Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Ira Glass on the Creative Process

THE GAP by Ira Glass from DanielSax//frohlocke on Vimeo. Connections and creativity are related. This video is a demonstration of that by use of everyday objects and metaphors. Daniel Sax, the creator, says: I think it was at springtime 2012, when I came across David Shiyang Lius lovely piece of work about Ira Glass. It was the most inspiring and motivating video, I have ever seen in my life. I watched it over and over again, listened to Ira Glass' voice and told myself, that I am not the only person who is constantly disappointed about the gap between ones... Read more →

When the Intermediary is not Adding Value

The chart is from a smart post by Ben Thompson# where he adapts to publishing Acer founder Stan Stih's idea that both ends of the value chain command higher values added to the product than the middle part of the value chain. Shih called it the “Smiling Curve.” Thompson articulated how not so smiling for traditional publishers: The problem for publishers, though, is that the free distribution provided by the Internet is not an exclusive. It’s available to every other newspaper as well. Moreover, it’s also available to publishers of any type, even bloggers like myself. This reminds me of... Read more →

Impact of Digital in Store

My best friend when I was a teenager owned a fashion retail store -- well, her family did. One of those stores you see in towns when you travel to Italy, way before discount malls made their way there. She worked in the store during the summer and to help her mother out on Saturdays. It was a perfect opportunity for me to spend time with her, while doing something fashion-related. Incidentally, I was producing a line of earrings at the time, pearls and lace, very chic, made them myself. My mother kept a pair for sentimental reasons and two... Read more →

Getting Digital Right Impacts Business Performance

Starting with gaining a company-wide understanding of how the entire business benefits from digital. Last year, a McKinsey report outlined how digital transformation drives business value by enhancing connectivity, automating manual tasks, helping improve decision making, and supporting product / service innovation. The increased involvement of C-level executives# in both supporting and sponsoring digital business initiatives underscores the importance of getting it right to corporate performance. Having a digital vision and executive sponsorship are a good starting point; organizational alignment, followed closely by business processes and actual implementation are critical to making it work. With more than 1,000 selections just... Read more →

Blogs Still Underutilized Tool to Connect Content and Commerce

A new study# conducted by L2 in partnership with Demandware provides evidence that content and commerce can and should coexist in direct-to-consumer channels: Historically, site investments by retailers have bifurcated into two camps: (a) optimizing commerce by providing a streamlined push-to-cart and checkout experience; or (b) organizing rich content to enhance engagement and build brand equity. It is a well-know fact that before making a purchase people go online to browse options and research solutions. Sites that combine product information and, for instance, reviews, instructional videos, along with other branded content provide a richer, differentiated experience that helps sway decisions.... Read more →

End of Apps, Side Projects, and Opportunity

Making Sense: The End Of Apps As We Know Them. Paul Adams: [via] One final step further. What if the cards came from other things? Like vending machines that you walk up to and pay through the card? Hotels you walk into and order your breakfast or pay for the wifi? The ramifications for websites might also be huge. If a publishing company, for example the New York Times, can push content to cards, and those cards can be seen in many different third party places (with revenue sharing agreements) why bother having a website at all? It’s just a... Read more →

Broadening Experience to Make Better Connections

Every industry tends to be a bit insular. What happens when you are fully immersed in one environment is that you end up absorbing the thinking of those around you, and that by and large is colored by like-experiences. Plus, as Fred Wilson said#, you may end up in a bubble, where many of the people you come into contact with have a vested interest in telling you what you want to hear. There is a reason why CEOs are some of the loneliest people in business: everyone they work with works for them, the people they report to are... Read more →

How do You Search for Experiences?

At first blush, the shifts in marketing spending seem to favor the direct response approach. After all, the very first thing we do when we are thinking about something we want, or have seen is to power up our laptop, or smartphone/tablet, and look for it. Google continues to benefit from this reflex because it is basically the only game in town#. In aggregate, marketers are spending almost $50 billion in search and is still the largest part of digital advertising vs. $34 billion for display. Digital is still about 5.7 percent of the total ad spend, however, which is... Read more →

Worshiping at the Targeting Altar

The idea of knowing what people want to buy before you serve them an ad is genuinely revolutionary. Or at least it would be if it actually worked, says Richard Huntington. Making assumptions about people based on past behavior is a good way to be exactly wrong. I've brought it up before. Many do research on behalf of clients, or for a relative, or to write a blog post. Although we use search to get stuff done, search, alone, is not a dead on indication of purchasing intent. In other words, it is missing context. Let me give you an... Read more →

Holiday Commerce Circa 2014

It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays. This year's forecasts and predictions are zeoring into the proverbial market trifecta -- more focused spending, business moves from digital-native commercial powerhouses like Amazon, eBay, and Google to deliver products faster, and consumer rising expectations are converging to create a very interesting pre-holiday season. Brian Kilcourse at RSR Research says expect a wild cyber weeked, not just Monday. RSR eCommerce Benchmarks# on digital channels influence over spending: 40% of retailers believe that between 5-25% of their total sales are influenced 16% think that 25-50% of their sales are impacted, and 11%... Read more →