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George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Email: georgewill@washpost.com.

The Bronx, the only one of New York Citys five boroughs that is on the American mainland, once had a sociological as well as geographical distinction. In the 1930s it was called, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, the city without a slum. It was the one place in the whole of the nation where commercial housing was built during the Great Depression. In the third quarter of the 20th century, however, there came, particularly in the South Bronx, social regression that Moynihan described as an Armageddonic collapse that I do not believe has its equal in the history of urbanization.

Of the several causes of descent, there and elsewhere, into the intergenerational transmission of poverty, one was paramount: family disintegration. Some causes of this remain unclear, but something now seems indisputable: Among todays young adults, the success sequence is insurance against poverty. The evidence is in The Millennial Success Sequence published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and written by Wendy Wang of the IFS and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and AEI.

The success sequence, previously suggested in research by, among others, Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nations largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor.

A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort have had children before marriage. Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that. Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox millennials who put marriage before the baby carriage have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

One problem today, Wilcox says, is the soul-mate model of marriage, a self-centered approach that regards marriage primarily as an opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment rather than as a way to form a family. Another problem is that some of the intelligentsia see the success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms. And as AEI social scientist Charles Murray says, too many of the successful classes, who followed the success sequence, do not preach what they practice, preferring ecumenical niceness to being judgmental.

But what if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.

Reversing social regression using public policies to create a healthy culture is akin to nation-building abroad, an American undertaking not recently crowned with success. Wang and Wilcox recommend education focused on high-level occupational skills, subsidizing low-paying jobs, and public and private social marketing campaigns, from public schools to popular media, promoting marriage toward the end of the success sequence.

Continued here:
Will: The success sequence way out of poverty - The Columbian

Two years ago, Charlie Cole became Tumisfirst chief digital officer, charged with bringinga digital mindset to the organizationandworkingwithmarketing, merchandising, creative and distribution ona comprehensive digital strategy. Cole now leads a digital team of over 20 people that reports to the CEO and takes care of online analytics, customer relationship management and direct display.

If we just talk about title names, by hiring a CDO, you are sending a message to the whole organization that digital is the most important thing to do, said Cole. If you have the CDOreport to the CMO, you are sending a message that digital is one level less than marketing.

Alexa von Tobel,who was appointed as the first CDO for financial institutionNorthwestern Mutual this year, agreed that the CDO and CMO roles are now complementary. She said her team is accountable for key digital client touch points like the production of financial plans, paying bills and reviewing balances, while the marketing team is responsible for advertising, field marketing, sponsorships and more to strengthen the Northwestern Mutual brand.

Essentially, the digital team is responsible for driving digital client and adviser experiences, from mobile towebtoemerging platforms, she said.

The CDO role would seem an anachronism at a time when nearly every company is steeped in technology. But far from fading, the CDOrolehas in many cases grown in importance at many legacy businesses still struggling to adapt to the rapid changes of digital technology. The CDO role of the past tended to fall under the marketing department and was often focused on e-commerce. Many CDOs were something of figureheads, without their own departments. But at Tumi, NorthWestern Mutual and other brandsincluding Nike and Morgan Stanley,the CDOrole has matured and taken on greater responsibilities.

For instance, Lisa Schneider, who was promoted from chief digital product officer to CDO for Merriam-Webster last year, thinks this title change reflectsboth greater responsibilities and overall organizational structure shifts. As CDO,Schneiderdoesnt only oversee digital product management, design, UX and product development as she used to but also editorial, marketing, social media and analytics.

Thisreflects the companys understanding that digital isnt a single department but simply a part of how we do business, said Schneider. These groups all roll up to one CDO so that we can ensure communication and collaboration under a unified digital strategy as part of our core DNA.

From a recruiters perspective, Ryan Bulkoski, partner of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, saidthat CDOs have become more business-oriented, and some even report directly to CEOs. CMOs are more about branding, PR and marketing communications, while CDOs are focused on user experience, user interface as well as product management and development. Sometimes, we see CDOs even own engineering resources, he said.

89% of marketers feel advertisers have a responsibility to pull ads from extremist websites. Check out the rest of our original research in this report.

Jerry Bernhart, a marketing recruiter with over 30 years of experience, agreed, saying that today most big companies want CDO to be a separate executive role from CMO and sit side by side withthe CEO. CDOs are now even put in the queue for CEO succession, said Bernhart. For instance, Kevin Walsh, former CDO for Carats Asia Pacific operations, was promoted to the agencys CEO in April of this year.

A new CDO study by PwC analyzingthe worlds 2,500 largest public companies shows that 19 percent of them designated an executive to lead their digital efforts in 2016, up from 6 percent in 2015. And over 60 percent of CDOs were hired in 2015.

Meanwhile, CDOs are more likely to have a technology rather than a marketing and sales background. The PwC study shows that in 2016, 32 percent of CDOs primary expertise was ina technology field, compared to 14 percent a year prior. In comparison, the percentage of CDOs with marketing, sales and customer service backgrounds fell to 39 percent in 2016 from 53 percent in 2015.

Thats because big companies no longer view digital as just a marketing tactic like social media and mobile apps. Digitalhas broadened to encompass questions like how companies can apply emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence and augmented reality toareas like consumer experience, recruitment and employee engagement, said Chris Curran, chief technologist for PwC.

CDOs are no longer just the digital czar they are the orchestrator within their company, said Curran.

Louisa Wong, who became the first CDO forDentsu Aegis Network last year, echoed that sentiment, saying that 70 percent of her time is spent on providingstrategic consultancy for clients, helping them understand how technology and data transform not just digital but also all the media formats.You need to understand the data and new technology not only from Facebook andGoogle but also from Oracle and IBM, said Wong.

Every organization is different, but Bulkoski said when companies hire a new CDO, functionslike digital marketing, digital analytics, social media and user experience design that historically reportedto the CMOmayshift to the CDO.The growing complexity of the position means its difficult to fill. Bernhart said that, onaverage, he conducts only one CDO search every three months because its sotime-consuming and resource-intensive.

The position requires a wide range of competencies: You need to have strategic skills, understand data and technology, execute for business results, be able to work in a complex environment and sit at right hand of the CEO, he said.

Michael Adler, senior managing partner for executive search firm AC Lion, added that his biggest challenge when looking for CDOs is figuring out if those candidates have the balance of strategic and executional abilities.A lot of C-level executives dont have the ability to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, he said.

Bernhart and Curran think the role may present cultural challenges ina legacy organization. CDO candidates likely come from startups or entrepreneurial companiesand may view legacy businesses as old-fashioned entities that move too slowly. And the CDO may be much younger than most people on the senior executive team.

Some organizations want to shake things up and look for a CDO with startup experiences, while others may not realize what they get themselves into until they have hired the person, said Curran. A person from a nontraditional background may question lots of things. You need to prepare for that.

Read more here:
'Not just the digital czar': How the role of chief digital officer has evolved - Digiday

Social Advertising via Facebookis available now and offers three types of campaigns: overall branding to engage customers, sales to generate more leads, and service to increase parts and service revenue. These solutions provide the auto industry the opportunity to grow their brand awareness on the largest and most-used social platform in the world Facebook. GSM in-house experts work closely with dealerships to set up ads that extend the life of ongoing mail and email campaigns.

GSM realized this critical component would help drive opportunities to dealerships, resulting in increased traffic to the dealers site. The inclusion of this channel is positioned around the fact that automotive ads on Facebook have been known to have a 2x higher click-through rate than a typical Facebook ad.

GSM understands every client has a unique set of challenges and goals. Because of this, they are continually delivering competitive advantages to drive increased traffic, sales, and market share.NaKedra Campbell, Sr.Product Manager of Digital Marketing Solutions, defines GSM Social Advertising as, an ideal opportunity to conquest new customers and connect with in-market buyers. GSM is always looking for new ways to strengthen a dealers marketing strategy. Social media advertising pushes beyonddelivering relevant messages that connect, persuade and promote a dealership and its offerings.

GSM Social Advertising is a progressive and critical component of an omnichannel strategy; it propels a dealers marketing mix, and extends the life of their ongoing campaigns. Ultimately, this is an opportunity for dealers to close another communication gap in the automotive customer journeycreating a more unified presence across all touch points.

See the article here:
GS Marketing Launches GSM Social Advertising - MarTech Series (press release)

UBS may have spent the last two years fine-tuning its content creation arm Unlimited with partners Vice and Vanity Fair, but it has admitted this was at the expense of good old-fashioned marketing prompting it to reallocate budgets into more direct channels.

The financial services company found itself investing "too much in content creation" and not enough into making sure people saw it, forcing it to slice 10% off the contracts with its editorial partners to pump into actually marketing the content it had spent so much to make.

Everybody believes the content they produce is going to change the world of everyone. They believe it is going to be groundbreaking, changing world initiatives," said Thierry Campet, global head of marketing communications at UBS Wealth Management, speaking at Mobile Marketing Summit yesterday (7 July).

"The truth is, we believed it as well, but if you don't push your content in the good old fashioned way - and thats not TV anymore but paid social media marketing - if you don't push it they won't see it. That was a huge learning for us - we really thought the content would sell on its own and it didn't."

Campet was brought into UBS in 2015to shake up the marketing output from simply pushing products to establishing brand affinity. He describes this job at a more than 150-year old brand as "a daily fight".

"It is difficult for a bank to stop talking about what it knows, especially when they have been doing it for 150 years. You have to tell them, they are not interested. Speak about what wakes them up in the morning, and it is not you," he said.

Enter Unlimited, the marketing boss' ploy to establish UBS as a brand with a purpose. But a key issue UBS faces is measuring the success of its marketing initiatives when it takes a minimum of two years to convert a consumer from one bank to another, ruling out immediate results.

With this in mind, Campet said he is trying to measure the success in "many ways", given he can't rely on traffic converting into customers as first planned. He confessed that Unlimited is for now acting solely as a form of brand advertising - a 30-second ad in the shape of a website - rather than something that actively drives business results.

I thought people would read Unlimited and go to UBS and sign up, he said. But Unlimited plays a little bit of a role of TV ad - I don't know how much traffic it will generate the day after, but my objective as a KPI is to make people come and then come back.

Right now my KPI is to have as much traffic as possible, then I will figure out how to get them to UBS, he adds.

Despite its mission to drive brand affinity, UBS branding in Unlimited is subtle. When Vice and Vanity Fair publish the funded content on their own platforms and social media channels, the signpost Powered By UBS is used, an admittedly discreet disclaimer because the purpose of Unlimited is to make the content of UBS known as opposed to the brand UBS, Campet said.

I believe people will engage with us through our content rather than through our name, he added. Campet hopes the more content people read, the more they associate that content with its wider purpose of the bank.

The more money you have the less interested you are in talking about money, Campet said. As a consequence we engaged too many times in conversations with potential prospects about money, where people are really interested in your purpose. Over the last few months we have realised it hugely revolved around three things: families, business, and purpose.

Unlimited was created with that in mind - how can you engage a conversation with very wealthy people without ever talking about finance, he added.

Purpose is the driver of Unlimiteds editorial agenda. It has two editorial lines; Does wealth make us rich anymore? and Is it a matter of time?. The notion of living past the age of 100 is no longer a pipe dream with the advancement of technology, but the second question asks whether there is point in having extra years if those years arent used to serve a purpose.

Can I build something that 300 years later will still be there and I will be remembered for? Campet said.

The marketing heads focus over the next two to three years lies in funneling an editorial strategy, having completely underestimated the impact of consistent editorial agenda.

We are a big bank, everyone loves to think that what is being produced is going to break the house. The truth is - no one piece will because it is coming from all over, he said. My objective is Having people from varying horizons to work together in their own way but following a thread which is common in all of them.

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UBS cuts 10% of Vice and Vanity Fair content budget to push into social marketing, admitting it got the mix wrong - The Drum

Mondelez, the manufacturer of Oreos cookies, has made marketing mistakes at times. Like when it sent out single nickel-sized mini Oreos to households as samples. Even splitting the top and bottom wouldn't make them go far.

But the company is usually savvy, particularly when it comes to social marketing. It pulled off 40 million likes on for Oreos. And when its Honey Maid graham crackers brand used a same-sex couple with child in an ad and was buffeted with hate mail, Mondelez turned the entire thing into a viral win with a brilliant YouTube video.

So forgive me if I raise an eyebrow at the reports about how avocado Oreos might be the next flavor to show up in stores. There is something going on -- Mondelez is making itself beloved by consumers while trolling the press and getting attention for a big promotion that won't be over for another week.

Mondelez has been running a promotion called the #MyOreo Creation Contest. People submit flavor ideas and someone, whose idea is chosen, will walk away with $500,000. Sweet. Literally.

People have sent in all sorts of ideas, as you might expect. Apparently Mondelez made limited batches of some for the people who made the suggestions. The flavors include:

And, in addition, galaxy, unicorn, and ... avocado. Galloping green glob, the last one sounds terrible. (And I'm hoping no unicorns were hurt, either.) That led to people getting some of these and a few media outlets running headlines like Avocado Oreos Are A Thing Now, So If You'll Excuse Me I Have To Go Leave The Planet and Oreo Is Making Avocado, Unicorn, and Carrot Cake Fan-Requested Flavors.

Some in the media are either over-reacting, having fun, or both. But, not to worry, there is no way Mondelez is going to mass produce avocado Oreos, with or without corn chip-flavored cookies and a suggestion to dip in glasses of salsa. This seems like a smart way to get positive attention from customers who post about getting their suggested flavor, manage media coverage, and extend attention for the contest. Plus, the contest doesn't end until July 14.

Not to doubt how far some people will go, including eating avocado sandwiched between two Oreo cookies, like in the video below.

Overall a smart move -- the marketing twist, not necessarily this video. However, there is one place Mondelez may have messed up on the social front -- the domain oreos.com is owned by someone else and available for anyone who wants to pay enough. But, to put everyone's minds at ease, no one has avocadooreo.com. Yet. Sometimes you have to look toward the little things in life.

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Oreos Pulls a Genius Social Media Move by Freaking People Out - Inc.com