bloombergmediaforum

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Brand New Media presents latest financial services research at Bloomberg

Bloomberg Media hosted Brand New Media's sixth annual Digital Marketing of Financial Services summit at its offices in New York City on September 26.  Close to one hundred senior marketing executives attended the summit, which included topline results of Brand New Media’s most recent research initiative as well as panel discussions.

BlackRock Senior Managing Director & Global Chief Marketing Officer Frank Cooper III speaks on a panel of CMOs at Brand New Media’s Digital Marketing of Financial Services Summit, held at Bloomberg’s offices in New York. The panelists discussed the role of data and analytics, digital marketing and digital KPIs as well as other key topics. Pictured L-R: Legg Mason Global Head of Communications and Engagement Fran Cashman; Cooper; Edward Jones Principal, Marketing Communications and Canadian Marketing Jim Olsen; Ameriprise Financial EVP – Marketing, Communications and Community Relations Deirdre D. McGraw; Aflac SVP, Chief Marketing Officer Gail Galuppo. Photo: Brian Uyeda Photography

Speakers included Marketing Officers and Heads of Digital Strategy from leading Asset Management, Wealth Management and Insurance companies – including BlackRock, Schwab, Vanguard, Legg Mason, Ameriprise Financial and many more.   Bloomberg Media is a Founding Sponsor of the research initiative that is conducted by Brand New Media in partnership with Northwestern University on an annual basis. It is the most comprehensive research conducted on digital marketing and media within the financial services industry.

Vanguard head of Enterprise Digital Intelligence and Digital Analytics Association Executive Board of Directors Rusty Rahmer shares insights on how to succeed in an era where frictionless customer experiences are the expectation. Photo: Brian Uyeda Photography

Select firms were recognized at the summit as leaders in Mobile Experience, Social Marketing and Customer Experience based on quantitative outputs from proprietary models developed by Brand New Media and Northwestern University. These firms included Citigroup, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, Goldman Sachs, Principal Financial, Prudential, State Farm, State Street Global and GEICO.

| Read more about Brand New Media - Jen Robinson | October 6, 2017

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How to extend custom content across digital, print, TV, and audio

On his self-titled Bloomberg multi-platform show, David Rubenstein -- the co-founder and CEO of the alternative asset management firm The Carlyle Group -- interviews some of the greatest minds in business. Wells Fargo is sponsoring the show, and wanted to reach its influential audience wherever they watch, listen or read.  

To extend its ad campaign, it has commissioned a series of custom content executions that are running across all of Bloomberg's media platforms -- digital, print, TV, radio and podcasts. The ad campaign is built around the concept of an "unlock" -- a moment of insight, where the bank's clients see their investing futures in a new light.

To illustrate how the bank helps clients come to these realizations that often lead to a better path forward, Bloomberg Media Studios is interviewing nine executives from across the business units of Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management. In conversations with each, we're exploring examples of "unlock moments" they and their colleagues have had with clients. Here's how those conversations play out across the five Bloomberg media platforms:

1. The most comprehensive execution of those conversations is a series of 8- to 10-minute podcasts, such as this one with Arne Boudewyn, the Head of Family Governance, History and Education Services at Abbott Downing, a unit of Wells Fargo that advises ultra-high net worth families.

2. Highlights from the conversation then run as a question-and-answer page in Bloomberg Businessweek, opposite a page of Wells Fargo brand advertising.

3. The core of the unlock moment Arne describes is included in an infographic on Bloomberg.com, along with data from Wells Fargo and other sources that provides context for the topic.

4. The essence of the unlock moment is captured in a 30-second video vignette that runs on Bloomberg Television.

5. A 30-second audio version of the video vignette runs on Bloomberg Radio.

The custom program required a minimum of each executive’s valuable time, but it’s made them into rock stars in their respective divisions. It’s drawn kudos from the bank’s CMO and won an award for Best Integrated Media Execution from Gramercy Institute, composed of marketers from 30 of the world’s top financial brands.

| Read next: Bloomberg launches first fixed income investing resource

 - Edward Adams | October 2, 2017

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Bloomberg Media and Twitter are building the future of live video news

The future of live video news won’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before, according to Bloomberg Media Chief Executive Officer Justin B. Smith. “We’re creating a completely original, organic consumer news experience,” he said during an Advertising Week session yesterday in New York. “It’s an entirely new form factor and type of engagement.”

Smith and Twitter Chief Operating Officer Anthony Noto joined Ad Age Editor Brian Braiker for a discussion on how their two companies are partnering to do that. Bloomberg’s global social live breaking news network will “marry Twitter’s speed and scale with Bloomberg’s global newsroom judgment,” said Smith.

Bloomberg Media CEO Justin B. Smith, right, talks about building a completely new consumer news experience with Twitter COO Anthony Noto, center, and Ad Age Editor Brian Braiker, left. Photo: Jean-Pierre Uys for Bloomberg

Twitter, of course, is now one of the world’s primary news distribution channels, with more than 300MM monthly average users. The new live news network will  serve that audience with breaking news and intelligent information that is vetted and verified by Bloomberg’s data-driven, non-partisan global news organization.

With more than 2,700 journalists and analysts on the ground in 120 countries and television studios worldwide, that adds a critical human layer. “Think of it as an expert guide walking you through the latest news, comments, data and video,” Smith said – all with Twitter’s interactivity and citizen journalism built in.

The partnership grew from remarkably successful experiments, Smith and Noto said. That includes live streaming the 2016 Presidential debates and former FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony this summer. “When we did the debates, you could see the conversation come to life,” Noto said, with additive commentary from across feeds appearing alongside the co-branded programming.

More recently, a live stream of last week’s  Bloomberg Global Business Forum – introduced this year as the successor to the Clinton Global Initiative – attracted 3.9MM viewers on Twitter, Smith said.

Smith announced four sponsors who will be included in the network’s launch later this year, also reported by Ad Age:

Goldman Sachs, Infiniti, TD Ameritrade and CA Technologies have inked deals to advertise on Bloomberg's forthcoming Twitter-only network, a project announced by the two companies in May. Bloomberg has been looking for sponsors to not only serve ads during breaks but be part of the content that will fill the nonstop news engine. Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith says the companies have been working closely, engineer to engineer, to develop what he’s pitching as a new kind of media. 

Ad Age : Bloomberg Stresses Brand Safety to the First Advertisers for its Twitter News Network

The next-generation breaking news network will be as innovative for marketers as for news consumers, Smith said. “We’re really intent on solving both the news consumer problem and the advertising interruption problem. We’re not going to be doing any traditional TV video spots – we’re looking for ways ads can complement the environment and add value for consumers.”

To do that, Twitter and Bloomberg Media will use both art and science. “The most powerful thing we have is that we know what people want because of who they follow,” said Noto. That allows the company to build mechanisms that are creative, customized, and relevant.

Smith added: “We’re hiring out of the box thinkers and allowing all ideas to get a hearing,” fostering an innovative approach focused on continually evolving the new network as it launches and grows.

At launch, users will see an extraordinary mix of user-generated breaking news video from citizens, curated and verified by Bloomberg editors, together with live video and reporting from Bloomberg journalists around the world. It will be both fast and filtered, both distilled and in-depth. And it will be easy to use, graphic and readable on any device.

Follow: Justin B. Smith Anthony Noto - Jen Robinson | September 28, 2017

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Making human connections in a fast-forward world

Authenticity, relevancy, values – amid an era of technological disruption and changing business models, those were the ideas that came to the fore at Bloomberg Media’s second annual Global Leadership Breakfast during Advertising Week New York.

Moderated by Bloomberg Media CRO Keith A. Grossman, a panel of brilliant marketing minds – Ford Chief Brand Officer Musa Tariq, GE Chief Marketing Officer Linda Boff, CA Technologies EVP, Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Flaherty and State Street Global Advisors Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Tisdalle – offered a powerful look at why such uniquely human qualities matter more than ever to businesses.

Bloomberg Intelligence Chief U.S. Economist Carl Riccadonna set the stage for the panel’s discussion with a briefing on macro-economic trends. The current economic cycle shows no sign of ending any time soon – but growth is just above what Riccadonna called “stall speed,” the point below which the economy could take a nose dive.

Most of that growth comes from consumer spending, he added – so whatever affects income in turn affects growth. New business creation is rising slowly; and employment has also risen, which could give incomes and growth rates a boost. 

But changes driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are on the horizon: “we track mentions of the term by executives on company earnings calls,” said Riccadonna, “and it’s through the roof.”   

Against that backdrop, the panel’s marketing leaders emphasized the need to deeply understand and live your brand’s values. “The greatest risk is not embracing who you are,” said GE’s Linda Boff. For GE, that means remaining true to a brand identity that stretches back to Thomas Edison – while taking action to express that in bold, unexpected ways.

GE Chief Marketing Officer  Linda Boff speaks during the Bloomberg Media Global Leadership Breakfast, kicking off Advertising Week New York. Photo: Jamie Watts for Bloomberg

One way she and her team recently did just that was with “Balance the Equation,” an effort that both galvanized and celebrated GE’s commitment to increase the number of women employed in technical positions. A three-day installation at New York’s Grand Central Station projected the images and accomplishments of 12 female scientists and engineers as re-imagined stars on the station’s famed ceiling.    

That started conversations – and made new connections for GE on a human-to-human level.  “You have to throw open a lot of doors,” said Boff. “Give people as many opportunities as you can to experience your brand, your values.”

State Street Global Advisors CMO Stephen Tisdalle makes a point as CA Technologies CMO Lauren Flaherty looks on. Photo: Shannon Doubleday for Bloomberg

The need to make human connections applies across categories. Stephen Tisdalle of State Street Global Advisors pointed out the most people wouldn’t associate financial services marketing with emotional connection – and yet, he said, “money is a very emotional thing.”

“Fearless Girl,” the Wall Street statue created by SSGA that became a viral sensation, demonstrates that unequivocally. The extraordinary success of “Fearless Girl” is, like GE’s “Balance the Equation,” grounded in a core brand value, Tisdalle said. The company holds a deep-seated belief that “greater diversity of thought and leadership produces better returns over the long term,” he said. The statue embodies that idea, he added, in a way that is simultaneously bold and aspirational. 

Ford Chief Brand Officer Musa Tariq speaks, flanked by GE CMO Linda Boff and Bloomberg Intelligence Chief U.S. Economist Carl Riccadonna. Photo: Shannon Doubleday for Bloomberg

In the age of radical transparency fostered by mobile phones and social media, taking action that leads the way speaks louder than the words of more traditional marketing campaigns.

“You don’t own your brand anymore,” said Ford’s Musa Tariq. Conversations that influence the perception of a brand can begin in many different places, among many different constituencies. If you’re doing lots of things as a marketer, he added, you’re starting those conversations.

GE’s Linda Boff agreed. “If you’re doing it right, it’s out there, beyond your control,” she said. SSGA’s Tisdalle added that with the “Fearless Girl” campaign, “we let the technology do our marketing and communications for us – without planning any of it.”

According to Ford’s Tariq, the result is that every marketing organization now is structured a different way. “The tech is in place, the people are in place,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s a model. We’re all experimenting.” 

CA Technologies CMO Lauren Flaherty shares insights as GE CMO Linda Boff and Ford Chief Brand Officer Musa Tariq listen. Photo: Shannon Doubleday for Bloomberg

Reorienting toward values-based action, open communication and constant experimentation has revolutionized the role that marketing plays across organizations, said CA Technologies Lauren Flaherty. “It’s a more fun job, with a higher degree of accountability – and I don’t know a CMO who doesn’t want that,” she said. “We used to talk about activity. Now we can use data to talk about contributions.”

That change has made marketing integral to every part of the business, from product development to sales to human resources. It has also reset the agenda from what a business needs to what its customers need. “It’s ‘how am I helping you,’ not ‘how am I selling to you,’” Flaherty said.

SSGA’s Tisdalle shares that view. “You’re now Chief Relevancy Officer, not CMO,” he said. And that comes full circle, back to the way brands articulate and act on the values they hold. “If it’s not real on the inside,” said Flaherty, “it will never be real on the outside.”

 - Jen Robinson | September 25, 2017

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Bloomberg Media and Twitter lead the future of news at Advertising Week New York

Bloomberg Media Chief Executive Officer Justin B. Smith and Twitter Chief Operating Officer Anthony Noto share a unique vantage point as partners building the first live social video breaking news network.

Combining the trusted global news-gathering resource of Bloomberg and the social power of Twitter, the effort sits squarely at the evolution and convergence of media and technology platforms. Next Wednesday during Advertising Week, Smith and Noto will share invaluable insights gained from their experience in helping to reshape today’s digital news experience.

Bloomberg founder Mike Bloomberg and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey talk with Bloomberg Television anchor Emily Chang at Bloomberg Media's 2017 IAB Digital Content NewFront. Photo: Jamie Watts/Bloomberg

We’ll capture highlights from their discussion on the future of media and The New News project, if you’re unable to attend.

We’ll also be reporting back from the Bloomberg Media Leadership Breakfast, which opens Advertising Week for the second year in a row on Monday, setting the stage for the week-long industry gathering. Focusing on the intersection of media and the global economy, the session will feature Bloomberg Intelligence Chief US Economist Carl Riccadonna, who will lead off with a need-to-know briefing on what’s driving the global economy, and an all-star panel of industry leaders.

GE CMO Linda Boff, Ford Chief Brand Officer Musa Tariq, CA Technologies EVP & CMO Lauren Flaherty, and SSGA CMO and Senior Managing Director Stephen Tisdalle will sit down with Bloomberg Media Chief Revenue Officer Keith Grossman and Riccadonna to share an expert view of what’s coming next amid a rapidly evolving media landscape.

Advertising Week New York begins Monday, September 25 and continues through September 29. Learn more about Advertising Week and sign up to attend. Here’s the lineup of Bloomberg Media events:

Monday, 9/25, 8:00AM ET Bloomberg Media Leadership Breakfast Special Event, by invitation only + Platinum & Super Delegates. Register.

Wednesday, 9/27, 3:30PM ET Bloomberg & Twitter: The New News Seminar event, Future of Media track. Register.

| Read Next: Bloomberg Media CRO Keith Grossman explains why consumers have more time – and marketers have more opportunities to fill it

- Jen Robinson | September 20, 2017

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Bloomberg Media recognized with 2017 MIN Awards

Media Industry Newsletter (MIN) announced its 2017 Award winners last week, honoring Bloomberg Media with two awards that point to a laser focus on producing excellent work for advertising partners.

The MIN Media People Award recognized Bloomberg Media’s marketing team in the Best Marketing Team category, citing the team’s creative and strategic use of proprietary data and technology across a global, multimedia custom content platform.

The team has consistently exceeded benchmarks to produce real results for partners, beating industry norms as measured by both our in-depth analytic suite and through custom proprietary surveys. Engagement time for Bloomberg’s custom content, for example, is almost twice the industry benchmark, building deep relationships between brands and Bloomberg’s uniquely valuable audiences and ultimately resulting in enviable renewal rates. – MIN Awards 2017

And the MIN Campaign of the Year Awards recognized Bloomberg Media’s “Day Zero” program for Optum, a leading health services company, in the Advertising Campaign: Drugs and Remedies category. The interactive short film tells the story of Optum’s commitment to improving health care with data through the lens one patient’s journey to find a life-saving liver transplant.

Day Zero required both Optum and Bloomberg to step outside their comfort zones, to tell the very human story of a man who was facing death… The package of films ran on Bloomberg.com, and the main film was also shown on Bloomberg’s Apple TV channel, Bloomberg’s Hulu channel and in the Delta crew lounges worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of people have viewed this project… In an internal Optum research study of its target market, Bloomberg’s work has been ranked far above that of any of Optum’s other custom content. – MIN Awards 2017 

Earlier this month, HOW Magazine honored Bloomberg Media with a Promotion & Marketing Design Award for “Day Zero” as well. 

Related: Bloomberg Media Studios launches “Day Zero,” brought to you by Optum

As of September, in fact, Bloomberg Media has won 34 major industry awards in 2017 – with recognition for creative, sales and marketing leadership as well as operational excellence.

Bloomberg Media sales executives Michelle Evers and Amanda Romano were honored as 2017 Top Women in Media by Folio in June; while Amy Marks, Bloomberg Media’s head of global marketing, and Megan Latham, who leads Bloomberg Media’s global ad operations, have been recognized by this year’s Folio: 100 list of innovative media industry leaders.

Earlier this year, Bloomberg Media’s global ad operations team was recognized for the second year in a row as MIN’s Best of the Web, winning laurels for envisioning and implementing a fully cross-platform operational strategy unique in the industry. Continuing that tradition, ad operations team member Tony Talal was recently named to the 2017 Folio: 30 under 30 list, which recognizes up-and-coming stars helping shape the future of the media industry.

Bloomberg Media’s creative team, meanwhile, has racked up honors for its client work from such industry leaders as Hermes Creative Awards, World Media Awards, MARCOM Awards, Creativity Media & Interactive Awards, and many more. Congratulations to all our colleagues!

- Jen Robinson | September 18, 2017

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Bloomberg launches first fixed income investing resource

The fixed income market has tripled in the last three years, and shows no signs of stopping. Investors are increasingly seeking new ways to access that market, whether they embrace passive investing or pursue more active products and strategies. That’s more difficult than simply buying shares – and there hasn’t been a definitive information source to help them do it. Until now.

This August marked the launch of the multimedia Bloomberg Fixed Income Exchange – known as The FIX – across Bloomberg’s digital universe. It’s a unique space for investors to learn more about the global fixed income market, which now dwarfs the equities market in size, but is vastly more complex to understand.

The FIX multimedia experience connects with audiences across Bloomberg digital environments.

The enhanced transparency around bonds and other debt-based securities The FIX offers comes as an unprecedented generational wealth shift happens in the U.S. About 10,000 baby boomers reach retirement age every day – and that will continue to for the next several decades. The more-predictable returns of fixed income form the bedrock of many retiree investing plans – versus putting money into the more-volatile stock market. That means demand for fixed income investments is likely to sharply increase.

That, in turn, means professional money managers and individual investors alike need to be smart about fixed income as never before. The FIX helps them do just that – from explaining key market drivers to exploring the newest ways to access the market, including products like ETFs, derivatives and others.

“The FIX draws on both Bloomberg’s deep-rooted expertise in the bond market and on the Bloomberg Barclays Indices, which are the investing world’s most widely used tools for benchmarking,” said Bloomberg Global Chief Revenue Officer Keith Grossman. “That’s allowing us to fill a critical need for a better platform to educate business and finance-focused audiences across the board, from institutional investors to financial intermediaries to affluent individuals. And we’re delighted to have PIMCO as our launch sponsor. ”

Cathleen Stahl, Managing Director, Global Head of Marketing for PIMCO, added: “PIMCO is thrilled to sponsor the FIX, which shares our vision of helping investors make well informed decisions about their fixed income investments. As one of the world’s premier fixed income investment managers, PIMCO is committed to using our time-tested investment process to find the best opportunities in every market environment so we can help clients achieve their long-term investment goals.”

The FIX brings together an abundance of intelligent, bond-focused content from across Bloomberg’s multimedia universe. Dedicated markets reporting delivers the latest need-to-know news, while a graphics-heavy section on the basics helps investors unpack topics like reading the Fed tea leaves and where to invest right now. A real-time rates and bonds tracking tool keeps investors up-to-the-minute wherever they are.

Investors can freely access live-streamed and on-demand fixed-income focused video across platforms.

Live-streamed and on-demand video from Real Yield, Bloomberg’s weekly fixed-income television show hosted by Jonathan Ferro, delivers thought-leading interviews with fixed income and credit leaders from global financial institutions, illuminating the most consequential developments in the marketplace. A new Bloomberg Radio show offers a weekly Q&A with Simon Ballard, Bloomberg News’s global credit and bonds strategy lead based in London.

Additional elements include markets-focused podcasts such as the daily P&L and in-depth analysis from  markets-focused reporting teams. The Weekly Fix, a new dedicated newsletter, launched this month as well – and new digital videos and data visualizations are set to launch in coming months.

| Visit The FIX

 - Jen Robinson | September 7, 2017

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Beyond awareness with data science

As John Wanamaker famously said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” The digital revolution and rapidly evolving data technologies have taken marketers further than ever towards solving that puzzle – while also unleashing new market forces that raise new possibilities.

A group of media and marketing leaders met recently in New York at the Cynopsis Measurement and Data Conference to focus on this changing landscape. From creating new measurement standards to solving for video’s reach across platforms, a full day of panels examined key questions and emerging answers.

Bloomberg Media Global Head of Data Science and Insights Michelle Lynn speaks on a panel at the Cynopsis Measurement and Data Conference in New York, August 3, 2017. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

Bloomberg Media’s Global Head of Data Science and Insights, Michelle Lynn, joined a panel including top executives from comScore, MediaCom and 22squared to talk about what agencies and brands need from transparent measurement as well as which metrics are most important to them.

For Lynn, the ultimate measure is whether marketing campaigns generate real business results. “Awareness is good,” she said, “but it’s not a business outcome.” Linking advertising performance to, for example, business revenue growth, or an increase in units shipped, is a more meaningful measure than how many people might have clicked on an ad.

To help shift paradigms in that direction, Lynn suggested taking a real-time approach to defining metrics that matter. When a campaign is live, “we see how our audience is engaging, and because we have a deep understanding of who they are and what motivates them, we’re able to use that to increase effectiveness – whether it matches the original KPI exactly or not,” she said. When key performance indicators can develop across a campaign, brands are more likely to make significant connections with the audiences of most consequence to them.

Lynn also constantly seeks opportunities to gain novel insights. One example comes from the integrated performance analytics her team employs.  “It’s exciting to see panels working together,” she said – for example, seeing audiences who watch television engaging in search. “It allows you to make connections you couldn’t have a few years ago, and assess effectiveness in a different way,” she added.

Another example comes from the way a diversity of perspectives helps original measurement to emerge. Lynn’s team is spread over every global region and includes data scientists as well as more traditional market research pros, fostering a potent mix of ideas and capabilities. “Some of the most creative ideas come from the data scientists – new ways to get at things, or what to look at,” she said.

So what’s Lynn’s biggest concern? As data sets get bigger and powerful technology tools become the currency of measurement,  protecting data privacy is on her mind. “Researchers need to prepare for the future – now,” she said. 

Read next: Here’s how AI is already shaping the media business    

- Jen Robinson | August 10, 2017

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Bloomberg Media accelerates its growth in Asia

Parry Ravindranathan, International Managing Director, believes the media industry is being disrupted – but for him, that’s a good thing. “Traditional business models are being challenged,” he said recently in Mumbrella Asia, “and we look at it as an opportunity to innovate and capture our audience.”

Bloomberg Media International Managing Director Parry Ravindranathan. Photo: Samantha Sin for Bloomberg

Seizing that opportunity takes both personal commitment and innovative investment, he explained in the Mumbrella profile and in recent reporting on Bloomberg’s new Hong Kong television studio.

For Mumbrella, Ravindranathan detailed his approach:  

“In my role, you have to be very passionate about what you do, but most importantly understand what your audience wants.  I’m first and foremost a content guy who thinks of the business, not the other way around.  And I think this is an important distinction. I believe if you don’t understand, consume and love the content, you can’t get the pulse of the business.”

“Here, we are in the midst of doing something truly innovative and exciting with Twitter and we are also experimenting with messaging apps and technologies of tomorrow like virtual reality and augmented reality. The media landscape is continuously evolving.”

Read more from Mumbrella Asia about how Bloomberg Media International Managing Director Parry Ravindranathan is innovating to help future-proof the newsroom

Bloomberg’s new Hong Kong television studio produces programs all over Asia. Photo: Samantha Sin for Bloomberg

For leading Asia trade publication Marketing Magazine, Ravindranathan explained why investing in a state-of-the-art television studio in Hong Kong feeds that approach:

“The new look and feel, and the integration with the digital assets, will all provide better TV experience to our audience and those who are on Interactive TV, a data-driven television that is incorporated into the workflow of our terminal users.”

Bloomberg’s new Hong Kong Studio. Photo: Samantha Sin for Bloomberg

Take a 360° degree look at our new Hong Kong studio! 

Read more from Marketing Magazine about how Bloomberg is investing in television and localization in Asia

Follow: Parry Ravindranathan: @parryravi Bloomberg Asia: @BloombergAsia Bloomberg Media: @bbgmedia

- Jen Robinson | Aug. 1, 2017

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Here’s how Citi is doing smart event marketing

Yesterday morning at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters, Bloomberg Media Global Chief Revenue Officer Keith Grossman kicked off an ANA members-only conference on sponsorship and event marketing with an interview of Amy Sokotch, SVP of Media and Partnerships at Citi.

Their wide-ranging conversation showed how Citi is combining consumer value, social purpose and emerging technology to propel sponsorships into a new domain.

Citi SVP of Media and Partnerships Amy Sokotch and Bloomberg Media Global Chief Revenue Officer Keith Grossman kick off the ANA’s member-only Sponsorship & Event Marketing conference. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

Sokotch described how Citi delivers access to thousands of events for consumers, through such large-scale partnerships as the Citi Concert Series on TODAY and cardmember-only opportunities produced in conjunction with  Live Nation.  Using proprietary technology, the company’s in-house experiential platform also allows it to activate smaller, more localized opportunities.

That value drives affinity and loyalty, as well as acquisition and retention. “When people get to attend an event exclusively,” Sokotch noted, it’s a powerful human connection. And as Grossman pointed out, “only events and experiences have native utility.”

Extending that special factor beyond the event itself is the goal. Sokotch and her team are meeting that challenge with key innovations that make sponsorships work harder, building out impact across a cohesive program.

When the dots get connected between big initiatives, she said, “it makes each one feel bigger.” For example, she explained, Citi taps into its entertainment access program to provide cardmembers with opportunities to  support No Kid Hungry, an organization that works to end childhood hunger, by attending culinary events like Taste of the Nation. Similarly, the company’s popular New York Citi Bike initiative has let riders earn dollars for partner charities just by taking a ride.

Importantly, those tie-lines are supported and enhanced by digital technologies. Experimenting with and investing in the wide-open possibilities tech introduces is also helping Sokotch break the traditional boundaries of event experiences. New ways of interacting and making connections for Citi have included virtual reality (VR), livecasting on social media and nimble content creation. 

The power of VR, Sokotch said, lies in its ability to create “access beyond attendance” – a mantra for the Citi team. That can allow, for example, a cardmember to experience a concert live from their own home using technology such as Samsung Gear. Demand is already high, even as VR is a still-developing interface. In one instance, Citi worked with NBC to offer VR headsets for a Citi Concert Series on TODAY performance. Within 24 hours of sharing the offer on Citi’s social media platforms, “we had about 40,000 responses,” Sokotch said.

Facebook Live video is another way Citi is building positive associations with its Today show concert partnership. These real-time sessions bring fans intimate interviews with artists performing in the concert series; fans can ask questions and learn more about band members, whether they’re attending in-person or across the country.  

And Citi has launched an exclusive concert series of its own, the Citi Sound Vault. Coinciding with the Grammy Awards earlier this year, the series hosted such rock icons as Sting, The Chainsmokers and Metallica for sold-out shows at the historic Hollywood Palladium. Meanwhile, an on-site social media team, complete with legal advisors to help navigate compliance needs, “churned out content – gifs, videos, and more – that brought a really exciting, ‘you are there’ feel to Citi’s social feeds,” Sokotch said.

Technology is also helping Sokotch track these efforts, allowing her team to follow customers through experiences and more deeply understand their needs and responses. That, in turn, can be used to measure success and feed into new ideas and programs as they’re developing.

| Read next: Adweek and Bloomberg Media explore trust marketing in a disruptive world

- Jen Robinson | July 28, 2017

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Bloomberg Pursuits expands its modern luxury platform

What does Jackie O’s signature Cartier watch and tiny lettuces that retail for almost $50 a pound have in common? Behind each is a story steeped in business relevance, cultural influence, and a dash of splendor. Backed by research and expertise, Bloomberg Pursuits editors and writers unpack these rich stories and why they matter to appreciative audiences. This unique variety of intelligent luxury journalism was on display recently at two events that highlighted key lifestyle trends – and how the multimedia brand is covering them in new and exciting ways.

Bloomberg Pursuits’ Emma Rosenblum moderates a panel discussion at Christie’s with (from left) Christie’s Tom Burstein, Bloomberg’s Chris Rovzar, and Christie’s Eric Wind. Photo: Tiffany Sage/BFA NYC.

In the first, a sparkling jewelry-and-watch auction preview hosted in partnership with Christie’s, Bloomberg Pursuits invited discerning consumers to experience rare pieces up close – and find out more about craftsmanship, luxury trends and investing in luxury.  Bloomberg Pursuits editor-in-chief Emma Rosenblum led a panel that included Bloomberg’s Managing Editor of Global Luxury Chris Rovzar, Christie's US Jewelry Department Head Tom Burstein, and Christie's Senior Watch Specialist Eric Wind.

When it comes to luxury asset classes, Christie’s Tom Burstein noted that “the word 'investment' comes up more frequently than it did ten years ago" in jewelry. “It’s the well-known, branded jewelry that’s held its value,” he continued. And don’t forget about watches. Added Christie’s watch specialist Eric Wind: “The hunger for watches has been very hot at Christie’s this year.”

And what resonates with these investors? Bloomberg’s Rovzar said, “Its everyday affluence and the super high-end that people want to read about and experience. What affects them – and what’s amazing.”

Colorful jewels on prominent display at Bloomberg and Christie’s event. Photo: Tiffany Sage/BFA NYC.

Following the panel, the audience was invited to a reception featuring magnificent pre-sale jewelry and iconic watches. On display: a Cartier “tank” watch owned by Jackie O. “That watch is what popularized the Tank,” said Eric Wind, Christie’s Senior Watch Specialist. “It is probably the most important Cartier watch today.” Alongside the priceless piece were a gold Rolex that cost $600 retail in 1969, now with an estimated value of $400-600K; and the 18.04-carat Rockefeller Emerald— the real deal among named gemstones.

Event sponsors XOJET and Terranea Resort integrated seamlessly into the gathering with relevant, one-of-a-kind gastronomic experiences that provided unique value to well-heeled guests.

XOJET brought guests a custom “pour over” station – a dramatic visual presentation that evoked elite travel. The “Challenger 300” cocktail was poured over a bitters-cotton candy cloud, while the “Citation X” was poured over butterfly pea flower tea. Each drink arrived with a silver airplane-topped swizzle stick for a smooth landing.

Terranea Resort gave guests a taste of pacific paradise through its “Salty & Sweet” dessert bar, a cool display of delectable treats baked with Terranea’s signature sea salt. Each dessert laid atop a bed of salt harvested off the shores of Terranea, rounding out the full oceanfront experience.

XOJET-sponsored “Pour Over” station at Bloomberg Pursuits event in partnership with Christie’s. Photo: Tiffany Sage/BFA NYC.

Terranea Resort’s custom “Salty & Sweet” dessert bar at Bloomberg Pursuits event in partnership with Christie’s. Photo: Tiffany Sage/BFA NYC.

At the second event, a group of luxury brand marketers attending an intimate breakfast in New York learned what resonates most with luxury consumers and saw an exclusive preview of forthcoming content from Bloomberg Pursuits editor-in-chief Emma Rosenblum and her team, including deputy editor James Gaddy, who covers fitness and adventure travel; travel editor Nikki Ekstein; food editor Kate Krader; cars and bikes editor Hannah Elliott; and arts and culture editor James Tarmy.

For Bloomberg, Rosenblum explained, the best luxury content isn’t just about what’s hot. Pursuits’ readers are interested in a mix of service journalism and deeper dives into the stories behind the story.

Magic Greens, by Kate Krader. Photo: Ted Cavanaugh/Bloomberg Pursuits; Food styling by Diana Yen.

For example, travel writer Ekstein shared an upcoming Bloomberg Pursuits feature for which she traveled to Chiang Rai Elephant Sanctuary– a reserve in Thailand that offers once-servile elephants and their human families the space and resources to live safely and peacefully, while also supporting responsible wildlife tourism.

Ekstein said: “I like to reflect on people’s bucket lists, and then figure out how people can do them in the most intelligent way.” That means trust – trust that it’s a great luxury experience, but also trust that money is being spent in a way that’s socially and environmentally responsible.

“Our audience has a lot of money – and they are very willing to spend it, if they feel they are getting good advice,” added Rosenblum.

Three for the Road, by Hannah Elliott. Photo: Matt Goldman/Bloomberg Pursuits.

And thanks to an enhanced multiplatform experience in 2017, elite consumers can now find inspiration at every turn: in Bloomberg Businessweek— whose June redesign boasts a new ten-page Bloomberg Pursuits section – as well as online, in-app, via digital video and in a just-launched television show timed to the weekend mindset.

Rosenblum previewed an edit calendar packed with covetous features like a style guide for fall’s best fashions, a foodie bucket list, a how-to for buying fine art, and an insider look at high-class travel. Bloomberg’s new content partnership with HODINKEE— announced earlier this year— enables readers to enjoy additional watch coverage from the premium watch and timepiece publisher, like a Vintage Watch Explainer in October.

At their core, Bloomberg Pursuits editorial topics anticipate and reflect the enthusiasms of its audience, uniquely achieved through a direct line of communication. Every story links to its author’s email address, and Bloomberg readers frequently reach out to share feedback and anecdotes.

“Our readers trust our recommendations,” Rosenblum said. “They know we’re putting research and expertise behind every one. That defines our brand.”

- Brittany Bakacs | July 26, 2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

The Future of Innovation: Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence

Technology has never been more important to business, as artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to generate billions in productivity enhancements. But today’s relentlessly rapid pace of change means companies must work collaboratively to realize this transformation – either by partnering with tech start-ups or by creating dedicated innovation labs.

Bloomberg LIVE’s The Future of Innovation: Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence, held in San Francisco on June 22, brought together leaders who are actively engaged in just such collaboration to explore how the AI revolution is accelerating innovation for business. 

The Future of Innovation: Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence gathered business leaders, technologists, entrepreneurs and investors in San Francisco on June 22, 2017.

Featured speakers included distinguished computer scientists from Microsoft and Salesforce, three top AI start-up executives and the co-managing partner of the leading AI venture capital firm. Bloomberg journalists including Tom Giles, Executive Editor for Global Technology, and Emily Chang, anchor and executive producer of the daily San Francisco-based news show Bloomberg Technology, led the conversations.

The gathering continued a series of future-focused programs sponsored by Siemens, a global leader in automation and digitization. Lak Ananth, CEO and Managing partner of next47, a unit of Siemens that develops innovative new technologies – the name is a play on the year Siemens was founded, 1847 –welcomed the group with a look at the significant role start-ups will play in the future of artificial intelligence.

.@next47 CEO Lak Ananth kicks off a discussion on #TheFutureOf AI, saying start-ups will play a significant role pic.twitter.com/qbNmsMrfJh

— Bloomberg LIVE (@BloombergLIVE) June 22, 2017

Highlights from the breakfast provide an expert, thought-provoking look at what businesses need to know about the disruption to come:

Bloomberg Executive Editor, Global Technology Tom Giles talks with Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher sat down with Bloomberg’s executive editor for global technology Tom Giles.  Socher founded MetaMind, a start-up acquired by Salesforce in 2016. MetaMind’s deep learning AI platform analyzes, labels and makes predictions on image and text data for business decision-making.

“In terms of AI, what we’ve seen is that consumers are getting used to it,” Socher said. “The biggest players in AI right now are all consumer-based companies,” he explained – companies like Facebook and Google who have spent billions in AI research and development.  

The result is that intelligent user experiences have come to be the expectation, he added. Auto-complete or suggested answers in a Google search is one example. “When they now come to an e-commerce site, they want to type in an obscure product name” and have the same experience, Socher said. “People want to have a personalized experience.” His prediction: consumer AI and enterprise AI will merge – and that’s why he’s excited to be at Salesforce. In his current job, “we’re bringing those technologies into the enterprise,” he said.

Bloomberg’s Ellen Huet, who covers startups and Silicon Valley (right), sat down with Jennifer Chayes (left), Distinguished Scientist, Managing Director and Cofounder of Microsoft Research New England and Microsoft Research New York City. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Distinguished scientist Jennifer Chayes, managing director and co-founder of Microsoft Research New England and New York, pointed out a new business need: ensuring that an algorithm helping them make decisions is fair. Most AI systems work by getting “trained” on events and their outcomes with massive data sets. But if there is hidden bias in the data set, then there will be bias in AI system too.

Chayes’s labs work across disciplines to find solutions. “We have machine learning people working with anthropologists and legal scholars to figure out how to make these systems fairer and more transparent,” she noted.

“Our enterprise customers have liability – and they are going to need software that has this built in,” Chayes added. “There will be a business imperative to deliver safer results. You won’t just be able to say, ‘sorry, the algorithm did this.’ It’s our responsibility to make sure the artificial intelligence and machine learning we’re using is fair.”

Nicole Eagan, CEO of cyber security start-up Darktrace, speaks at The Future of Innovation: Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The AI used by cyber security start-up Darktrace, said CEO Nicole Eagan, uses a different approach than the outside-in learning from data sets most AI systems employ. That’s because most cyber attacks use novel software, she said – so training a system on past events wouldn’t work.

Darktrace solves that problem by training its AI on real-time input from the data network itself. Working with a group that included former members of British intelligence, the company developed machine learning that understands what’s normal for the network “like the human immune system understands what’s normal for the body,” Eagan said. It can then create “digital antibodies” to respond to invaders.

“There’s an endless amount of unknown attacks out there,” Eagan added – and right now they’re not technically sophisticated, she added, even though they can do a lot of damage. But “what happens when the day comes when the attackers use artificial intelligence itself as part of the attack?” Using AI for defense can position companies to meet that threat.

Gurjeet Singh, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of AI start up Ayasdi, on stage in San Francisco. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Gurjeet Singh, co-founder and executive chairman of AI startup Ayasdi, doesn’t teach machines to understand the world around them. His company focuses on a different problem: making sure end-users can benefit from AI without having to be data science experts themselves.

To do that, his company combines the latest mathematics from academia with distributed systems and user-experience research – all behind the scenes. The resulting tools are easy to implement and save companies money and time by helping identify data that can be safely ignored.

“Any time you deploy AI in any form, the end user experience is something that has to be thought through really well for it to work,” said Singh. Off-the-rack AI tools, or systems built for one company’s needs, may not translate to a specific use-case. Speaking of the AI start-ups featured at the event, he added: “All of us are focused on building the best applications for you, not ”here’s our thing, go do what you want with it.’”

Clarifai founder and artificial intelligence expert Matthew Zeiler, speaks with Bloomberg’s Mark Bergen. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Clarifai, founded by AI expert Matthew Zeiler, is a leader in visual recognition technology. “In a fraction of a second, you can recognize content,” with Clarifai, said Zeiler. The AI lists and categorizes words associated with pictures, makes video searchable, and lets users find something visual similar to what’s in a given picture – or even part of a picture.

“But to make artificial intelligence really powerful,” Zeiler said, “you need to be able to personalize it.” And Clarifai does that too, allowing users to create new models that teach the system. “We got this training process down from weeks and millions of images to literally seconds,” he said. “with few clicks and a few seconds you can customize the platform to recognize whatever applications you care about.”

And that opens new possibilities. “It’s an exciting time. Three years ago nobody knew what AI was or what it could do,” Zeiler said. Now, he added, “it’s a different leap we have to make to translate it into solving a problem for a business.” 

Zachary Bogue, Co-Managing Partner, Data Collective, spoke with Emily Chang, anchor and executive producer of the daily-airing Bloomberg Technology. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

“We believe artificial intelligence will fundamentally disrupt every single deep industry vertical – from genomics to drug discover to agriculture to earth observation,” said Zachary Bogue, co-managing partner of venture capital fund Data Collective.

Nearly a decade ago, Bogue got interested in the finding a way to make sense of the huge data sets that were breaking existing database technologies. Now, “These data sets are so dynamic and so massive they fully exceed human cognition,” he said.

Transfer learning – fast becoming AI’s latest buzz-word – will be important to managing that data. Bogue unpacked how it works with a simple example. “A good use case for AI is to look at vibrations coming off heating and ventilation systems in a big building,” he explained. Such an AI system would catch problems well before humans or existing technology could. Then, those learnings can be transferred: “An adjacent area where that’s pretty useful is doing the same type of diagnoses for jet engines,” Bogue said.  

But AI isn’t yet applicable to everything, he believes. Bogue offered an example from the startup world: “Something that everyone thinks they can automate is real estate brokers. But actually their role is incredibly complicated, nudging the buyer and seller together, understanding subjective wants and needs. We’re a long way from that being automated.”

Read Next

The Future of Smart Cities: Spotlight on Infrastructure The Future of Infrastructure: Spotlight on Oil & Gas

- Jen Robinson | July 26, 2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

Here’s how AI is already shaping the media business

Technological change has become a constant – and the pace is only accelerating. This spring, NYC Media Lab’s inaugural Machines + Media conference brought together a cross-section of the media industry at Bloomberg headquarters in New York to look at how technology is changing the way media is produced, distributed and consumed.

The event focused on present and future developments of data science applications, such as natural language generation, automatic video production, personalization and recommendations. Following the event, NYC Media Lab and Bloomberg’s Office of the CTO collaborated on a white paper detailing “How AI is Changing Media Economics,” released this week.

Highlights from the white paper offer key insights on what the future holds for media companies: “Yesterday’s media business models were aimed at mass distribution of content, but today, it’s the niche markets that matter. That’s because in today’s oversaturated media ecosystem, consumer attention is the ultimate finite resource.”

“To successfully cultivate their loyal fans across a distributed network of platforms, companies are leveraging AI in a number of interesting ways.”

“…AI optimization now occurs at every level throughout the media sector, and is the successor to predictive analytics. Whereas yesterday’s executives were content to have machines simply forecast, today’s management expects it to also take action.”

“AI… makes for an incredibly quick feedback loop. Media companies, from film studios to news organizations, have more insights into what drives ROI and in many cases need very few inputs to predict the success of books, ads and media of all variety. And once released, the feedback on media is near instantaneous: the half-life of a Facebook post is only 5 hours, a mere blink of an eye compared to 20th-century feedback systems. This makes media brands more nimble. In an industry that’s classically been defined by its high up-front fixed costs (think paying authors in advance for a new novel) and relied on fixed strategies (think staggering DVD releases after theater releases), the media industry can take an iterative approach, test more, and improve faster.”  

Read the full paper on NYC Media Lab’s site or watch video from the conference on YouTube. Follow: @TechAtBloomberg

- Jen Robinson | July 14, 2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

Adweek and Bloomberg Media event focuses on trust in a disruptive world

As artificial intelligence (AI) ushers in the latest, most powerful wave of digital disruption against a backdrop of ubiquitous social sharing, trust between people and institutions has become a moving target. How can brands navigate that intersection of technology and humanity successfully?

That question was at the heart of the second installment of an event series designed by Adweek and Bloomberg Media to examine the future of marketing in an interruptive world.

Bloomberg Media Global Chief Revenue Officer Keith A. Grossman, left, and Adweek Editorial Director James Cooper, right, kick off the “Focus On: Technology and Humanity” breakfast, held July 11 in New York. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

Adweek Editorial Director James Cooper and Bloomberg Media Global CRO Keith A. Grossman welcomed brand and agency guests to a morning that included a briefing from Bloomberg Intelligence, a one-on-one conversation with Goldman Sachs Global Co-Head of Brand and Content Strategy Amanda Rubin, and a panel discussion with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chief Brand Officer Marissa Freeman; CA Technologies SVP, Corporate Marketing Anna Griffin; TD Ameritrade CMO Denise Karkos; and Trustpilot Founder & CEO Peter H. Mühlmann.

“We’re at a really interesting inflection point in the business,” observed Adweek’s Cooper. “Digital technology is transforming brands and business in a way we couldn’t have imagined even two years ago.”  Brand safety and brand trust have come to the forefront as hacking and malware have created increasing anxiety.

Bloomberg Intelligence technology analyst Mandeep Singh, left, and Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst for software and IT services Anurag Rana, right, give a a briefing on AI. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

To provide objective insight into these crucial yet difficult topics, Bloomberg Media’s Grossman introduced Anurag Rana and Mandeep Singh of Bloomberg Intelligence, who gave a briefing on the rapid growth of AI.

Although public cloud spending is forecast to reach more than $200B by 2020, said Rana, a senior analyst focused on software and IT services, “cloud represents a very small portion of the $2T total tech spend at this point.” The bulk of spending by companies still goes to legacy tech, he said – but it’s the computing power of cloud systems that enables AI. And according to Bloomberg Intelligence, the AI market is growing at 54%, more than twice the growth rate of cloud (22%) or big data (23%).

The use cases for AI are endless, added Singh, a technology industry analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, “and they intersect with humanity at every point.”  Technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing will impact everything from supply chains to programmatic advertising, and solve challenges from city parking to cyber attacks to developing new cancer treatments.  

“The world as we know it has been disrupted at a fast rate,” Rana said. “But it’s only going to get faster from here.”

Goldman Sachs Global Co-Head of Brand and Content Strategy Amanda Rubin sits down with Adweek Editorial Director James Cooper. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

As disruption happens, how can brands build trust across the spectrum of customers and public opinion? Content marketing can prove effective, said Amanda Rubin, Goldman Sachs’ global co-head of brand and content strategy.

“Brands have to demonstrate transparency. They have to figure out ways to add value to the general public and introduce themselves in ways that are relevant,” Rubin said. For Goldman Sachs, that meant crafting narratives that not only helped to define who the company was to a general audience, but also provided “relevant, immersive, intellectually valuable experiences digitally.”

In today’s world, that matters because “public sentiment is critically important to commercial viability,” Rubin added. “Brands can’t underestimate or ignore the importance of public opinion.”

Left to right: Peter H. Mühlmann, Founder & CEO, Trustpilot; Denise Karkos, CMO, TD Ameritrade; Anna Griffin, SVP, Corporate Marketing, CA Technologies; Marissa Freeman, Chief Brand Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Photo: Jen Robinson/Bloomberg

So what’s the most important goal for marketers to keep their sights on when it comes to trust? Be human, said the leaders who participated in the panel discussion on trust marketing strategies that concluded the event.  

When brands do this well, said Anna Griffin, SVP of corporate marketing for CA Technologies, “you don’t even distinguish ‘I’m a brand having a conversation with a consumer.’ It’s ‘I’m having a conversation of value with someone who’s seeking value.’”

Those conversations can take place anywhere – which means advertising can evolve to become a place or forum for dialogue. “It’s everywhere and takes many shapes,” Griffin said. “It could become a charitable act of giving, or a consumer experience that has less to do with a product than it does with what a product enabled.”

Denise Karkos, CMO of TD Ameritrade, built on that idea, noting the importance of marketing across all facets of an organization. “It’s a team sport today,” she said. “You can’t just think that your advertising is going to create trust. You have to have your sales, your service, your product marketers, aligned – everyone has to be lined up against what your truth is and your brand purpose.”

One reason for that is the fact that communication between people and companies now takes place in public forums, added Peter Mülhmann, Trustpilot’s founder and CEO. These conversations are increasingly initiated by customers, creating a public dialogue that’s now as widely read as any other source.  

“The simplest thing a company can do is to start the conversation,” Mühlmann said. “Ask, ‘how did we do? What did you think about us?’ And make sure it’s public – because it’s going to be anyway.”

Companies can create the right structure and process to do that by empowering employees. “We’ve operationalized the sharing of social media posts among our employees globally,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chief Brand Officer Marissa Freeman. “It’s a user interface that has hundreds of social posts – and many of them, the best performing ones, are the ones of our CEO. Every employee shares what she has to say – and it becomes massive when you’ve got 70,000 people sharing your social posts.”  

Read next: Adweek and Bloomberg Media: Mobile-Best Marketing

- Jen Robinson | July 11, 2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

Bloomberg Caps Journalism Awards Season With Two Gerald Loeb Award Wins

Loebs Among More Than 100 Other Awards and Citations This Season

This week, Bloomberg finished the journalism awards season with two Gerald Loeb Awards for Explanatory and Feature reporting. The Loebs, which are considered business and financial journalism’s highest honor, recognized Bloomberg's "Superbug" series for its bracing look at how pharmaceutical companies are promoting the overuse of antibiotics to bolster their profits, and Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel for their international Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, "Hot Mess: How Goldman Lost Libya's Money."

Also this week Bloomberg won the "Breaking News" award from the National Press Club for our "smart, fast and informative" coverage of the Brexit vote. 

Bloomberg reporter Natalie Obiko Pearson, Jason Gale and Monte Reel accept the Gerald Loeb Award for explanatory reporting for "Superbug Spreaders" in New York City on June 27, 2017. In a year with no shortage of consequential global business and finance news, Bloomberg stood out for chronicling capitalism in all its forms. Our award-winning reporting on Amazon's Prime same-day delivery service, which ran in Businessweek, prompted the company to expand the service to predominantly black neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago and other cities that had previously been excluded.

Among more than 100 awards, citations and recognition this year, some more notable wins included:

- Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley and Andrew Willis' Businessweek cover story, "How to Hack an Election," won a Deadline Club Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award, was a Loeb finalist and received an Overseas Press Club honorable mention.

- Bloomberg was the recipient of three Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards for the "Superbug" series, an informational graphic detailing how Chinese companies are buying overseas assets at a record pace, and a package of stories about the demonetization in India.

- In addition to a Loeb, Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel won an Overseas Press Club award for their Businessweek cover story about how Goldman Sachs lost $1.2B of Libya's money.

- Bloomberg won six SABEW awards this year, in the retail, markets, technology, opinion, feature writing, and best package or ongoing series categories. 

- Tim O'Brien was recognized for his opinion writing by the Deadline Club, SABEW and others.

- Peter Coy won a National Headliner Award and other prizes for his economics and business commentary.  

- Joshua Green won a New York Press Club Award for his piece in Businessweek about Reince Preibus.

- Hugh Son, Matt Leising and Annie Massa's stories on "The New Wall Street" received an award from the Society of the Silurians.

- Businessweek's cover story "Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs" won a Sidney Award.

We are honored to be recognized by our peers and congratulate our colleagues for continuing Bloomberg’s proud tradition of award-winning journalism.

- Ashley Bankhen | June 29,2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

Bloomberg Market Data and News Available for Amazon's New Echo Show

Bloomberg Media today announced that the Bloomberg Skill is available on Amazon's new Echo Show. Starting today, consumers can download the "Bloomberg Market Data and News" skill for their Echo Show via the Alexa App to access the latest business and market news, now enhanced with visuals and video content on the Echo Show screen.

The Bloomberg Skill for Alexa offers: 

   - Live Bloomberg TV    - US stock prices in charts    - US and world market indices with charts    - Bloomberg market summary video    - Bloomberg flash briefings

Echo Show users can launch the skill by saying, "Alexa, Open Bloomberg," and view market indices and watch live TV by saying, "Alexa, how are the global markets doing today?" or "Alexa, watch Bloomberg TV."

The Bloomberg Skill on the Echo Show is a visual expansion of its existing presence on other Echo models. With the added screen, the Echo Show allows Bloomberg to deliver our high-quality video content with just a simple ask to Alexa. As connected devices continue to be a growth engine for digital media, Bloomberg aims to better understand how people use voice interfaces to unlock personalized experiences. 

- Clara Pyo | June 28, 2017

[bloombergmediaforum]

#Hello

Smarter, faster: Bloomberg Media Global Head of Digital Innovation Michael Shane’s summer reading list below explores what you need to know about what’s next for digital media, from the evolving post-mobile interface to why most decisions should probably be made with 70% of the information you wish you had – and much, much more.     

We are not at an inflection point. 

Billions of new ad dollars will shift to digital platforms in the years ahead, but Google and Facebook are already taking $0.84 of every new dollar as it arrives because for many people, the internet essentially is Facebook and Google (with a little Amazon on the side).

We are years away from hardware that will generate the kind of paradigm shifts and monumental new businesses brought about by multitouch and broadband cellular data ten years ago.

We are operating in between watershed moments on saturated platforms.

That’s what makes the digital media business right now so interesting… and beguiling. Most of the technologies that excite us right now are so nascent. The possibilities and opportunities are obvious but the specific market fit is not.

The links below are my best (flawed, incomplete) effort to illustrate where we are now, with a focus on the things that seem likely to affect our industry and trenchant insights from Really Smart People. The number of links in any given section represents my diet lately and not any kind of relative importance. You won’t find answers below, but I hope this material will help us all to ask the right questions.

In a world where Google and Facebook take $0.90 of every new ad dollar, what’s a publisher to do? Hug your audience.

Why the SaaS era of journalism may be our most exciting yet | David Skok Digital journalism has gone from a modular phase of disruption to a new phase of integration that relies on owning the relationship with your reader through data.

The state of mobile advertising | Digiday Mobile will represent more than 70% of digital ad budgets in less than five years… but “[a]gencies are spending a lump sum on Facebook, for instance, but they never plan intentionally to carve out a budget for mobile… Their ad budget goes where the audience is, and most of Facebook’s audience is on mobile.”

How food brand Tasty is a template for BuzzFeed’s vertical expansion | Digiday But Tasty has become about more than just food. BuzzFeed is viewing its success as a template for vertical content sub-brands… All told, these verticals are the fastest-growing part of BuzzFeed’s business.

The future of online news video | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism The last few years have seen an explosion of online video, driven by technical improvements, initiatives from platforms like Facebook, and investment by media companies in new visual storytelling formats. But to what extent are consumers embracing news video? Is this an incremental addition to the digital landscape or another fundamental disruption requiring urgent and immediate action?

How Tyler Brûlé has extended Monocle beyond simply a magazine for the jet set | NiemanLab “What I think is important to us is that we can say: People spend $150 a year to subscribe to the magazine. There’s absolutely no way for them to get it discounted. They have to spend $150. And they’re probably more likely to fly on your airline, or buy your shoes, or book into your hotel, or purchase one of your cars than someone who is in a free channel.”

AI is going to save the world! AI is going to upend capitalism and society as we know it! AI is going to destroy/create millions of jobs!

AI is going to change things, including the media business.

The great AI awakening | New York Times How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.

Google’s AI invents sounds humans have never heard before | Wired Jesse Engel and Cinjon Resnick are part of Google Magenta—a small team of AI researchers inside the internet giant building computer systems that can make their own art—and this is their latest project.

The promise of artificial intelligence | a16z From Andreeson Horowitz, a ~45-minute narrated walkthrough of what companies are doing with AI today and what’s bubbling up from the research community that’s just a few years out.

Andreeson Horowitz AI playbook | a16z The companion microsite to the narrated presentation above.

Breaking the black box: what Facebook knows about you | ProPublica We live in an era of increasing automation. Machines help us not only with manual labor but also with intellectual tasks, such as curating the news we read and calculating the best driving directions. But as machines make more decisions for us, it is increasingly important to understand the algorithms that produce their judgments.

Machine learning hasn’t been commoditized yet, but that doesn’t mean you need a PhD | fast.ai “This haze of hubris blinds people to the fact that they are stuck in an echo chamber where everyone is talking about the tech trend rather than the customer needs and the economics of the businesses.”

Voice and the uncanny valley of AI | Benedict Evans WHAT DO WE WANT? Natural language processing! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? Sorry, when do we want what?

Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets | Google If you don’t see the chart you need, just ask.

“Mobile first” is so passé. It’s all about “reality first” now. Well, not now. But soon. As computing careens toward its rectangular prison break, the evolution of the UI has already begun.

Cameras, ecommerce and machine learning | Benedict Evans The image sensor in a phone is more than just a camera that takes pictures - it’s also part of new ways of thinking about mobile UIs and services, and part of a general shift in what a computer can do.

The first decade of augmented reality | Benedict Evans These are of course all the same kinds of questions that had to be resolved for smartphones and indeed PCs before them, just like form-factors - as in 2000 or 1990, the answers aren't clear, and neither, actually, are the questions.

From mobile first to mobile native | Benedict Evans What happens if you just forget about the PC altogether? But also, what happens if you forget about feature phones? What happens if you presume all of the sophistication that a modern smartphone has and a PC does not, and if you also presume that, with 650m iPhones in use and 2.5bn smartphones in total, you can build a big company without thinking about the low end anymore?

Presence Capital investor predicts the 2017 market for AR/VR | VentureBeat Machine perception is a core technology that will power the next wave of computing. If you’re not investing right now, three or four years down the line when consumer AR becomes mainstream you’ll be too far behind on the software side.

The scientists who make apps addictive | The Economist “Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.”

Because you can’t harvest seeds.

Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation | Asymco “But there is another form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation...The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth.”

The messy business of reinventing happiness | Fast Company “The theater was quiet, the elation gone. Iger repeated, ‘This better work.’ This is the story of what it took to deliver on those three simple words.”

The ownership problem  | Cap Watkins It turns out that the way great products get built isn’t by owners or groups of owners.

Exalting data, missing meaning | Andy Matuschak “But in consumer products, education, and so many other domains involving the messiness of humanity, the data obsession falls prey to hidden errors and distorts our true goals. Worse, it deprives us of truly meaningful insights that are available via philosophy, intuition, and stories, but not yet fully explicable through quantitative systems.”

The distribution of users’ computer skills: worse than you think | Nielsen Norman Group What research papers should a digital product designer consider reading? | Quora One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s often misleading to rely on such personal preferences.

Rules of interface design: automation | Eric S. Raymond Every time you require a human user to tell a computer things that it already knows or can deduce, you are making a human serve the machine.

Jeff Bezos’ “Day 1” philosophy: high-velocity decision making | SEC archive Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Market research, wireframing, and design | Stanford University An idea is not a mockup. A mockup is not a prototype. A prototype is not a program. A program is not a product. A product is not a business. And a business is not profits. 

With thanks to Bloomberg Beta.

Shift: The commission on work, workers, and technology report of findings | Bloomberg, New America The future of work is the future of everything.

I'm always on the lookout for the weird and wonderful corners of the web – the experiments, proofs of concept, and leaps of faith that make the internet great. Here are a few I've found and that my colleagues have shared with me lately. 

Mashable reels | Mashable

Visual essay: craft beer | The Pudding

Audio-visual essay: the art of sampling | The Pudding

Timeline | Timeline gallery

Cadillac driving game | The Outline

Speech synthesis technology | Lyrebird.ai

Spatial audio on the web | Omnitone

DeepWarp: photorealistic image resynthesis for gaze manipulation | Skoltech

Gaze manipulation 1 | AlteredQualia

Gaze manipulation 2 | AlteredQualia

Build your own trading bot | Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

- Michael Shane | June 23, 2017