older users engaging with hashtags like #parenting (4b views) for example, and #momlife (20b), facilitating new use cases, and new, potential marketing value, for the app.

The adoption of career advice clips further highlights this expansion, which likely points to there being a lot more to TikTok than you might think, while the platform's highly attuned, highly personalized algorithms are also helping to fuel these new shifts, again broadening your TikTok horizons.

In essence, you can't take TikTok at face value, and if you think you know what it's all about, it may be time to reassess.

Spending some time in the app, searching by hashtags relevant to your business, and your niche, could uncover a whole other subculture of short clips that you never knew existed.

And soon, it might just help you find your next best job candidates.

See the rest here:
TikTok is Exploring New Job Listing and Recruitment Tools - Social Media Today