Ayzenberg Introduces Next Iteration Of Its Social Index, SI 3.0

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With 70 percent of consumers saying trusting a brand is more important than in the past, marketers are increasingly seeking earned media mentions, which research shows helps gain consumer trust. Earned media, namely media that marketers haven’t paid for and don’t own, comes in many forms, including organic influencer tags, op-eds, interviews, news segments, documentaries, and the like.

Using Ayzenberg’s Social Index and Earned Media Value Index (a.EMVI), over 3,000 companies worldwide have measured the dollar value of their social media actions and endorsements that comprise modern earned media. The company recently debuted the latest iteration of its Social Index, SI 3.0, with four new updates exclusive to members, including an updated algorithm, a dashboard and EMV visualizer, global EMV for key markets and daily EMV updates.

First up, SI 3.0 boasts a new EMV engine and algorithm for improved accuracy. The Index’s API—built on decades of media buying, analytics reporting for Fortune 500 companies, third-party research and Ayzenberg’s Orchestra Tech platform—provide marketers with more precise vertical values, which enhance the value proposition to their customers.

Next, a new dashboard and EMV visualizer, the latter which is in beta, will allow analysts, media planners and integrated marketers to select a date range all the way back to January 2020 to understand how a specific key performance indicator (KPI) performed on a specific platform and location. 

This time-bound visualization, helpful for enhancing postmortems, is available for seven top social media platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Twitter. Last November, Ayzenberg introduced TikTok values to its Social Index.

SI 3.0 also now offers global values across key markets including NA, EMEA and APAC countries. With these expanded regions and the program’s EMV visualizer, marketers can choose any two locations and compare the difference between the areas for the same industry platform and KPI.

Lastly, marketers can keep an eye on the EMV of their influencer, content marketing, PR, and organic and paid social media campaigns with a.EMVI’s new daily EMV updates. A snapshot of the day’s Index is dynamic and updated on the fly, according to Vincent Juarez, Ayzenberg CMO and a.EMVI author.

The variables used to calculate EMV are nuanced, which makes it more difficult to accurately quantify than paid and owned media. But it’s critical to do so given earned media’s growing impact on the bottom line. For example, an Edelman survey found that 44 percent of consumers were influenced by positive press to choose a brand. And Yale researchers concluded that op-eds are a cost effective way to influence people’s views, finding that an op-ed costs from about 50 cents to $3 per mind changed.

Influencers are particularly useful for driving earned media and influencing consumer buying behavior. According to a new GRIN report, over half of consumers said that general, word-of-mouth and social media are their preferred mediums for discovering new brands. What’s more, about 80 percent told GRIN that social media directly impacts their purchasing decisions and 35 percent have confirmed that they were “very” or “extremely likely” to purchase influencer-endorsed products online.

SI 3.0 offers two subscription plans, a monthly $600 plan and an annual $6,000 plan. Click here for more information.

If you’re interested in seeing how your social campaigns stack up, a.network developed the Social Index tool with the goal of becoming the industry standard for measuring earned media value (EMV) and campaign ROI.

Social Index 3.0 leverages a combination of expert analysis, machine learning algorithms and vast amounts of proprietary and public data. The index helps brands and agencies take engagement and earned media ROI measurement to the next level.

Experts Weigh In On Shoppable Ads Trends

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As traditional shopping increasingly wanes, retailers are ramping up investment in shoppable ads. From livestreams and Google Shopping to Checkout on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and Product Pins on Pinterest, these shoppable forms enable consumers to go from discovery to purchase in seconds, leading to greater profits. Ahead, executives from AcuityAds, Joyned, Wunderkind and Clinch share the trends that brands should keep ahead of as retail strategies evolve to favor shoppable media.

Shoppable Media Helps Advertisers Shorten Path To Purchase And Build Relationships With Consumers

Seraj Bharwani, AcuityAds chief strategy officer, says to keep in mind shoppable media’s two objectives. The first is to facilitate the path to purchase with direct access to ecommerce. In-stream, in-video, in-feed and in-Pin transactions allow advertisers to build efficient access to their ecommerce sites and facilitate the sale. These formats are best for small-ticket and impulse purchases where the consumer’s decision journey is naturally short – for example, consumer packaged goods, wellness and beauty categories.

The second objective, according to Bharwani, is that shoppable media intend to help advertisers achieve first-party relationships with consumers. While it cannot guarantee a transaction for considered purchases, shoppable media can meet consumers during the exploratory stage of their decision journey, for example when seeking financial services, healthcare and automobiles. Nevertheless, front-end media alone will not decrease the journey for such purchases given that they often take weeks to months to complete the transaction. In this context, brands require post-media exposure to increase sales productivity.

Address The Experience, Not Just Driving Behavior

According to Joyned chief executive officer Jonathan Abraham, true social shopping is about addressing the consumer’s experience and going beyond Facebook Shops or clicking on Instagram Ads. 

Retailers can help reduce reliance on third-party social media platforms by offering virtual spaces where friends can have private, ‘dressing room’ conversations, notes Abraham. Doing so will drive higher organic traffic and average orders while also increasing lifetime customer value.

Adapt To The Consumer And How They Want To Communicate With A Brand

Where social media was once a tool to discover new products, it has now become the channel where products are purchased. Wunderkind president Michael Osborne stresses the importance of recognizing that every touchpoint in a consumer’s shopping experience has the potential to lead to revenue. To capitalize on this fact, brands must offer an authentic, personalized and experience-evoking email, text or direct message. 

Wunderkind’s research found that 51 percent of US consumers view email as the most effective form of communication from brands, followed by text (38 percent), in-app messaging (23 percent) and instant messaging (22 percent). Among the four forms of communication listed here, brands underutilize text messaging in particular. Not only does this channel help brands achieve a direct line of communication unavailable elsewhere, but it also allows for easy sharing of links to personalized promotions.

To earn loyal consumers and develop a reputation for reliability, brands must offer more than quality products and active social channels—they must adapt to the consumer and recognize how they want to be engaged with and through what channels while continuing to prioritize their interests and needs, according to Osborne.

The Importance Of The Consumer Experience In Shoppable Media

The personalization of shoppable ad units was the last element that commerce brands had envisioned addressable TV would solve for. According to Oz Etzioni, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clinch, enabling ‘shoppability’ doesn’t solve for the redundancy of the same irrelevant shoppable units being served to the consumer. 

Clinch personalization has the ability to reflect tonality and inconspicuous call-to-actions that allow shoppers to respond to on their own time—whether by pausing their show to make a purchase online or scanning a QR code as they continue watching their live program uninterrupted. As Etzioni notes, by personalizing the shopping ad, brands can improve the user experience with the effect of making the user more receptive to the message and less likely to exit the stream or app.

Brands must make the path to purchase as seamless as possible during 2021’s holiday season given the uncertainties associated with the intersection of shelter-in-place and work-from-home shopping habits with supply chain and shipping issues, according to Etzioni. Apart from sales lift and return on investment, shoppable ads may also be used to reinforce relationships with retailer platforms and provide helpful information regarding consumer preferences.

Intel Announces New Developer-First Products And Technologies At Inaugural Innovation Event

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At its inaugural Intel Innovation event keynote, broadcast live from Fort Mason in San Francisco, Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger and the company’s executive team members debuted new products, tools and technologies as part of its renewed commitment to the developer community.

“Our recent actions in the ecosystem must be built on core values that are essential to you, but we haven’t done a great job recently. Today, this changes. We can and we will do better. Today we are recommitting to delivering what you expect and need from us—a complete portfolio of hardware, software tools, technologies and products for developers,” Gelsinger said.

According to Gelsinger, Intel’s new developer-first strategy is built upon three elements: creating an open ecosystem and unlocking the garden gates for developers, a belief in horizontal ecosystems where developers can choose their own setup, and solutions with world-leading security features to ensure trust.

First up, Intel announced a new unified Intel Developer Zone, which gives developers access to a consolidated Intel Developer Catalog of key Intel software offerings in addition to an improved Intel DevCloud development environment to test and run workloads on several of Intel’s newest hardware and software tools.

Next, Intel said it’s gearing up to ship oneAPI 2022 toolkits with 900 features since it shipped last year. As noted in a press release:

“This new launch adds cross-architecture software development capabilities for CPUs and GPUs through the first unified C++/SYCL/Fortran compiler and Data Parallel Python and expands Advisor accelerator performance modeling, including VTune Flame Graph to visualize performance hot spots and improves productivity through extended Microsoft Visual Studio Code integration and Microsoft WSL 2 support.”

Intel also announced 11 new partners including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley, who will deliver strategic code ports, additional hardware support and new services and curriculum to enable further ecosystem adoption of oneAPI.

The company also unveiled its 12th Gen Intel Core processor family, which includes the launch of six new unlocked desktop processors, including the 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K gaming processor and 60 processors set to power more than 500 designs from Intel’s partners.

In addition, Intel’s new solution for data scientists—available on Linux-based workstation PCs from Dell, HP and Lenovo—will enable them to iterate, visualize and analyze complex data at scale “with the highest memory configuration of any similar offerings,” according to the press release.

In expanding developer accessibility to AI, Intel shared an overview of its Aurora Supercomputer, which will exceed two exaflops of peak double precision compute performance, enabling it to handle high-performance computing, AI/ML and big data analytics workloads.

“Developers are the true superheroes of the digitized world – a world which is underpinned by semiconductors. We will not rest until we’ve exhausted the periodic table, unlocking the magic of silicon and empowering developers so that, together, we can usher in a new era of innovation,” said Gelsinger.

Unexpected Lessons In Leadership And Marketing With StockX CMO Deena Bahri

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Deena Bahri is the Chief Marketing Officer at StockX, a Detroit-based technology company providing an online resale marketplace for sneakers, apparel, accessories and collectibles.

In this episode, Deena and I discuss her journey to becoming a CMO, the defining moments in her career, and the lessons motherhood has taught her about leadership and marketing. Deena says, “We’re never just sitting back and saying, oh, we’ve got this covered. We know exactly how to do that.”

Listen to hear Deena’s approach to leadership and how she is embracing new opportunities to grow while never losing sight of the customers’ needs.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Forgive yourself when you aren’t perfect
  • Always seek improvement
  • Focus on building trust with your customer

Key Highlights:

  • [01:29] What has motherhood taught Deena about marketing?
  • [04:51] Deena’s journey to StockX
  • [06:57] What even is StockX?
  • [14:08] Seizing growth opportunities
  • [17:45] Marketing to sellers and buyers
  • [19:43] Deena’s approach to leadership
  • [21:40] Defining moments in Deena’s life
  • [24:49] Advice to her younger self
  • [25:53] Don’t underestimate data and analytics
  • [27:18] Brands to follow

Resources Mentioned: 

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Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart:

Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth opportunities. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine companies.

AppsFlyer: The State Of Ecommerce App Marketing 2021

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According to a new AppsFlyer report, global ad spending on app installs in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 reached $5.4 billion, with the US leading the way, followed by Brazil and the UK. That momentum continued as ecommerce app installs saw a 48 percent increase between January and July 2021, with Android gaining 55 percent and iOS 32 percent. Around that same time, ecommerce app spend experienced a 55 percent increase as compared to March to July 2020. 

Ahead we’re breaking down additional global and US ecommerce app insights from the report as well as AppsFlyer’s tips on how marketers can respond to the holiday rush and the challenge of iOS updates.

Impact Of COVID-19

COVID 19’s impact on consumer behavior can’t be understated. The ongoing digitization of our lives won’t taper as the pandemic seems to be – 70 percent of teen and adult smartphone users in the US stated they would continue their COVID-19-induced smartphone behaviors even after the pandemic is over.

Globally, mobile commerce grew roughly 30 percent in 2020 and made up 64 percent of retail ecommerce sales. According to eMarketer, mobile commerce sales will approach $3.2 trillion this year and surpass $5 trillion in 2025.

In addition, Global ecommerce app installs rose by roughly 50 percent in 2021 – the same level reached during the 2020 holiday season – as consumer spending rose by 55 percent YoY. Accordingly, ecommerce app usage during the 2021 holiday season will be unprecedented.

To capture the most value out of these behaviors, retailers should put mobile apps at the center of their Q4 marketing strategies and secure seamless transitions from mobile web to app, where, according to a Google report, performance is significantly higher. Additionally, marketers must communicate with existing buyers where they are and use deep linking to smoothly reach the correct destination within the app.

State Of Ecommerce Apps In North America

While growth is more widespread around the world on Android, iOS dominates the US market share in ecommerce, comprising roughly one-quarter of the market, based on AppsFlyer’s data. The US comprises one-third of global ecommerce user acquisition (UA) budgets at over $18 billion in H2 2020 and H1 2021 combined. This is due to the US’ massive scale and a particularly high cost of media. Scale plays a larger role than the cost of media in developing markets like Brazil and India while the opposite is true for developed markets like Germany and Japan.

AppsFlyer also found that app installs are up 36 percent YoY compared to pre-pandemic levels, with 2021 in-app spending having peaked in March with a 156 percent increase over March 2020. Additionally, the 2020 COVID-19 app install surge surpassed the holiday rush, which begins in November, by 8 percent.

iOS 14.5 Leads To Decline In Remarketing Conversions

iOS remarketing conversions declined by 50 percent after the launch of iOS 14.5 while Android remarketing conversions witnessed a 10 percent decline over the same period between April and July 2021. As of August 2021, 83 percent of US iOS ecommerce app users have upgraded to iOS 14.5 or newer. Of those, 42 percent of users prompted have opted in.

To get the max opt-in rates, AppsFlyer suggests ensuring that apps evaluate when and how to display the ATT prompt and optimize the user experience to harness users’ trust. To acquire full iOS attribution coverage, marketers should also make sure their media partners are integrated with SKadNetwork (SKAD) and that reporting includes SKAD data without double counting. 

Lastly, marketers can prepare early for the holiday rush by utilizing the lower cost per install (CPI) in Q3 and increase UA before Q4 rush. AppsFlyer reminds marketers that remarketing reaches its peak effectiveness in November and December while CPI rises dramatically in Q4.

2021 Spending In Ecommerce Apps Up 35 Percent YoY

March 2021 saw an in-app revenue spike that was just 6 percent less than the peak in November 2020 and 9 percent higher than the July 2020 spike resulting from the first COVID-19 lockdown. Despite the fact that in-app spend has declined by 16 percent since March 2021, it’s up 35 percent YoY through July 2021.

November 2020 experienced a 16 percent holiday season spike over that year’s previous high watermark. This year, AppsFlyer predicts ecommerce in-app spend will rise by 42 percent between July and November.

App Install Ad Spend Down 10 Percent YoY In 2021

Despite ecommerce app installs being up 2 percent YoY in 2021, app install ad spend per app is down 10 percent this year, according to AppsFlyer. Nevertheless, ad spend is very likely to surge during Q4 based on the consistent holiday rush.

iOS app install ad spend per app was 22 percent higher, on average, than Android between January and April. In the months after the iOS 14.5 launch, Android install ad spend per app surpassed that of iOS spend by 4 percent on average.

Marketers Aren’t Capitalizing On Low Android Cost Per Install (CPI)

Compared to non-organic installs being 14 percent below the average for the same period last year, Android CPI was 50 percent below average in July 2021. Consequently, Q3 and Q4 2021 will likely serve as strategic moments to invest in Android UA given the holiday season and that overall Android installs in July 2021 were just 5 percent below average.

In addition, AppsFlyer found that iOS CPI surged leading up to iOS 14.5. Q1 2021 iOS CPI is up 129 percent over Q1 2020 while the average Android CPI is up 20 percent over the same period.

Making Your Product Marketable, Valuable, And Usable With Innovatemap’s Christian Beck

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Christian Beck is an executive partner at Innovatemap where he focuses on growth strategy and design. He is also the host of the podcast Better Product.

While Christian doesn’t consider himself a marketer, he and I discuss design, user experience, and how marketing is tied closely to his role. Throughout the rest of our conversation, we also touch on how the scale of technology is outpacing human cognition, why that matters, and what making a good product is all about.

According to Christian, a “better product is marketable, valuable, and usable.” Since technology is evolving rapidly, companies must be intentional about sticking to the fundamental design principles—designing around human behavior. What can marketers learn from design and vice versa? Listen to the full conversation to find out.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How technology scale is outpacing human cognition
  • Why a better product is marketable, valuable, and usable 
  • The push for community in product spaces

Key Highlights:

  • [01:24] Why Christian doesn’t see himself as a marketer
  • [02:15] Why he started with design 
  • [06:20] Technology scale outpaces human cognition
  • [11:47] Who is Innovatemap? How did it begin?
  • [15:10] What makes a good product?
  • [18:36] How the Better Product podcast was born
  • [22:22] The push for community
  • [26:32] An experience that defines Christian makes him who he is today
  • [28:22] Christian’s advice for his younger self
  • [30:02] What marketers should be learning more about
  • [33:58] The brands and organizations Christian follows
  • [36:35] The biggest threat and opportunity marketers face

Resources Mentioned: 

Subscribe to the podcast:

Connect with the Guest:

Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart:

Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.

Fintech App Marketers Set To Spend A Record Amount On User Acquisition

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In the last two years, financial technology (fintech) app downloads jumped 132 percent globally and 110 percent in the US alone. That’s according to AppsFlyer’s latest report on the state of finance app marketing, which details COVID-19’s impact on the industry.

Last year, fintech app marketers worldwide invested $3 billion to acquire new users and have already spent $1.2 billion in Q1 2021, reports AppsFlyer. US fintech app marketers commanded over 35 percent of worldwide budgets, investing $985 million on user acquisition in 2020. Latin America came in a distant second with a 20 percent share, followed by Japan and Korea and Western Europe.

Demand for finance apps is growing across the world. Between Q1 2019 and Q1 2021, as more people switched to banking and investing from home, non-organic (NOI) installs globally ballooned 172 percent.

AppsFlyer notes that 29 of the top 40 markets by app installs saw a 20 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). During Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, the top three markets by number of fintech app installs were India, Brazil and Indonesia, which altogether comprised nearly half of the global number of downloads.

AppsFlyer’s research also shows digital banking installs increased 45 percent in Q1 2021, while traditional banks saw a 22 percent rise in installs during the same period.

In the US, NOI doubled between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, although the surge in cost of media in iOS made it harder for the average finance app to scale UA as much as Android, according to AppsFlyer. The report shows there was a 50 percent gap between the share of NOI installs on both platforms, mostly driven by investment apps.

Another result of the high demand for finance apps: a 34 percent jump in cost per install (CPI) between Q1 2020 and Q2 2020 to $12.4 average per app. AppsFlyer found that CPI dropped 28 percent in Q3.

Financial services lead iOS with a 37 percent conversion rate—nearly 70 percent higher than the runner-up, investment apps. For Android, digital banking apps came in first with a 33 percent conversion rate.

Lastly, AppsFlyer data show that app install fraud rates in the US have plummeted, with Android’s fraud rate dropping 80 percent between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021. Though the fraud rate was much lower on iOS, the decline in app install fraud on the platform was similar. Bots were the primary form of fraud attack on Android while click flooding plagued iOS.

AppsFlyer’s findings are based on an anonymous aggregate of proprietary global data gathered from 4.7 billion finance app installs. Among those installs, 400 million installs and 120 million NOI were based in the US.

Report: Mobile App Installs Up 31 Percent YoY In Q1

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Mobile app installs were up by 31 percent year-over-year (YoY) in Q1, according to Adjust’s annual ‘Mobile App Trends’ report. The figure is a testament to the app economy’s uninterrupted ascent since the start of the pandemic — in 2020, app installs surged 50 percent YoY across all verticals, reports Adjust.

In its latest study, Adjust shares mobile growth trends in the gaming, ecommerce and fintech verticals including insights about installs, sessions, time spent in-app, and retention and reattribution rates globally.

Starting with fintech apps, Adjust found that installs grew 51 percent from 2019 to 2020 and are up again by 12 percent in Q1 YoY. Investing and stock-related app searches in particular surged 115 percent YoY, while crypto app downloads saw a 81 percent growth YoY.

Fintech sessions surged too, growing 85 percent YoY; they’re already up 35 percent in 2021, according to Adjust. Fintech sessions grew steadily with the largest weeks at early October (22 percent above average) and late November (24 percent above average).

Compared to gaming and ecommerce apps, Adjust notes that fintech apps had the highest number of returning users: 18 percent on day seven and 12 percent on day 30.

Gaming app installs overall increased by 51 percent in 2020 YoY— 26 percent for non-hyper casual games and 43 percent for hyper casual games. For the latter, the last week of March and first week of April was the best performing period, namely 51 percent above the yearly average. For hyper casual games, growth was strong at the beginning of 2020 though it decreased throughout March then stayed steady for the rest of the year.

In 2020, sessions for non-hyper casual games increased by 27 percent YoY, with sessions for 2021 currently down 9 percent below last year. Sessions for hyper casual games grew by 36 percent YoY, with current sessions down 21 percent so far.

As Adjust notes, last year casual gaming and sports gaming posted the highest session lengths at 21.19 and 22.77 minutes each. Hyper casual sat at 18.78. Overall, users spent 42 percent more time on casual games than on hyper casual.

Upon analyzing Q4 2020, the best performing quarter of the year, games retained best on day one at nearly 30 percent, followed by hyper casual at 27 percent. As per Adjust, hyper casual games must acquire the maximum revenue per user in the first two days of download as retention rates dip heavily after that — just 7.5 percent of users return by day seven and 1.75 percent return by day 30.

Ecommerce installs only grew 6 percent in 2020, but sessions saw a 44 percent surge, showing how deeply engaged users became. Still, 2021 is looking strong so far with Q1 at 11 percent above the yearly average, reports Adjust.

Ecommerce apps retained well, with 13 percent on day seven and 8 percent on day 30. Their reattribution rates hit their peak in Q3 last year at 1.22.

Getting into paid versus organic installs, Adjust’s findings reveal the highest overall share of paid installs took place in Q1 and Q3 of 2020, during which time there were 0.45 paid installs for every organic.

Hyper casual had the highest ratio of paid installs to organic installs, hitting 3.17 by Q4, while shopping saw its largest share of paid installs in Q1, at 0.85. Fintech, on the other hand, had a low share of paid installs — 0.1 to 0.13 for payment and 0.8 to 0.2 for banking, respectively.

At a median of $1.88 per install, Q4 was the most expensive quarter to acquire users. Hyper casual came in at $0.27 per install, gaming at $2.52 and ecommerce at $1.56. Adjust’s data show fintech had its priciest quarter in Q1 at $1.57 versus $0.53 in Q2.

These findings are based on a mix of Adjust’s top 2,000 apps and its complete dataset of all the apps it tracks.

Cannes Lions Awards Microsoft As 2021 Creative Marketer Of The Year

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The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has named Microsoft its 2021 Creative Marketer of the Year.

The win comes after Microsoft has won Lions across a vast suite of products over the years, including Xbox, Microsoft Cloud, Microsoft Kinect, Windows 7, Windows Vista, OneNote, MSN and its Halo series.

“The accolade is presented to an advertiser that has amassed a body of creative and Lion-winning work over a sustained period of time, and has established a reputation for producing brave creative and innovative marketing solutions,” reads a press release.

Over the years, Ayzenberg has been proud to help tell the story of Microsoft’s initiatives for Xbox One X, Microsoft 365, Microsoft AI, Xbox Game Pass, Gears 5 and Minecraft Earth, among other campaigns.

Last November, Ayzenberg helped Xbox debut its new Series X and S consoles, respectively. And in February, Xbox launched its new wireless headset, the trailer for which Ayzenberg helped create.

“Watching Microsoft, the past few years at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has been like watching one of the legendary sports franchises methodically build to preeminence. It starts with veteran leaders whose experience is only surpassed by a relentless pursuit of perfection. It builds on a deep bench of players exceeding expectations by the company in which they find themselves. But to reach the pinnacle of Creative Marketer of the Year, the team has got to get to the point that they are mission-driven and playing as one. Awards aside, you can feel that this has happened for Microsoft,” Matt Bretz, executive creative director, Ayzenberg, told AList.

In 2019 alone, Microsoft won 11 Lions, five of which were captured by McCann New York’s ‘Changing the Game’ spot for the Xbox Adaptive Controller, including a Grand Prix in Brand Experience & Activation and a Titanium Lion.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be recognized for our creative storytelling. Our ambition to amplify the voices of customers and changemakers—from kids who use the Xbox Adaptive Controller to trailblazers like 49ers Offensive Assistant Coach, Katie Sowers—help demonstrate how technology can bring us closer together and inspire meaningful, positive change in the world,” said Chris Capossela, chief marketing officer, Microsoft.

The Lions will honor Microsoft on Friday, June 25 during Cannes Lions Live, the first-ever virtual edition of the festival after last year’s edition got canceled. The fully digital experience will run from June 21-25.

This year, all Lions members will have complimentary access to Cannes Lions Live with their subscription fee, which includes awards results, analysis, commentary and a “creativity on demand” channel.

Why CMOs Love/Hate Data

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Can data be fun? Ayzenberg VP of Product and Technology Chris Strawser believes so. He and Sepulveda Partners founding partner Ben Tiernan join Listen In to make the case that the golden age of data analysis is here—and we need not fear it.

Chris and Ben share the work they’ve put into Datarithm, their solution for making meaning out of the mess and complexity of data. They explain why it’s finally time for CMOs to shake of anxieties regarding data analysis, and to start embracing it.

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About Listen In: Each week on Listen In, Ayzenberg VP and ECD Matt Bretz and a rotating cast of hosts from Ayzenberg will interview experts in the field of marketing and advertising to explore uncharted territory together. The goal is to provide the a.network audience with actionable insights, enabling them to excel in their field.