Key Findings

Is Your Brand Story Doing Its Job?

According to a recent study by McKinsey, there may be a disconnect between your company’s core messages and what matters most to your customers. Even worse, your customers may not be able to tell you from the competition by your messaging.

McKinsey reviewed public documents of Fortune 500 and DAX30 companies and developed a list of about 13 themes and topic areas companies use to position their brands. They then picked the top 90 global B2B companies on market capitalization across six sectors to review.

Customers in the study judged the strength of brands by their perceptions of a company’s effective supplychain management and specialist market knowledge. Yet, themes such as social responsibility, sustainability and global reach dominated most B2B company messaging. McKinsey also found customers had difficulty distinguishing one company from another when comparing messaging.

Suggested fixes for this include making use of market research, and asking sales reps to gather intelligence on exactly what customers value about your product or service. Then, engage salespeople in helping marketing stay in tune with customer needs and perceptions. McKinsey also warns to stay abreast of market shifts, evolve and be consistent.

http://bit.ly/18PvzS5

 

Advertisers Chase America’s Evolving TV Watching Habits

We still love watching television, but technology is rapidly changing our habits as binge watchers and cord cutters force networks, program creators and advertisers to adapt. Adult Americans watch about 4.5 hours of TV per day, although many appear to be doing much of it during weekend marathon sessions with their DVRs.

Long gone are the days when we were tethered to our televisions and at the mercy of network programming schedules of our favorite shows. We now have DVRs, TiVos and Roku boxes and subscription services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon streaming our shows over broadband and fast Internet connections. Finally, we don’t have to schedule our lives around NBC’s “Must See TV” night — we simply record the shows we want to watch, or now with Video on Demand, we can “time shift” our personal viewing to whenever, wherever. While “appointment television” once gave way to channel surfing, we are now practicing the ritual of “binge-watching,” where we devote hours of time catching up on our favorite series, at home or on the go via our mobile devices. The practice has boosted ratings for Mad Men and introduced new viewers to Lost.

This has caught the attention of TV producers who are retooling shows with marathon viewers in mind — enhancing scripts with richer character development and storylines, and eliminating pacing around commercial breaks.

As streaming services increase, some households are cutting the cord to traditional cable and satellite services, and watching shows through game consoles, Roku boxes or Apple TVs. All these changes are sending TV networks, media buyers and advertisers scrambling for a toe-hold. Networks are even integrating social media during live shows such as The Voice and Project Runway to capture younger demographics who multitask on mobile devices. Only time will tell how ever-changing technology and our interaction with it will take television watching trends next. Stay tuned!

(http://tv.msn.com/emmys/the-new-frontier-of-television-watching/story/feature/#scpshrjwfbs)

 

Technology and Innovation Drive Vast Shifts in Energy Landscape

The Wall Street Journal recently marked the vast changes to the global energy landscape over the last 20 years in an extensive report entitled, The Future of Energy. From the technology breakthroughs that brought about the U.S. oil renaissance via hydraulic fracturing and a renewal in deepwater drilling, to innovative business models such as solar leases that now make this energy source accessible to a whole new group of home owners, the report chronicles the breadth and depth of energy’s past, present and possible future.

“The last time we had a presidential election, the U.S. was going to run out of oil,” says Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS, in the WSJ report. “Since then, U.S. oil production has grown 25%… technology has opened doors people didn’t know were there…Over one million jobs have been created by the development of unconventional gas. The U.S. went from importing 60% of our crude in 2005 to 42% today. We’ve seen a big turnaround.”

Another topic addressed by the WSJ’s expert energy panel convened for the report was energy conservation, or the lack of it in the U.S.

According to Bill Ritter, director of the Center for the New Energy Economy, every person can make a difference in curbing energy waste. He cited the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project study that found the building of 32 large power plants can be avoided and $544 million in public health benefit generated in the Southwest by 2030 by implementing best-practice energy-efficiency programs.

“Per capita energy consumption in the U.S. is among the highest of all large economies in the world,” says Jeffrey Ball, scholar-in-residence at Standford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance. “Americans could do a lot to curb their energy consumption without making life any less fun…we don’t need to wait for government to act…we make choices everyday about how to use energy. We can exercise our power to think.”

(http://on.wsj.com/1j9ybMx)

 

“Smart” Patient Monitors Changing ICUs

In hospital settings, change is sometimes slow to occur. Yet, small changes can have a big impact on many levels. Take for example, all those intimidating bulky, beeping machines wired to patients in the intensive care units. Thanks to “smart” technologies, mobile patient monitors are starting to appear in many hospitals and could make those mammoth machines a thing of the past.

While most hospitals continuously monitor patient vitals only in ICUs, sleek new wireless monitors worn on patients’ wrists allow nurses to monitor them in a regular room or wherever they are in the hospital. These real-time monitoring devices also eliminate the need for nurses to wake up patients in the middle of the night, and more accurately calculate alarm thresholds using algorithms, reducing “alarm fatigue” (7 in 10 hospital alarms turn out to be false). In addition, the devices save all the information to the patient’s electronic health record for doctors to review as time permits. Now that’s smart technology!

(http://singularityhub.com/2013/11/08/mobile-med-tech-revolution-hits-hospitals/)

Bullets

B2B

• Some 54% of American consumers are now on more than one content platform, such as desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.(marketingprofs.com)

• 23% of social media messages include links to content , including published articles, videos and photos. (AOL-Nielsen)

• Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors, and companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links than others. (contentplus.co)

• Both business customers and recreational travelers indicated that wireless was the No. 1 priority at hotels and in the rooms and 34% of business travelers won’t stay at hotel without Internet. (motorolasolutions.com)

• Consumers are spending time researching on their smartphones (15+ hours a week), their research starts with a search engine (vs. a mobile site or app), proximity is important (69% expect businesses to be within five miles of their location), immediacy is key (more than half want to purchase within the hour) and mobile influences their purchase decisions (93% go on to buy). (googlethinkinsights.com)

Brand Strategy

• Some 54% of American consumers are now on more than one content platform, such as desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.(marketingprofs.com)  

• 23% of social media messages include links to content , including published articles, videos and photos. (AOL-Nielsen)

• Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors, and companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links than others. (contentplus.co)

• Both business customers and recreational travelers indicated that wireless was the No. 1 priority at hotels and in the rooms and 34% of business travelers won’t stay at hotel without Internet. (motorolasolutions.com)

• Consumers are spending time researching on their smartphones (15+ hours a week), their research starts with a search engine (vs. a mobile site or app), proximity is important (69% expect businesses to be within five miles of their location), immediacy is key (more than half want to purchase within the hour) and mobile influences their purchase decisions (93% go on to buy). (googlethinkinsights.com)

Energy

• For every one cent increase in a gallon of jet fuel, U.S. airlines’ costs go up by $175 million. (nationalairlinepolicy.com)

• For the 12 months until October 2013, the electricity produced from wind power in the U.S. amounted to 163.849 terawatt-hours, or 4.06% of all generated electrical energy. (iea.gov)

• A U.S. Government Accountability Office report counted 82 different programs spread across nine agencies that provided tax breaks, loan guarantees, or other economic assistance to the wind industry. (instituteofenergyresearch.com)

• When Congress enacted the Renewable Fuel Standard program in 2005 and expanded it in 2007, the idea was to reduce dependence on foreign oil and cut greenhouse gas emissions by mixing biofuels with gasoline and diesel. Since 2005, U.S. ethanol production has more than tripled. Over that period, that has cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks by 210 million metric tons and reduced U.S. gasoline imports by about 600,000 barrels per day, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. (businessweek.com)

• The industries with the highest positive ratings among 18-29-year-olds were: the computer industry (69%); the restaurant industry (64%); the farming and agriculture industry (62%); and the internet industry (57%). Among the lowest scorers were the oil and gas industry (25%), the federal government (31%), and the real estate industry (32%). (marketingcharts.com)

Healthcare

• On the rise for 30 years, melanoma is the most common cancer in the U.S. among people ages 25-29. In 2013, 76,000 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed resulting in approximately 9,000 deaths. However, when melanoma is detected early survival rates are almost always 100%.(WebMD.com)

• Women under 55 are less likely to seek help for atypical heart attack symptoms – shortness of breath, fatigue, nausea, back pain – and more likely than men to die from a heart attack. Women who are depressed have two to three times higher risk of heart disease than other women. 80% – 90% of heart disease is preventable, even for women who have had a heart attack. The key is to know and address your risk factors; high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle and stress. – (WebMD.com)

• 50 million people in the U.S. are affected by all types of arthritis. By 2030 this number is projected to reach 67 million. (cdc.gov)

• Americans drink nearly the same amount of calories from alcohol as they do from sugar-sweetened drinks according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.(huffingtonpost.com)

• Researchers at Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity (Rebecca Puhl, PhD) found that the most effective public health campaigns are empowering and solutions-oriented, not focused on body weight and obesity. (experiencelife.com)