We’re searching for the most pressing marketing insights this week. Updated daily.
Purpose At Work: Ocean Spray’s Key To Leadership During Challenging Times
Forbes
Ocean Spray senior vice president and chief operating officer Brian Schiegg says that in response to COVID, the company added $1.50 an hour for frontline food manufacturing associates, as well as donated over 100,000 meals and hundreds of thousands of its juices and snacks to people in need.
Why it matters: When asked where he thinks the company’s instinctive reaction comes from, Schiegg says: “People aren’t looking for a picture or a press release. They’re just trying to do the right thing and let that stand on its own.” Schiegg emphasizes the importance of leading with empathy and communicating with internal members as much as possible.
Examining A ‘Safe And Just Return To Work’
WWD
The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) released a report titled “A Safe and Just Return to Work” highlighting the need for caution around reopening businesses. The report offers safety guidelines and highlights the need for workers’ input and fair compensation for sick, injured and at-risk workers.
Why it matters: With some businesses poised for reopening, national COSH’s co-executive director Jessica Martinez urges companies to involve their workers in decisions about workplace safety.
Is Your Marketing Strategy Based On The Right Data?
Harvard Business Review
To ensure their data works for them, marketers must start with the simplest dataset required to inform a business decision then build a virtuous feedback loop between data, insight and action. Marketers must also analyze digital data to understand if customers are using the services for which they’re paying and getting the appropriate value, the moments in the customer’s buying process that influence their decision and the conversations that are converting to sales.
Why it matters: As a result of the pandemic, marketers can no longer rely on previous assumptions about their customers. Instead they must evaluate the right data, the right way.
Why We Need To Rethink The Purpose Of AI: A Conversation With Stuart Russell
McKinsey & Company
In this episode of the McKinsey on AI podcast mini-series, University of California, Berkeley, professor Stuart Russell says to ensure artificial intelligence benefits humanity rather than cause us harm, we must abandon the idea of creating “intelligent” machines altogether.
Why it matters: As per Russell: “The key characteristics . . . are first, being of benefit to the humans is the only objective for machines. But the second principle is that the machine does not know what that means. It does not know our preferences for how the future should unfold, and that turns out to be crucial. It knows that it doesn’t know the objective. The third principle is essentially what enables it to learn more about the objective, that our choices, our behavior reveals information about our underlying preferences.”
Constraint Fuels Creativity, Says Cannes Lion Chairman
Adweek
Cannes Lions chairman Philip Thomas believes that going digital with events isn’t good enough to replace the real thing and that constraint fuels creativity, citing the correlation between low budgets and award-worthy work.
Why it matters: With Cannes Lion and other major events completely canceled this year, brands and agencies alike are trying their best to understand what the future holds.
Goop’s Chief Content Officer On Balancing Self-Care At Work
Harvard Business Review
In HBR’s “The Anxious Achiever” podcast, Goop chief content officer Elise Loehnen tells host Morra Aarons Mele employees should be privy to each other’s mental health conditions and maintain open dialogue about their feelings at work. Loehnen says an easy way leaders can hold space for vulnerability is to sit in a circle and have each person describe their vulnerability as either red, yellow, or green.
Why it matters: Keeping open lines of communication in the workplace helps employers and employees understand each other’s behavior.
US Fashion And Beauty Retailers Begin To Reopen
Fashionista
After weeks of lockdown, several retail chains like American Eagle, Gap and Macy’s are preparing to reopen portions of their store fleets in states like Texas and Georgia. Gap is reopening 800 of its stores before the end of May, Macy’s has opened 118 stores and American Eagle has opened 43 of its 1,000+ American Eagle and Aerie stores, with plans to open 600 by the end of May.
Why it matters: Precautions like limiting occupancy, hand sanitizer stations, face coverings and new fitting room procedures will make for a very different shopping experience.
What Industry Leaders Won’t Miss About TV Upfront Presentations
Ad Age
Things annual attendees of the upfronts won’t miss about the event include: fighting for seats, having to travel on Mother’s Day, waiting out in the rain and all the conflicting reviews of each presentation.
Why it matters: The upfront presentations aren’t all glitz and glamour.
Savage x Fenty Creates Community From Self-Isolation In New Campaign
Fashionista
Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty recruited its brand ambassadors, friends and customers to create its summer campaign via self-photographed images of them wearing the brand’s latest pieces, reimagined by mixed-media artist Rafatoon.
Why it matters: Many brands have started outsourcing creative content at a time when in-person shoots aren’t a viable option.
