Here’s what we think you should know this week: Gen Z’s brand affinity isn’t, the CMO wish-list, China is re-shaping global privacy law, Crypto goes to the mall, and the REAL digital transformation imperative.
Happy marketing.
CONSUMER TRENDS
Gen-Z’s New Luxury
Quick-Take: Demand for what The RealReal calls “unbranded jewelry,” like these earrings and this necklace, beat out other familiar luxury labels for the #2 spot. This ranking isn’t specific to jewelry, either: People are actually buying more no-name bracelets, chains, and cocktail rings than the latest It bags from It brands. Skoda chalks it up to the individualist spirit of Gen Z and millennial shoppers: “People are having fun with fashion, they’re less logo-driven, and they just want pieces that speak to them and feel good,” she says. “There’s been so much talk about looking for items that spark joy, and I think this ‘trend’ in unbranded jewelry really reflects that. It’s for the love of the piece, and nothing more.”
CUSTOMER INNOVATION
How Banks Can Enable a New Era of Payments
Quick-Take: Herein lies the threat for the big banks: that these traditional lines of revenue are not just stolen by challengers. But, that this leads to wholesale customer churn, with the banks relegated to nothing more than a holding stop for money that is immediately moved to another account, where customers can reap the benefits of personalised service. The irony is that the traditional banks have a legacy of customer trust upon which to capitalise, which the neobanks are yet to achieve. By virtue of their brands and longstanding presence across the industry, customers are far more likely to trust the traditional banks with their data over an unproven neobank.
CMOs
Enterprise CMO Survey
Quick-Take: Some 51% of respondents say they’d wish to see their advertising operations staff give attention to higher integrating their agency’s martech stack in 2021, 46% say they’d wish to see their operations staff give attention to extra versatile marketing campaign administration, and 39% say they’d wish to see their operations staff give attention to real-time transparency.
DATA & PRIVACY
Data Privacy Laws Prevent the Public Good
Quick-Take: We wanted to ask a simple question: Do U.S. privacy laws actually protect data in the ways that Americans want? Using a national survey, we found that the public’s preferences are inconsistent with the restrictions imposed by U.S. privacy laws.
China Could Reshape Cross-border Data Rules
Quick-Take: China’s Personal Information Protection Law establishes mutually incompatible data governance standards that could put multinational companies at risk. With stricter standards and penalties than the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, China may be looking to set international standards.
Did You Report Your Data Subject Requests?
Quick-Take: Specifically, businesses must publicly report: The number of access requests that the business received, complied with in whole or in part, and denied; The number of deletion requests that the business received, complied with in whole or in part, and denied; The number of do-not-sell requests that the business received, complied with in whole or in part, and denied; and the median or mean number of days within which the business substantively responded to requests to know, requests to delete, and requests to opt out.
Based upon a review of the websites of the Fortune 500, 40.5% of Fortune 500 retailers have reported the metrics referenced in the CCPA Regulations.
TECHNOLOGY
The Great Platform Myth
Quick-Take: In 2020, the number of marketers looking for integrated solutions doubled compared to the previous year, no doubt in part due to the challenges the pandemic brought. As a result, legacy players known for their suites of acquired products have increasingly tried to position their offerings as a ‘platform’ to cater to these market demands. But acquiring products built on entirely different tech stacks, stitching them together in a sales presentation and calling it a platform — when all the user really has is a Frankenstein mishmash that may be powerful, but also surprisingly unwieldy — is not a platform. It’s a patchwork.
Mall Operator to Install Cryptocurrency ATMs
Quick-Take: Customers will be able to buy or sell a minimum of $1.87 and $9.36 in cryptocurrency respectively, according to a report by Bitcoin.com. The machines will offer 30 different currencies including bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Litecoin. Coin Cloud will install the ATMs in eight cities in Brazil including Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Goias.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Digital Transformation Beyond Traditional KPIs
Quick-Take: Organisations that default to applying their traditional KPIs to measure digital transformation will find that they aren’t useful indicators of the success or challenges of the process. One reason for this is that digital transformation occurs as a series of changes, and in the early stages, there aren’t usually traditional indicators of success, such as an increase in sales for the effort. Traditional KPIs are usually tied to longer-term business outcomes or a specific department and therefore reflect a fractured view that isn’t helpful when measuring digital transformation. Digital transformation often affects the entire organisation, and the KPIs for it should span multiple functions and not be siloed.
The Real Digital Transformation Imperative
Quick-Take: A recent report shows when enterprises were faced with digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, 90% of those that didn’t accelerate their implementations “lost business” as a result. 37% of companies lost a significant amount of business due to slow adoption to “digital-only” business models. 52% cited customer experience as the top priority in their transformation agenda. 30% have accelerated the migration of data, applications, and services to cloud. 40% plan to operate a hybrid model that combines office and remote working. While 28% of leaders stated that digital is now part of their company’s DNA, 30% are still in the process of scaling up successful digital transformation pilots.
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Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash.
