A reader submitted this eloquent quote on the collective goal of "Two PM":
Everyone respects the specialist, who is deeply informed in his or her area of expertise, but can seem a little narrow. Someone of wide but superficial knowledge is easily dismissed as a dilettante. But occasionally one comes across someone whose knowledge is both wide-ranging and deep, and such a person we call a polymath.
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MEDIA: The stats from Super Bowl LI —which saw the New England Patriots overcome a 25-point, second-half deficit to stun the Atlanta Falcons in overtime, 34-28—are flowing in. Here are a handful from the digital marketing realm that have really jumped out so far from Amobee Brand Intelligence.
MEDIA: It’s hard for people who aren’t teens with a million Snapchat friends to grasp, but once your network is sufficiently big, viewing stories can feel like the “lean back” experience of watching television, as opposed to the “lean forward” experience of engaging on social media.
RETAIL BLOODBATH: The best public data on what Macy's real estate is worth comes from a January 2016 presentation from activist hedge fund Starboard. Based on Starboard's estimates and some back-of-the-envelope math — and assuming real estate values haven't gone down — Macy's owned real estate is worth nearly $18 billion. ($21 billion minus $2.8 billion of leased space, excluding some properties Starboard valued at zero value).
RETAIL BLOODBATH: There are (still) too many stores. While Macy’s — which is being trounced by both Amazon and fast-fashion competitors on both price and style — is closing 68 of its stores, that still leaves the company with well over 600 locations. Retailers may be better off investing more in fewer locations in order to generate concentrated foot traffic that is not beholden to promotions. “There is just too much square footage in offline retailing,” Witcher said.
MEDIA: There's a global and growing audience for live competitive video games, or eSports, where players inflict virtual carnage on each other in titles such as Call of Duty or do battle in digital versions of conventional sports like football.As eSports bars replace sports pubs, soccer players trade in cleats for control pads and live streaming audiences match the Super Bowl's, it's tempting to think the future belongs to eSports royalty Scump and Nadeshot rather than Ronaldo or Beckham.
DATA: Born just before or right after 9/11, they also had to endure the Iraq War and the recession of 2008 as children. Despite coming of age during relatively turbulent times, they are highly resilient and upbeat. Adept at sorting news for themselves on smartphones, a Gen Zer is more likely to focus on the more uplifting news of the day instead of watching or reading the depressing lead story presented to them on TV or in a newspaper. In fact, out of 30 characteristics, “positive” topped Gen Z’s list of how they describe themselves.
BRAND: The largest number of brands in the category is clustered in the lower right quadrant, performing well offline but not at all well online. Department stores such as Macy’s and Kohl’s are joined by specialty retailers like Old Navy, American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch. The inconsistency between the brands’ online and offline performance represents an opportunity to move the positive conversations happening offline into the social media world.
BRAND: It was the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history and the first Super Bowl to go into overtime. But for as unpredictable as the action on the field was, the attendant advertising felt a bit familiar. Advertisers shelled out as much as $5 million for 30 seconds of screentime time during this year’s big game, according to ad-tracker Kantar Media. But official sponsors weren’t alone in trying to nab some attention: Countless other brands also tried to cash in on an highly-engaged second screen audience on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and, most importantly, Twitter.
MEDIA: Omelet’s senior social strategist Kim Jimenez, suggested that with growing competition from Instagram, Snapchat should focus more on messaging than content efforts like Snapchat Discover and Live Stories. “The Instagram encroachment may actually revert the social platform back to its original focus of ephemeral one-on-one interactions,” Jimenez said.
RETAIL: The practice of manufacturing clothing and accessories in Asia and shipping them into the United States is common in the apparel industry — as of 2015, over 97% of clothes and 98% of shoes sold in the US were imported, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. But that dependence on foreign imports might become a particular issue for the first daughter because of President Trump’s stance on trade
ECOMMERCE: Alibaba has, until now, avoided any direct involvement in the e-commerce battle between Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal, but with this investment, it is likely to increase the competition in the e-commerce space. Alibaba is the dominant e-commerce player in China, but its scope outside the country is still limited, and if it wants to keep Amazon in check, then competing in India is going to become necessary. Whether that will be through an intermediary like Paytm, or by finally setting up its own standalone presence here remains to be seen.
ECOMMERCE: Amazon has long plowed its profits back into its business investments. In order to speed up its delivery, it has invested in opening new distribution centers and leasing fleets of trucks. In May, Amazon leased 40 Boeing jets from Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings and Air Transport Services Group Inc., a fleet it dubbed "Prime Air." The moves comes as e-commerce continues to outpace retail sales. Amazon said Thursday the number of items it sold in the fourth quarter rose 24 percent compared with a year ago. Its revenue rose 22 percent to $43.74 billion, slightly missing analyst expectations.
Why Snap's IPO valuation is reasonable? CB Insights used their data analytics software to track Snap's growth and longterm viability. Read here.
Before the Internet, when distribution was the bottleneck, the optimal strategy was to maximize the available throughput. The best example is consumer packaged goods: companies like Proctor & Gamble built massive brands that were designed to appeal to the broadest swaths of population possible, maximizing the return on the effort and expense necessary to advertise and secure retail space. In the case of politics, this manifested as a push by the parties for broadly acceptable candidates who could appeal to the middle.
Internet companies, on the other hand, have effectively infinite throughput. Amazon, for example, unbound by the need for shelf space and capitalizing on its transformation into an e-commerce platform, can plausibly bill itself as “The Everything Store”; products are found not through browsing but by search. This, by extension, means that products need to be wanted, not simply recognized — and the same goes for Google’s impact on politics.
Facebook, as is its wont, supercharges these effects: instead of users “pulling” out content they are interested in, the algorithm “pushes” content based on its capability of driving engagement. And what drives engagement? Emotion and passion. That may mean a funny product video, or, in the case of politics, politicians who eschew the middle and run to the extremes.
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