The weekly Digital Download is out. Get all the Marketing hot news, quick tips, and highlights you need to get you through the week, rolled up into a five-minute read.

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In the News

Hot Off the Press

• Google Search Console adds ‘associations’ so you can link with other Google accounts
  • Google announced a new feature in Search Console named “associations.” Associations lets you connect your Search Console account with other Google accounts, such as YouTube, Google Analytics, Android apps and much more. You can access this feature by clicking here. What are associations. Google said an “association is a connection between a Search Console property, and some other entity or property in another Google service: for example, between a Search Console property and a Google Analytics account, a YouTube channel, or a Chrome Web Store account.”

• Enhanced Measurement in Google Analytics 4 Simplifies Events Management
  • Changes to website content often go hand in hand with the need to update analytics tags. Marketers are well familiar with this task. With the introduction of Google Analytics 4, Google introduced enhanced measurement, which has the potential to make these updates much, much easier. How Tagging Links and Buttons Have Changed: Back when analytic solutions were first introduced, adding events required proactive planning of any analytic tags before launching a site. This meant identifying buttons for embedded video playback or links to secondary websites, then modifying the code. In this case, modification meant manual edits to the HTML of any given page. It entailed auditing the event function on every page, which created extra work for quality assurance and introduced the potential for human error. I can say from experience, clients would often add the main analytics tag, but fail to update the other elemental tags on a page for the media they wanted tracked.
• Spotify is Launching its Own Clubhouse Competitor
  • Here we go! Spotify announced today that its acquiring Betty Labs, the company behind the live sports audio app Locker Room. Locker Room will stay live in the App Store but will be rebranded with a different name in the future on iOS and, eventually, Android with a broader focus on music, culture, and sports content. Spotify says it sees live audio as ideal for creators who want to connect with audiences in real time, whether that’s to premiere an album, host a question-and-answer session, or possibly even perform. The app will directly compete with all of the various live audio apps currently on the market, including Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, and Discord.
• LinkedIn Adds Creator Mode, Video Profiles and New Career Training Tools
  • LinkedIn unveiled a series of new features that it will be rolling out over the coming months to play into that strategy, and also, it hopes, increase engagement on the platform. This includes the launch of a “video Cover Story”, short videos that people can make talking about themselves to live on their home pages. And for people to feel more connected with how they are depicted on LinkedIn, it is also adding a pronoun feature. Alongside these, they are officially launching a new “Creator” mode, a more refined but also more democratic version of the company’s Influencer network (anyone can be a Creator if they so choose, for a start). It’s also carving out more of a solid place for freelancers on the platform, by way of a new Service page attached to your profile.
• Brandfluence – Why Growing Executive Influence is Essential for B2B Marketing
  • If there was one thing 2020 showed us in the B2B marketing world, it was the growing importance of influence in all aspects of the customer lifecycle from awareness to advocacy. People want to connect with other people, not some faceless brand. The good news is that smart B2B marketers are putting a face to their brands through employee advocacy programs and building the visibility and influence of their key executives. But how should B2B brands approach the task of growing their brandfluence? Read more to find out.

• How B2B Marketing Influencers are Finding Success on New Social Media Channels
  • In the world of social media, the only constant is change. Each platform continues to update and add new features, and new channels appear on a regular basis. With this change comes opportunities for B2B marketing influencers to share their thought leadership in new ways and have their voices heard. Find out how B2B influencers and thought leaders are finding successes on some of the newer social channels like Clubhouse.
• Big Tech CEOs Face Lawmakers in House Hearing on Social Media’s Role in Misinformation
  • During the more than five-hour hearing, lawmakers in five-minute intervals called out executives on a wide range of issues including extremism, misinformation, cyberbullying, climate change and the coronavirus. Many of the politicians attempted to force the chief executives to answer “yes” or “no,” cutting them off if they tried to explain how “nuanced” those issues are. The display demonstrated just how deep the desire in Washington goes to change how social media companies operate — while also underlining the lack of consensus on how exactly to do that.

Creativity

Out of the Box

• Criticism is Poison. Don’t Swallow It
  • Criticism is painful. How painful? It’s painful enough to stop us from creating great products and services. It’s painful enough to stop us from marketing them as creatively as we possibly can. The thing is, almost all criticism comes from people, who aren’t in the market for what we do. It comes from people who were never going to hire us. It comes from people who envy our success. This means we need to wise up. We need to listen to relevant voices. We need to learn from informed voices. We need to appreciate well-intentioned voices. And we need to ignore the rest.

• The Right Way to Pitch a Creative Idea
  • So, you’ve had a great idea. At least, you think it’s a great idea. You’re confident that it will improve the company, increase revenues—and boost your career. You just have to persuade your manager. What’s the best approach? A group of researchers conducted some studies. They now think that they know exactly what you need to do to persuade your boss that you’ve got a killer concept. Find out what the secret is.

• Burger King Turns a Video Game Basketball Court into a Menu Where You Can Score Free Food
  • Burger King is appealing to basketball fans in Spain by turning a court in video game NBA 2K21 into a “menu” where they can score to win free food items. The campaign, by David Madrid, used the court editing tools available in the game to create a court customized to be like a Burger King menu board. Fans can download the court in MyLeague Mode (PS4) or MyNBA Mode (PS5), and score from one of the products so they can get them for free in their next order; for example, standing on a designated point to get a free Big King sandwich. The harder the shot the bigger the reward; if they shoot and score from the middle of the court, they can get a full menu with fries and soda.

• Apple iPhone Ads Tout Its Merits for the Clumsy
  • The newest iPhone campaign from Apple finds comedy in clumsiness, as it sets out to demonstrate just how durable the iPhone 12 is. Even if you’re a complete klutz. Two fun new spots, directed by Kim Gehrig of Somesuch, include one where a woman goes into an epic fumbling sequence in an attempt not to drop her iPhone after it slips from her hand while walking along (we’ve all been there). It’s all to no avail; it falls to the ground anyway, but (spoiler alert) it doesn’t shatter thanks to its Ceramic Shield feature.

Tricks of the Trade

Tips and Tricks

• How Marketers Can Respond to Apple’s iOS 14 Privacy Update
  • There has been a lot of excitement among consumers about Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 update. For business owners and marketers, however, this update is causing apprehension because it impacts data tracking permissions and therefore the efficacy of Facebook ads. The iOS 14 update’s most notable changes are to its privacy and data sharing policies, also known as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework (ATTF). Apple wants to give users a more transparent choice to protect their privacy and information. At face value, that sounds like a reasonable change. Currently, if you want to turn off data sharing on your iPhone, you can go to Settings > Privacy and switch off that function. With the iOS 14 update, you’ll be prompted to make that decision anytime you download an app.

• 6 Ways to Bring Empathy into Your Marketing Strategy
  • Empathy is the ability to see events and situations from another’s perspective — to put yourself in their shoes. For brands, empathetic marketing is about seeing the world through the user’s point of view. It helps you place the customer at the center of your marketing strategy and work outwards. But it’s important to remember that being empathetic also means being genuine — you can’t create emotional marketing campaigns for the sole purpose of manipulating customers. Empathy is believable when it creates authentic connections between brands and users. You have to build trust and organic relationships throughout the customer journey.

• 20 Ways Businesses Will Engage Social Audio
  • The recent social audio craze––brought about by platform leaders Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces––has us reminiscing at my firm Kaleido Insights about the early days of social media. The tech crowd abuzz with the promise of a new, real-time engagement platform, influencers gathering en masse to share content, and the ever-so-slight opening of the proverbial “exclusive access door” to the public for a peek inside the magic. If you’re a curious about social audio and looking to explore opportunities for your client’s benefit, keep reading.

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