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Tapad, the leading provider of privacy-safe, cross-device marketing technology solutions, has announced its partnership with Innovid, the world’s leading video marketing platform. This integration enables Innovid to bring cross-device personalization and a more unified viewer experience to its video marketing clients including Bank of America, L’Oréal, Microsoft and Procter Gamble.

Innovid’s proprietary technology is the only platform optimized for video, enabling marketers to thrive in an ever-changing digital television landscape.

Since its launch last year, Innovid’s Marketing Cloud Suite has helped marketers increase message relevance and the opportunity to drive conversions, retention and acquisition through video personalization. By leveraging the Tapad Device GraphTM, Innovid’s marketers can now benefit from the ability to drive consistent, personalized user experiences across all devices, creating more impactful connections with consumers and increasing ROI.

“Personalization is a must for every data-driven marketer and really needs to happen across all devices to ensure a unified customer journey,” says Ronnie Lavi, SVP of product at Innovid. “At Innovid, we recognize one size does not fit all when it comes to video. As an open platform, we are always looking to add best-of-breed capabilities through integrations and partnerships, and we’ve chosen Tapad because of its superior cross-device expertise.”

“Innovid has long paved the way for effective personalization in the video marketing space,” says Pierre Martensson, GM of Tapad’s data division. “As video continues to gain popularity across digital formats, we’re excited to see how our technology empowers Innovid to bring that renowned personalization to more customers across all of their devices.”

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Funny or Die has helpfully updated United Airlines’ famous “Orchestra” marketing video to illustrate the company’s policy on “re-accommodating” paying customers seated on its planes, should it decide instead to give those seats to employees.

In this update of United’s well-known video (watch it above and the original below), members of the orchestra are seated in some of the airplane seats — with enough room to play their instruments! — performing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” which has been United’s commercial theme song for years.

As with the original video, Voiceover Guy assures viewers: “Every thought, every movement, carefully planned, coordinated and synchronized. Performing together with a single ‘United’ purpose. That’s what makes the world’s leading airline flyer-friendly.”

Only, in this version, the performance is intercut with YouTube video recorded by passengers on Monday of airport authorities who had come on to the plane at United’s request to get the passenger out of his seat. They are seen dragging the bloodied man down the aisle amid horrified reactions from other passengers.

After which, Funny or Die’s suggested United Airlines tag update appears on screen:
“United: Yikes”

Here is United Airlines’ original “Orchestra” video:

The chief executive of United Airlines should be fired or resign if the company expects to recover any time soon from two massive public relations disasters in two weeks, marketing experts say.

Shares in United Airlines’ parent company fell as much as four per cent on Tuesday  after a disturbing video surfaced of a security officer forcibly dragging a man out of his seat, bloodying his face, in order to make way for United employees on an overbooked flight. Horrified passengers can be seen in the background recording the incident on their phones.

A letter to United’s employees from CEO Oscar Munoz was later leaked to media. The passenger — a doctor who had said he needed to stay on the flight to make his shift at a hospital — was one of four randomly selected to be escorted off the flight after no passengers volunteered to give up their seats. In the letter, which voiced support for his employees, Munoz said he became “disruptive and belligerent” and refused to leave when staff asked him.

Sunday’s incident at Chicago’s O’Hare airport came after United’s highly publicized, widely derided episode in late March when airline employees barred two teens from boarding a flight because their leggings were not deemed acceptable for those travelling on so-called “buddy passes” given to family and friends of the airline’s employees. The story resulted in a social media firestorm and a Twitter hashtag, #BanUnited, which resurfaced Tuesday.

“They say brand is culture and culture is brand, and what is happening at United is a very serious cultural problem,” said Andris Pone, president of the Toronto-based marketing firm Coin Branding.

“The leggings debacle is one thing, but then the fact that there were clearly no lessons learned after that happened shows that this is a brand that has completely lost its way.

“This is brand rot starting at the top. You could crash an airplane with a drunk pilot and not get this much negative press, and it is totally well deserved.”

Social media reaction to both incidents were swift and unsympathetic, culminating with an online petition calling for Munoz’s resignation that had collected more than 25,000 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

Pone and others agreed, noting the CEO of Volkswagen AG’s U.S. division was replaced by an interim executive a few months after the German automaker admitted to installing software that allowed U.S. diesel vehicles to exude excess emissions.

“This clearly sends a message that the company values a ‘profit over people’ mentality and that is the kind of thing that comes from the CEO and trickles down from the top,” Anthony Kalamut, professor and program co-ordinator at the Seneca College’s School of Marketing in Toronto. “A cultural change is definitely something they need to be exploring.”

Munoz’s statement to the media on Monday was an apology that took no responsibility for the incident: a classic non-apology. “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers,” Munoz said.

After public criticism for his first apology, Munoz issued a second Tuesday afternoon where he directly addressed the event on the flight.

“I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard,” he said in the statement. “I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right.”

With its responses, United has failed on every level to follow basic principles of crisis public relations, the experts say.

“PR 101 is first you admit the mistake, then you apologize sincerely, and then you talk about what you are going to do to make sure it will not happen again,” said Ken Wong, marketing professor at Queen’s University’s School of Business.

United, in both of its recent PR imbroglios, appeared to justify its corporate policies at the expense of passenger service and common sense, and executives then did one worse by reaffirming their initial defenses.

In the case of the bloodied passenger, the airport security officer has been placed on leave pending a review by Chicago’s Department of Aviation, but United will bear the brunt of his rough behaviour because the company supported the passenger’s removal in the first place.

“CEOs are hired to respond to what the board sees as the biggest threat to the company the time of their appointment,” Wong said.

“The reason Munoz is CEO at United and his support at the board level has nothing to do with PR, and was more about the general drive to maintain margins in the face of falling oil prices.”

That may change now if terrible PR is United’s biggest headache and becomes a liability to the air carrier’s stock, Wong said. “If that CEO is not fired, then his contract certainly should not be renewed.”

Financial Post

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Twitter.com/HollieKShaw

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The talk centered on lab-grown diamonds, e-commerce, and video marketing.

Last week’s American Gem Society Conclave took place at the Loews Hollywood Hotel, just five minutes from my home, which made it convenient to do the important things: eat and drink my way around the neighborhood. Not only did I host out-of-towners for cocktails on my deck (a fun group led by my dear friend, publicist Michelle Orman), but I also got a chance to meet up with jewelry friends at several great local restaurants.

The week was a decadent reminder of what I love most about Conclave, besides the stellar education and unbelievable networking: the dining! On Tuesday night, on the eve of Conclave, I hit up Mama Shelter with Orman and gang. On Wednesday night, I laughed my way through a late dinner at Loteria with my friend and publisher Mark Smelzer and the supremely gracious Craig and Laura Underwood of Underwood’s Fine Jewelers in Fayetteville, Ark. And on Thursday, Omi Privé’s Manos Phoundalakis, Stuller’s Ashley Brown, Smelzer, my boyfriend Jim, and I dined at super-stylish Paley, in historic Columbia Square. Besides the fact that I need to show some restraint at the dinner table this week, I learned a slew of things at Conclave, easily the most worthwhile jewelry retail education event of the year.

Jay Leno is a joke machine.

The comedy legend gave the opening keynote address at Conclave. From World Cup soccer and Ikea to smart refrigerators and Donald Trump’s new reality show (“The Amazing Racist”), the one-liners that spilled forth from Leno’s mouth were funny and silly, if largely forgettable (thank God I remembered to take notes!). Now boasting a shock of white hair, the 66-year-old began his routine gently on Wednesday but ended with an impromptu bang, when he auctioned off tours of his much-celebrated collection of rare cars and motorcycles for $5,000 a pop. I counted close to $30,000 in pledges, all going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation!

Video content marketing is where it’s at.

“Facebook, Instagram—they’re all video-first platforms,” Todd Hartley, CEO of WireBuzz, told jewelers at his “Digital Marketing Tricks for Growing Jewelry Sales” seminar. Referring to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, he said, “The Big Zuck knows people are four times more likely to watch video than read text. Video is effortless.” Hartley then rattled off some convincing bullet points: “People are three times more likely to share video. In a B-to-C world, people don’t make decisions by themselves anymore—they share information. Smaller fish are noticing the power of video. It has higher conversion rates.”

Get on board with live video.

Hartley encouraged retailers to experiment with Facebook and Instagram’s live video platforms and proved how easy it was by taking a live video of the audience. “On Facebook Live, you should stay longer than you would for other videos,” he said. “Google is looking for content quality and it determines that based on time on page, so the longer people are on there watching, the better the quality is.”

He was far from the only AGS speaker who urged retailers to embrace video content. Ford Saeks, president and CEO of Prime Concepts Group—who, in his “Business Growth Acceleration” seminar, suggested that videos “start with a headline, an intriguing question, a teaser”—and Ben Smithee, of The Smithee Group, both made it clear that the moving image is marketing gold. And they both shared:

The first rule of taking video on your smartphone—

Before you hit record, flip your phone on its side so your screen view is horizontal. Otherwise, you risk looking like an amateur.

By 2025, three out of four people in the workforce will be millennials.

Smithee threw down some compelling stats, including the one above and this one: “Currently, there are more than 50 million millennials in the workforce. They will eclipse boomers in spending,” he said. (Though boomers are far from out—read our upcoming May issue to find out why and how you should market to these classic big-spenders.)

Of the many insightful tidbits Smithee shared, reminding the audience that millennials “are the first generation to impact the generations before us” was a new one for me: “Our parents and grandparents are on Facebook, Snapchat, God forbid Tinder,” he said. “The purchase influence of the millennial mindset is everything.” In essence: We all text poop emojis to people on our smartphones, he said. (Okay, perhaps not all of us—but I must admit, guilty as charged.)

Lab-grown diamonds are a divisive issue (to say the least).

Charles Stanley, president of Forevermark U.S., introduced Leno’s keynote speech with a declaration: “We claim to sell precious, rare gems of everlasting value that are central to everlasting love,” he said. “Some contemplate selling imitations and synthetics, which are not rare. It’s undermining the DNA of jewelers. Jewelers sell precious, rare gems. Synthetics are not gems.”

At a seminar on synthetic diamonds led by De Beers Technologies U.K.’s Samantha Sibley, however, the message was less impassioned, more clinical: “Synthetics are diamonds produced in a completely different chemical environment than naturals,” she said. “Synthetic diamond is man-made material that possesses the same chemical composition and crystal structure as its natural counterpart. They look similar to naturals, but the difference is in how they’re grown.”

Expect the industry dialogue to get even more pointed as lab-grown brands such as Brilliant Earth, Pure Grown Diamonds, New Age Diamonds, Newrock Diamonds, DNEA, and Aidia (pictured below) ramp up their production and marketing.

Love Bonds pendant in 18k yellow gold with pavé lab-grown diamonds on extendable chain, $1,805; aidia.com

Check back next week for Part 2 of my takeaways from the 2017 AGS Conclave.

Solarity Credit Union receives Diamond Awards for their new website and recruitment video

YAKIMA, WA (April 10, 2017) — Solarity Credit Union was recently honored with a Diamond Award, and Category’s Best Diamond Award, which recognizes outstanding marketing and business development achievements in the credit union industry.

Award winners were recognized at the council’s 24^th annual conference held March 29-April 1 in San Antonio, Texas.

The awards were presented by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Marketing Business Development Council, a national network comprised of over 1,200 credit union marketing and business development professionals.

Solarity Credit Union won the Diamond Award for best video, entitled Experience Extraordinary. Their collaborative video brought employees together to share their culture and core values in an innovative way.

Solarity Credit Union also won the Diamond Award for their website. With the implementation of their new and innovative features, their new website represents an online branch that gives them the ability to serve their digital members.

“The credit union industry has no shortage of marketing and business development talent, but, as the name of the prize suggests, these professionals shine the brightest,” said Amber Scott, Chair of the CUNA Marketing Business Development Council’s Diamond Awards Committee. “Bold, inventive and fearless in the face of uncertainty, the 2017 Diamond Award winners inspire us to aim higher and try new approaches.”