Pinterest wants its users to get offline. And that’s a pretty good thing to be about these days.
Ben Silbermann during NewCo Shift Forum 2018
Ben Silbermann is a founder and CEO of Pinterest, one of the most misunderstood platforms ever born in Silicon Valley. I’ve written about the company extensively, and earlier this year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben at the Shift Forum. Find out why I’m an unabashed fan in the video and transcript below.
John Battelle: I’ve found Ben to be one of the most thoughtful, humble, and non-typical valley founders out there. Please join me in welcoming the founder and CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann, to Shift Forum.
Its most significant business crisis to date fails to tarnish Facebook’s earnings. Perhaps it’s time to admit something about ourselves we don’t want to face.
Facebook earnings just came out, and as it has nearly every quarter, the company crushed it. Many (including myself) were expecting at least some measurable effect on the company’s performance from the Cambridge Analytica train wreck, but the company seemed instead to pick up steam, booking a 63 percent increase in earnings year on year and beating Wall St. estimates by an astounding 34 cents a share. “Up yours, haters!” may not have been overtly stated on the earnings call, but I am quite certain there was plenty of that sentiment going around One Hacker Way today. In America — particularly Trump’s America, nothing washes away sins like unmitigated success. Oh, and money — lots and lots of money.
Facebook stock is already trading more than five percent up in after hours, and will likely pop on the open, as the investing public hastens to ride it back up to its pre-Cambridge Analytica highs. And why not? It’s Facebook’s time, after all. The company has taken its licks, apologized, and promised to do better. Zuck went to Washington, and new features seems to roll out almost daily — each promising one more “fix” for whatever was originally broken about the service.
It’s not Facebook’s fault that capitalism works the way it does. The bare truth is simply this: Facebook works for advertisers, which is another way of saying it works for business. And as long as it keeps doing that, business people aren’t going to stop using it. Period, end of sentence. The executives at Facebook know this, and as much as they’ve claimed they’re willing to impinge their business to “fix” their service, there’s simply no way they’ll actually going to roll out any changes that significantly change how their advertising model works. Regulation could “fix” it for them, but after Congress’ laughable performance earlier this month, that’s highly unlikely.
Its most significant business crisis to date fails to tarnish Facebook’s earnings. Perhaps it’s time to admit something about ourselves we don’t want to face.
Facebook earnings just came out, and as it has nearly every quarter, the company crushed it. Many (including myself) were expecting at least some measurable effect on the company’s performance from the Cambridge Analytica train wreck, but the company seemed instead to pick up steam, booking a 63 percent increase in earnings year on year and beating Wall St. estimates by an astounding 34 cents a share. “Up yours, haters!” may not have been overtly stated on the earnings call, but I am quite certain there was plenty of that sentiment going around One Hacker Way today. In America — particularly Trump’s America, nothing washes away sins like unmitigated success. Oh, and money — lots and lots of money.
Facebook stock is already trading more than five percent up in after hours, and will likely pop on the open, as the investing public hastens to ride it back up to its pre-Cambridge Analytica highs. And why not? It’s Facebook’s time, after all. The company has taken its licks, apologized, and promised to do better. Zuck went to Washington, and new features seems to roll out almost daily — each promising one more “fix” for whatever was originally broken about the service.
The Chief Brand Officer of P&G on Facebook, Google, and bringing true diversity to marketing.
Marc Pritchard and John Battelle during NewCo Shift Forum 2018
It isn’t easy being the CMO of any massive business — tenure is short, the demand for growth from Wall Street is relentless, and your budget is often the first to be cut. But that budget is also expected to drive that growth — an often contradictory challenge. Marc Pritchard, the Chief Brand Office of P&G, has been a CMO for more than ten years — so he must be doing something right. At the Shift Forum earlier this year, Pritchard explained his strategy for managing through significant disruption. When he started in his current role, Facebook was a tiny player, Twitter was a toy, and YouTube had no ad model.
What a difference a decade can make. In the transcript and video below, hear Pritchard on the Facebook/Google duopoly, the role of marketing as a change agent in society, and how he navigated a bruising proxy fight with a renown Wall Street raider.
Late last week Facebook announced it would eliminate all third-party data brokers from its platform. It framed this announcement as a response to the slow motion train wreck that is the Cambridge Analytica story. Just as it painted Cambridge as a “bad actor” for compromising its users’ data, Facebook has now vilified hundreds of companies who have provided it fuel for its core business model, a model that remains at the center of its current travails.
Why? Well, I hate to be cynical, but here’s my answer: Because Cambridge Analytica provided Facebook air cover to consolidate power over the open web. Put another way: Facebook is planning to profit from a scandal of their own making.
The IAB annual meeting — an industry event featuring all manner of digital media and marketing folk — is in full swing right about now, and it’s managed to capture a news cycle by releasing an early draft of a speech from Keith Weed, CMO of consumer packaged goods giant Unilever. The Journalcovers the story here, and here’s the (literal) money quote: “‘We will prioritize investing only in responsible platforms that are committed to creating a positive impact in society,’ [Weed] will say, according to prepared remarks.”
Put another way: Clean up the fake news, the addictive manipulation, and the AI-driven kid bait, or we’ll pull hundreds of millions of dollars from YouTube, Facebook, and Google. The result could be a major bonanza for huge publishers like Oath and Amazon, and perhaps for media outlets with less scale such as Vox, Axios, and Buzzfeed. Sounds like a big loss for the platforms, no?
Well, maybe. I was on the board of the IAB for many years, I helped lead its fraud efforts, and I’ve worked closely with huge advertisers like Unilever. And upon seeing this news, my only question is this: Will it even matter?
Clearly, we’re tired of politics. Bring on the escapism, please!
Was it me, or did the Super Bowl feel … less frantic than usual this year? It was as if the collective will of capitalism — because let’s face it, that’s pretty much what the Super Bowl has become — had decided to ignore the anxiety of our political climate, and instead focus on the essence of entertainment: Humor, shared values, and advertising for advertising’s sake. The point is to sell stuff, after all. And given we’ve all been addicted to a potent and poisonous political drug for the past year, it seems we’re all in the mood for some serious group rehab. The ads didn’t disappoint. (The game was damn good too, and that certainly helped immensely.)
Another major theme was corporations touting their essential goodness — Bud sending water to disaster zones, Hyundai saving kids from cancer — but these well intentioned approaches failed to truly land their punches (more on that in a second). I watched the entire five or so hours — it was strange to release my thumb from hovering over the fast forward function on my DVR remote. And while plenty of the ads elicited eye rolls, very few were out and out duds. Here are some of my picks.
Would you care if the brands you interact with everyday disappeared?
Would you care if the brands you interact with everyday disappeared? A global survey says nearly three-quarters of those asked wouldn’t. Would what we do as marketers, branding strategists, advertisers or product managers matter anymore? But before it turns into a philosophical debate about the meaning of existence, let’s quickly return to reality.
Not long ago, I attended a thought provoking event by Brand South Australia discussing the future of brands and how the “Future Enterprise” can foster trust in consumers.
10 Trends Now Influencing How Consumers and Brands Interact
By Sheryl Connelly, Corporate Futurist, Ford Motor Company
It used to be that consumers chose brands based solely on the products they sold. If someone liked a product or service, they typically became a loyal customer.
But today’s buyers demand more of companies. In addition to the products that line their shelves or appear in their catalogs, brands are often called upon to offer more — chiefly, a position on timely social issues.
