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By: Brandi Lalanne, VP, Research & Insights
MMI Agency

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At the time of writing, ChatGPT is down due to high demand, thereby confirming that the below was written by an actual human who is clacking away on a keyboard.

For those unfamiliar, ChatGPT is the most recent form of OpenAI’s large language model. GPT-3, which powers it, is the largest neural network ever produced. To simplify things without losing magic, ChatGPT takes user inputs and then, based on a prediction on what the statistically most likely useful result would be, spits out text that is convincing enough to seem like a human wrote it.

We have seen chatbots before, but the intelligence of ChatGPT sets it apart. The underlying model powering the ‘GPT’ of ChatGPT obtained its smarts by learning from all available data on the internet—text, books, wikis and more. The data made it smart, but the intelligence comes from its ability to provide persistency in conversation. Rather than each input you provide serving as a single instance, ChatGPT will remember your inputs over time and take them into account to breathtaking detail. While some are relating ChatGPT to Google, I would counter to suggest that this is what Apple, Microsoft and Amazon had envisioned their digital assistance products would one day accomplish.

To be clear, ChatGPT is not a search engine aggregator. It predicts its output based on the words you choose and the sequencing of those words. Its output has a likelihood or probability, not an accurate answer. This is, of course, what makes it human-like. If you think of it playing the role of a type of advisor rather than a type of calculator, the benefits become more abundant:

·     Provide ChatGPT with a list of items in your pantry and refrigerator, your dietary restrictions, and have it come up with a recipe with steps to follow

·     Have ChatGPT build out an annual budget and savings plan based on your income, financial goals, and investments

·     Ask it to write a program—in any language—and it will produce code that you can start modifying and building off of immediately. Or, submit your code and have it to debug and write it better

·     Have it write a 4-day-a-week workout routine using whatever gym equipment you have access to, how long you can devote to the workout and your fitness goal

·     Have it create an organic social content calendar for three months with a focus on product awareness across whichever social channels you list, along with the tone you desire

·     Provide your resume and a job posting and request that it write a cover letter for you to use, along with an introductory email

·     Give it a writing prompt, topic, overall motif and it will produce a near-publish-ready book, manuscript, essay, or multiple search-optimized articles

The list goes on and on, and the more specific your inputs, the more robust the outputs become. Today, it can be used to make personal workflows more efficient by providing guidelines or the building blocks that let the work leapfrog over a lot of the “starting from scratch” or set-up phase. It can serve as a catalyst that allows a lot of roles to move from creator to editor and usher you into the thick of a project or task.

There are limitations, of course. One current issue is that you can only input so much information, which naturally limits output. This makes it good for some tasks but not great for large scale work. Another issue is that GPT is not constantly learning, as the model type relies on pre-training. Bluntly, there’s no risk of it taking anyone’s job just yet.

Related, I’d be remiss to not mention that data ethics will be a major conversation: GPT suffers from machine learning bias—a topic that will continue to grow in seriousness. Since this is a pre-trained model that has used internet text to learn, it is going to hold all of the biases common with how people write and behave online—especially when they believe they are anonymous. This language model could easily be deployed with nefarious intent. There are also concerns in marketing and education around the fact that ChatGPT-created content is not detectable and the implications this could have on plagiarism and duplicative content.

On the flip-side, imagine a world where a GPT-type object is running in the background of the technology you are using today. Rather than calling on different services—Siri, Google search, Alexa—you can simply act as if speaking to a true advisor or assistant. GPT can create your weekly schedule based on what you need to accomplish and meetings, and while connected to your smart home it can get your morning coffee running, then pass to Siri to read your missed text messages, run a shortcut to kick open Spotify to listen to a workout playlist, and so on. It might take another few years before we see GPT used in a scaled way, as underlying technology needs to make a few more steps. Given Miscrosoft’s heavy investment in OpenAI, it is expected that they will be one of the first to start integrating these tools into things like Office, Windows and Bing.

While GPT was first released in 2018, it is its latest iteration that has seized the spotlight. A lot of technical versioning follows a typical logarithmic change, but GPT has experienced exponential change between versions. Early versions of GPT required working knowledge of Python, Git repositories, and data science to be able to use it. But, OpenAI’s release that deploys GPT as a chat bot has provided a user experience that has made its use far more approachable and accessible to a wide range of people who only need a little imagination paired with curiosity.

As clichéd as it is to say “the sky’s the limit,” the debut of ChatGPT definitely inspires the sentiment. Its easy accessibility, alongside its ability to produce truly smart output across such a broad range of disciplines, means that its applications – despite the limitations described above – are expansive indeed. As we consider all the potential that this tool has to enhance our personal and professional lives, it seems like the era of genuinely compatible human and AI thought has finally arrived. I welcome it.

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Originally Released On

PR Newswire

CONTACT:

Adam Wise
KWT Global for PRophet
awise@kwtglobal.com

PRophet becomes first comms tech company to empower users to hone their media interviewing skills with AI-powered, personalized and judgement-free feedback from Yoodli’s speech coach

NEW YORK, Nov. 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — PRophet, the first-ever AI-driven PR pitch platform built by and for PR professionals that predicts media interest and sentiment, today announced a partnership with Yoodli, an innovative AI-powered software platform which helps users improve media interviewing, public speaking, and communication skills using artificial intelligence. The partnership cements PRophet – a product from Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) – as the first-ever communications tech company to offer AI-generated analytics support to companies seeking to hone storytelling and earned media engagement.

With PRophet’s customized Yoodli platform, users will be able to receive judgment-free feedback on their performances during practice media interviews; the technology will denote trends in filler word usage, eye contact, body language, and more. Yoodli also allows users to practice for upcoming speaking engagements and provides real-time feedback during live event sessions. Additionally, Yoodli creates immediate transcripts and allows media trainers to show their clients an instant replay of speeches with actionable insights for future improvement.

“You can have the best communications platform in the world, but if you botch the interview, you miss the headline. Media training is a lost art – and as companies awaken to the power of earned media to drive growth, Yoodli’s platform is truly revolutionary,” said Aaron Kwittken. “Together, PRophet and Yoodli unlock real-time, AI-backed data for modern communicators, supplementing human instinct with insights to improve pitching and interview performance.”

Yoodli has already been endorsed as an AI-powered speech coach by world champions of public speaking, speech language pathologists, and hundreds of communications faculty at universities such as Harvard and the University of Washington. Toastmasters International recently announced that they were rolling out Yoodli’s AI training software with 300,000 members worldwide.

“If communication coaches are professional trainers, think of Yoodli as the medical report: we augment the work of media trainers, PR firms, and communication coaches by providing clients with objective data on how they speak,” said Varun Puri, co-founder of Yoodli. “Our partnership with PRophet is a big step in enabling PR professionals at agencies and in-house teams to improve, upskill, and scale their communications coaching with a proven, tech-based solution.”

PRophet is a flagship product within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, a proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS tools built for in-house marketers, spanning campaign ideation to activation and analysis. To learn more about the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, visit this link.

About PRophet
PRophet is the first-ever A.I.-driven data-as-a-service (DaaS) platform designed by and for the PR community that analyzes past stories to better predict future media interest and sentiment using natural language processing and machine learning. PRophet was founded by PR and marketing industry thought leader and serial entrepreneur Aaron Kwittken in 2020 with backing from political strategist, technologist and author Mark Penn, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Stagwell. To learn more about PRophet, please visit www.prprophet.ai or email sales@prprophet.ai to schedule a demo.

About Yoodli
Yoodli is an AI powered platform to help you improve your public speaking and communication skills without the pressure of an audience. Yoodli provides judgment-free analytics on your filler words, eye contact, pacing, monologues, and more. Corporate professionals, sales teams, and university students use Yoodli to get feedback on their everyday Zoom calls and to prepare for upcoming speeches and interviews. The platform is endorsed by Toastmasters International, World Champions of public speaking, and thousands of speech coaches and media trainers across the world. You can start using Yoodli for free at www.yoodli.ai

Yoodli was founded by Varun Puri and Esha Joshi in 2021 at the Paul Allen AI Institute in Seattle. Yoodli has been voted as the product of the day on Product Hunt and featured as one of the five hottest startups in the Pacific Northwest. The Yoodli team has raised $7M+ from investors including Madrona Venture Group, Cercano Capital, the Allen AI Institute, and others.

About Stagwell
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

Media Contact
Adam Wise
KWT Global for PRophet
awise@kwtglobal.com

SOURCE Stagwell Inc.

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CONTACT:

Sarah Arvizo
Stagwell
pr@stagwellglobal.com 

Celebrates GALE as part of AOY Shortlist

Stagwell – just 1% of the market – is 20% of the AOY list

Observatory Included on the Small AOY Shortlist

NEW YORK – Dec. 12, 2022 – Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, celebrates its strategic and creative agency Anomaly which has been named U.S. Agency of the Year by Adweek, the American trade publication covering the advertising, marketing, and media industries.

Adweek editors applauded Anomaly’s ‘monster’ year of new business wins, which included 16 accounts ranging from Dunkin’, Vans, and the ‘pitch of the year’: Bud Light U.S. Additionally, Adweek said “the agency’s Super Bowl spot for Meta Quest tugged on our heartstrings.”

Business agency GALE – which continued its trajectory of triple-digit growth in 2022 – was also shortlisted by Adweek as U.S. Agency of the Year, one of only 10 agencies recognized. GALE’s notable 2022 new business wins include H&R Block and Dropbox, and it was earlier named to Adweek’s list of Fastest Growing Agencies for 2022.  

“Our challenger network – just 1% of the market – boasts 20% of Adweek’s prestigious list. We’re proud to celebrate Anomaly as Adweek’s 2022 Agency of the Year. Led by Carl Johnson, Karina Wilsher and great office leaders in New York and Los Angeles, Anomaly lodged a remarkable year of new business growth and creative innovation. I am also excited to see GALE shortlisted for Agency of the Year and proud of Brad Simms and the fast-growing team there,” said Mark Penn, chairman and CEO, Stagwell. “I also want to congratulate Brendan Shields-Shimizu and the Observatory team on their recognition on the Small Agency of the Year short list for continuing to innovate for clients in a variety of formats.”

“If you define and fully commit to what you believe; identify what must remain and must change, what you’re prepared to do, and more importantly not do, then you can make significant progress in a turbulent, unpredictable world. We do and we did,” noted Anomaly co-founder Carl Johnson.

Observatory, based in Los Angeles, was also included on the shortlist in the U.S. Small Agency of the Year category, recognized for selling a variety of work including an action figure of Martha Stewart, two docuseries, a podcast, a film, and a concert. It also received nods for developing 15 sports films for clients as well as creating a sequel to an iconic Chipotle ad.

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the challenger holding company built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing.  Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

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CONTACT:

Sarah Arvizo
Stagwell
pr@stagwellglobal.com 

Los Angeles Rams and ARound Introduce the Next Generation of Stadium Augmented Reality, Sponsored by SoFi

ARound Expands Stadium-Wide AR With Addition of In-Venue Broadcast Integration on SoFi Stadium’s Infinity Screen, In-Home Fan Experience; SoFi Signs on as First ARound Brand Sponsor

LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK – Dec. 5, 2022 – The Los Angeles Rams are introducing a new fan-focused technology experience at the stadium and at home. Debuting at yesterday’s game, fans at SoFi Stadium were the first to experience shared augmented reality (AR) in an NFL game with the launch of ARound, a next-generation fan engagement platform designed to enhance gameday fun with live, real-world AR experiences, sponsored by SoFi, digital personal finance company and SoFi Stadium naming rights partner. First launched in August with the Minnesota Twins, ARound expanded its platform to include in-venue broadcast integration as well as an at-home AR experience.

ARound, part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, uses 3D spatial computing to localize content to individual users throughout the venue, enabling SoFi Stadium’s 70,000 attendees to see the same real-time 3D effects and participate in the same shared experiences. Using the ARound Stadium app, fans point their smartphone at the field to open up a universe of AR effects, interacting with the physical venue and fellow fans in real time. ARound and the Rams have taken shared AR several steps further through new fan experiences custom to the Rams and to the NFL:   

  • Infinity Screen AR: Fans can view effects like “Rampede” and “Make Noise” come to life on the Rams’ state-of-the-art 70,000-sq. foot videoboard, The Infinity Screen, with AR experiences incorporated into the gameday production in real time, such as when a touchdown is scored or when the team takes the field.
  • Players in 3D: Key player callouts including Aaron Donald, Bobby Wagner, Cooper Kupp, Jalen Ramsey, Matt Gay, and Matthew Stafford are featured through special effects, making their personalities larger than life.
  • The Best Seat in the House, At-Home AR Experience: Fans can join the gameday festivities and contests through a life-size virtual stadium experience from their homes, mirroring what’s happening during the game at SoFi Stadium. 
  • SoFi: Official ARound Sponsor: Opening the door to this new, connected marketing medium, digital personal finance company and SoFi Stadium naming rights partner SoFi has signed on as ARound’s first platform partner with stadium-wide AR games, contests, effects, and a remote experience amplifying the energy and excitement of Rams gamedays and the SoFi brand. 

“We are thrilled to team with ARound and SoFi to incorporate AR into gamedays at the Rams House in unprecedented ways,” said Marissa Daly, VP & GM, Los Angeles Rams Studios. “This experience is a continuation of the game-changing ways we’ve partnered with SoFi at SoFi Stadium and across Los Angeles to elevate the fan experience on gamedays and beyond.”

“Fans come to the stadium to feel closer to the game, to the players, and to other fans. We developed ARound to enhance those feelings through highly immersive and interactive AR experiences that complement the action on the field,” said Josh Beatty, founder and CEO, ARound. “And with products like Apple and Google AR Glasses already in development we’re excited to open up the living room to blended TV experiences we know are the future of broadcast entertainment.”

“At SoFi, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation to create seamless experiences for our members, all while fulfilling our mission of helping our members achieve financial independence,” said Lauren Stafford Webb, CMO, SoFi. “We are proud to sponsor ARound’s first-of-its-kind technology for Los Angeles Rams fans at the iconic SoFi Stadium to make their experience even more spectacular.”

Journalists interested in covering the Rams launch can access the press kit here.

 About ARound

ARound is a first-of-its-kind stadium-level shared augmented reality platform and is part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, a proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS solutions build for the modern marketer. ARound keeps audiences engaged by capturing their attention through immersive, interactive and shared experiences with fellow fans across the venue. Where other AR products offer isolating, singular experiences, ARound’s massive multi-user AR – which uses 3D spatial computing to localize content – redefines what it means to be part of a connected fan experience. It was the winner of Stagwell’s annual innovation competition which invests in new product ideas proposed by the network’s 13,000+ employees. ARound and the Stagwell Marketing Cloud are a part of Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network build to transform marketing.

 About Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams – Los Angeles’ original professional sports team and Super Bowl LVI Champions – stand as one of the oldest franchises in the National Football League and since its founding in 1937, have garnered four World Championships and sent 30 of its members to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As a professional sports team, the organization is committed to be a valuable civic partner and serving the greater Los Angeles area 365 days a year. The Rams play their home games at SoFi Stadium, which is located at Hollywood Park, a 298-acre sports and entertainment destination being developed by Los Angeles Rams Owner/Chairman E. Stanley Kroenke in Inglewood, CA.

About SoFi

SoFi helps people achieve financial independence to realize their ambitions. Our products for borrowing, saving, spending, investing and protecting give our over four million members fast access to tools to get their money right. SoFi membership comes with the key essentials for getting ahead, including career advisors and connection to a thriving community of ambitious people. SoFi is also the naming rights partner of SoFi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams. For more information, visit SoFi.com or download our iOS and Android apps.

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By: Adrienne Adair, SVP, Creative, 
MMI Agency

Originally Released in 
MediaPost

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Creating content at a pace that continues to grow in response to consumers’ appetites can feel daunting. That each creative asset further needs to grab the audience’s attention in the first three seconds, and bears the responsibility of resonating with that consumer and garnering a like, click or sale, only adds to the challenge. 

Continually optimizing performance is the key to a successful and diverse content strategy, and that requires a carefully orchestrated flights of assets to launch, test and learn to immediately develop the next round. The cadence of those assets must be constant and unwavering: assets that vary by message and by imagery. Static assets. Animated assets. Influencer’s assets. Now, multiply those assets by the number of unique audiences.

Given these challenges, how do we preserve the ability to curate original work without blowing the budget in the time it takes to produce it? AI can put invaluable time back in the hands of creatives by using features that allow designers to crowd-share a project in real time to finish a layout in far less time than had been possible.

Web and mobile apps are available to create content quickly through customizable templates and access to thousands of fonts. They can even intuitively reflow your layout from one size to multiple formats with a single click and allow you to publish the content to your social channels directly from the app. AI can be used to analyze and extrapolate an image from simple to complex backgrounds more quickly than with the original image selection tools, enabling designers to composite multiple images in one layout at breakneck speed.

There are also innovations still in development that promise to speed up the work of designers such as AI’s predictive technology that can uncrop portraits, not only showing a cropped subject in full frame, but also giving designers the ability to change the wardrobe or the surrounding background — all with a few clicks. 

Want to create a motion video from a static photo? AI can analyze the motion from a selected source video and apply it to a static photo, allowing designers to make stationary subjects dance. Another such innovation on the horizonwill allow easy creation of packaging mocks that apply 2D design elements to 3D packaging composites, reducing an hours-long exercise to just minutes with a single click.

Why should brands be interested in how AI has enhanced these tools of the trade? Because time = money. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the path from imagination to realization on behalf of your brand is more direct than ever.

With these tools, tasks that once took four hours might take as little as 40 minutes. From pandemic repercussions to supply chain limitations to inflation, brands are challenged to make the same level of impact in the market with more conservative budgets. The time saved in production allows more time for creativity and more time to produce a greater number of the most impactful assets to amplify your brand’s presence and maximize performance.

 

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The UPS Store, the world’s largest retail franchisor, has partnered with full-service advertising agency Doner and Facebook’s Spark AR Studio to launch an out-of-this-world AR adventure featuring the Moon. The campaign, ‘Moon AR Ad-Venture,’ allows users to experience the many services offered by The UPS Store in new, fun, and engaging ways. Using AR, customers can shred the moon’s surface, send copies into orbit, use a planet-sized stamp, bubble-cushion with booster rockets, and pack and ship across the universe. Plus, users can place the moon in the palm of their hand – or in their living room.

One of the most robust applications ever seen on Facebook’s Spark AR platform, this AR experience pushes boundaries by using six different 3D models to develop five animations, all while maintaining high, photo-real quality of assets. As mentioned above, the campaign launches today. It will run for four weeks nationally across social media channels, specifically Facebook and Instagram. Doner and The UPS Store have enjoyed over two decades of collaboration, with this campaign marking a first for the partnership through its innovative usage of AR.

David DeMuth, CEO, Doner: “We’re always looking for new, engaging and interactive ways to dimensionalise our clients’ brands and this AR experience is a great example of that,” said David DeMuth, CEO of Doner. “For The UPS Store, we’re excited to use this technology to help bring the brand story to life in an interactive and memorable way.”

Michelle Van Slyke, SVP, Marketing and Sales, The UPS Store: “This effort moves beyond mere observation in advertising, delivering a multifaceted, interactive experience that engages people,” said Michelle Van Slyke, SVP, Marketing and Sales, at The UPS Store.

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Missed Advertising Week New York this week? We distill the biggest brand takeaways on brand fandom, political advertising, and media channel transformations below. Follow Stagwell on LinkedIn to keep up with the insights.

Rise of Brand Fandom – Move over, sports teams and celebrities. 

Fifty-seven percent of consumers consider themselves a fan of a brand or product – higher than sports (48%), movies (52%), celebrities (54%), or online influencers/personalities (37%). 

The brands that take a holistic stake in consumers’ lives will drive loyalty, affinity, and advocacy–and not just in the moment. Fandom is not a fad or a flash in the pan; 2 in 5 brand fans have been fans for over 10 years. Focus on helping consumers develop their personalities through your brand by delivering marketing, events and experiences, and content that gives them a platform to express that personality.  

“Fandom is critical in the luxury space. Luxury is no longer defined as the most expensive thing –it’s defined by insider knowledge. We’re seeing a dispersion of brands being considered ‘wealth’ and ‘luxury,’ and price point alone won’t keep you in that luxury equity space. It’s important to have fan bases that really think of your brand as luxury.” – Neda Whitney, SVP, Head of Marketing, Americas, Christie’s

Political is the Biggest Media Story of 2022 – Get ready for hotter cyclical media environments as political advertisers diversify digital media channels to engage more voters.

Brands will feel the effect of political messaging as political advertisers spend a record $3 billion in the last three weeks of the election alone.

Many ads will tell Americans they’re poorer than ever because of inflation, for example – how will brands push back and get consumers to continue spending? Brands can no longer afford to be apolitical but risk looking too performative if they don’t back up their positions with actions. Lyft decided to foreground its identity as a transportation company when deciding to act, and as a result, it has provided ride services for voting, vaccines, and reproductive rights.

“We saw in 2016 that so many people chose not to vote because they didn’t have access to transportation. So we asked ourselves: how can we make an impact there? We created a voter access program and saw its immediate impact in 2020. It’s about looking at the issues consumers care about and our services. It’s our job to listen – to talk to elected officials and let them know we can come in as a partner to solve some of the issues our consumers care about.” – Heather Foster, Head of Government Affairs, Lyft

Digital Channels and Political Advocacy – Are political advertisers about to have the digital marketing efficacy reckoning?

This cycle will be the first many realize media buys are not driving impact because of mistargeting. Many voters in battleground districts no longer have traditional television – but there’s a disconnect between ad spending and consumption, with most dollars still going to broadcast. Brands need to get more comfortable shifting the media mix and taking risks with bourgeoning digital channels.

“The idea that there’s the TV generation and then there’s the kids – it’s an antiquated view. The fact is cord cutting is mainstream – now the majority of the population – and the idea that we can say we have a TV strategy and a different digital strategy is fraught with disaster. As we iterate, brands need to think about messaging across the full funnel, and know that TV and streaming work really well together because it allows us to do that. The future will be integrated streaming and linear in a really incremental fashion.” – Ashwin Navin, CEO SambaTV

Resurgence of OOH – OOH is resurging because OOH is modern.

When you start treating it like programmatic or digital it becomes a valuable tool in the funnel. Driving consumer engagement and social amplification through use of the OOH medium. (The Harris Poll found TikTok and other social media platforms are a major source of OOH ad visibility: 82% of TikTok users report frequently noticing OOH ads in content in their feeds, with nearly identical impact reported by Facebook and Instagram users.) And don’t sleep on the innovation underway here: location-based insights, shared AR capabilities, and more are all letting advertisers do more at scale. Embrace the underlying technology capabilities of Out of Home as a resilient pillar of your media plan for 2023.

”Out of home isn’t changing – the strategy is. Media is the new experiential and Out of Home is where people are. The technology that sits behind Out of Home is driving a different strategy lens, a different creative lens, and a different content lens.” – Brad Simms, CEO, GALE Partners.

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Originally Released On

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CONTACT:

Brandon Dixon
Stagwell
pr@stagwellglobal.com 

Natalie Black
Code and Theory
press@codeandtheory.com 

NEW YORKOct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Code and Theory, a digital-first creative agency within Stagwell, announced today the formation of the industry’s first holistic Inclusive Design and Marketing Strategy (ID&M) discipline. In a crowded agency landscape where brands must choose either campaign-focused DEI or social impact marketing agencies, Code and Theory’s ID&M applies inclusivity to a digital-first strategy and uses intersectionality to unlock transformational value for brands. Code and Theory’s ID&M discipline is the first of its kind from Stagwell.

Kirstyn Nimmo, an award-winning social impact strategist behind the White House-recognized #IAmAMan campaign for criminal punishment reform, the Nestlé Purina partnership that opened NYC’s first pet-friendly domestic violence shelters, and launched the Anthem Award Winning Yahoo Allyship Pledge to provide education about the Black experience in America and more, will serve as Group Director.

 

Nimmo’s 14 years of social impact expertise will be applied to existing Code and Theory work streams across the agency, enhancing an already strong set of digital-first deliverables. She is tasked with building a diverse team of creatives, strategists and technologists to ensure every agency output is inclusive at its core; helping brands resonate with today’s diverse consumers, and increase retention among employees. To date, the agency has delivered breakthrough results while amassing an impressive body of inclusive work with The Washington Commanders, Con Edison, Adidas, National Council on Aging, and Johnson & Johnson, to name a few.

Diverse consumers are transforming the U.S. mainstream; representing the most dynamic and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. consumer economy and a multi-trillion dollar opportunity for brands.  For Code and Theory, the demand has never been greater as clients are actively seeking insight and expertise in this space.

“Over a decade ago, it was exciting to witness the industry recognizing the importance of diversity and multicultural marketing, but modern consumers are demanding more than that,” explains Nimmo. “The pandemic and recent racial justice movements led to collective and individual changes in identity, agency, and accountability. Those events paved the way for an expanded focus on inclusion, where brands can honor consumers’ intersectional identities. Brands have the chance to evolve and accurately reflect our culture’s complexities and we’re proud to answer that call.”

“ID&M’s purpose is to approach Inclusivity the same way we have approached Digital Transformation for decades, which is to connect the dots for consumers and brands at every touchpoint,” says Dan Gardner, Founder and Executive Chairman, Code and Theory, “I am beyond thrilled to have Kirstyn join Code and Theory. Brands that want to tap into this massive market opportunity and realize a strong ROI – a return-on-inclusion – will benefit from her expertise on how to authentically embrace inclusion as a strategy and not a tactic across all areas of their business, including marketing and communications.”

The establishment of the discpline aligns with the agency’s commitment to being an anti-racist company. In 2021, Code and Theory hired its first Chief Diversity Officer, Renée Miller, and has since developed its 5% Shifts framework, which compels the agency to continuously revisit progress against all of their DEI commitments, and helps clients make real shifts which result in measurable change.

“At Code and Theory we knew that an ongoing commitment to growing a racially and ethnically diverse staff, wide-ranging in age and identities, would continuously expand our ability to bring our clients cutting edge, intersectional thinking that transforms business and impacts across our clients services, platforms and campaign ecosystems. By putting inclusion at the core of our agency, it’s become a clear focus in our work, birthing this new ID&M discipline.” added Renée Miller, Chief Diversity Officer, Code and Theory.

As part of the effort to drive brand evolution, the ID&M discipline created Words Up, an industry writing guide intended to bring inclusive discourse and collaboration surrounding language. Nimmo adds, “As marketers and builders grounded in digital spaces, we help clients reach people all over the world, and it’s critical that language resonates in the right ways, in the right places. When brands use inclusive language, they invite communities in, grow their audiences and create brand love with consumers they may have failed to recognize in the past.”  Additionally, Nimmo and the ID&M team created a Linkedin Group and Discord channel for creative and brand professionals to further collaborate, share resources and knowledge in real time.

To learn more about Code and Theory’s Inclusive Marketing and Design discipline, please visit here.

To learn more about Code and Theory’s DEI framework visit here.

To access the first edition of Words Up, please visit  here.

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About Code and Theory
Born in 2001, Code and Theory is a digital-first creative agency that sits at the center of creativity and technology. With a global client roster of Fortune 100s and start-ups alike, we crave the hardest problems to solve and create end-to-end solutions that flex to meet the needs of today’s ever-changing digital landscape.

About Stagwell
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com

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By

Mark Penn
Chairman and CEO, Stagwell

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When I ran campaigns, I used to lament that corporations would spend more on marketing a hamburger than marketing political ideas and efforts. Back then, campaigns were struggling shoestring enterprises. No longer.

Today, campaigns and issue groups spend billions of dollars (much of it ineffectively) on communicating to voters, and fundraising at large has become big business. Ironically, the rocket fuel for all this was not the much-maligned Supreme Court decision Citizens United that gave corporations political speech rights. Rather, it was the internet – opening up a far speedier and cost-effective method of motivating voters and fundraising from them. Everything we condemn about politics and social media today – the speed of clickbait, the sensationalizing of small news events, the partisan divide – has paved the way for online fundraising and its explosive growth.

Political advertising spend is rapidly breaking records

Political advertising will hit $7.8bn in the 2022 midterm elections – nearly approaching the $8.5bn spent across TV, radio and digital media in the 2020 presidential cycle. We are seeing continued growth in campaign spending, and each mid-term is coming close to the previous presidential runs in spend. Each president leaps to a new record in political expenditures. It will take a set of really mundane candidates with a runaway winner to break this ever-increasing cycle. Absent that, this is a double-digit growth spiral for several more election cycles. I never thought I would see $10m Congressional races and $100m Senate contests, and yet those are now everyday occurrences.

Digital fundraising is rising at a faster rate than overall spending

Of the $14.4bn in paid media spent during the 2020 cycle, 49% was raised online. The 2022 cycle should exceed $14bn in paid media spend, with over 60% likely to come from online fundraising. To put that in context – in 2014, less than 9% of the $4.4bn in contributions came in via online donors. Democrats, who are notably vocal about money in politics, spend the most – generally about 50% more than the Republicans.

Donors today are largely first-timers – and start small

For most donors over the last few cycles, giving to politics has been a new experience. Most of these contributions aren’t from big-dollar donors or PACs, but low-dollar donations from average Americans giving amounts between $30 and $100 (76.1% of Act Blue Democratic donors in 2020 were first-time donors).

Americans have a love-hate relationship with political giving. When asked to give $1 on their tax return to fund campaigns, most Americans said ‘no’ to the voluntary check-off, and the fund was running out of money. Taxpayers generally believed politicians should finance their own campaigns and leave the public out of them. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, candidates used direct mail to gather low-dollar gifts, but it was slow and expensive. In 2008, social media entered the scene and spilled over into news and politics. With its proliferation of inflammatory messages and clickbait, social media was the ideal incubator for online giving. While less than 1% of voters donated to campaigns in the past, that number is now up to 10% and continues to grow.

How companies can mimic political fundraising techniques

I always call online fundraisers the best marketers in the world. Why? Because in return for their funds, consumers get absolutely nothing of tangible value – no product and not even a tax deduction.

What makes them such good marketers? They believe in math. They have hundreds of people who craft messages, then test them methodically and go big with the ones that work. They refine their lists, carefully managing their communications to people to avoid overload or confusing and contradictory messages. And they utilize low-cost, effective messaging techniques, driving campaigns through email and increasingly via text messaging, as consumers switch their preferred communication modes.

Today, these fundraisers employ the process and rigor that most corporations should envy: ample message creation, thorough testing, careful media mix modeling and rigorous adherence to performance standards and return on investment. Politics once again leads the way in how to structure and carry out effective online marketing. This rigorous approach would and is working for commercial online marketing, though retail marketers have more limits on how aggressive they can be. Still, they can treat Thanksgiving, Prime Days and Christmas as a kind of commercial election day, working up to harvesting sales in the same way that political fundraising is mostly prospecting until the campaign’s final months. Commercial marketers can also be more aggressive via text messaging to mimic these successful political messages.

Political fundraising is only starting to hit its groove and has many potential roads for broad expansion. While online fundraising exploded in 2020, only 20% of the 180 million Americans who voted in that cycle donated to a campaign, and under 2% of the country gave over $200. By comparison, over 70% of Americans gave to charity in 2020, totaling $324.1bn in individual contributions that mirror the scale and spend of small-dollar political contributions. The addressable digital advocacy and political fundraising markets represent massive growth opportunities.

Galvanizing the masses around a cause: still the mandate

Online political fundraising is, in essence, fan marketing. It’s about getting those who care most about your brand to be even more passionate and committed. When an employee of a competitor company insults a customer, don’t just sit there – use it to your advantage and broadcast it to your loyal fans. Most commercial marketing, even online, is passionless and saccharine; if you want to be as successful as political marketers, you will have to take some risks and be bolder. Now, this may not fit all corporate brands, but that’s the advantage that upstart challenger brands have in the marketplace – they can be free to be out there, within the bounds of good humor and taste.

To be clear, political ads continue to be a discipline unto themselves, built primarily around negative messages with no clear analog in commercial marketing. Online fundraising also includes tough negative messages, but is built mainly around bringing people together as part of a group that wants to help a cause. This new technique is at the forefront of what’s possible in this new online world as more and more people are plugged into news and current events. Online fundraising can and will expand into the not-for-profit world, but it will surely lead the way in fan marketing for breakthrough companies as well.

Mark Penn is chairman and chief executive officer of New York-based marketing group Stagwell.

 

 

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Originally Released On

PR Newswire

CONTACT:

Sarah Arvizo
Stagwell
pr@stagwellglobal.com 

NEW YORK – Sept. 29, 2022 – Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, hired Mansoor Basha as chief technology officer (CTO) of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC). Joining from the Applied Intelligence Practice at Accenture, Mansoor will be responsible for the technology roadmap, data strategy and cloud portfolio integration across the SMC, Stagwell’s proprietary suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and data-as-a-service (DaaS) products built for in-house marketers.

Mansoor brings more than 20 years of experience across product development, management and marketing, engineering, and new business development. While at Accenture, he was responsible for strategy and consulting, data-led transformation, cloud analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning-based use cases, and scenario analysis for several Fortune 500 companies.

“Every company is now a digital marketing company but most lack the resources to develop the tools they need to actually engage in modern marketing,” said Mark Penn, chairman and CEO, Stagwell. “With Mansoor’s deep background in both building and marketing innovative tech solutions, the Stagwell Marketing Cloud is well positioned to build a digital marketing infrastructure that any CMO, at any company, can take advantage of.”

“I’ve spent my career blending business strategy and technical acumen to bring transformative products to market – the very same special combination that attracted me to Stagwell and the Marketing Cloud,” said Mansoor Basha, CTO, Stagwell Marketing Cloud. “From the acquisition of Apollo Program to boost its first-party data infrastructure, to the recent launch of the first shared augmented reality experience in a live event setting with ARound and the Minnesota Twins, it’s clear that Stagwell takes a thoughtful, strategic approach to building the SMC, paving the way for organizations to deliver marketing innovation at whatever scale they need.”

Mansoor also currently serves as an investment advisor to 11.2 Ventures and Purple Arch Ventures, as well as an adjunct faculty member teaching digital marketing at New York University. He will join Chief Product Officer Abe Geiger, Chief Marketing Officer Elspeth Rollert and Managing Director Matthew Lochner on the SMC leadership team.

The Stagwell Marketing Cloud is a proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS tools built for the in-house marketer, spanning capabilities such as brand intelligence to media activation and influencer management. Products within the cloud include ARound, a first-of-its-kind stadium-level shared augmented reality platform; PRophet , a predictive AI platform for PR professionals; Koalifyed, an end-to-end influencer management platform; the Harris Brand Platform, delivering competitive brand intelligence; and more. 

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com

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