by Jacqueline Koch | Sep 6, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
In today’s fast moving data-driven economy, being “scared of numbers” is becoming a major liability for both readers and writers. However, data also provides a great opportunity to uncover insights, discover connections and move knowledge forward. The challenge then is how to empower writers to tell the stories revealed by data in such a way that an average maths-averse reader can understand and embrace.
Maths-anxiety is “a thing”
Maths anxiety has been defined as feelings of “tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations.” According to a study by researchers at the University of Granada, tension, nervousness, concern, worry, edginess, impatience, confusion, fear and mental block are some of the symptoms of this disorder. For the average person, this means that the very thought of having to interact with numbers makes them queasy.
The power of data
More and more magazines and newspapers, as well as their branded content studios, are recognising the power of using data to identify and tell stories. According to Virtualization and Cloud News, approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day. This number will continue to grow as smartphones, tablets, wearable technology and connected homes produce more and more data.
But for journalists and other writers, the data they really want to access is called “open data.” According to the Open Data Handbook, open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute. But it’s not just for journalists. In March this year, as part of the 2016 International Open Data Day, cities, states and federal agencies tackled some of their biggest issues using data. From school enrolment to international aid distribution to tracking terrorism, the open data community tackled some of the world’s most pressing issues.
Portland, OR-based journalist Lee Van der Voo who is also the managing director of the non-profit journalism organisation InvestigateWest, told The New School’s, Ashawnta Jackson that journalists have come to see data work as an opportunity to do more with less. “Using open data makes us incredibly more efficient in analysing trends. It helps us look for newsworthy patterns in everything from contract spending in state government to budget analysis, and enables us to look very closely at particular data sets, for example traffic stops made by police or accidents on state highway.”
Bringing meaning to data with storytelling
For the many people afflicted with math anxiety, the growth of data-driven journalism may not be music to their ears. What’s more, according to Jennifer Aaker, Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, studies show that we are wired to remember stories much more than data, facts and figures. However, when data and story are used together, she said, audiences are moved both emotionally and intellectually.
In his book, Facts Are Sacred, Simon Rogers suggests that data analysis isn’t about graphics and visualisations; it’s about telling a story. “Look at data the way a detective examines a crime scene. Try to understand what happened and what evidence needs to be collected.” According to Rogers, the visualisation will come naturally once the mystery is solved. The focus is the story.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Jim Stikeleather cautions that done well, a visualisation should tell a story through the graphical depiction of statistical information. “The visualisation needs to tell a story to the audience. Storytelling helps the viewer gain insight from the data,” he said.
Data-driven storytelling done well
During the final week of last November, The Wall Street Journal published an article each day under the title: Our Demographic Destiny. The seven-part series tries to answer the question: What will the world be like in 2050?
Topics covered included “The end of cheap labor,” “Gender gap” and “Tastes like chicken,” which explored the challenges food producers face in satisfying the world’s appetite for meat. In addition to a rich narrative describing each trend and the people who are impacted, each article included photographs and visualisations of demographics along with companion anecdotes. Put together, the series helped readers envision how we will work, age and live. Readers who have virtual reality (VR) headsets could even watch embedded VR movies or interact with the content using their keyboard, game-board or mobile device.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Aug 31, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
When two trends collide, interesting opportunities emerge. This is very much the case for the twin trends of podcasting and branded content, where the former is becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Podcasting is becoming a force to be reckoned with
With around 57 million monthly listeners – an increase of 75 percent since 2013, it is clear that podcasting is not the flash in the pan that some predicted it would be. A 2015 report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism suggests that podcasters are actively experimenting with a wide range of revenue streams including premium content, sponsorships and dynamic ad insertions.
According to The Nieman Lab’s Rex Sorgatz, there is good reason for advertisers to be attracted to the platform because even medium-sized podcasts can now command a $20-$50 CPM for a 60-second spot. Radio, on the other hand, grabs less than $2-$10 CPM. According to Sorgatz, among the many reasons for this: quality of the content, desirability of the audience, and intimacy of the ads.
Advertising is going native
The age of branded content or native advertising is also clearly upon us. For the uninitiated, native advertisements take on the look and feel of the content surrounding them. By 2021, native display ad revenue in the US, which includes native in-feed ads on publisher properties and social platforms, will make up 74 percent of total US display ad revenue, up from a 56 percent share in 2016, according to new BI Intelligence estimates. BI Intelligence breaks out native ads into t
hree categories: social native, native-style display and sponsored content (also referred to as premium native).
According to the report, sponsored content, which is categorised separately from native display due to the direct relationship between publishers and brands in creating the format, will be the fastest-growing native format over the next five years. However, the high cost to produce these ads and the limitation in inventory will limit the format.
The rise of branded audio content
What makes podcasting so appealing to brands? “You’re going to get a growing number of people to spend 30 minutes with your brand on an ongoing basis in a way that may be very challenging to do with video or Facebook,” said Steve Pratt one of the founders of Pacific Content, a company that produces branded podcasts for Shopify, Slack and Envoy, an iPad-based, visitor-registration system.
Other common formats for branded audio content include radio programs, in-store and event radio stations, infomercials as well as point of sale audio and video.
Just like print media giants, including The New York Times and The Associated Press, have created internal native advertising studios offering services to brands, a number of the larger radio and podcasting companies are now launching their own branded audio studios.
Last year, iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel) Chairman and CEO, Bob Pittman announced the company was launching the “first branded audio studio for the digital era to prove the power of radio, the power of live content, and the power of cross-platform programming designed for a media world without walls.”
At the launch, the company said that the studio, called “iHeartMedia Soundboard,” would create the next generation of audio-video and live, experiential storytelling across radio, online, events, mobile, social and outdoor platforms.
Coca-Cola was one of the first companies to tap iHeartMedia Soundboard to create a branded podcast. The podcast series titled First Taste Fridays with Coca-Cola is targeted at teens and describes itself as a source for “first tastes of the hottest new music and behind the scenes artist interviews.”
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by Jacqueline Koch | Aug 29, 2016 |
Niantic’s release of PokémonGo, the new free-to-play app, which uses familiar cartoon characters from the 1990s, has been taking the world by storm. While the negative articles pile up bemoaning the cellphone generation’s continued obsession with their mobile devices, positive conversation around the new phone game is slow to trickle in. But one unexpected proponent of the game has cropped up: small businesses, desperately in need of advertising.
The basics of its success
PokémonGo’s concept is fairly simple and extraordinarily similar to geocaching, the satellite-mapped treasure hunting activity that started in the early 2000s. Basically, you download PokémonGo as an app to your smartphone, and the app randomly generates Pokémon (animated creatures famous from the television show) onto a satellite map of your surrounding area. These Pokémon can then be caught by swiping your finger across the screen to “catch” them. While producers at Niantic are reticent to give any gameplay directions on how to interact with the game, it seems that the primary objective is to “catch them all”; and the higher level your Pokémon, the better.
Niantic, started as an internal Google project, has succeeded in large part because of its connections with parent company Google. Proprietary access to GoogleMaps technology allows the game to seamlessly show up-to-date local mapping which helps its augmented reality experience feel clean and ![]()
immersive. The game has done phenomenally well, quickly breaking records both with iOS and Droid devices for most downloads. The game currently has 100 million users across the globe since its release at the beginning of July.
The in-app purchase with a surprising effect
PokemonGo currently brings in US$10m in daily revenue, mostly from in-game purchases. One of the most lucrative purchases is what is called a “lure.” After buying a lure, the owner can place it on a Pokéstop (a geographic location marked as a hub in the game), increasing the spawn rates of Pokémon in the area. While there have been issues reported with lures being placed as bait for armed robberies, lures are meant as a benefit for players, and now, local economies.
Pokéstops are placed at random by the game at notable geographic locations; monuments, parks, public buildings and in some cases memorials. This encourages people playing the game to get out of their homes and go for a walk, some people venturing so far that they have to call for an Uber to get home. But in urban areas, Pokéstops mean more foot traffic and more foot traffic means more business.
A new kind of advertising
With so many people who might otherwise not be out and about, local urban businesses have seen a huge boost in incidental sales, and companies that invest the $10 to put a lure on their nearest Pokéstop for 24-hours can sometimes see that increase in business multiplied hundredfold. As an example, the Denver Zoo recently invested $380 in lures over a weekend period and saw a $58,000 jump in sales from PokemonGo users alone.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Aug 23, 2016 |
By Christopher Ross
It may be surprising to know that there is a powerful connection between the hormone oxytocin and the bread and butter work of the publishing industry – storytelling.
While oxytocin was discovered nearly 70 years ago, it has only recently been proven to produce reactions that tend to make us become more trusting, compassionate, even charitable and generous. It creates a signal in the brain which is referred to as “it’s safe to approach others,” and dubbed the moral molecule, cuddle hormone, the holiday hormone. Some have even called it the love hormone. As the research and the naming continues to evolve, one thing is undisputed, oxytocin makes us more sensitive to the social cues around us and facilitates narrative bonding with stories.
The reason this hormone is interesting to publishers is that it is what the brain generates when activated through engaging narratives, images, music and more. The movie industry figured this out early on and leveraged this emotional response to sell films. Writers know the art and arch of a compelling narrative with or without action. This is one of the key physiological reasons that while watching a fight scene happening on the ledge of a building, one might get sweaty palms or experience an emotional tug watching while a scene with a soft piano music playing while a young child on crutches struggles to walk up a grassy field. Because narratives activate oxytocin, storytellers have the power to grab the audience, and keep them coming back for more, and more.
The medium matters
The form in which a narrative is told absolutely matters. Marshall McLuhan a narrative theorist famously wrote back in the 1960s that “the medium is the message,” This has been found to be neurologically true. Whether the story is told in print, online, interactive, in videos, pictures, content marketing, editorials or shoppable content, they are all mediums that have the ability to generate oxytocin and elicit empathy, compassion and more.
Prior to these revelations, researchers have long known that two regions of the brain known as the Broca and Wernicke areas, light up when language is being shared. But recent research has demonstrated that when stories and analogies using colourful, narrative and sticky language are applied, many more cortexes in the brain light up. As an example, if a story teller describes a noisy and smelly kitchen, they would only activate one cortex in their audience’s brain. But when the author describes walking through a crowded kitchen, with its loudbanging of the pots and pans and the aromaof nutmeg and cinnamon wafting through the air, the audience fires their cortexes that relate to smell, sounds and even movement. It has proven that stories activate 3 timesmore cortexes of the brain than facts and numbers alone as explained in The neuroscience behind storytelling.
Jennifer Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business found stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. What’s more, she found audiences reported more positive reactions to advertisements that were told as narratives verses those using only facts.
Don’t tell them. Show them…
For marketing and messaging it is no longer enough to tell consumers what your product or opinions are. You need to show why it is important for them. It’s not new, but it should be adopted more broadly. According to Onespot, 92 percent of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story. They want content that is compelling, expressive and that they can relate to.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Aug 18, 2016 |
By Estelle Pin, Boost! Collective’s Millennial-in-chief
This is the first in a two-part series about the increasing trend of ethical consumerism in millennials. Part two will explore storytelling in ethical consumerism and who’s doing it well.
Think about your 20s.
Whether you’re experiencing them right now, or remembering days behind you, some things are universally true. For instance: chances are, you thought of positive things when prompted to think about this time in your life. You also probably thought of self-defining moments. That could be the moment you got your first real job, or that really fantastic date you’ll never forget. Or it could be the single strange moment when you tried something new and you decided this was now going to be something you did.
That’s the thing about identify formation. It’s sort of a trick question. “Who are you?” Um, a cellist, a writer, a skier, a runner? “No, no, that’s what you do—but who ARE you?” I’m … a French immigrant. “No, not where you’re from—WHO ARE YOU?”
When the date who thinks they’re tricky asks this, the answer will be: What I do is who I am. As is what I think. And what I like. And where I shop. All of these things are who I am. Because identify formation happens when we make decisions, and when we see our values or traits reflected in our actions.
Making the “right” decisions
Shopping according to your values and making consumer decisions based off ethical concerns is a quantifiably shared trait in today’s millennial generation. And the fact that this generation is undergoing so much identity formation now, is part of why ethical consumerism exists and is so popular among a generation still in its formative years.
Ethical consumerism is “the practice of purchasing products and services produced in a way that minimizes social and/or environmental damage, while avoiding products and services deemed to have a negative impact on society or the environment.” It’s generally much more expensive than price shopping, because of the increased standards for production, or because you’re paying for higher wages, or because your money also goes to donating a pair of those shoes for someone in need.
So, is that something you do?
Nowadays, for people born roughly between 1980 and 2000, the answer is more often yes than for any previous generation. In their article “Examining Overconsumption, Competitive Consumption, and Conscious Consumption from 1994 to 2004”, Carr, Gotleib, Lee and Shah posit that members of Generation X over-consume, at the lowest cost, and with the lowest rates of ethical consumption, instead opting to shop for status signifiers; traits which shaped the direction of our economy and global leading into the 2000s.
Millennials, both exuberant to be coming of an age where their actions form change in the world, and reactionary to the generation that preceded them, are hoping to reverse these trends. In a 2014 Forbes report, 40 to 60 percent of millennials (depending on location) responded that they would pay more for socially conscious or eco-friendly brands.
Why pay the price?
It could be that part of this trend is due to increasing stress over the state of our world and society. Global warming is finally too obvious to reasonably refute. Global productivity per capita has been growing for decades—while personal income and wages have not been increasing to match. Human rights violations are frequent news, refugee numbers are at a high all across the world, and sexual assault happens to one in every four women you know. So of course, a company which touts positive environmental impact, or fair wages, or charitable donations to people in need, will speak to people who want to make a difference with their purchases.
The other reason ethical companies are attracting so many loyal millennial consumers willing to pay more for their products is simply, that’s what we do. Because it’s a part of who we are—or who we think we are. In a survey by Boston Consulting Group, half of millennials surveyed said that the brands that they shop and the choices they make say something about who they are as people.
A trend with no sign of stopping
While the kind of identity formation that happens in a person’s twenties seems conveniently timed with these pressing global issues, the trend of ethical consumerism isn’t just going to stop when millennials hit their 40s.
Think about the peanut butter you bought in your 20s. The dish soap? The toothpaste? Are they the same brands you buy now? Again, the likelihood that you said yes is disproportionate. And according to Jon F. Sherry’s “Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior”, it’s even more likely that your kids will buy the same brand, simply because you do. Which means, if you are shopping ethically now, your children will probably continue your ethical consumer habits, even if they don’t know that’s why they do it.
This means for companies getting on board with ethical and environmentally-friendly production, the consumer returns aren’t just a passing trend. Furthermore, these companies reap the benefits of the better world they contribute to.
Tune in next time for more on whose doing this well, and how we can learn from them…
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