Monthly Archives: November 2019

Sainsbury’s, for what it’s worth, simply stated: “Some customers preferred to pay with cash and card, which sometimes meant they were queuing to use the helpdesk, particularly at peak times of day. This is why we’ve added a manned till and two self-checkouts back into the store.”Try to pay with notes or coins in an Amazon Go store and it could take you a while, too. There is speculation the tech giant is currently looking for sites in the UK.In China, however, where the penetration of mobile payment stands at 86%, according to PwC’s Global Con­sumer In­sight Sur­vey 2019, things are moving a little more quickly. There is much excitement about Alibaba’s Freshippo. Yes, you can still go to a helpdesk if you want to pay cash, but the retailer’s commitment to experiential smartphone-assisted retail is impressive.There are reportedly more than 150 stores across 21 Chinese cities. The app allows shoppers to access information about products, add them to their shop, checkout with Alipay and arrange delivery to their home within 30 minutes (if they live nearby), as well as use a number of services in store such as restaurants and Starbucks cafés.

We know it is flawed but NPS is still useful for comparison as everybody else is using it. This has resulted in a cult of NPS, so we are all surrounded by people begging us to “rate our service” online or face-to-face.The strongest selling points of NPS is its simplicity. It is easy for people to understand the goal of having more promoters. And given the obsession with the idea that ‘what gets measured get managed, and what gets managed gets done’, NPS gets pushed to the front of the class.But there are flaws in this thinking, one of which is this: contrary to thepurveyors of ‘brand love’ and ‘brand purpose’, customers are not lying awake at night thinking about your brand. At a more practical level, NPS and CSAT scores do not measure whether your responder is a top customer, a one-off client or, worse still, a person who just likes to rate thing badly.NPS and other measures are being asked to work too hard. It should be a starting point to prompt more insight but today, NPS is seen as the end point.Nor are these scores consistent in the context. Should the question be asked early in a customer’s journey or later? You will get a different result depending on the context. There is really no one number that represents a customer’s experienceAlso, NPS does not tell you why a score is bad, or why it might be improving. There is no diagnosis, which is the starting point of defining strategy, as Mark Ritson rightly points out.Talking to a couple of fellow marketers about NPS really proved to me how deep its adoption is. One service brand’s senior management are bonused on the score, simply because it correlates with one of the company’s key business drivers.I’m not so sure; this particular industry has so many moving parts that ascribing the voice of the customer to NPS is fallacious.When I’ve used NPS, I’ve quickly realised the consumer view of the industry drove perception more than I would have liked. The notion of a consumer making up their mind about a brand or service interaction in a split-second based on an often poorly laid out and inconsistent style means our scores are unreliable. Improving the score becomes a bit of a game, as opposed to a tool to unlock a prediction about what a customer will do in the future.The doyen of marketing measurement and author of Marketing and the Bottom Line, Tim Ambler, speaks to this point in a paper entitled ‘Assessing marketing performance: Don’t settle for a silver metric’ in the Journal of Marketing Management. He agrees marketing performance can and should be evaluated. However, he rails against the idea that there is a single number, financial or otherwise.NPS and other measures are being asked to work too hard. It should be a starting point to prompt more insight but today, NPS is seen as the end point.

In New York City, daily deliveries have exploded in a single decade from 360,000 to 1.5 million. A scooter delivery service in China dispatched 30 million food orders on one summer weekend. Our lives are easier, but at what cost? Nearly a third of waste in the United States derives from delivery packaging. All that cardboard requires 1 billion trees to manufacture it. And our demand continues to grow, driving Amazon and its competitors to stockpile items they expect you to buy.Is it just the trash? No. Society’s addiction to instant retail gratification is also taxing urban infrastructure, while Amazon annually pumps out 44.4 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Maduro is paying retirees and pensioners with petro, he claimed during a government-sponsored program that the crypto has “27,000 affiliated businesses.” Maduro also explained at the program his bonus plan for pensioners and that he expected merchant adoption to “double in the coming months.” Meanwhile, news.Bitcoin.com was told by local sources that the PoS systems used at affiliate stores only accept cryptos like LTC, BTC, and BNB. Various reports also detail that Venezuela’s central bank has indicated plans to stockpile BTC and other digital assets. Last February Pedro Peroza wrote a number of informative articles concerning the National Superintendency of Crypto Assets and Related Activities (Sunacrip) operations. Peroza said he believes Maduro’s regime has been stockpiling digital currencies via the “collection of taxes in cryptocurrency, for that a Law was approved in the ANC (National Assembly Madurista).”Sunacrip Press reports that the ‘Savings Plan’ in petro celebrated its first year of operation with more than 3 million savings accounts. “A year ago I invited you to save in petros and look how well they did, today I call on all businesses, all entrepreneurs, to join, to look for this new path, and begin to travel the petro’s path, so they can see that they are going to do much better,” President Maduro wrote according to Sunacrip Press on November 6, 2019.During Maduro’s recent speech, the president told attendees that cryptocurrencies and the petro will help Venezuelans battle against the “economic war.” “We have achieved the slowdown of the economic war through the self-regulation of the economy,” Maduro explained to the program guests. “With this self-regulation of the economy, other actors have begun to operate with their own currencies.”

«C’est une surveillance à 360 degrés. Je n’ai pas le droit de passer une mauvaise journée». «Souriez à tout le monde, tout le temps. Sinon, cela peut vous coûter cher». Sous couvert d’anonymat, ces employés du site berlinois de commerce électronique Zalando racontent comment ils vivent le fait d’être «ranké» en permanence par le logiciel Zonar. Ce système d’évaluation des salariés par leurs propres collègues a été mis en place par l’entreprise sur 5 000 de ses 14 000 employés.Deux chercheurs de l’université Humboldt, à Berlin, Philipp Staab et Sascha-Christopher Geschke, ont étudié le fonctionnement de Zonar pendant deux ans. Leurs conclusions, publiées dans un rapport de la fondation Hans Böckler – proches des syndicats –, sont dignes d’un épisode de Black Mirror. «Il s’agit essentiellement d’évaluer, de contrôler et de sanctionner en permanence les employés à l’aide des technologies numériques modernes», estiment-ils. L’entreprise crée «de la surveillance, de la pression et du stress». Ils ajoutent, évoquant un concept cher à Michel Foucault dans Surveiller et punir : «Zonar représente un système très complet, quasi panoptique, de contrôle des performances.»

Le branding audio a progressivement repris de l'importance pour une raison principale : la vitesse. Plus la peine de diffuser systématiquement des spots de trente secondes pour faire passer un message ou installer une marque, les formats courts sont privilégiés et c'est là où la force de l'audio est révélée, en capturant l'attention et permettant la mémorisation plus rapidement que tout autre canal. Le son a en effet l'incroyable faculté de déclencher des souvenirs et des émotions, provoquant à chaque répétition un réflexe quasi pavlovien comme pourrait le faire le jingle Intel ou le son d'ouverture d'un Mac. D'où le grand come-back des podcasts et autres snacking contents.  Les marques doivent donc manier le sujet de l'audio comme celui de la communication, de l’identité, du marketing ou du design, et l’intégrer comme un puissant levier d’émergence et d’adhésion pour les années à venir.  

La 5G, c'est enfin parti ! Quatre mois après avoir dessiné cet été les premiers contours du  système d'enchères « hybride » censé répartir les 310 MHz de spectre indispensables aux quatre opérateurs pour pouvoir lancer le nouveau standard de téléphonie mobile, l'Arcep, le régulateur des télécoms, a publié jeudi soir les paramètres définitifs du processus d'attribution et les a transmis au gouvernement.Pour Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom et Free, ainsi que pour les équipementiers comme Huawei, Nokia et Ericsson, c'est un énorme ouf de soulagement. « Nous sommes satisfaits de voir que le processus avance » estime la Fédération française des télécoms (FFT).

While the research has been commissioned by TV advertising body Thinkbox, it is based on econometric analysis of £1.4bn in media spend by 50 brands across 10 forms of advertising over three years. The aim is to offer brands practical advice if they don’t have access to econometric analysis across six categories – FMCG, finance, retail, online retail, automotive and travel.The research also finds that TV has the highest ‘multiplier effect’ across other channels, boosting all other channels by at least 20% and the only media platform to do this. For example, TV advertising can boost performance in cinema by up to 54%; print, radio, online display and social media by 31%; and direct mail, online video, video-on-demand and outdoor by up to 22%.The next highest is print, which can boost cinema advertising by up to 13% but only improves other media by up to 8%. The average multiplier effect across all channels is 8%.

WeWork, le pionnier américain des bureaux partagés, a annoncé la suppression de quelque 2.400 emplois dans le monde, soit près de 20% de ses effectifs totaux dans le cadre d’un plan de restructuration.« Dans le cadre de notre stratégie de recentrage sur le cœur de métier de WeWork, et comme nous l’avions précédemment fait savoir aux employés, la société procède aux licenciements nécessaires pour créer une organisation plus efficace », indique le pionnier américain des bureaux partagés.Le plan social a commencé « il y a des semaines dans des régions du monde et s’est poursuivi cette semaine aux Etats-Unis. Cette réduction d’effectifs concerne environ 2.400 employés dans le monde »  poursuit Wework qui employait 12.500 personnes au mois de juin dernier.Un modèle économique incertainLes déboires se sont accumulés récemment pour l’entreprise de « coworking » (un mot entré cette année dans le Petit Robert.)  . WeWork avait prévu de faire une entrée en grande pompe à Wall Street cet automne. La société avait pour 2,5 milliards de dollars de trésorerie au 30 juin mais les coûts de construction et d’autres dépenses ont aspiré cet argent selon les banques.

Finney graduated from world-renowned Caltech with an engineering degree in 1979. After working in computer game development for some years he then went on join the PGP Corporation, creating some of the first “pretty good privacy” the world had seen. Finney was an OG cypherpunk, a member of the early 90s mailing list and avid developer and philosopher when it came to crypto solutions for preserving privacy, anonymity and financial autonomy.Among his pre-Bitcoin accomplishments are the creation of the first known anonymous remailer and a 2004 reusable proofs of work (RPOW) digital cash system. He also famously received the first ever bitcoin transaction directly from Satoshi. These basic facts are impressive enough, but it stands to take a more detailed look at some coincidences and other nuggets that could shed light on whether there’s truly a case to be made for Hal as Nakamoto. First though, a quote from Finney via a 1992 cypherpunks email:Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization – and Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.Other Intriguing Finney FactsLibertarian LeaningsAs a cypherpunk, Finney expressed many libertarian and anarchic views regarding individual freedom. Analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto’s correspondence, the Bitcoin whitepaper, and the famously hashed genesis block message may hint at Satoshi possessing similar convictions. In one 2010 email to Laszlo Hanecz, of 10,000-bitcoin pizza fame, Nakamoto expresses hesitancy about GPU mining outcompeting CPU users, saying:GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware … I don’t mean to sound like a socialist, I don’t care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%.As libertarian anarchists are typically individualist and opposed to socialism, this is a noteworthy statement from Satoshi.Down the Street From DorianFinney was famously discovered to have lived just blocks away from a real life Satoshi Nakamoto in small town Temple City, CA; a Japanese-American man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Though Newsweek quoted Dorian as saying “I am no longer involved in that [Bitcoin] and I cannot discuss it,” and “It’s been turned over to other people,” Nakamoto has since issued a statement emphasizing his denial of the explosive Newsweek hound piece, noting: “I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin. I unconditionally deny the Newsweek report.” He also explained that due to previous work contract stipulations, he was not at liberty to speak about any past projects, and thus the misunderstanding in Newsweek’s assumption he meant Bitcoin.Some zealous Satoshi hunters theorize Finney may have used Dorian as an inspirational pseudonym of sorts, to honor the humble and financially embattled California coder who noted in his official statement: “I have not been able to find steady work as an engineer or programmer for ten years. I have worked as a laborer, polltaker, and substitute teacher. I discontinued my internet service in 2013 due to severe financial distress.”