A polarized Senate voted early Friday morning to confirm Tom Price, the conservative Georgia congressman who has been one of Congress’s most vehement opponents of the Affordable Care Act, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The 52-47 vote made Price the latest in a series of controversial Cabinet nominees whom the Senate’s Republican majority has been strong enough to muscle through on party-line votes.

Price did not draw a single vote from Senate Democrats, who argued that the intersection of the nominee’s personal investments and legislative behavior warranted deeper scrutiny of his ethics.

Lacking the votes to defeat his confirmation, Democrats instead marshaled a war of words. They used the hours leading to the 2 a.m. roll call to read testimonials from Americans with severe, expensive-to-treat illnesses and gratitude to the ACA, Medicare or Medicaid — cornerstones of federal health policy that the Democrats accused the nominee of wanting to undermine.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who as a 2016 presidential candidate energized many progressive voters, accused the White House of hypocrisy. President Trump, he contended, had campaigned on promises not to cut the nation’s main entitlement programs but then chose as his HHS secretary a congressman who has long sought to weaken them.

Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, was confirmed early Friday as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

“The American people are still waiting for that one tweet that says, ‘I will keep my promise,’” Sanders said.

However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave an impassioned defense of the new president’s choice to lead one of the government’s largest departments, saying that Price “can help bring stability to the health-care markets Obamacare has harmed. He can bring relief to families that Obamacare has hurt.”

The vote followed Senate confirmation of a half-dozen of President Trump’s Cabinet-level appointments — which have progressed with little of the comity that traditionally defined the chamber’s culture. During the floor debate Wednesday on Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Republicans invoked a rarely used rule to formally rebuke Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), contending that she had impugned the conduct of a Senate colleague by reading long-ago statements critical of his civil rights record, including a letter by the late Corretta Scott King.

Democratic opposition to Price’s nomination triggered fireworks last week in the Senate Finance Committee, a panel with jurisdiction over the HHS. First, all of the committee’s Democrats boycotted what was to have been the session to decide whether to recommend Price to the rest of the Senate; their absence prevented the GOP majority from conducting the vote. The next day, the Republicans changed the committee rules to allow the vote to proceed and unanimously supported Price without a single Democrat in the room.

[Democrats block confirmation votes for Sessions, Price and Mnuchin]

The debate over the HHS nominee opened in the full Senate on Wednesday night with Democrats casting the prospect of Price as the government’s top health official in apocalyptic terms.

It began with Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, predicting that “this is about whether the United States will go back to the dark days when health care worked only for the healthy and wealthy.”

As debate was ending, Wyden gave a stinging denunciation, focusing on what he called “a coverup” by Price about his purchase last year of discounted stock in a small Australian biotechnology company in which a fellow GOP congressman is the largest shareholder. Alleging that the nominee “failed to come clean” about whether he had special access to buy the stock because of his position, Wyden said, “It ought to shake this body’s confidence in Dr. Price.”

McConnell delivered a sharply different portrayal, saying that Price, an orthopedic surgeon for two decades before entering politics, “doesn’t just understand health-care policy as a policymaker, though he does deeply. He also understands it as a practicing physician.”

A fellow Georgian, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, spoke of the nominee in superlatives. He has known and trusted Price for 30 years, Isakson said — as a neighbor, as his doctor and his successor in the House.

As Thursday evening wore on and few Republicans chose to speak, the hours became a litany of Democratic complaint.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) linked Price to what Democrats have begun to call “the swamp Cabinet,” a group with “a huge array of conflicts of interest. . . . If we could stop them we would do so because we think they will do damage to the American people — damage to Medicare, damage to Medicaid . . . damage to clean air . . . damage to clean water.”

When Warren took the floor, she made no reference to her rebuke before Sessions’ confirmation. Instead, she repeatedly asked, “Where are three Republicans” willing to join the Democrats in objecting to Price as she read letter after letter from Massachusetts residents with cancers, premature babies and devastating chronic diseases whose treatment was covered by government insurance programs she said Price wants to abolish or cut.

[Tom Price belongs to a doctors group with un­or­tho­dox views on government and health]

The confirmation of a Health and Human Services secretary raises anew the question of what role the White House will play as Republicans try to come up with an approach to abolishing the ACA and creating a more conservative set of health-care policies.

At his first news conference after the election in November, Trump said that his administration would submit a plan to “repeal and replace” the 2010 health-care law “almost simultaneously” with Price’s confirmation. He said the plan “will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably the same day. Could be the same hour.”

In an interview with The Washington Post the following weekend, Trump said that a plan with the goal of “insurance for everybody” was “very much formulated down to the final strokes.” He reiterated that he was awaiting Price’s confirmation.

Asked at his confirmation hearing whether he was involved with writing a plan, Price drew laughs by partly deflecting the question.

In an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that aired Sunday, Trump seemed to retreat from his earlier timetable. Asked whether Americans can expect “a new health-care plan rolled out by the Trump administration this year,” the president said the process is “very complicated” and that undoing a law and putting something in its place “takes a while to get.”

“Maybe it’ll take till sometime into next year,” he said, although “the rudiments” could be released in late 2017. His comments were ambiguous about whether the White House was preparing its own plan.

“We’re gonna to be putting it in fairly soon,” he said, without elaborating.

9th Circuit Judges Richard R. Clifton, top, William Canby Jr. and Michelle Taryn Friedland. (AP)

The list of evidence-free claims from President Trump and his administration is long and growing. “Millions” of people voted illegally. Inauguration turnout was the “biggest ever.” All negative polls are “fake news.”

No matter how hard the administration is pressured to support its assertions, no matter how many “four-Pinocchio” and “pants on fire” ratings follow, Trump doesn’t relent. It’s hard to imagine he feels the need to, especially when polls such as one this week out of Emerson College show registered voters find his administration more truthful than its interlocutors in the news media.

‘Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media’https://t.co/6LmsR5JOSW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Trump’s defiance might work well as political theater, and there’s no denying that it made for an effective presidential campaign. But as a legal strategy, it’s already hitting roadblocks.

The first came last week, when a federal judge froze his controversial executive order shutting U.S. borders to refugees and migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries.

But the real blow came Thursday, when an appeals court upheld that freeze. In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found that the government had failed to show why the travel ban needed to be immediately reinstated, as The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky reported.

To arrive at that decision, the appeals court did something close to what fact-checkers, journalists, scholars and others do every day when Trump and his surrogates make extraordinary claims: It demanded extraordinary evidence — or at least some evidence — for the administration’s arguments.

And it got none, the judges said.

The court asked the government to explain the “urgent need” for the order to be restored, but Justice Department lawyers offered “no evidence,” the opinion read.

It asked for evidence in the form of legal precedents that noncitizens affected by the order “have no rights” under the Constitution. The court found the government’s examples unconvincing.

It also asked for evidence that immigrants from the countries named in Trump’s order had committed terrorist attacks in the United States. Instead, the government merely argued that the court “must not review its decision at all,” according to the opinion.

[Read the 9th Circuit’s opinion on the travel ban]

In court papers, the government argued that the president’s authority to suspend immigration was “unreviewable,” meaning the court couldn’t check his power. That seemed to alarm the judges.

“There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability,” the opinion read, “which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”

The Trump administration has argued that the travel ban was necessary to protect national security and defend against terrorism. Trump went so far as to assert on Twitter that if a terrorist attack did happen, the judiciary would be to blame.

While language like that might play well with the base, it was part of what caused the court to recoil, suggested Mary Fan, an immigration and refugee law professor at the University of Washington School of Law.

“The court can’t abdicate responsibility in the face of fear-filled words like ‘terrorism’ or terms of deference like ‘national security.’ These are, of course, important interests, but you have to have substance behind the words,” Fan told The Post.

“You can’t just play upon these fears without giving the court a substantial reason to justify extreme exercises of power,” Fan said. “The Trump administration made the 9th Circuit’s job easier in the sense that they were so extreme in what they claimed about unreviewability that they made themselves into a straw man easy to knock down.”

Trump reacted angrily to the opinion on Thursday, accusing the judges of making a “political decision.” He had previously used the phrase “so-called judge” to refer to U.S. District Judge James L. Robart, who penned the lower court decision that paved the way for the appeals court’s ruling. The Justice Department said in a statement it was reviewing the 9th Circuit’s opinion.

[Trump lashes out at ‘so-called judge’ who temporarily blocked entry ban]

Trump’s attacks on the judiciary will likely continue, but he’ll have a hard time bashing individual judges on the appeals court because the opinion was unanimous and unsigned, said Jonathan Hafetz, a constitutional law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. Writing on the legal blog Balkinization, Hafetz described the 9th Circuit’s ruling as an “important moment in the defense of judicial independence.”

“President Trump, from his reckless implementation of the Executive Order to his flagrant attacks on the integrity of federal judges hearing these challenges, has transformed the case into an early — and critical — showdown over the independence of the judiciary in the United States,” Hafetz wrote. The judges, he added, may have penned the opinion unanimously because they “recognize the real and grave threat Trump poses to the foundations of the constitutional order.”

In a case such as this one, the government faces a heavy burden. To lift the stay on Trump’s executive order, it had to show both that it was likely to succeed on the merits of the case, and that leaving the stay in place would cause “irreparable injury.” It failed on both fronts.

“Although we agree that ‘the government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order,’” the court said, citing a past Supreme Court opinion, “the government has done little more than reiterate that fact.”

The judges continued: “Despite the district court’s and our own repeated invitations to explain the urgent need for the Executive Order to be placed immediately into effect, the Government submitted no evidence to rebut the States’ argument that the district court’s order merely returned the nation temporarily to the position it has occupied for many previous years.”

In a damaging aside, the court raised questions about whether it could trust the administration’s credibility on the status of the order itself, saying that the administration, through the White House counsel, had shifted positions on whether the order would apply to lawful permanent residents.

[What Trump could learn from George Washington’s first executive order]

“The White House counsel is not the President, and he is not known to be in the chain of command for any of the Executive Departments,” the court wrote. “We cannot say that the current interpretation by White House counsel, even if authoritative and binding, will persist past the immediate stage of these proceedings.”

In short, the court found the administration essentially unbelievable, as have many of Trump’s critics.

Though the court’s ruling represents a significant setback for the administration, some legal observers cautioned about reading too much into it. The court has yet to rule on the merits of the case, including whether the order discriminates against Muslims specifically, as the plaintiffs — the states of Washington and Minnesota — argue.

“Are there tea leaves to read in this opinion? There sure are, particularly with respect to the judges’ analysis of the government’s likelihood of prevailing on the merits and its blithe dismissal of the government’s claims of national security necessity,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare.

“But it’s worth emphasizing that the grounds on which this order was fought are not the grounds on which the merits fight will happen,” Wittes wrote. “Eventually, the court has to confront the clash between a broad delegation of power to the President — a delegation which gives him a lot of authority to do a lot of not-nice stuff to refugees and visa holders — in a context in which judges normally defer to the president, and the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated.”

Read more:

7 key take-aways from the court’s ruling on Trump’s immigration order

Trump’s loose talk about Muslims gets weaponized in court against travel ban

How all-caps came to signify shouting, as in Trump’s ‘SEE YOU IN COURT …’

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has issued an RFP for marketing and media buying consulting services.

SCOPE OF SERVICES

• Strategic planning

• Media planning, buying and trafficking

• Campaign post media buys analyses

• Creative services, including the development of graphics and messages

• Market research

TASK ORDER ONE:

STRATEGIC PLANNING

The consultant is required to develop and implement multiple marketing campaigns designed to achieve specific objectives defined by the Authority. Campaigns will include, creating awareness of products and services and influencing customer preference for choosing Dulles and/or Reagan, resulting in increased revenue.

• Key components of campaign development include utilizing available data to define the target audience, understanding factors that influence  decision making, crafting the messaging (graphics,  radio scripts, etc.) and identifying the most cost effective channels to reach the target audience and achieve the desired outcome.

• A documented strategic approach for each campaign that achieves the Authority’s defined marketing objective, that demonstrates an understanding and recommendation of the target audience that is  most appropriate for the desired outcome, as well as the factors that influence the achievement of the Authority’s desired outcome within the target audience. The strategic approach will also define the key messages that are recommended for each target audience, in order to achieve the desired objective. The Authority will make available to the successful consultant the data and research it has obtained over the years regarding passenger demographics, customer segments, product usage, competitive insights and industry trends.

• Research may be required in order to develop complete strategies for each marketing campaign. The consultant must be able to obtain its own relevant research data, such as Scarborough, and other sources, as it pertains to specific campaign objectives.

TASK ORDER TWO:

MEDIA PLANNING, BUYING, TRAFFICKING AND REPORTING

The consultant shall be required to plan, buy and traffic various types of media, with the advance approval of the Authority, including, but not limited to, print advertisements, radio or television ads, digital, paid social media,  etc. that support the strategic media plan objectives.

Media Planning

The consultant shall:

• Provide an annual media plan, including a schedule and rationale for each recommended medium, based on an approved budget, to include target audiences, costs, frequency and reach. The media plan will detail flight plans, dates, times and messages.

• Present each campaign’s draft media plans and schedules for the Authority’s review and comment. Once the revisions have been incorporated, the consultant will submit a final media plan and schedule, including a rotation of creative, detailed media budgets, deadline dates, positioning, relative discounts and bonus spots, blocking charts, material instructions and ad production specifications.

• Detail specific medium, such as radio, print advertisements, social media, website, etc. that should be utilized by target audience and seasonality that will yield the highest return on investment.

Media Buying

• Prepare and submit for Authority approval a monthly and yearly media schedule for each campaign, including scheduling and rotation of creative, detailed media budgets, deadline dates, positioning, relative discounts and bonus spots, material instructions and ad production specifications.

• Negotiate reserve and purchase the best advertising placement and rates for media buys, as approved by the Authority in the final Plan Continued.

• Prepare, coordinate and submit timely delivery of all creative materials in the proper formats to each media outlet.

• Have distribution capabilities for sending broadcast quality videos and audio to approved broadcast stations, as needed.

Media Trafficking

The consultant will traffic assigned media buys to ensure timely placement of ads, adherence to budget, and provide documentation from each media buy verifying that each ad ran, per the approved insertion orders.

Campaign Post Analysis Reports

The consultant will prepare and submit a mid-year post media buy analysis summarizing the metrics for each campaign and a year-end annual comprehensive twelve (12) month post media buy analysis that measures  the effectiveness of each campaign. Elements should include campaign objectives, situation analysis; defined target audiences; key products and services, key messages, creative concepts, recommendations for research and creative pre-testing, budget, timing, rationale, deliverables, actions, recommendations and next steps.

TASK ORDER THREE:

CREATIVE SERVICES AND PRODUCTION

Graphic Design and Copywriting

• Utilize the market research data to guide the creative process for each marketing campaign and target audience to influence passenger perceptions and trial and usage of Dulles and Reagan products and services. The design concepts should always incorporate research findings by customer segmentation.

• Develop creative materials necessary to support the recommended messaging and mediums. All creative designs and messages must be aligned with particular media buys, such as print or digital advertisements, video storyboards, radio scripts including script writing and copy editing.

• Graphic designers must be able to understand and adhere to the Authority’s brand guidelines manual available on the Authority’s website under Supplemental Information for this solicitation.

• Provide advertising creative designs and messages for each identified key customer group. The consultant will discuss with the Authority that all objectives are understood and that the proposed campaign meets those objectives

• Create design concepts that meet each campaign’s objectives, including copywriting and script writing. The consultant will provide the Authority with storyboards that support key messages for specific target groups and include action on the part of the traveler.

• Draft and present copy and scripts to the Authority for social media messages, radio, digital and print advertisements and videos. Revise and finalize as required by the Authority. Obtain Authority approval of all copy and scripts prior to utilizing.

• Develop creative materials from concept through final production, in the required format, to include, radio, digital and print advertisements and, possibly television and other agreed upon medium. Development of creative materials includes copy direction and creative for digital advertising materials and any other marketing materials in support of digital advertising activities.

• Provide a variety of approaches for each concept when requested by the Authority. The design concepts must logically link creative approaches back to the Authority-approved strategic marketing plans.

• Create new copy elements that deliver consistent and appropriate messaging to target audiences. Graphic Production and Installation

• Produce and install small and large, grand scale graphics seamlessly with the highest quality standards. Graphics range from interior to exterior installations. Make sound recommendations to the Authority on the best production and installation means necessary to execute a final, high quality and durable products.

Videography

• Create film, produce, edit, and animate videos and provide high quality, high definition, finished products within a pre-determined timeline and budget. Technical capabilities include using the most current production and editing software platforms to produce the highest quality, audio, and/or computer generated graphic videos that allow for easy and efficient editing of projects.

• Draft video scripts and prepare and present story boards for each video. The creative process for each video project will be a joint effort between the Authority and the consultant. Video creation (filmed or computer-generated), production, sound and music editing will commence upon approval of all scripts and storyboards.

• On-site filming which includes the assembly of proper lighting and audio as required to produce high quality, high definition videos that are broadcast quality and may be distributed to news sources.

• Videos generally should be compatible with the Authority’s various airport TV monitors and web postings, including, but not limited to, outside websites and a variety of medium and other channels. Broadcast-quality video productions, as specified by each television station, will be required for selected projects to be used for television advertising and the consultant will be responsible for distributing the high definition videos to broadcast networks and others in the desired format.

• Some video and/or audio projects may be created with or without an Authority representative or producer present, depending on the type of project, deadline and available manpower. In some instances, the Authority may just provide direction and the video/audio production firm may send either ‘in-progress’ updates or a ‘finished’ product. The level of Authority involvement will be at the Authority’s sole discretion.

TASK ORDER FOUR:

MARKET RESEARCH

In order to test passenger perceptions of Dulles and Reagan as well as awareness of products and services to induce trial and usage, the consultant may be required to conduct quantitative and qualitative market research in the Washington metropolitan region to determine new trends in passenger habits and preferences.

The consultant may be required to:

• Conduct and analyze quantitative research throughout the contract term to better understand the changing aviation industry and its effect on consumers. The research may include, customer demographics, passenger perceptions of Dulles, behavior before and after arriving in the airport and preference for selecting an airport. The new data should be incorporated into the consultant’s annual strategic media plan to help strengthen Dulles and Reagan’s position in the marketplace.

• The consultant shall be required to conduct qualitative research such as focus groups, as needed, throughout the contract term to test creative campaigns that are designed to influence trial and usage of Dulles and Reagan and its services.

Proposal due by February 10, 2017 to:

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Procurement and Contracts Dept
MA-29 1 Aviation Circle, Suite 154
Washington, DC 20001-6000

PR firms in Washington, DC include Fleishman-Hillard, APCO Worldwide and Burson Marsteller.

 

Designer Adam Lippes. Photo by Caroline Owens.

“We’re definitely in a new era,” says designer Adam Lippes. He’s talking about fashion, and the marketing of it, specifically.

As fashion month kicked off in New York on Wednesday, Lippes is participating in this new era of which he speaks as the latest designer to jump on the see-now, buy-now trend. See-now, buy-now is a new concept where the consumer « sees » the clothes come down the runway and can purchase them immediately after. As such, one look from Lippes’ eponymous line will be available immediately for purchase after his Fashion Week presentation tomorrow via a video created with the e-commerce site, Farfetch. The video will be distributed across both the designer’s and the e-commerce site’s digital and social platforms. A second video will be released later in the season and will offer the entire collection once it hits stores.

This concept of buying clothes right off the runway was spurred by designers seeing the impracticality of a fashion system that shows a collection four months before it’s available to buy. Which is especially bothersome to consumers in the age of digital, where instant gratification rules supreme, leaving them bored of the collections before they even became available in stores. Brands like Burberry began to experiment with see-now, buy-now and then came Tom Ford. Shortly after, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren followed suit.

According to fashion industry website, Business of Fashion, last season’s Tom Ford initiative resulted in the biggest sales day for the brand at Bergdorf Goodman. Both Topshop and Burberry sold out of certain items from their see-now, buy-now offerings. Ralph Lauren had less luck, although higher ticket items like a $14,998 Western-inspired suede coat sold out all but one immediately following their show. All in all, increased searches for these brands on e-commerce sites went as high as 75% for Tom Ford, to 20% for Tommy Hilfiger, signaling that see-now, buy now results in heightened consumer interest.

Designer Adam Lippes with his CEO, Michelle Gaster Wasserman. Photo by Caroline Owens.

For Lippes, who gained notoriety during the near-decade he spent as the Global Creative Director for Oscar de la Renta, growth is his primary goal leading him to follow suit with the Burberry’s and Tom Ford’s of the world. While his 4-year old label has seen high double-digit growth every year and has expanded to 100 doors in 20 nations, he is acutely aware of how fast the consumer landscape is shifting. “Even with our growth, we always have to find brand new ways to communicate with the customer,” he tells me during an interview in his Washington Square Park townhouse.

See-now, buy-now is just one of many tactics the brand is employing to help grow the business digitally, according to Lippes new CEO, Michelle Gaster Wasserman. Wasserman, who formerly ran the North American e-commerce business for Coach, says, “Digital sales were up 35% last month as a result of refinements we made to our strategy, some of which were as simple as better investments into areas like art direction. »

But for a young brand like Lippes’ without retail stores, the benefits of a see-now, buy-now video are twofold. In addition to the instant gratification it gives to consumers, there is a significant brand positioning opportunity that arises. “Without having retail stores, you lose the chance to tell the story in context. Your brand story doesn’t live on Net-a-Porter, and you don’t see it in Bergdorf Goodman where you are on a rack amongst other designers, » adds Wasserman. « Videos like this allow us to communicate our story. »

See-now, buy-now via video is not completely unchartered territory for Farfetch who live-streamed the Creatures of the Wind show last season and then offered a selection of pieces for purchase directly after.“Our customer loves the option to have immediate access to their favorite brands as and when they are available,” says Candice Fragis, Buying and Merchandising Director at Farfetch. What makes Lippes’ initiative unique, however, is that he seems to be the first to create a video of this type in an editorialized way, telling a story based off the inspiration of a 70’s fashion shoot.

« It’s an exciting time to be a young brand, » enthuses Lippes. « You can see what’s happening and you can move. »

Rebecca Suhrawardi is Fashion and Features journalist residing in New York City. Her work appears in the international editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, where she is a Contributing Editor.

GroupM, the leading digital media investment firm, has released the preview version of its annual report on the state of digital marketing and its impact on marketers and advertisers. The report, titled “Interaction: Preview Edition for Clients and Partners February 2017”, is published by GroupM’s Worldwide Media and Marketing Forecast, highlighting the challenges in digital marketing across channels. On a positive note, the report predicts the digital share of ad investment in 2017 will jump to around 33%.

Interaction 2017 takes a very cautious approach in defining the digital landscape, suggesting the new and old worlds are contributing equally to new marketing technologies in dollar investments since 2013. In 2016, CMOs spent 72 cents of every new dollar on digital advertising, and 21 cents on TV. In 2017, the balance will swing higher — 77:17, in favor of Digital ad. TV ad spends will remain consistent as per the report.

Top Focus-Areas in Digital Transformation 

2017 is slated to be the year of Big Bang in marketing and advertising technologies. Top 100 CMOs agree that big-brand advertising is definitely moving towards Intelligence Age from the existing Information Age.

Traditionally, marketers have always been building strategies to outperform competitors at every touchpoint along the customer journey. Marketing budgets in 2016 reveal how nothing has changed in marketing, except for the increased complexity in the marketing platforms and their functionalities. While most enterprises now rely on automation for marketing and sales for B2B commerce, a handful of them also prefer to deploy intelligent technologies for social media and mobile apps. Omnichannel customer experience is driving more audience engagement than ever before.

Interaction 2017 reports –

“On a single platform you can advertise, sell, fulfill the order, and deliver customer service. A single piece of content, or more accurately, intellectual property, can be watched in linear form or on demand, as a show, a still, a clip, a multi-hour binge and multiply reconfigured for multiple platforms.”

And what drives customer experience?

Of course, it’s the accuracy and quality of customer data that marketing automation tools mine from omnichannel platforms.

“High-quality data is data that helps you acquire the customer you don’t know and to better understand the customer you do know.”

Read Also: CMOs Own Initiatives in Customer Experience; Focus Sharply Moving Towards No-Screen Engagement

Interaction 2017 suggests CMOs should start owning in-house media groups rather than relying on advertising. The threshold of the usefulness of owned media in 2017 is raised by integrating marketing technologies and sales enablement platforms running on AI, machine learning, and NLP.

“As artificial intelligence becomes part of the taxonomy of everything the structured and unstructured story around the brand, its purpose, origin and the conversation it creates will become part of the consumer experience.”

AI manifesting itself in daily life

How can marketers stay away from AI? Machine learning, voice recognition, NLP and cognitive learning capabilities lies at the heart of every innovation made in marketing technology ecosystem. AI in marketing technology provides brute force to marketing efforts, mimicking human behavior for personalized customer experience.

2017 will throw up battles of the AI innovators – “narrow intelligence” (those who are good at only one thing) versus “general intelligence” (those who are flexible and adaptable). Sans doubt, CMOs are yet to assess the extent to which AI can substitute human customer service interactions.

“This is clearly true of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple which by market capitalization are among the six most valuable companies in the world. It’s true also of Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. Eight businesses, with data at their core (that are) mapping human behavior, (and in doing so) are becoming the wireframe of human experience.”

AR and VR: From Small Screen to No Screen

According to EIU’s latest report on customer experience, CMOs are focusing on moving towards no-screen engagement by 2020. AR and VR technologies enable marketers to deliver entertainment, social relevancy, personalization, and speed. Advertising in 2016 moved from storytelling to story creation. VR accessories touched sales figure of five million units in 2016. Exquisite customer experience in 2017 will be about delivering a 360-degree and immersive experience, minus the screens.

“It’s likely that the biggest AR deals in the near term will be collaborations between brands and retailers and between sponsors and events. Further applications can be expected in travel, tourism, and real estate. In all cases, the momentum needs to exist for the necessary app installs and for sufficient value to be created for all stakeholders.”

Video is a hotbed of Opportunities

TV still rules; online video platforms fail in longer formats.

Marketers shifting focus towards video marketing over Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and YouTube are yet to achieve the golden “catch”. Despite programmatic featuring as the fastest growing advertising technology, advertisers are unable to accurately measure key engagement metrics: who watched what, where, for how long and on what device.

Interaction 2017 reports, “For every 20 video ads served in the news feed, three are watched for three seconds or more and just one is watched for ten seconds or more.”

To show how video paradigm is shifting away from TV-only platforms, GroupM published a “video taxonomy” card for advertisers.

via GroupM

“The advertisers that account for 90% of television advertising revenue account for between 30% and 40% of the revenue of the digital behemoths.”

OTT: The Confluence of TV, Programmatic and Internet

Over-the-Top (OTT), or Connected TV, is still in its infancy. However, there is no shortage of advertisers who are promoting their brands over OTT. Promising to be an enriching customer-centric platform, the new ad inventory stack allows advertisers to broadcast quality and brand-safe content in an on-demand environment.

“The monetization of OTT bundles is straightforward – subscription sales plus highly targeted advertising less the cost of re-transmission fees. From the advertiser’s point of view, few will be big enough to represent meaningful sources of advertising inventory and it will be up to the agencies to aggregate the pool and harmonize both delivery and measurement.”

GroupM report notes, “Failure to create something that people are prepared to pay for or perceive as an indispensable utility is itself a prescription for failure. And so, the prescription to make TV ubiquitous is simple even if complex to activate.”

Marketers can’t miss Audio in 2017

Audio is the least explored marketing territory in the digital ecosystem. The soundtrack for brand promotion remains an elusive concept despite the bludgeoning budget allocations across web, social, mobile, search, video and e-commerce. Radio and online audio stores continue to have massive customer retention, thanks to the smart media streaming technologies. On-demand audio content provides unmatched consumer interaction, providing a beyond-the-demography snapshot about customer’s listening behavior and emotional intimacy with brands. Players like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartMedia offer impeccable audio content discovery. However, ROI attributed to audio channels is meager despite collective revenue of over $9 billion and subscribers over 1.5 billion.

“2017 will be a big year for both Pandora and Spotify. Rumors of Pandora’s sale began to swirl in late 2016 and Spotify is expected to go public, and along with Snapchat, create the next two major publicly traded native digital media companies. In the meantime, against a backdrop of rising interest rates iHeartMedia’s immense mortgage obligations may be a barrier to progress.”

The insights provided by Interaction 2017 on every aspect of digital identity for an enterprise proves to be a ground-breaking “handbook” for every CMO who intends to magnify business objectives using digital transformations. Be it AI, mobile-first or programmatic and OTT, Interaction 2017 will remain the epitome of “ethical” branding policies in 2017.

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