Showing posts with label Social Media Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media Marketing. Show all posts

Newsletter Digest — Week of March 6, 2017

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Here's a quick overview of some links from my newsletter from the week of March 6, 2017. These are merely highlights extracted from the newsletter; if you'd like to get The Full Monty, please hit subscribe now and you'll get an email at the top of each week with the entire edition.

Industry

  • Last week, we highlighted the importance of interplay between digital and in-store experiences in retail; this week, we revisit that topic with the acknowledgement that brick and mortar isn't dead, but it's suffering. Some of the pervasive issues affecting the retail industry include: a sea of sameness, independent entities versus integrated channels, customer experience hiccups, lack of wow factor, and treating all customers the same.
  • These 10 breakthrough technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop. But you should know about all of them right now.
  • A look at the increasingly complex world of native advertising technology in 2017.

Platforms

Twitter

  • The New York Times is publishing its journalists' tweetstorms in its print edition. Giving additional and more permanent life to Twitter commentary is a clever move that will help spread and preserve such correspondence that would otherwise be easily overlooked. It's a technique that brands might consider as well.

Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp

Google / Alphabet

  • YouTube debuted YouTube TV, a $35/month service including broadcast networks, about 30 cable channels, cloud DVR with unlimited storage, personal recommendations. This will be a stand-alone app, separate from the subscription-based YouTube Red. Google got itself into trouble with multiple messaging apps. Might video be going the same way?

Snap

  • New Snapchat user numbers indicate that older groups are now more likely to tune in for content. The platform has multiple partnerships with television networks for mini-episodes. Meanwhile, the younger groups are less likely to add Snapchat when Instagram Stories can fulfill their broadcasting needs.

Collaborative / Autonomous / AI

Transportation

  • As the Uber Turns... the soap opera continues as the company continues to get hammered with negative news that includes its corporate culture, bad boy CEO, personnel issues, underhanded use of technology, and lawsuits. Good times. Too much to cover here. Click here for the entire rundown of the crisis.
  • Will ride-hailing be free by 2021? If ad platform Vugo has its way, you'll watch ads to earn ride credits. Sounds freakily like the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits."

Autonomous 

Artificial Intelligence / Bots / Blockchain

Virtual Reality / Audio

VR/AR

AUDIO

And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.


Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

  • Video is the new blogging: research from Convince & Convert and Vidyard indicate that there's more attention than ever being paid to videos today. In fact, 53% of videos that are 90 seconds or less are watched to completion.

Privacy / Security / Legal


Measurement / Metrics / Data


Essential Watching / Listening / Reading



Do you like what you see? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday.




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The Metric That Matters

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When I worked at Ford Motor Company, I had opportunities to do unorthodox things in the pursuit of helping people understand how Ford was changing.

I gave speeches to thousands of people at conferences, telling the Ford story and demonstrating how Ford's communications efforts were just as exciting and different as its products.

I arranged to have vehicles loaned to non-traditional influencers. Not car reviewers, not business reporters. But bloggers, people with large Twitter followings or YouTube subscribers — people who could reach and influence audiences that we couldn't. The request was usually greeted with raised eyebrows and a skeptical look, not to mention an under-the-breath muttering that so-and-so didn't have the same reach as Auto Week or the Wall Street Journal.

And see, those offbeat things didn't necessarily find their way into the company's "Clipsheet" — the metric that mattered most — because they either weren't placed in a publication or platform that could be tracked, and therefore these were discounted — or worse — ignored.

"We don't see any value in it" was the refrain I heard — even though I had firsthand experience of witnessing these people, whether they approached me after a speech or tweeted from the road — saying how they perceived Ford so much differently because of these efforts. See, the value attributed by the company was not the same as the value attributed by the public.

But to me, the ultimate value is in a story like Alex de Carvalho's, in which he got to take a cross-country road trip with his aging father, sharing a unique experience, and crafting a memory that will last the rest of his life. And in Alex's mind, Ford was responsible for making it possible for him to bring joy to his father, who has since passed away.

You can read Alex's story below:




Maybe these nontraditional efforts don't show on a company's balance sheet. But I know how much of an impact they make. And they do show on a balance sheet of a very different sort — the balance sheet of life. It didn't necessarily win me any friends with the bean counters at my employer, but it made a difference to at least one person.

And I would do it again in a heartbeat.


Special thanks to Alex for allowing me to share his story.

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Essential Reports and Trends as We Enter 2017

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There's no question that 2016 threw a lot at us. It's tough to keep up with trends and industry news — which is one of the reasons I began The Full Monty as a newsletter nearly four years ago. [Note: if you don't yet subscribe, here's a quick way to get on board.]

Given that it came fast and furious, you may have missed a few of the essential reports or industry developments, so we've got some of those of which you should take note. And if you find this or our regular updates of any help to you professionally, we'd urge you to consider supporting us on Patreon.



Trust in Flux

The Edelman Trust Barometer continued its annual summary of what the world thinks of the government, media, NGOs and businesses, and this year indicated a widening gap between the informed and uninformed public. Given the recent spate of elections, it's our prediction that this trust gap will widen in the coming year.



Broaden your Horizons

As a classics major, we were drawn to this piece on why everyone should study classical culture. Aside from being inspired by the less-than-usual sources, it also helps with strategic thinking, as you begin to see the interconnectedness of ideas. And it makes you more interesting to talk to.


The Boss Needs Help

CMO.com's top 10 marketing trends for 2017 takes a look at what executives need to deal with in this world that's half-digital, half-analog in its thinking. From geo-political uncertainty to issues of trust, the rise of AI, blockchain and mobile, and the confusion around multiple vendor partners, it's a lot for any single executive to deal with.


While I Have Your Attention

Meanwhile, CMOs are getting antsy. It's not surprising, given that the average tenure of CMOs has dropped to 44 months. But CMOs have desires for 2017, and they include — among other things — a broader focus on brand, fewer AORs and more specialty shops, and better justification for investment in marketing.


Social Business Is Everyone's Business

Altimeter looked a little deeper at the state of social business in 2016. For those not familiar with social business, this is the concept of taking what's learned externally and bringing it back into the enterprise, to benefit from the input. What's becoming even more prevalent is the move away from just sharing on social media, and gathering data and insights that must be integrated across many different departments. Innovation itself is no longer enough, as companies struggle with integration: from customer service to customer data, with a better governance structure in place to alleviate confusion.



Like, Comment or Share this 800-lb. Gorilla

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center took stock of the demographics of various social platforms in 2016, concluding that there's no stopping Facebook. Engagement and usage of Facebook is on the rise, with 79% of online Americans using Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter (24%), Pinterest (31%), Instagram (32%) or LinkedIn (29%). That's 68% of all U.S. adults.



Newsflash: Marketers Use Social to Self-Promote 

Buffer took at look at the state of social media in 2016 and found that marketers are very good at talking about themselves on social channels (SURPRISE!). Video is still top of mind for many marketers, but it's a challenge to find the time and budget to make good on it. Video is currently a hot commodity on Facebook, and 93% of marketers are on Facebook, where they're spending money. And surprisingly, only 21% of respondents are using social channels for customer service. That's a big opportunity for improvement, and frankly one that should take precedence over finding the time and money to spend on video creation.


The Future of Work Still Includes Work

The future of work is changing, and we need to change with it. According to Glassdoor, HR needs to get with the program by transforming itself to a "people science" by making use of data. This may be a hard pill to swallow for a department that is largely behind the times in adapting to changes; marketing and communications have already shown how much they lag, and they're usually change agents.

The report also notes that automation doesn't necessarily portend fewer jobs. The more likely scenario is different jobs. Other observations: there's an increased desire for nontraditional benefits and the gig economy may lose steam as demand for such services decreases.


When News Breaks, We Fix It

Nieman Labs has more predictions for journalism in 2017 than you can read on your commute. There's no question that 2016 marked a wild and unpredictable year for journalism, from unexpected election results on both sides of the Atlantic to the crescendo of "fake news" exacerbated by Facebook and Google. From trust to truth, communities to transparency, drones to data, video to VR and more, there's a number of topics that deserve your attention in this round-up.

But it's clear now more than ever that we need to make the case for journalism as a profession and to step up and pay for good reporting.


Uber for Monopoly

Naked Capitalism ran a four-part series called Can Uber Deliver? in which it used data on the industry's competitive economics, to address the question of whether Uber’s aggressive efforts to completely dominate the urban car service industry has (or will) increase overall economic welfare. It's a long read, but if you're at all interested in the gig economy or the ride-hailing industry specifically, it's worth spending some time on this series.


We hope this summary has been helpful. If you don't yet subscribe here, please click here to get your free email updates. And the same goes for The Full Monty.


Photo credit: Bruce Guenter (Flickr)

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Boycott This: When Media Attack

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So much about the political and media cycle in 2016 has been unusual, uncommon, or unprecedented. If anyone thought this pattern would end once the election was over, the past week has offered proof that we are in a new world. We’ve been calling it a post-factual world, but things have gotten so surreal that that might not capture it adequately anymore.

The politically-themed site Breitbart.com has not just covered the news over the past year; it has often been the news. President-elect Trump tapped the site’s management and staff for much of his campaign staff and inner circle, and from all appearances, he gets much of his information or perspective based on how Breitbart covers current events. It is not a political statement to suggest that Breitbart, for better or worse, is right now perhaps one of the most influential information sites online.

This has been a source of satisfaction to some; to others, it is a source of considerable angst. Breitbart is unabashedly far-right conservative — even by its own admission — and has been the primary home for the “alt-right” community; others see the site as a harbor for various forms of extremism. Certainly, in the aftermath of the election, Breitbart’s editorial outlook and its spin on current events came under greater scrutiny than previously — leading to a brighter spotlight on Breitbart from the rest of the media, and from advertisers.

Since the election, many of those advertisers have decided to stop advertising on Breitbart, particularly as they determine Breitbart’s content and editorial outlook does not fit their corporate values. Some of the big name companies pulling ads include: Warby Parker, Allstate, Nest, the Vanguard Group, and Earthlink. And the activist Twitter account Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) appeared, publicly calling out all brands that were running advertising on the site.

The problem was that some brands had no idea their ads were appearing on Breitbart at all. Many of those ad placements are retargeting ads that follow you on the internet, thanks to ad tech. If you've visited a site, it or an associated ad will appear on a site like Breitbart. Google’s ad network is all over the Breitbart site, which means any business that does retargeting or audience targeting through Google could show up — and that's quite a few.

At this point, it would seem that the only way to stem the flow of advertisers appearing on Breitbart would be for the ad networks themselves to decry the site as out of alignment with their values.

But the biggest name is Kellogg’s — that good old, all-American brand that is synonymous with breakfast — and Breitbart has chosen to respond in an unprecedented way — one that should be of deep concern to marketers and to all Americans, regardless of your political outlook. When Breitbart began drawing more attention — particularly as its former editor became a senior strategist for Donald Trump — Kellogg's decided to pull its advertising from the site, stating
"We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren't aligned with our values as a company."

Breitbart — a media outlet, remember — responded to the retreat by encouraging its readers to boycott Kellogg’s products, positioning the company’s decision as a declaration of “war against conservatism” and “un-American.” Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow called Kellogg's decision an "act of discrimination and intense prejudice," and indicated that Kellogg's "declared hate for Breitbart's 45 million monthly visitors."

The company started the hashtag #DumpKelloggs, plastered its website with anti-Kellogg articles, and even resorted to a pop-up display exhorting users to "join the movement against anti-conservative biogtry" which included logos of Kellogg's many brands.

Now, setting aside the irony of Breitbart — a site predicated on the intolerance of half of the political ideology of this country — rejecting the idea of intolerance against their one-sided news screeds, there's more to be concerned with here.

Politically-motivated boycotts of big name brands are nothing new. In the past few years, some that come to mind are Starbucks, Disney, and Target, which have been the target of boycotts from the right. Domino’s, Chic-Fil-A, and Hobby Lobby have found themselves in the sights of the left.

Grassroots-led political boycotts are not new in American business — and in the very polarized America of 2016 and beyond, it probably stands to reason that there will be more of them than ever in the next few years. But the Breitbart call to boycott Kellogg’s is different. And it should bother you even if you’re politically conservative by nature.

This is the first time, to this commentator's knowledge, that a media outlet has mounted a campaign to boycott an advertiser. And while people in the United States still have First Amendment rights to patronize or boycott any brand they wish, when an outlet that purports itself to be a media site — especially one with the political influence Breitbart appears to wield — such a public call for a boycott against advertisers is much more insidious.

It's unethical. It’s quite possibly illegal. And it’s most certainly dangerous.

From a perspective of journalistic ethics, Breitbart’s actions violate standard journalistic practices. Other media outlets have decided editorial outlooks, but none have ever tried to impose those outlooks on advertisers or outside businesses before. Breitbart’s call for a boycott is clearly intended to send a message that brands had better align with or support its political perspective — or face (purported) economic consequences.

Purely and simply, it’s an attempt by a political website to inflict its political outlook on brands and companies, and to generate consequences for companies that decline to support or advertise on any outlet they choose. Breitbart’s action is intended to send a message that any company not sharing its worldview may be in for a world of hurt. And they stated as much to the Associated Press when they said Kellogg's was making such a move "to its own detriment."

Now, you've seen movies about organized crime. There's a word for that kind of talk and behavior.

It's called extortion.

If you want to look extortion up in the dictionary, it's quite simply:
the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one's office or authority.

But beyond being unethical and illegal, it creates a precedent about which other brands need to be vigilant. As Rob Clark said on Twitter,

Aside from the more salacious claims of extortion, Breitbart’s actions could violate laws barring unfair business practices because it is calling for a massive group boycott of an advertiser to further its competitive position. Ted Boutrous, a First Amendment lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles, said:
“It’s clearly intended to deter other advertisers from withdrawing their business and to ensure costs and prices don’t go down for Breitbart. It’s a serious issue to boycott in the commercial sphere.”

We'll see what the future holds as far as lawsuits and Breitbart, particularly as the state of California has some fairly broad anti-competition laws.

Even absent any legal action, the last laugh may be on Breitbart, though.

Their tantrum has led to a backlash against the backlash, and there is now an equally strong movement online to buy Kellogg’s products in support of the company’s decision. The hashtag #BuyKelloggs has risen and you can see photos of Kellogg's purchases all over Facebook. In fact, our family bought dozens of boxes of Kellogg's cereals to donate to local food pantries.

Maybe you can think of a creative way to support the good guys too.
When media boycott a brand,
We suddenly know where we stand.
   The effects are subliminal,
   And the actions are criminal
When Breitbart extends a Black Hand.

If you liked this commentary, you can listen to a version of it in my podcast The Full Monty. Subscribe via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.




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Living in a Post-Factual World

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We seem to be living in a post-factual world.

You may have noticed that when both sides of the political spectrum meet to debate about something, they tend to have a belief set in their minds and they greet each other with heels dug in and ready to defend their position, regardless of what's presented to them.

Even if they're given an unassailable set of facts, they'll choose to deny it or to deny the reality of something the rest of us have seen happen with our very eyes. Candidates, pundits and the public alike are guilty of this post-factual trance that seems to keep them from admitting they're wrong. And it's dangerous.

Many of these debates happen on Facebook, which to this day will not admit that it's a media property. Personally, I think Facebook is a media property, since more people use Facebook as a news discovery source than any other. People now open a social media app to find news more frequently than they go to the New York Times or CNN home page. According to Vox:
"The result has been a disaster for the public’s understanding of current affairs. Reporters have come under increasing pressure to write “clickbait” articles that pander to readers’ worst impulses. Too-good-to-check stories gain more traction online than stories that are balanced and thoroughly reported. That has worsened the nation’s political polarization and lowered the quality of democratic discourse."
Facebook's position is that it is a tech company, not a news company. While it may not produce any news on its own, it is still the arbiter of what people see, and as such, it has a significant responsibility to ensure that the news shared on its site is accurate and reliable.

But when you have instances of teenagers in Macedonia who just “launched at least 140 US politics websites” with “American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com,” and Facebook is pulling news stories and even trending items from them, it's a significant problem.

Given the rash of stories recently about Hillary Clinton's emails and the FBI, it was inevitable that the following headline popped:
“FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE”
However, if you look at the site where this supposed "news" story came from, it was denverguardian.com. One small problem:

There is no Denver Guardian.

It's a site that was established on GoDaddy in July of 2016, according to the article in the Denver Post. But people believed it because they wanted to believe it. They couldn't be bothered to check.

And neither could Facebook, evidently.

The social media giant is under pressure now to crack down on fake news, but at the same time Mark Zuckerberg is denying that it's a news organization, and is instead just a tech company. To the extent that Facebook is not creating news, he is correct. But Facebook is a massive distribution network — a place that many people effectively make their home page. And Facebook needs to address that.

As much as Facebook as made the world a more connected place, as Zuckerberg's mantra goes, it has also gone against the grains of human nature. We haven't been a global people. We've been a national people at best, and more likely a tribal people. It's human nature to stick with what we know. And Facebook, ironically, has done more to enforce that than eradicate it. And it hurt the campaign and election process as people dug their heels in deeper, cited material from their own side, and became unwilling to believe facts that were right before their very eyes. To the point where I've seen some people decry fact-checking sites as tools of one side or the other.

Ultimately, we're living in a filter bubble where we've isolated ourselves from alternative points of view. Our worldview ends up shrinking rather than growing — particularly at a time when we need to unite. This 2011 TED Talk by Eli Pariser captures it nicely:



Our forefathers designed an amazing government—just tremendous—with a system of checks and balances. Bigly checks and the very best balances.

We just need some of those at Facebook now.


If you liked this commentary, you can listen to a version of it in my podcast The Full Monty. Subscribe via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.





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The Last Straw at Yahoo - or, My Bologna Has a Second Name

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It's M-A-Y-E-R.

Have you been following the Yahoo saga? In fairness, it's been going on for 20 years, but the last four under Marissa Mayer have been particularly fulsome. I covered much of the early history, right through the Verizon purchase in Episode 5 of The Full Monty.

Mayer has made some big bets with the company's assets, including the $640 million purchase of Brightroll and the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr. In case you were following, the Tumblr purchase was written down - twice - to the tune of $710 million.

Her focus has been on so-called "MaVeNS" - an acronym for mobile, video, native and social - said to be the key to Yahoo's future, against which everything was balanced. However, it was never broken out as a separate business unit and was subsumed into everything else the company did. The laudable intention was to simplify Yahoo, but functionally, nothing changed.

One thing that did change was Yahoo's work-from-home policy. Mayer very quickly eliminated that, thus alienating a huge group of employees, many of whom were working mothers. She didn't do herself any favors when she had a nursery installed in her office so she could return to work after only 2 weeks of maternity leave. Not every employee had that option.

So, we come to part of our story where Verizon purchased the core assets of Yahoo for $4.8 billion. Happy ending, right?

Not so fast. Since that time, a few things have surfaced. Namely:

Any one of these things would seem to be a dereliction of duty. Yahoo's board - historically ineffectual - still doesn't seem to be concerned about Mayer's fitness to lead, nor do they particularly have a sense of urgency about things.

Well, as I typically include a poem in each episode of The Full Monty, I've decided to dedicate this one to Yahoo's current CEO (with apologies to Dr. Seuss).

Marissa A. Mayer, Will You Please Go Now!

The time has come. The time is now.
Just go. Go. GO! I don't care how.
You can go by foot. You can go by cow.
Marissa A. Mayer, will you please go now!

You can go on skates. You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat. But please go. Please!

You can go on a bike.
You can go on a purple bike if you like.

You can Wander and Blink and Aviate too.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, DO!

Marissa A. Mayer, I don't care how.
Marissa A. Mayer, will you please GO NOW!

You can go on stilts. You can go by fish.
You can go in a Tumblr if you wish.

If you wish you may go
by Yahoo mail.
Just scan yourself
and leave Sunnydale.

Marissa A. Mayer!
Don't you know
the time has come
to go, Go, GO!

Get on your way!
Please, Marissa A.!
You might like going in a Flickr way.
You can go by neglect…or lack of sense
You even can go by incompetence.

You can go by lawsuit…or jet.
I don't care how you go. Just GET!

Get yourself some ravens.
Fly away with your MaVENS!

Marissa, Marissa!
Will you leave this room!

Marissa A. Mayer! I don't care HOW.
Marissa A. Mayer! Will you please GO NOW!

I said GO and GO I meant…
The time had come, SO…Marissa WENT.

If you liked this commentary, you can listen to it in my podcast The Full Monty. Subscribe via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.




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How Leaders Should Communicate

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Leaders — particularly business leaders like presidents and CEOs — are typically in the public spotlight. Many times, they are the face of their company and give statements to the press or even interact with customers online.

As the company's chief spokesperson, the CEO spends about 50 percent of their time performing functions that are associated with communications. This includes writing, presenting and public speaking, involving all of an organization's stakeholders. Emails to employees, cogent presentations, question and answer sessions with the board, speeches to townhalls, investors, and industry groups.

And in doing so, the Communicator-in-Chief should have a clear, succinct and memorable message. Because if anything, leadership is about taking complex ideas and making them understandable, relatable and actionable. In short, effective communication means clarity.

So, let's pause for a moment and reflect on the communications ability of one of the presidential candidates. There's no doubt that Donald Trump has managed to tap into a vein of discord and dissatisfaction in America, and has used Twitter in particular to fan the flames. The 140-character platform seems perfect for his insults, jabs, and sound bite-laden thoughts. But if you listen to him speak at events where he has unprepared remarks - and let's face it: that's most of them - he speaks in disjointed tweets.

But separate from his success with his core supporters, one must ask whether or not his style of speaking helps or hurts his cause with a broader audience. Is it clear? Is it understandable? Does he have a message?

Let's look at one speech which Salon.com asked readers to help diagram:




Any takers? The only thing worse than having to figure out how to diagram that sentence is having to listen to it over and over again as you get a transcript.

While the jumbled thoughts may leave you scratching or shaking your head, largely due to the lack of coherent message and syntax, there is one thing that Trump can get credit for: repetition. Not repetition of message, but rather repetition of words like they and it.

As you think about the leaders you admire and their ability to effectively communicate - consider Ronald Reagan, who was known as the Great Communicator - their success doesn't depend on how well they speak to stakeholders who currently support them, but rather on how well they can persuade those who don't yet agree with them.

The best leaders are natural storytellers. Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, and are easy to follow, whether they're written or spoken. And whichever role you inhabit — writer, speaker, or leader — you have a responsibility to your audience to bring them along the journey with you, ensuring they aren't inadvertently stranded on the way to the common understanding.

After all, that's why you're the leader.

If you liked this commentary, you can listen to it in my podcast The Full Monty. Subscribe via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.





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Twitter Needs a Sense of Urgency

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Twitter is in a rut. If you look at the growth of user numbers each quarter, you'll find a relatively flat number, hovering around 310 million monthly active users on a good month. The latest numbers show that Twitter's share of social network users in the United States is dropping, with only two percent year-on-year growth.

If you look at the stock price over the last year, it's down over 40 percent. It continues to be a haven for trolls, yet it is a dominant source of breaking news. It's Donald Trump's weapon of mass distraction. But no discernable progress on the product and the company's strategy have been made. A series of top executives from the product, media and communications teams have left over the last six months.

The public — at least the non Twitter-using public — still doesn't understand what Twitter is. And perhaps the issue is that neither does Twitter. We just witnessed what happened to Yahoo after a decade of not being able to effectively define itself. On one day, Twitter seems to be mimicking elements of Facebook. On another, it's adding stickers to be more like Snapchat. On the next, it is focused on streaming video deals with major sports franchises and media outlets.

To this commentator at least, Twitter doesn't seem to have any appreciable strategy for digging itself out of these doldrums. As of this writing, it is considering a sale and with Google, Apple and Disney bowing out of the bidding, it looks like Salesforce is the lead contender.

If we return to what Jack Dorsey said when he was initially made CEO, he pledged three things, as noted recently in Recode:
  1. Ensure a more disciplined execution 
  2. Simplify our service to deliver Twitter’s value faster 
  3. Better communicate our value. 

Let's just focus on the last two: simplify the service and improve communication. For all of its brevity in 140 characters, Twitter is immensely complex. The platform seems to be whatever you define it to be: an advertising medium, a research tool, a community, a news feed, a crisis management utility. The simplification, both in the product itself and how we refer to it, has yet to arrive.

And the communication function at Twitter — much like the rest of the Silicon Valley startups — has been lax and reactive. If I were advising the communications team there, I'd recommend creating a message that supports the company's strategy (assuming it has one) and aggressive storytelling and media relations. The public can't be expected to understand Twitter without Twitter better communicating what it is.

A big part of that effort should be more frequent and visible communications from Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey. As mentioned in Episode 7, the CEO is the communicator-in-chief. But Jack is also the CEO of Square — a job he didn't want to give up when he returned to Twitter to take the same role. As a result, Jack Dorsey is losing control of Twitter.

Whether or not the market or others realize it, Twitter is on the cusp of the fight for its life. A half-time CEO with a less than urgent approach is not what the company currently needs. If I were on Twitter's board, I'd demand that Jack Dorsey put more than 140 characters' worth of effort into figuring out how he's going to solve the aforementioned issues.

Because right now, it looks like you don't know, Jack.


If you liked this commentary, you can listen to it in my podcast The Full Monty. Subscribe via email or on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker or SoundCloud.





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