Generation Gap: How the Coronavirus changed media consumption and trust

The coronavirus outbreak has given us some time to really dive into the opportunity of digital platforms. Shops and malls were closed. Live events moved into Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Duo, Webex conferences. And, many of us searched for quite tones in some music streaming platform. In this period of social distancing and confused news spread, people consume incredible amounts of media – be it video, text, pictures, music or TV. The generation gap is quite impressive, when wee look at some study by the Global Web Index.

Global Web Index shows that 80% of consumers in the U.S. and UK consume more content since the pandemic outbreak. One things all generations and genders have in common: Broadcast TV and online videos (YouTube, TikTok) were the primary media sources. Furthermore, 68% of the 4.000 respondents preferred online news against any other news option.

Global Web Index gives us some insights into how different generations use media. It illustrates which impact the outbreak had on our media consumption. Whether it is correct to stereotype generations or not, GenZ, GenY, GenX to Boomers use media platforms in a complete different way.

Generations are very different in media usage though. Gen Z is more active listening to music than to news spreads. However, Gen X is more playful, mainly on mobiles and computers, they also tend to be self-organizing their lives when finding cooking recipes and healthy eating tipps. Still, what has massively changed in our lives is the way we trust others. Although, there is much noise around the World Health Organization (WHO), this organization is still seen as the most trusted source of information for any COVID-19 related updates. However, there are regional differences: The UK trust more in their government as the most trusted news source. Funnily enough, people trust more ein social media sources on information updates than their own family, friends or foreign government sites.

The study also shows that in times of uncertainty, the interest in new subscription rises. Obviously, people have got more time to watch films and inform themselves via new sources they have not used in the past. Whether, it is to understand the pandemic chaos better or to update themselves on content they have missed out in the past.

The only thing we wonder is, how can people consume more paid media when jobs and industries crack down? But maybe the economy is up and running soon. Then media consumption might change again completely.

Bosch Connected World 2020 – The human unicorn on AI

Unicorns are different, Bosch is different too. Ties, walled garden ecosystems and hierarchies sound like a thing of the past at this year’s Bosch Connected World. Urban smoothies, technological openness and „Menschment“ (instead of management) have taken over. Transformation at Bosch is in progress – not only in a digital sense. And in terms of Artificial Internet-of-Things (AIoT), Bosch nails their business transformation with their new unit Bosch.IO and their human-focussed Artifical Intelligence (AI) codex.

Bosch has a a clear focus: Staying human – in business creation, employee resources, and especially all means of industrial artificial intelligence. Whatever the decision is for companies starting to implement artificial intelligence, humans shall keep control. „Artificial intelligence has to be accompanied by ethics. AI has to serve people. With our AI codex we give our employees a clear guideline for the development of intelligent products“, states Bosch-CEO Volkmar Denner in his opening speech at their big AIoT event Bosch Connected World (BCW) in Berlin. Denner is emphasizing their mission with the statement: „Our aim is to make people trust in AI products“ and his personal note for a more sustainable industry „I believe in the power of technology to balance economical, ecological and societal challenges of the future“.

Humans & AI: Together for a better future

The ambition Bosch has in mind is that people and companies have more trust in its AI products. Guided by their Bosch ethos „Invented for Life“, the company strives to create safe, robust and explainable products, while improving human’s quality of life and looking at sustainable ways to use natural resources. Reading their 3 main guidelines for decision making in AI-based products makes clear that all companies should have a similar approach to AI…

Humans-in-command (HIC)
The AI product is used as a tool and humans get to decide when and how to use it.

Human-in-the-loop (HITL)
Humans can directly change and influence the decisions made by an AI product.

Humans-on-the-loop (HOTL)
Humans can define certain parameters for AI during the design process and can also review any decision that was carried out by the product.

The management team of Bosch made clear that they aim at a partnership of humans and AI, AI is not a human challenger or competitor. Humans shall be able to make use of their decision-making skills through AI, and AI shall enable an optimization and transformation of machines and business processes to drive business efficiency. It’s a hand-in-hand that leverages AI for better industries.

Business driven by hearts

The HR department is further fostering the AI transformation internally. They are training their own employees across all departments via their academy. However, Bosch not only bets on AI. They also encourage change. The company takes change management serious. Maybe it is not happening at the speed of AI. But in a balanced, structured and enjoyable calm program that an ever-changing global workforce is asking for. In her presentation „IoT needs IoP – leading yourself to lead others leads to high performance“ Petra Kama-Welle, Bosch VP Human Resources, made clear that a mindset change in leadership comes with role modelling.

By describing her roles from mother to change manager, Kama-Welle explained that role modelling is the way to escape the former „leadership-in-the-box“ hierarchy mentality in order to path the way from „command and control“ towards „enjoy, growth & perform“. It’s a modern leadership mindset transformation from a heart for hearts to grow hearts. While some companies start to define their business purpose these days, Bosch is already on the purpose road to let hearts drive their business. A bit poetical, I know, but that’s the way unicorns tend to be.

Leveraging the unicorn playground

Maybe one topic at Bosch Connected World can be optimized (definitely not the awesome catering!): the conference program. Selecting the right tracks from five stages with various parallel sessions around business or industry focus, remains a challenge for every attendee. Figuring out how to make your perfect way in a short two days’ knowledge gathering seemed almost impossible. Maybe AI could have helped. Maybe an AI event app, in which you throw in your main tags of interest could have provided a solution here. And maybe a professional moderation is something to think about as well for 2021. But hey, nobody said that unicorns are perfect.

Some show cases made me think, e.g. if Nikola Motor’s Badger, providing nine hundred horsepower out of a battery and fuel cell combination, is really needed in times of sustainability wake-ups. Or if the heat map train app, showing me which cabin is less crowded before accessing the train and notifying me „Mind the gap!“ persuaded me? Probably not. Still, it’s a unique „sensoring“ of decision-making, empowered by AI value. Should I rather trust Lindera and their „Decision Intelligence“ to not stumble at the train station in the future instead?

We will see, which Bosch or other Bosch enabled unicorns will help us in an AI ethical and supportive way in the future, maybe already at the next Bosch Connected World.

Study: Social Media more important for customer service

Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others are becoming more and more interesting from a customer service perspective. This is one of the results of a recent study by Boston Global looking at why consumers follow and unfollow brands on social platforms.

Consumers who want to reach out to brands and resellers for help, are fast in using social media accounts of brands. A quick direct message here, a public tweet there, or simply writing a review on the brand’s account site. Social media is becoming the contact point if companies want happy customers. Especially, when competitors are also on the same social network, the messaging and speed of reaction on engagement is essential for business impact and lead generation.

The study by Boston Global that asked 554 consumers makes clear why consumers follow and unfollow brands. or which content is relevant for them. In terms of content, there are two main reason why Instagram is relevant to consumers: a) to get to know more about products and b) to find information about their main hobbies. The conclusion is that the content of brands need to stick to the main business topics in order to stay relevant and drive business impact.

Furthermore, the study shows that social media helps customer service. Although a direct mail to the company or brand is the first choice, when there is a product question. The second way of approaching a brand on product problems is a direct message on the company page. Active and fast feedback of brands is essential in this case. It retains consumer loyalty, or regains customers that have made a negative product experience. Consumers unfollow brands predominantly as of irrelevant content, too high posting frequency and getting no feedback on direct messages on company pages.

And if you still think, social media is not important for your brand, then you better think twice. The study shows that especially Gen Z and Gen Y want to interact with brands on their social media accounts. Thus, dedicating serious resources to social media activities and leveraging the brand reputation on social platforms becomes an essential driver of business impact. Responding to consumers on social networks is appreciation and should not be underestimated for b2b and b2c companies.

Mobility in 2050? Drones, visions and more…

While CNN asks why Boeing is not grounding the 737 MAX, drone companies are competing on their future visions around taxi services. And the outlook of their visions goes until 2050…

There is much hope and many questions around air mobility of the future. Whether drones will be all around us in 2050? Well, for sure logistic and service drones will change the world massively, but won’t taxi drones will have many challenges to succeed?

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What kind of content engages LinkedIn users (Infographic)

It is no news anymore that all social networks are turning more and more into content platforms, and are challenging the good old publishing world. Brands and managers, especially thought-leaders, are showcasing their business expertise to their peers and the industry they are addressing on platforms like LinkedIn rather than starting their own blogs.

LinkedIn gets over 100,000 posts on a weekly basis published via their Pulse platform. Getting the attention of the users on LinkedIn however is rather difficult if your post is not found and pushed by the LinkedIn’s Pulse editorial team and positioned as a special content piece in one of their content channels. Only then, it reaches people that are not only in your own network and your connections area.

In order to give more transparency what really attracts users in terms of content, LinkedIn has published some interesting facts in an infographic to make clear what more than 9,000 LinkedIn users see as engaging content to them. Furthermore, they make some differences obvious between Millennials and Gen Z, but also what really drives engagement amoung users of their professional networks.

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Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/statistik-wordpress-web-daten-1820320/

Instagram rocks influencer marketing (report)

In the last weeks, influencer marketing has become the rising star among marketing tactics. This is not surprising as ad blocking makes the life for marketeers and their brand campaigns more and more difficult. The team at Hashoff, a micro-influencer platform, just recently published their latest annual report on influencer marketing which gives some interesting insights in an evolving marketing discipline (by channel like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and Vine).

From the 300 influencers that Hashoff interviewed, 99% stated that Instagram was their place to go to in order to connect with communities and brands. Furthermore, 56% of a very much engaged community spends more than four hours per day on social media. Over 20% spend almost an entire working day with seven hours on social sites.

There are already 12% of influencers that indicated that influencer marketing is their business profession. The rest of the influencers have a proper full- or part-time job next to their influencer “business”, with over a quarter of the influencers being students. Surviving as an influencer seems to be a hard business and the report suggests the impression that all influencer business is short-term and (spontaneous) campaign-based marketing activities.

It is interesting to see how much time influencers put in the quality of their content. Over one-quarter of the influencers of the report invest up to three hours for their content from idea to production, and some even up to five hours per piece (10.5%). Half of the respondents spend 10 to 60 minutes on their content pieces.

2017: Top Social Networks Data (Infographic)

All marketers want to know in our seminars, where to find their audience for their next social media campaigns. Obviously, all decisions and spends will be depending on if you are focussing on B2B or B2C customers. Still, some general (social network) data might be helpful in organizing and planning your next campaign audiences.

The guys at Trackx have recently published a new infographic. This infographic gives us the latest essential data and key insights on the major social networks. Interesting that almost every third (28%) has only one social network presence. Generation X is almost a full working day on Facebook available. Youtube generates 2 Mio. video views in a minute on their platform. And for marketers might be interesting that more than every second user on Instagram follows a brand (53%).

But find the data that might be relevant for your knowledge here in this infographic.

The Responsive Car: Peugeot Instinct Concept

Not futuristic in terms of the design. Not too special compared to Tesla (big tablet in the middle, holographic head-up display, plug-in hybrid engine, and so on). Still, it is a smart car with a very much clean and intuitive layout. Peugeot unveiled their latest car study at Mobile World Congress last week, called Instinct concept.

That the trend of all car manufacturers is heading towards smart connected cars is no secret any longer. However, the Peugeot approach seems like a vision probably many people cannot envision yet. Autonomous, intelligent, self-driving cars that talk to all of your other devices and can even detect in which state of fitness you are sounds like a far too futuristic project these days.

“In the future, maybe you will have cars that can be only autonomous, and it will be forbidden to drive anymore. But this transition will be very long, and what we wanted to illustrate here is part of this transition, because this will take time.” Matthias Hossann, Head of Concept Car and Advanced Design, Peugeot

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Peugeot foresees a future where the drivers can choose how much control they want to give to the car. The concept offers two self-driving modes and two active modes. The car shall even be able to adjust its driving based on data analysis that it gets from connected devices like smartphones or tablets. The car technology will be based on the Samsung Artik IoT platform. As an example, the car manufacturers mentioned that if someone has been on a hard workout, the smartphone tells the car automatically to shift into an “autonomous soft” mode to let the driver relax. Sounds like a responsive car, right?

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“This is a bridge, and it’s something that we would like to push for the future. That’s why we didn’t create something that looks like a UFO”, states Hossann.

The official debut shall be at the Geneva Motor Show next month. However, even Peugeot sees that the technology of the car won’t be available until 2025 at the earliest.

BMW connected window. The glass for the future?

bmw-connected-windowYears ago, I have written about various options of companies envisioning the future of mirrors and screens. Whether it was Samsung or Toyota or any other company out there. Many brands think about the future way of living with new world of screens evolving. The rising mobility trend drives companies to work on the glass of the future.

This time BMW came up with their latest world of a connected window. Is it a good innovation to have such a window in the bathroom (as a mirror), as a window (which takes your awareness away from e.g. the playing kids outside in the garden), or even as a car window (which might drag your attention to the wrong topic instead of focussing on the street)?

Have a look at it and tell us what you think…

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Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/architektur-hochhaus-glasfassaden-2256489/

How to Market to Generations on Social Media (Infographic)

All brands and companies wonder how to market to different generations on social media platforms. Marketers see great opportunities in reach and relevance in terms of the content, the data and the insights around consumers and customers. No wonder, as there are over 2.3 billion active social media users globally across various platforms. Almost 9 out of 10 Millennials (87%) are connected with brands and their families and friends via social networking.

Although the social channels are becoming more and more a paid media, the most important message to all marketers will be to listen to their customers and to engage when they are active in their social worlds. In which way a brand is then capable of personalizing and individualizing messages and content is on a different page. So, it will always stay a balance between paid and organic content that brands need to deliver to their customers.

However, the main challenge is to understand on which platform which target group wants to be addressed in which way. What kind of content do you need? How do these people engage? And why for brands Twitter or Instagram might make more sense than Facebook and Pinterest in talking to some of the generations.

Check out the infographic by Webpage FX and get some interesting insights in audiences on major platforms. BTW: It’s a shame that LinkedIn often gets forgotten in these overviews…

How to market to each generation - infographic
Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/handy-smartphone-tastatur-app-1917737/