Strategy Stream

With Twitter’s introduction of a new bookmarking feature, users can now easily save tweets and share them later. The icon will be available on every tweet as a private tool; meaning users can bookmark a tweet without notifying the person who posted it. Will this change the way consumers are interacting with the social media platform?

The HQ Trivia app is dictating when and how consumers use it and providing a potential model for marketers. “Much like gambling, these appointment-based apps play off of the human need for thrills and risk—as well as the desire for exclusivity and inclusiveness.” By using an appointment-based model a company is giving consumers a reason to change their behavior. HQ is also bringing mass data collection to the table. They are amassing huge amounts of data about their users and using it to test the messaging that consumers respond best to among other things.  In another HQ article, we touch on how there have been a lot of mixed reactions to HQ Trivia, one including “insane hallucinatory tech death”. With Black Mirror scarily predicting what our future looks like, a lot of people are saying that there’s a Black Mirror aesthetic to HQ. The game sucks you deeper into your phone with the promise of cash, creating a sense of urgency and inability to resist. (https://strategystream.tumblr.com/post/169468877661/is-hq-trivia-the-future-of-tv)

If that wasn’t enough, last Friday the NRA honored the head of the Federal Communications Commission with a rifle after braving death threats and other opposition as he worked to repeal Net Neutrality...

He said major technology firms such as Netflix and Amazon are allowed to do the same thing. AT&T has maintained their ground that them merging with Time Warner would be a vertical merger, and that AT&T’s DIRECTV and Internet services is not a direct competitor to any of Time Warner’s businesses. The merger will give consumers more choice and lower prices.

Apple tends to be the last one to join the party with the launch of their devices always showing up with something that “just works”. But there’s no denying that the sound quality of Apple’s speaker is top-notch, but in a marketplace where Amazon has such an entrenched smart speaker/voice assistant ecosystem and Google isn’t far behind, can a great-sounding-but-imperfect device be worth buying? Apparently, since the HomePod sold out of preorders the final day of preorders, which to Apple is strange, since their products usually sell out of preorders on the firs day. 

Or T-Mobile may identify another pain point, an aspect of wireless service that annoys customers, and attempt to fix it in another splashy Un-carrier event.

A POV from Accenture on the ins and outs of personalization. Predicting a consumer’s next move has become key in implementing personalization, but there’s a fine line between being cool and creepy. Are you listening to the wrong signals? Brands may think they are good at listening to their customers, when they’re really paying attention to the wrong things. It’s not just about the transaction. It comes down to the attributes. Why did they purchase? What were the micro-moments that led up to them purchasing? What was the context of their purchase? Paying attention to the wrong things is what leads a customer to leave. If it’s irrelevant, they have no reason to stay. 

This is something that we’ve heard before, but is it true? There have been a lot of mixed reactions to HQ Trivia, one including “insane hallucinatory tech death”. With Black Mirror scarily predicting what our future looks like, a lot of people are saying that there’s a Black Mirror aesthetic to HQ. It’s simultaneously highly polished and incomplete. The 3D shapes that look flat until they move and of course the lags and glitches. The game sucks you deeper into your phone with the promise of cash, creating a sense of urgency and inability to resist. 

The future of retail is here! 

The current state of the project is unknown. It may have been shelved alongside Intel’s mobile ambitions when the chipmaker cancelled its Atom line of ultra-low-voltage chipsets, but since Stack envisioned utilizing laptop-class Kaby Lake silicon from the outset, it may have survived the strategy shift.

Branding is all about telling a story; the process of creating the persona of a brand and aligning it to a target consumer authentically involves research into art, culture, and philosophy, and being connected to the greater zeitgeist. Branding has evolved and is replicating a lot of tools and skills that have been used in traditional storytelling for a very long time. Having an expertise in how brands specifically can use these tools gives you the ability to create with the brand, opposed to just creating your own thing and finding a way to wedge a brand into your art.

Whoa, these are crazy. The only use case I see are tween girls and fashion influencers who are big on Snap Chat.