Ariella Brown

What retailers and consumers expect from another busy summer break
Just after the firecrackers fade out on the Fourth of July, marketers shift their tune from the pleasures of summer to anticipating back to school. While the messaging may appear out of sync with the beach season, it’s actually right on target for the majority of shoppers.
Deloitte’s 2019 back-to-school survey anticipates very strong sales at the end of this summer. They anticipate back to school spending to hit $27.8B, or $51...

Rapid testing by Smartly.io aimed at bringing the best optimized creative for every traveler
The travel companies, TUI Belgium and TUI Netherlands, set out to reach more potential customers interested in summer travel vacations through Facebook and Instagram. They knew that video can be very effective in that way, but as their existing video content had not been designed for social, they wanted to find a way to test that the video content they would put out on those channels would prove effec...

The banking industry is beginning to embrace AI and digital assets in an effort to put in place cutting-edge detection and to reduce human workload.

To keep up with the pace of business and the security threats in today’s environment, financial institutions need to improve efficiency and develop innovative safeguards to manage risk. The advance of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets makes that possible, improving performance while reducing processing time and costs. Though some of these advances are already in use, the level of sophistication will progress...

Nearly every day, we hear about new advances in AI that enable new ways to monitor activities and people, transforming many processes in our day to day life.

What we may then hear every other day is how AI can exacerbate racial and gender bias and pose a threat to privacy, job security, and economic well being. It could possibly even spark a war in the view of Elon Musk.

AI-powered facial recognition raises concerns over privacy and bias

As explained in Facial Recognition Concerns: Microsoft'...

In the process of exploring the final frontier, the crew of Star Trek made use of technology born of the creator’s imagination. But much of that technology has been realized - at least to some extent - by the year 2019.
Communicators
Should you still have a flip-style phone in your possession, like I do, you have a piece of tech straight out of Star Trek. In fact, TrekMovie.com suggests "the modern flip-style mobile phone was inspired by the communicators from the original Star Trek.” As Osca...

“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his short story, “The Rich Boy.” “They are different from you and me.”
Those of us who are not rich and wonder at just how different their lives were than our own, can catch glimpses of it in tours of elaborate mansions that were once the homes of the wealthy elite.Certainly, that’s a big draw for tourists to Newport, Rhode Island.
Newport’s primary claim to fame is that the rich made their summer mansions, which they sometim...

Which B2C content strategies are taking over B2B?
Content has always played a role in B2B marketing strategy. However, it used to be devoted primarily to long form content. Now, taking a cue from what has been proven effective in the B2C space, more B2B businesses are adopting or planning to add on more short form content, including videos.
Walker Sands looked at the latest trends in its The Future of B2B Content 2019 report. And true to its own discovery about adapting video to marketing, it...

You may have heard the expression, quality doesn’t cost -- it pays. A more precise formulation applies to business in the form of the 1-10-100 rule of data quality. The idea is that while it could cost you $1 to corroborate the data upon entry, it costs $10 to clean it later and $100 to leave it uncorrected due to the various losses that will result from it. How to prevent that happening? Adopt a CDP solution.
Losses due to poor data quality cost the US economy $3.1 trillion annually, accordi...

To find out what women in tech want, we asked them. A query to HARO drew a large number of responses. Everyone wants equal opportunity, though some experience it more others. Some women share positive reports for the level of female representation at their places of work, while others still feel the sting of being overlooked by those who direct technical questions only to the men in the room. However, their thoughtful responses include not just what women want but what practical steps will ge...

When you look up at the night sky, you only see a tiny fraction of the stars in space. Our rather limited view is partially due to light pollution, partially due to our position in the galaxy and the distorting effects of our atmosphere on the light that does make it over, also due to the fact that some of these stars are so far away that their light is still working its way over to us.
But if you can gain a view from space, you can see sights that are truly out of this world. Thanks to the H...

Kazoo's Paul Pellman, a former Google exec, tells of how two HR properties merged, then pivoted
What’s in a name? Quite a lot for brands. Many invest a great deal in building up their name recognition. So when a company makes the move to rebrand: the question is, what justifies changing that name, which can cost the company the goodwill it has cultivated over years of conducting business? Also what particular challenges do B2B companies have over B2C ones when taking on rebranding?
This was t...

A mother’s love is indeed priceless, but Mother’s Day spending can be measured. Marketers who take note of trends can achieve a significant lift in May sales.
The National Retail Foundation (NRF) anticipates that Mother’s Day 2019 will be the biggest to date. According to the figures based on the survey, Americans will be spending a record $25 billion on Mother’s Day gifts an...

The gender gap that persists in tech career paths remains an obstacle to overcome for women who want to break into the field. But it can be done, and women who have made it have some valuable insight to share with those aspire to follow in their path or blaze their own. It all comes down to overcoming self-doubt and moving fearlessly forward. A number recommend connecting with others for support, but sometimes the motivation has to come from within.
Fortune Favors the Bold
Sophie Knowles, Fou...

Assessing the state of women in tech does present a kind of half-full – or more precisely quarter-full – glass perspective. There is definitely still a marked gap in terms of representation in the field and even pay. However, there are also signs of movement in the right direction. So while we do mind the gap, we should also look at what works to narrow it down. (To learn about one woman who’s made it in tech, check out How I Got Here: 12 Questions With Web Entrepreneur Angie Chang.)
1. The q...

The evolution of sales and marketing ops has made these traditionally tactical roles much more into contributors of organizational data and technology strategy that supports driving more revenue. The combination of sophisticated consumers and the ability to tap into technology to better track causes and effects for sales and marketing is driving businesses to pay greater attention to their marketing and sale ops. Recently, Maurizio Pittau identified three causes of the current focus on market...