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Sabeen H. Ahmad of WPP's Essencemediacom, speaks with Business Insider at their Fireside Chat, on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Businesses and how to prompt for success in sales and marketing.

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While each generation's use of social media platforms constantly ebbs and flows, Gen Z in particular often leads these trends. Here, some data and a few things to think about for strategies incorporating Meta's platforms of Facebook and Instagram and Gen Z's usage of the two.

Pulling Apart the Threads of Meta

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Honored to represent EssenceMediacom and Media Futures Group as a judge at the 2023 Effie Awards. For over 50 years, The Effie Awards have been known by advertisers and agencies globally as a symbol of achievement - recognizing any and all forms of marketing that contribute to a brand's success. Effie Worldwide spans over 125 global markets - spotlighting, inspiring & championing the practice and practitioners of marketing effectiveness globally.

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One of the biggest adjustments in this post-COVID19 world has been for those in higher education. For students, professors, and the institutions themselves, the pandemic put a spotlight on the value of higher ed, and what changes need to be implemented now, in order to prepare for a post-pandemic future. A quick whitepaper on the subject here...

https://bit.ly/CrisisInHigherEd 

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The Unfortunate Missteps of 2 Generations

This week, when Bloomberg Magazine arrived at my doorstep, the photo of the gold-chain-laced red and white Nike’s immediately caught my attention as the cover stated, “This is Not a Shoe, It’s an Asset Class.” I flipped through it while sipping my coffee, and glanced at the photos of a facially-blurred out teenager casually sitting amongst thousands of sneaker boxes in multiple settings, including what looked like the outdoor deck of his home, and also a warehouse overflowing with boxes of shoes. All of this he’d apparently shared on the Instagram feed of his self-made company, West Coast Streetwear. I shook my head at the braggadocios look-what-i-have style of Gen Z’s influencer class, but also shrugged with a bit of respect that a 19 year-old had the hustle and strategic foresight to use “specialized computer programs such as Cybersole, Kodai, and GaneshBof” to build an empire of sneakers for lucrative, and legal reselling.

Hours later, a friend of mine who is a true sneakerhead, sent me a link to Bloomberg online, I thought, to read the same article I’d flipped through earlier. Instead I was directed to an update with a new headline: “Nike Executive Leaves Following Report about Son’s Business.”

It turned out, Joshua Hunt’s interview with the proud (cocky?) 19 year-old, wanting to prove his success to a journalist who needs documentation for journalistic integrity, unveiled a severe conflict of interest, and essentially, insider trading between mom and son. Credit card receipts and phone numbers for West Coast Streetwear were registered not to the Founder and CEO, Joe Hebert, but to his mom, Ann, a Nike employee of 25+ years. When questioned, this discovery pulled the string of confidence right out of the 19 year-old who  immediately stopped responding to the reporter, and unraveled the career of a woman who spent her life climbing the corporate ladder at one of the most well-known brands in the world.

As this story continues to permeate newsfeeds, I couldn’t help but think about how the lives of these two people, more importantly, that of Ann Hebert, had been essentially exposed (and Ann’s, destroyed), through the hubris of a 19 year-old. While her son had decided that thanks to his inside connection, he was raking in way more money as a sneaker reseller than a would-be college student, Ann had finished college in the 1990′s and within 2 years, started in ‘various sales rep roles’ at Nike, eventually climbing up the corporate, and once very male ladder at Nike, to Vice President, General Manager of Nike in North America. That is a significant mountain to climb. And while, according to Nike, she reported her son’s ‘side hustle’ back in 2018, it’s likely that the extent to which his business had grown, and that she was so deeply involved, definitely precluded her from any protection Nike would or could provide to a 25+ year loyalist employee. 

Imagine. Giving 25 years and 10 months to a company. Working for them for so long you knew all of the inner workings of it and the industry itself, and your son, who shared your mind for business, came up with his own company, that would allow him to live the same, or a more comfortable life that you yourself, worked so hard to provide. I can see the naiveté. Or maybe the ease of culpability. Ann Hebert is clearly implicated and involved, but that doesn’t make her downfall any less palatable to me. Maybe she would’ve been exposed, or maybe her son Joe could have continued to make his millions without implicating mom. Reselling of shoes is a gray area that I don’t claim to fully comprehend, and with software that allows you to automate bidding on rare shoes, its an industry and “asset class” that is clearly a corporate model that is already in existence. 

But, like many Gen Z’ers before him, it was Joe Hebert, and his naive desire to overshare, that caused his side hustle to crush his mom’s corporate climb of a career. There’s no outrunning this one, no matter how fly the shoes are. 

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A playlist to get the grump out while living in this alternative pandemic-skewed universe.

(via https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5vg8XvkqsfgrO8h6zhncAt?si=orivyaNbQyacaa_ZAcIeDg)

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Wrote a whitepaper on consumer behaviors in Health & Wellness, Work & Life in the time of COVID-19. Lots constantly changing day-by-day but here are a few things to think about...

In the time of COVID-19, consumer behaviors are emerging in ways and at speeds we could never have imagined. In this issue, we’ll take a look at work, life, health and wellness, and discuss what this may mean once we re-enter this new post-pandemic world.

https://bit.ly/PostCovidConsumers

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Quick trip turn Six Month Stint. Thanks for the memories peeps of @pokelondon , @publicis_london , @arc_ldn 🇬🇧💛✌🏼 (at Publicis UK HQ)

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That this even exists, is amazing. (at London, United Kingdom)

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Sabeen H. Ahmad | SocialBakers #EngagePrague Global Social Media Conference

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Sabeen H. Ahmad of Publicis N.A. speaking with Anthony Ha of TechCrunch on the Consumer Journey, Digital Strategy and how Social Strategies need to be individually customized for one to one connections.

For More: http://bit.ly/SHA_SpeakerSeries

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Sabeen H. Ahmad from Publicis North America, speaking at the Engage New York 2015 social marketing conference. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SHA_SpeakerSeries

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Great content doesn't create itself. Sabeen H. Ahmad of Publicis North America, discusses the ‘A.R.T. of Content Creation - and how #bigdata is used to create content that gets results.

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Sabeen H. Ahmad from Publicis North America discusses what makes good social content and how to set up your teams to make it consistently great. With Greg Galant, CEO of The Shorty Awards