MBA 6101 - That's a Wrap! What I Learned

As my MBA 6101 Brand & Marketing Management class comes to a close, I take a moment to reflect on what I thought the class would be like and what I actually learned.

What I thought class would be about:

• Brand-building principles
• Entrepreneurial thinking for start-ups or small business
• Digital marketing is here to stay
• Retrospective on how brands grew and maintained staying power

What I actually learned:

• Google Ads are just as powerful as an ad created by an advertising agency
• Hands-on branding (Google Ads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blogging)
• Why having a mindset for Digital Marketing is crucial for business transformation
• Why it’s important to see and be prepared for industry trends, no matter what sector you are currently employed in (automation, machine learning, AI, quantum computing)
• The power of data

Google Ads and Marketing have a huge impact on the marketing industry: for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search + Google Ads. Getting started is easy:

1. Write you own ad copy
2. Select the keywords you’d like your ad to target
3. Set a daily maximum budget
4. Choose your campaign’s start and end date
5. Turn on your ad

A small business owner (SBO) can create effective ads in minutes that deliver results that can be seen directly in the app. This information is power for the SBO, where at the click of a button, the campaign can be tweaked based on the trends being reported on. Genius.

YouTube

For content creators, uploading video content is simple and YT makes it easy to incorporate a channel into the overall marketing plan. OLV marketing helps build trust and establish the channel (and by extension, the biz) as having authority. This, in turn, makes it easier to connect to and engage with customers because they recognize you’re coming from a place of authority.

For users who do not like to read, videos contain information that provides them access to “inside information.” Most content creators are kind and want others to benefit from their experience. User have access to a wide variety of content that is both entertaining and educational and is easily found thanks in large part to the partnership with Google and their expertise in search. And it is FREE.

Facebook and Instagram

On Facebook, video ads are the highest performing ad units "because they encourage users to stop and pay attention to the content." The best ads are those with a hook in the first 5-8 seconds that trigger the click to 'learn more' and ultimately to convert to a sale/close the deal. Instagram is the most popular platform for brands who engage in influencer marketing. And like any relationship, requires an investment of time to develop content, build trust, and provide value. "After seeing posts with product information on the platform, 87% took a specific action, like following a brand, visiting its retail store, or making a purchase." That's exactly what a business seeks! 

Blogging

If/when the time is right, I will start blogging for the business I want to start. It would help me start to shape content for a website. A blog could help keep my audience engaged and provide first-hand knowledge about what they find interesting and want to hear more about. This would help build my brand and solidify my standing as a thought leader. When the content is meaningful, it will build trust with my audience. 

Perhaps if I branch out to YouTube with a channel to upload videos that tie to my blog (and vice versa), I could determine where I should focus the bulk of my time and energy—where there is the interest and need.

Digital Marketing

A leader’s task is not simply "to adapt"; it is to be adaptive. Digital transformation is not a goal that one achieves; it is the means to achieve one’s goals. A digital mindset is a set of attitudes and behaviors that enable people and organizations to see how data, algorithms, and AI open up new possibilities and to chart a path for success in a business landscape increasingly dominated by data-intensive and intelligent technologies.

To accelerate adoption of radical, digital change, there must be a shift in shared values, norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Examples: a major reorg, acquisition, resource reallocation, hiring a digital transformation czar reporting to the CEO or phasing out a legacy system

Automation involves an entire category of technologies that provide activity or work without human involvement—example, a water wheel. The benefits include:

• Lower operating costs
• Improved worker safety
• Faster ROI
• Ability to be more competitive
• Increased production output
• Consistent and improved part-production and quality
• Smaller environmental footprint
• Better planning
• Reduce need for outsourcing
• Optimal utilization of floor space
• Easy integration
• Maximize labor
• Increase productivity & efficiency
• Increase system versatility

"Though automation could result in the elimination of 73 million jobs, it’s also predicted to create 58 million new jobs. While a net loss of 15 million isn’t exactly cause for celebration, it does seem more manageable than roughly half of country’s jobs disappearing."

Machine Learning is one of the most disruptive technologies of our generation. Algorithms are written to build models which can be used to make predictions so that machines can analyze data. This learning benefits from the human intervention that helps improve results. Deep Learning, a subset of Machine Learning, uses a complex layer of algorithms to arrive at model that were built to resolve challenges that regular ole machine learning could never do, removing the need for programmers to fix any issues related to inaccurate predictions. It’s a slower process but they become smarter over time by using more data than a machine learning model would. Example, instead of asking your Echo Dot, “Alexa, turn on the light”, Deep Learning would do the same simply by uttering, “It’s dark out here” and a gadget would provide light.

Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning and deep learning are the means with which one would execute artificial intelligence because AI is a programmed “rule” that makes a device respond in a particular manner, based on a pre-defined situation. Simply put: it’s a bunch of “if-else” statements of code that trigger a process to find an option that delivers an expected outcome.  AI involves a machine exhibiting and practicing something similar to what we describe as human thinking. Siri, Alexa, chatbots are digital AI assistants.

Quantum Computing

"Quantum computing is a rapidly-emerging technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers. Quantum algorithms take a new approach to complex problems -- creating multi-dimensional spaces where the patterns linking individual data points emerge. Classical computers cannot create these computational spaces, so they cannot find these patterns. 

Quantum computers are elegant machines, smaller and requiring less energy than supercomputers. An IBM Quantum processor is a wafer not much bigger than the one found in a laptop. And a quantum hardware system is about the size of a car, made up mostly of cooling systems to keep the superconducting processor at its ultra-cold operational temperature. A classical processor uses bits to perform its operations. A quantum computer uses qubits (CUE-bits) to run multidimensional quantum algorithms."

Harnessing the Power of Data

The role of data is to empower business leaders to make decisions based on facts, trends and statistical numbers. But with so much information out there, business leaders must be able to sift through the noise, and get the right information, so that they can make the best decisions about strategy and growth. Data can transform business:

• Companies expect that data and analytics will soon be the most critical factor in determining competitive differentiation. 
• The returns on current data and analytics initiatives, so far, are large, and they are expected to grow dramatically. 
• The enormity of the task at hand is mirrored in the myriad obstacles that challenge firms. 
• With the help of proper organizational approaches and integrated tools, firms have the ability to harness the power of data like never before.

After reading “A Call to Action on Data Fluency”, I would counter with these two articles: 

• Harvard Business Review’s Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces by James Wilson and Paul Daugherty, https://hbr.org/2018/07/collaborative-intelligence-humans-and-ai-are-joining-forces
• Harvard Business Review’s Robots Need Us More Than We Need Them by James Wilson and Paul Daugherty, https://hbr.org/2022/03/robots-need-us-more-than-we-need-them

In place of typical textbooks, MBA 6101 required the following three books to be read and blogged about and I summarize below my key takeaways from each:

Ascend Your Start-Up

• In order to scale faster and more fearlessly, you must think big. Think category. What is the minimal viable category you are entering?
• Growth thrives at the intersection of technology and humanity
• To be strategic, you have to make mind space for yourself, to carve out one or two hours a day to think. Architect the outcome.
• It’s not a sprint, but a marathon so focus on the journey
• Create believers
• Stay close to your “why?”
• Be better tomorrow than you were yesterday. Continuously improve. Stay curious
• Grit, grit, grit

Guerrilla Marketing

This book was written by an ex-Burnetter and it reflects all the tenets that work, proven by almost 100 years’ worth of work, yet is scaled & laid out in such a way as to not overwhelm the reader (who is likely a small business owner).

• Ensure a quality product or service
• Focus on innovation once previous bullet is established
• Solve problems in order to succeed
• Deliver speed and flexibility to market
• Start with a core idea and apply it consistently
• Positioning is the key to marketing
• Commit to your marketing plan and invest in it (paid, owned and earned)
• Research, test, measure, and recalibrate

Surfing the Tsunami

The better data that a business has, the more profitable you can be, when you are armed with the power that comes from data.

Think of artificial intelligence as the brain behind either hardware or software...it is increasing automation...and is poised to increase in [its] impact [to the world].

• Adapting is a "good" response to AI, where one should learn more and pay attention to what's going on and the trends or patterns being seen.
• Adopting is a "better" response to AI, where one is adopting AI-related tools & platforms, becoming more actively involved in managing AI. 
• Adept is a "best" response to AI, where one is adept at getting directly involved with developing AI or learning how to code and/or work with related data.

There are plenty of opportunities to be optimistic, if a society invests enough in its citizens.

Week 7 – MBA6101 – How Does Automation & Evolving Workforce Impact Me?

There is a terrific online article on the pros & cons of Google Ads with 10 pros and 7 cons. Here they are:

Most of the "pros" column boils down to the power of data, and if you are using Google Ads for your own business, this means you own the information: first party data. Knowing how to leverage the information and translate it means you can recalibrate your marketing activity with the click of some keys. In addition, every single one of the "pros" ties back to the suggestions provided by Levinson in his book, Guerrilla Marketing. This translates into some solid advice for maximizing your dollar and reaching your customer with the right message, at the right time. In the "cons", each bullet underscores the importance of conversion, meaning, having someone who is searching for something you make (product) or provide (service) is of no consequence if they don't pull the trigger and buy or make contact with you/your company. And knowing how to interpret or read the data is a huge hurdle for those individuals not familiar with Google Ads. I also appreciate the fact that it mentions how critical it is to understand how a consumer searches. If you are trying to be clever in the copy on your site instead of being down-to-earth and realizing how someone might seek out the product or service to solve their problem, you will miss out on them ever finding you.

Google Ads' impact on the marketing industry is significant, "...we conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search + Google Ads. This is huge and small business owners would not be priced out of the large corporations that have advertising agencies create their ads and manage their spend. My kids know that the influencers they follow make a lot of money app (Google, YouTube, social networks) monetization. In a nutshell: a business would be remiss in not leveraging Google Ads.

Social Channels are immensely lucrative and easy to use, both for the influencer and the user. The market continues to grow as visualized in this chart:

Instagram is the most popular platform for brands who engage in influencer marketing. And like any relationship, requires an investment of time to develop content, build trust, and provide value. "After seeing posts with product information on the platform, 87% took a specific action, like following a brand, visiting its retail store, or making a purchase." That's exactly what a business seeks! On Facebook, video ads are the highest performing ad units "because they encourage users to stop and pay attention to the content." The best ads are those with a hook in the first 5-8 seconds that trigger the click to 'learn more' and ultimately to convert to a sale/close the deal. 

I do see the trend of clients (brands) pulling campaign management in-house. "To better protect their reputation and ensure campaign effectiveness, more brands are starting to create and implement their campaigns in-house instead of relying on agencies. They’re wary of fake influencers and the likelihood of middlemen falling for such influencers." Working in the advertising business, I can tell you that it is critically important to vet all influencers, not just by the agency's standard, but also taking into account what the client/brands value and making sure that any influencer speaking on their behalf (paid spokespeople, for example) don't have any hidden surprises, because those surprises are usually never good and can negatively impact/have an effect on the brand.

So what are the best careers in digital marketing if that's the space where all the players are? The seven hottest jobs right now in this sector are:

1. Content Manager & Content Strategists
2. VR Developers & Editors
3. SEO and SEM Specialists
4. UX Designer
5. eMail Marketing Specialist
6. Digital Marketing Managers & Directors
7. Analysts and AI Specialists

My current role falls under bullet #6 and I love everything about what I do: shaping the advertising, laying out a marketing plan, optimizing output based on inputs, and continuously learning & refining as I go. If someone is working outside the advertising and marketing industry, there might need to be a realistic expectation that she/he/they will likely need to start at the bottom and work their way up. As mentioned in class, learning online learning is the easiest and fastest way to learn, especially when you might not have a lot of time on your hands yet are looking to pivot existing skills mid-career. 

I strongly believe that the digital marketing job is constantly evolving. One of the ways to maintain a pulse on things is to setup Google alerts or follow key players in this space on LinkedIn or read articles & trade magazines/sites that talk about all the innovation happening r-i-g-h-t-n-o-w. "According to LinkedIn, the 'Digital Marketing Specialist' role is among the top 10 most in-demand jobs, with 860,000 job openings. The most requested experience in digital marketing includes social media, content strategy, SEO, analytics, and more." One piece of advice: if you're not a data person, become one. Understand what the data is telling you and take appropriate action to optimize it for you or your client. Becoming the human that can do that will ensure you have a role in the future as the game keeps evolving & changing.

Well, what about automation? Is my job going to go the way of the dodo? Not according to a study done by Harvard Business Review of 1,500 companies. Findings? "Firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work together." [emphasis is my own]. "Humans need to perform three crucial roles. They must train machines to perform certain tasks; explain the outcomes of those tasks, especially when the results are counterintuitive or controversial; and sustain the responsible use of machines (by, for example, preventing robots from harming humans)." That's brilliant: train-explain-sustain. First, train. Machine-learning algorithms must be taught how to perform the work they’re designed to do. Humans will be needed to do that. Second, explain. As AIs increasingly reach conclusions after processing millions of pieces of data vis-a-vis processes that are not always transparent, human experts in the respective field that is leveraging AI would need to explain the behavior to non-expert users. Third, sustain. Organizations will require employees who continually work to ensure

the AI systems are functioning properly, safely, and responsibly. 

In addition, "Smart machines are helping humans expand their abilities in three ways. They can amplify our cognitive strengths; interact with customers and employees to free us for higher-level tasks; and embody human skills to extend our physical capabilities". So, rather than feel a sense of dread that there will be no need for humans and there will be significant job loss, it is important for businesses to reimagine a world where the more monotonous or repetitious tasks are not just outsourced (as was the trend over that last three decades--globalization), but are machined so that the human can focus on problem solving, thought-leadership, and collaboration with machines. It will behoove a person to be able to translate that knowledge into actionable progress to further improve process. How better than to have a seasoned employee help develop those skills?! That's the first step, how can the operations/process be improved?  Next, putting key stakeholders into a room to brainstorm how the team, business, or sector 

might be able to collaborate with AI systems with the goal of improving the way things are being done at present? The third step is for companies is to think about scale and how to sustain the solution the stakeholders brainstormed/proposed. To me, this is true transformation of business. Keeping the tenets of business top-of-mind, from speed-to-market, to flawless execution. From customized solutions to specific consumers to harnessing the power of data to constantly evolve. 

"Company roles will be redesigned around the desired outcomes of reimagined processes, and corporations will increasingly be organized around different types of skills rather than around rigid job titles. Some of those skills are what one might expect (for example, proficiency in data science and data wrangling), while others are less obvious (for instance, the ability to use simple machine learning tools to cross-sell services). Organizations that use machines merely to displace workers through automation will miss the full potential of AI. Such a strategy is misguided from the get-go. Tomorrow’s leaders will instead be those that embrace collaborative intelligence, transforming their operations, their markets, their industries, and—no less important—their workforces." (Wilson & Daugherty 2018).

References:
Digital Marketing Institute. (2022, January 17). 7 of the Hottest Digital Marketing Jobs. DMI. https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/7-of-the-hottest-digital-marketing-jobs 

Duggal, N. (2022, May 16). Why Choose a Digital Marketing Career in 2022? SimpliLearn.com https://www.simplilearn.com/why-choose-a-career-in-digital-marketing-article 

Johnson Jones Group. (2021, December 17). Is Google Ads Worth It? 17 Pros & Cons Of Using Google Ads In 2022. Johnson Jones Group, a digital marketing agency. https://johnsonjonesgroup.com/is-google-ads-worth-it/

Santora, J. (2022, March 29). Key Influencer Marketing Statistics You Need to Know for 2022. Influencer Marketing Hub. https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-statistics/ 

Wilson, H.J. and Daugherty, P.R. (2018, July 1). Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/07/collaborative-intelligence-humans-and-ai-are-joining-forces

Week 8 – MBA6101 – LinkedIn | Top Skills & Hire-ability | Parachute

LinkedIn

I'm in a love/hate relationship with LinkedIn. I love the reach and networking of the site. I hate how Facebook-y some posts have become and I loathe getting unsolicited messages from individuals that appear to think it's Tinder (completely unprofessional and borderline stalker-ish). Lemme break down the dichotomy...

On the side of "love", it *is* where most professionals can be found. It also helps to see an individual's work experience if you are a hiring manager or want to know more about a new teammate. Furthermore, LI offers suggestions for how to get noticed and/or appear on more searches--one would be foolish not to take these things into account! If you haven't updated your LinkedIn profile, you should get How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile and make it happen! One should also sign up for alerts for any brands, organizations, job searches, and/or leaders that one wants to follow. If you join a new team or someone joins yours, add her/him/them to your network! By the way, did you know that a candidate's experience is being looked at through a different lens, post-pandemic? Here are 10 Surprising Stats You Didn't Know About LinkedIn.

On the "hate" side, there seems to be a trend of over-sharing (TMI) that is quite personal on what I consider to be a professional social site which should skew posts towards work-related content. Here's a great summary of what I mean. Look, everyone has personal demons to overcome/struggles that have made them stronger. And I'm all for contextualizing how we can leverage insights gleaned from everyday life and apply them to work life, but c'mon! No need to over-dramatize to get a "like". One other annoying thing is related to including a photo as part of your profile. A photo of oneself is helpful, of course, as people sometimes recognize faces but may forget names so it's good to humanize a profile that would otherwise be just a list of cold facts; HOWEVER, this also has the potential to open up your DM to people who want to date you (not the platform, people!). Lastly, there are phishers and spammers getting your personal information off your profile, robocalling or worse, stealing your identity because there is so much detailed info at their fingertips. I also submitted an online application for a job that I believed was legit--it wasn't. Unbeknownst to me, there were multiple attempts to falsely open an account in my name. Which was unfortunate since my sole intent was to desperately find a job after having been laid off for a year in 2020.

I will say that after not being able to find a job for so long and looking at the job postings, I saw I lacked a pre-requisite that popped-up, time and again, each time I searched for the position I was qualified for because I had the experience. What I lacked was an MBA degree. What did I do as a result? I enrolled in an online program at Benedictine University to increase my hire-ability and close that gap. I plan to be a May 2023 MBA graduate.

Top Skills & Hire-ability

Professor Todd Kelsey sees having CASA Marketing skills [Content, Search, Analytics, Social] as a solid foundation for being considered a prime candidate for hot job market in the field. CASA Marketing skills are focused on those things that will get you hired and this conclusion is underscored by an almost decades-worth of data where "Year-to-year digital marketing continues to come out at the very top of all skills for getting people hired, even up against coding and software development, etc." Being a living, breathing digital marketer, I know this to be true. I don't like labels, generally speaking, but my inner analyst enjoys putting behaviors into homogenous groups, which helps glean insights that might shape how an audience is parsed to receive unique marketing messages based on similar behaviors. 

That said, I started out as a One-to-One marketer that evolved into a database marketer that evolved into CRM marketer to arrive at being a digital marketer. Honestly, it's all the same but it's only the labels that changed. See where I am going with this? It's a label. At the core, it's all about getting the right message to the right consumer at the right time. Period. "Digital Marketing" feels too channel-specific-a-skill in my eyes because the reality is this: "digital" is the vehicle or platform...the marketing is and always will be "the action or business of promoting and selling products or services". So go ahead and keep changing the labels, just know that at the core, I am really good at doing the thing that marketing does: getting the right message to the right consumer at the right time...in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

What Color is Your Parachute? (2022 edition)

I used this book yeaaaaars ago and didn't realize it maintains its relevance by getting updated every year with information that is quantifiable, actionable, and timely. There's a quote in the book, chapter 4, pages 73-74: "If you can, you’ll do better to start with yourself and what you want, rather than with the job market and what’s 'hot.' The best work, the best career, for you, the one that will make you happiest and most fulfilled, is going to be one that uses your favorite transferable skills; in your favorite subjects, fields, or special knowledges; in a job that offers you your preferred people environments, your preferred working conditions, with your preferred salary or other rewards, working toward your preferred goals and values. This requires a thorough inventory of who you are." I believe that the pandemic triggered a self-inventory, a gut-check, a pause-and-think assessment in the minds of every employed person. Each person over the last two years has asked themselves these three questions:

1. "Was I excited to work every day last week?"
2. "Did I have a chance to use my strengths every day?"
3. "At work do I get a chance to do what I'm good at and something I love?"

If the answer was, "No", the next question was likely, "Then what am I doing here?" Roll tide.

In the Harvard Business Review article that listed out those three questions there is a study referenced, "ADPRI’s most recent 50,000-person surveys of stratified random samples of working populations around the world, the most powerful predictors of retention, performance, engagement, resilience, and inclusion...only when a company intelligently links what people love to their actual activities will it achieve higher performance, higher engagement and resilience, and lower turnover." This confirms what was found in chapter 4 of What Color Is Your Parachute?

Another perspective is that "The Great Resignation is more constructively viewed as The Great Migration—people are seeking new opportunities for meaningful work. People do not derive joy or a sense of value from performing the same tasks, over and over again, that take up the majority of their time each week and stymie their creativity." One thing is certain, "The move to remote work and changes in job flexibility may not have occurred for another 30 years if not for the [Covid-19] crisis." I am not so sure. Here's are a couple of articles, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic and a great infographic. These tell me the trend was definitely there, and there *might* be some attribution to the pandemic to explain the snowball-effect. One thing I *do* know is that there is definitely no going back to business as usual. That ship has sailed.

Week 8 – MBA6101 – Guerrilla Marketing

In Guerrilla Marketing's Chapter 8 Research: The Starting Point of a Guerrilla Marketing Campaign, Levinson stresses the importance of Research. In class, we've been hearing about how data (information) is powerful from a marketing perspective because it should inform all marketing activity. This is so very true, even more so now than it was in 2007 when the book was written.

I loved his quote, "Ignorance is more expensive than paid research". My clients over the years placed tremendous value in focus group information. This helped provide assurances to teams and leadership in their respective organizations that they were making informed decisions. In addition, Levinson's emphasis on testing is absolutely critical. Every plan I've ever put together includes A/B testing where possible, tagging copy with tracking codes and terms that are search-engine optimized. We ask folks within the agency to do their own searches to see if the hits are what were expected or if the user is taken in a different direction. We take these insights and further tighten the plans.

This runs counter to what Levinson proposes on pages 88-90; however, one of the learnings I've had is to make surveys short. Ask 2-3 questions tops. If you survey again, ask 2-3 different questions, gathering info in bite-sized chunks may seem laborious but the easier you make it for the user to complete, the higher the response rate. 

Another thing not mentioned by Levinson, likely because it wasn't as big a thing as it is today: ratings and reviews. Consumers might run the gamut on the spectrum, loving or hating them, but this is the swiftest way to get an idea of the experience others have had with a brand, product or service. I am guilty of always going to the worst review and the best review before taking the "average" number of stars or thumbs up that a business or product has received. Yelp, Google and proprietary sites use ratings and reviews and no small business owner should disregard it.

Here are a few articles worth checking out!

1. The Complete Guide to Ratings & Reviews (2022 Edition)
2. 8 Customer Reviews Best Practices to Optimize Conversion Rates
3. Webinar: Best practices for maximizing the ROI of a ratings and reviews program [requires you sign up to be marketed-to by BazaarVoice in order to watch the webinar]
4. Developing a Test and Learn Programme 
5. Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile [downloadable guide]

The article in the fourth bullet has a terrific chart around the various micro moments found in the guide referenced in the fifth bullet.

Week 7 – MBA6101 – Guerrilla Marketing

In Guerrilla Marketing's Chapter 7 Secrets of Saving Marketing Money, Levinson doubles-down on his advice from previous chapters: "don't feel that you must continually change your marketing campaigns.

While this is financially sound advice, the real savviness comes from a commitment to one's marketing campaign once it is fleshed out. All the more reason to try to get it right the first time, investing the appropriate time and resources to planning out what the year looks like. Once implemented, it is important to not distance oneself from performance management & analysis so insights can be gleaned and the plan calibrated for optimizations, not being gutted.

Further into the chapter, there is emphasis on various Pro Tips that are unbeknownst to most entrepreneurs. These include:

1. Bartering: it's not just for the Middle Ages. He suggests Googling "barter" to see how many sites are listed.
2. Trade Magazine ad space: this is definitely an "inside scoop" that anyone in the advertising business has known about and his suggestion to not assume that rate cards are set in stone is a good negotiating tactic that ad agencies use all the time.
3. National Magazine Remnant Space: get in touch with Media Networks, Inc., a company devoted to selling remnant space to local advertisers for cheap. Request a free media kit at (800)225-3457. You can get your ad into a national magazine for a steal. Pro tip: get the specs upfront so you can design your ad units accordingly for speedy insertion.
4. Co-Op Advertising: this one makes total sense as an opportunity for a "win-win". I would add that if an entrepreneur gets copy from a business partner, slightly tweaking it (if allowed based on any contractual obligation) would ensure you aren't only driving traffic to their page and making it your own helps based on SEO principles.
5. Per Inquiry or Per Order arrangements with an advertising channel: another "insider's tip"!
6. Tracking Codes: these are critical to have direct correlation between engagement and advertising asset. A build on this: leverage vanity URLs that drive to the same landing page. One can see which URL is working harder, not just where the traffic is coming from, and typically indicates best brand-recall.
7. Annual Marketing Calendar: I cannot even tell you how many Fortune 100 companies do not do this consistently! Many large organizations are silo-ed and this is one way the smaller businessperson can have a leg-up.
8. Be Pithy in Marketing Message: Levinson suggest 30-second over 60-sec vids but since the publishing of the book, the ad industry is seeing 15-sec or less with the hook required before the 6-sec mark. Skippable ads are between 6 and 20 seconds long and viewers must watch only the first five seconds before they can skip to the video they came to see. Note: non-skippable ads are longer, averaging 15-20 seconds.
9. Hire a Professional Designer: hiring a pricy professional to design your first ad or website will help ensure there's a brand identity that will become your calling card.
10. Start an eNewsletter: it's inexpensive and a quick read. Even better: drop in URLs for quick clicks to drive traffic to your website or social channels!
11. Library Shoots: in the ad biz, these are shoots that are done to capture as many scenarios or variations as you plan to need/use. See bullet number seven above: if you have a calendar, you already should have an idea of what your marketing asset should look like!
12. Market to Customers over Prospects: they have had at least one experience with you. If it was a great one, encourage word of mouth/referrals by offering them a kick-back like a free or discounted product or service.

Week 8 – MBA6101 – Surfing the Tsunami

In Chapter 8 of Surfing the Tsunami, Kelsey provides some thoughts on what to do next which has a hefty dose of common sense with some nudges on how to stay current:

1. Program alerts of various topics to keep abreast of what's happening around you/us (adapt)
2. Explore platforms--playing around with the tech won't make it so intimidating (adopt)
3. Read like someone will take all books away from you (Fahrenheit 451)--tech is constantly changing so don't fall behind/keep up
4. Take a course and/or earn a certificate to get necessary skills and let others know (companies, LinkedIn network, friends)
5. Never stop the educational journey
6. Keep options open, career-wise

Overall, I feel like the content is comes across to me as having an alarmist tonality that I viscerally react to, but I get what the message is: be prepared for a paradigm shift in commerce and employability. The title of the book gives this away since a tsunami (the natural disaster) has some warning signs if one knows what they are: the ground begins to shake, the ocean starts to have a loud roar and/or the water starts receding unusually far, exposing the sea floor, before the wall of water, sometimes reaching a maximum vertical height onshore (run-up height) up to 100 feet above sea level.

The topic is so very foreign to me that I get overwhelmed just thinking about it! As the sole breadwinner of the family, I don't have the luxury of pivoting without a safety net, so perhaps Kelsey is correct in suggesting one dips their toe in the water (pun not intended) and dabble with it enough to get some fundamental knowledge and familiarity with the subject matter so that a pivot could be possible. Most definitely I am still in the adapt phase and I want to get to adopt--just not so sure how quickly. I'll close with this most appropriate of quotes: "Time and tide wait for no man." ~Geoffrey Chaucer

Week 7 – MBA6101 – Surfing the Tsunami

In Chapter 7 of Surfing the Tsunami , Kelsey provides a few great articles to read a little more in-depth about AI and the various perspectives people have on the topic. 

The Forbes article on deep learning was a terrific read because it broke it down to terms that were easy to digest and literally visualize. In particular, machine learning is defined as "you plug the data in and get an answer in return," adding that "Machine learning uses the data to write the program." Deep learning takes machine learning to the next level through the use of artificial neural networks. 

There was mention of image recognition systems that were built on massive neural networks which learned (had been trained with large amounts of internet data) to recognize images. I experienced this first-hand using the little camera icon on the Amazon.com home page using a mobile device: 

A customer can tap the icon and the phone's camera (assuming permissions on the device allow access, ofc) can be used to either scan a product bar code or "look" at a product, "recognize" it to match against their inventory, doing a very intelligent search. Amazing. I didn't see/know about this function until a more geeked-out friend of mine pointed it out. This is what makes AI more real to me in my day-to-day. I just never knew enough about it to realize it was all around me! Crazy, I know.

The other thing that fascinated me in the book was the interview with Jim Spohrer, a computer scientist with IBM, One key piece of advice he gives, "Students should start thinking about making a job and note taking a job. In order to 'think beyond taking a job or making a career' requires understanding aspirations or even callings." I believe he is correct when he encourages one to to work on multi-disciplinary teams. I am not technical, at all. I get math, but that's not my strong suit. In my advertising career, I am not a creative (those are the graphic designers and copywriters that create the asset), but a creative could not come to life without a team of SMEs that include client service (my role), strategy/planning, project management, production, legal, compliance, finance, etc. And my experience is all the richer with my need to engage with all of them in order to create something that ladders up to the brief we receive from the client that contains the "ask". Spohrer also recommends one finds a role model, get to know them, and help them solve problems. Brilliant in its simplicity.