Understanding the Metaverse and why it matters.

What?

The metaverse is a shared virtual space composed of user-created virtual spaces united into a virtual universe. The spaces own unique attributes for economies, currency, digital assets, and avatars. Each space requires a user to enter it, to experience it, and exists whether a user enters or not. The space exists and operates independent of the outside world and other virtual spaces. Each virtual space supports interaction for users within the space.

“Metaverse is a working term for cyberspace that enables users to “live” within a digital universe with the help of next-gen technologies.” (“A Beginner’s Guide to the Metaverse | HackerNoon”)  

Why?

Metaverse interactions enable in-person connection and communication anytime, anywhere, virtually. The vision is that metaverse will service and support a virtual space’s economy. An economy that will be selective on supporting business building, commerce and virtual networking for work, training, and family events. Picture entering the International Bazaar (virtual space) to get outfitted for a return to fitness running. You (your avatar) connect with your personal assistant (avatar) who knows your health history and preferences and has prioritized which brands within the Bazaar you should try. With your digital twin you try on different shoe models and gear and take them for a test run checking fit. The personal assistant confirms your choice and enters your orders. This stresses a key point, the metaverse is more than gamification.

“Even though it was initially marketed as a new kind of massively multi-player online game the OASIS quickly evolved into a new way of life” Ready Player One. 

This new way of life will afford the opportunity of bridging the physical and virtual worlds for entertainment, travel, working, and business creation.

How?

The companies that are leading in creating a metaverse solution are consistent in the stack of services for delivering a solution. Even with the metaverse being in its infancy, the service stack has emerged with seven layers.  

• Infrastructure – cloud computing and telecommunications needed to build the higher levels 
• Human Interface – hardware for metaverse access (mobile, VR headsets, haptics, smart glasses)
• Spatial Computing – software 3D object rendering and interaction
• Creative Economy – tools & technologies monetizing experiences, products, and services
• Decentralization – tools promoting planning/decision-making with limited or no central control
• Discover – how potential users find out about a virtual space
• Experience- level of engagement, why users would come into a virtual space

Next-Gen technologies chosen by layer will deliver the capabilities necessary to meet metaverse expectations. 

When?

Metaverse is in its infancy. Metaverse maturity level can be assessed by the building tool set availability and the sophistication of current metaverse offerings.

Acknowledged building toolsets:

• Unity – 3D engine for gaming and metaverse experiences complement by digital assets from their Asset Store.
• Epic Games – in addition to owning games and sponsoring metaverse events, Unreal Engine is a 3D engine, design studio and asset marketplace. 
• Roblox – Supporting creators with a design platform with 3 D engine and marketplace for sharing assets and code.

Metaverses offerings that exist:

• Cryptovoxesls – Origin City’s decentralization and currency (ETH) are powered by the Ethereum blockchain. The provided editing tools, avatar, and text chat support land purchase, and building stores and art galleries.
• Decentraland – Decentralization and currency (MANA) are powered by the Ethereum blockchain. There is a marketplace where digital assets (real estate (LAND), wearables, avatar names) are managed, traded, and purchased.
• Sandbox – space focuses on unleashing gaming creativity by providing a platform for construction, ownership, and monetization of virtual experiences. Non-Fungible Tokens allow verifiable ownership of in-game assets.
• Somnium Space – The Ethereum platform supports an economy with decentralized marketplaces and tokenization of virtual land, assets, and experiences.

Is It for Real?

If the following is only 50% accurate, Metaverse progress and use has to be taken seriously.

Matthew Ball, CEO of Venture Capital firm Epyllion, believes that the metaverse economy could value between $10-30 trillion in the next decade 

Ready to get Meta?

Yalo can help. Our Web development and app development services and virtual reality offerings can transport your business firmly into 21^st century spaces. Reach out to us below to have a trenchant conversation!                         

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Catching the Wave

We have calmed most of the concern of artificial intelligence replacing workers.  Today, artificial intelligence is part of the fabric of our lives (Alexa, Siri) and an important part of business strategy. A strategy fast-tracked by COVID to deliver efficient and remote business processes. Businesses have dealt with worker shortages, supply chain change and inflation which have accelerated the introduction of the Internet of Things, 5G and artificial intelligence. Validating Sundar Pichai’s, CEO of Google Inc. claim that artificial intelligence will have a far greater impact than fire and electricity on humanity.

Another indicator of artificial intelligence’s impact is where are the best minds in technology going in industry and academia. The most recent Taulbee Survey 2020 by Computer Research Association indicates where the information technology PhD awardees are applying their expertise in academia and in industry. With the data from the report, in academia 17% are pursuing research and teaching appointments in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Considering todays’ artificial intelligence progress, we are experiencing the benefits of enterprise operational efficiency. The following trends will enable progression to the crest of the wave.

Augment

Enterprise implementations of artificial intelligence has help overcome the fear of the intelligent machine. For now, instead of machines replacing the workforce, machines analyze data and create information relevant for the workforce. Artificial intelligence augmenting the workforce is present in many professional fields including:

• Genetics – grouping DNA patterns to study evolutionary biology
• Dimensionality Reduction – problem simplification by reducing random variables resulting in better data visualization
• Ecology – comparison of audio recording of regions for comparison of species population for biodiversity

Expanded artificial intelligence use extends the need for data creation and growing AI literacy. This environment will develop more user-friendly tool sets which sort through the data isolating the value creating information for task completion.

Literacy

Language modeling is an artificial intelligence discipline that is significantly impacting our daily lives. With language modeling, machines and humans can interact and understand with a language that people can understand. Natural language processing (NLP) takes language and converts into computer code that runs programs and applications. In addition to use in intelligent voice assistants (Google, Siri, Alexa) NLP applied to:

• Web search – allowing algorithms to read text and translate to another language
• Word processing – supporting grammar and spelling checks
• Sentiment analysis – analyzing text for intent and processing customer feedback

The recent Open AI release of GPT3 is the most advanced language model to date, approaching the ability to conduct a conversation with users, moving toward literacy. NLP facilitating the human-machine interface will accelerate the democratization of technology in general and the acceptance of artificial intelligence.

Safety

With growth of knowledge and machines involved in business operations and our daily lives, there is an increased cybercrime risk. More human interaction and machine additions to the network create more points of failure. Artificial intelligence’s smart algorithms will manage network complexity, detect patterns, and network traffic call attention to dubious activities. Artificial intelligence’s smart algorithms will address cybersecurity by:

• Network Vulnerability and Threat Detection – faster identification and detection of threats
• Threat Defense Maintenance – automatic update and vetting of defense layers
• Incident Diagnosis and Response – quickly identifying what, why and how a breach happened
• Cyber Threat Analysis and Reports – AI data collection and NLP reporting tools for collecting data and summarize reports for timely distribution.

Through surveillance and antivirus software design, artificial intelligence will serve an ever-increasing cybersecurity role.

Metaverse

Metaverse is defined as a digital environment where multiple users can work and play together. This virtual world concept received a significant boost with the Mark Zuckerberg announcement of creating a metaverse combining virtual technology and Facebook. Users constructing these environments will be able to engage and expanding their creativity. Experiences in the metaverse will involve interacting with AI bots for relaxation and potentially as virtual assistants in selecting products and services. AI will play a significant role in creating and maintaining these virtual environments.

Simple As Possible

With increasing demand for the application of artificial intelligence, organizations are facing an artificial intelligence and engineering shortage in creating new tools and algorithms. This is a huge barrier in adopting the technology at the rate of change. Delivering artificial intelligence and machine language tools requires a sophisticated and evolving set of skills implementing this technology. Addressing this challenge with a set of tools to simplify the creations process will be a priority, but it is important to heed Albert Einstein’s caution:

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

The artificial intelligence No Code solutions are emulating web designing solutions where users drag and drop modules/features from a library to build a website ready page. No-Code artificial intelligence systems will create smart solutions by combining pre-created modules and supplying solution specific data through intuitive user interfaces. 

Contact Yalo’s resident Data Scientist Rich Krahn for more great insights as part of our data analytics services. Contact Yalo below to get started on a conversation about our many design and development services that can help your business to thrive digitally.

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When it comes to lead generation on your website, it all starts with one page; the homepage.

Not only does your homepage set the tone for a good (or poor) user experience, it can also mean the difference between a lead and zilch.

As you know, a good homepage should include a strong CTA and be tested with a few different elements.

Here are 4 tactics to consider to optimize your homepage.

• Opt-In forms and gated content: Gated content is all about capturing a lead. Offer something of value to visitors on these pages in return for their contact information. E-books or whitepapers are another example of gated content that you can offer to visitors. Remember to keep your opt-in form short and sweet – name and email should suffice. 

• Chatbots: Chatbots offer a non-threatening first engagement with your users. If your chatbot is able to help a potential customer, there’s a good chance you’ll get a lead from it. Make sure you program your chatbot to sound as human as possible.

• SEO: With over 3 billion searches a day on Google, you’d be foolish not to rely on SEO tactics. While the days of keyword stuffing are long gone, don’t sleep on quality, relevant content that’s updated regularly. It may take some time, but it’ll make a difference. 

• Referral system: How much is a lead worth to you? Some companies offer a discount to previous customers for coughing up a friend’s email address. Do keep a close eye on the KPIs to see if a referral strategy works for your business.

Let Yalo help you optimize your website and create impactful returns. We offer a wide array of creative services from our offices in Atlanta & Cleveland – interactive & development, design system managers, marketing communications and more – that can come into play to make your homepage (and the rest of your website) sparkle like a lead-gen jewel.

In today’s frenetic, fast-paced B2B sales environment, it can be hard to ensure that your sales team is having the right conversations with their prospects to deliver value and drive deals forward. The biggest impediment seems easy, but in reality is a complex problem to solve: equipping sales with the right content based on their unique prospects and specific selling situation.

Odds are, your organization already has some form of sales enablement in place, as 80% of organizations with sales teams bigger than ten people currently use sales enablement tools and practices, according to research from Highspot. But are you getting the best results from your efforts?

Here are 5 ways to shore up your sales enablement:

1. Reduce the Time Sales Spends on Non-Selling Activities

This seems a little straightforward, but most organizations have multiple portals or tools where sales reps are supposed to go to find what they need, and reps are spending between four to eight hours a week just searching for the right marketing content to send their prospects. The Sales Enablement Lab podcast is a great place to listen and learn how focusing sales on revenue producing activities and allowing marketing to gain better insight into content usage and impact.

2. Map Sales Enablement to the Customer Journey

We operate in industries with long buying cycles, this is just a fact of life. For example, the average lifespan for an ERP system is between 5-10 years and the buying cycle can be 12-18 months long, this timescale will not shorten in the foreseeable future. These solutions come at a great cost to an organization, and when you are making a decision that will affect the company for 5-10 years you will be dealing with highly informed buyers.

By mapping out the sales enablement strategy to mirror the customer journey you can arm your sales representatives with the content they need to match the customer’s current life cycle stage. Using automation you can drip feed information to your awareness stage prospects until they are sales ready, allowing your sales team to focus their efforts on closing decision stage prospects, without letting any leads go cold.

3. Give Your Team Easy Access to Content

The fact is, 90% of content goes unused by sales, according to the American Marketing Association. This is largely because sales simply can’t find it. Is your sales enablement system flexible? Can your content be organized in a meaningful way for your sales team in one centralized library? Flexible content organization and content recommendations based on performance, informed by your marketing automation platform, help keep conversations on point and accelerate conversions. 

4. Integrate Sales Enablement Across the Company

Sales enablement requires input from multiple teams, not just the sales department. Throughout the entirety of your customer’s life cycle, it is inevitable that they will come in contact with many departments, much more than just the sales and marketing teams. This means that in order to create long-lasting relationships with happy customers and to secure repeat purchase it becomes essential to deliver a consistent customer experience across all contact points.

By implementing a consistent sales enablement program business wide you can ensure that everyone in the organization has been empowered to support the core sales team with the ability to align the right resources to the right prospect. Each department understands their role in ensuring the right information, tools and subject matter can be delivered in a way which is relevant to each selling situation.

When sales and marketing teams work together harmoniously, companies typically see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher close rates.

5. Use Technology to Accelerate Success

Many sales departments don’t have the time or resources to evaluate and implement new technology. And yet, the right technology solution can help them be more effective in hitting their numbers and closing deals. This is an area where marketing can step in and help. As you’re vetting, deploying, and implementing best-of-breed solutions, consider what applications, features, or solutions can help sales prioritize leads  and work more efficiently and effectively, driving results across the entire organization.

Having a platform in place that enables data-driven analysis of what content, strategies, and processes are most effective in various situations lifts the performance of the entire sales team. This applies to them sharing insights with your marketing team as well. 

Learn more about how you can empower your sales team by contacting Yalo – we have a whole team of technologists, business analysts and salespeople who can help you win more business within which industry you compete.

Click below to hear Yalo’s CEO, Arnold Huffman, and his recent one-on-one interview with Atlanta Business Radio.

Learn even more about Yalo and our accomplishments and achievements by visiting our Press section.

AI is here and in the words of PF Sloane, many think we are on the “the eve of destruction.” But it is not that dire, it always feels this way when we are on “the eve of disruption.” For example:

• 100 years ago, Kodak “fiends” were roaming the country taking pictures without permission, considered an invasion of privacy by many and legal actions were even pursued to prevent this activity.
• “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” Popular Mechanics, 1946.
• Twenty years after television’s invention, in 1946 Darryl Zanuck stated, ”people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
• The cell phone was viewed as having no viable future. Marty Cooper, known as the father of the cell phone, was quoted as saying, “cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems,” “Even if you project it beyond our lifetimes, it won’t be cheap enough.”

Challenges of AI

The artificial intelligence disruption is rolling in and protesting or lamenting the risks will not hold it back. In these situations, big opportunities come commensurate with risks and responsibilities. Minimizing the challenges confronting this generation presents significant leadership moments. So, we have been here before, the next wave is approaching, and “disaster” is just around the corner. What is different this time is the reach of artificial intelligence in a Now-Digital, Now-IT based world.

The artificial intelligence wave is here, perhaps not cresting yet and what are some of the most frequently presented concerns?

• It’s The Wild West Out There – As invasive as artificial intelligence can be, standards (pgs. 18 & 19) for testing and ethics are at best just emerging.
• Man + Machine – Trusting the outputs is an increasing concern considering all of the artificial intelligence applications and this further-complicates the increasing machine-and-software addiction possibilities.
• Judgment – Intelligent machines require context from humans to complete tasks. This results in a single-mindedness in completing the task. If there is a conflict or roadblocks in completing the tasks, will AI make the right call or violate Issac Assimov’s laws?
• Control – Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded,” according to Prof Stephen Hawking. How do humans guide artificial intelligence innovation without losing control?
• We Don’t Have All The Answers – As machine intelligence grows, what are the plans to monitor the algorithms and learning abilities of AI and to have standards, ethics and tracking in-place to control, isolate and fix issues?

These are some of the challenges with artificial intelligence, but not a complete list.

Opportunities for AI

The challenges are plentiful but the opportunities are significant. They include:

• Predictive maintenance for automobiles and capital equipment (glass furnaces, paint systems)
• Packaging recommendations for eCommerce deliveries- thereby reducing transportation cost and waste
• Fraud prevention for credit card usage and online recommendations
• Logistics support in assessing traffic flows and optimizing transportation routes
• New drug creation leveraging historical data and medical intelligence

It is hard to imagine a discipline where artificial analysis has greater impact than marketing. Areas affected include:

• Personalization of the customer experience: social media, email, eCommerce, and notifications
• Monitoring and enhancing delivery of paid ad campaigns
• Improving the content and context of content creation using natural language processing and sentiment analysis tools
• Intelligent chatbots delivering human-like performance during online customer interactions
• Anticipating churn and focusing content and notifications to re-engage customers
• Showcasing products and/or services based on customer interactions with enterprise

With all the avenues for delivery business value, it is little wonder that artificial intelligence is projected to deliver additional global output of $13 trillion dollars.

Where We Go From Here

The value proposition is extensive, while at the same time the risk profile can be viewed as daunting. Where do we go from here?

Managing the introduction of artificial intelligence must address risk areas mentioned earlier. The risk/reward relationship has all of the elements associated with introducing any new technology. Artificial intelligence intensifies the risk/rewards because we are replacing routine human tasks and/or introducing data relationships and business tasks not easily grasped or described. 

Not understanding all the outcomes after AI implementation impacts the ability to have a sense of risk profiles for each potential application. Prevention and second order thinking becomes critical in assessing unintended consequences. This starts with the technology used to implement solutions powered by artificial intelligence. Isolating, cleansing and using appropriate unstructured data from a variety of sources is an emerging challenge. This must be accomplished in a secure manner, without revealing sensitive and personal information, and still achieve the business value of the algorithm/model. The delivery of the right data at the right time along with the uptime of the infrastructure of the solution is also key when artificial intelligence is applied to a mission-critical function, like customer service. Additionally, when utilizing what appears like non-sensitive information in building the artificial intelligence solution, the appropriate security levels must be established so that bad actors are prevented from building false identities for hacking and data-theft activities.

If an artificial intelligence solution could be compared to an automobile, the above elements would be similar to the frame, body, and tires/brakes. The real “engine” is the algorithm. In building and maintaining the algorithm, constant vigilance is required to ensure that recommended outcomes are consistent with regulations, social norms, and brand image. Managing the supplied data and supervising the algorithm includes addressing concerns over bias, underrepresented populations, and outcomes where there is no recourse (outcomes where it is unknown how to change the recommendation). Outcomes and response also require consideration on how the AI solution interacts with humans. When and how do humans interact with solutions when the solutions are slow to react to or are generating safety issues. This is not straightforward because they must also address situations where human judgment may be incorrect. 

When implementing artificial intelligence, the following quote comes to mind:

“Where there is great power there is great responsibility,” Winston Churchill 1906

In meeting the challenges that artificial intelligence presents, a structured enterprise approach that isolates the most critical risks, controls for the development/implementation of solutions, and strategizes to prioritize risks based on model transparency, complexity, and the nature of the human interface, is whole-heartedly advised in order to achieve success.

Yalo has begun our journey with artificial intelligence by offering our Sentiment Analysis services for AI for social media. Please learn more here about this exciting service.

I ran my first marathon in February. During the pandemic I started running just to get out of the house. Fast forward 10 months and I am on the starting line for the Florida Marathon.

At the starting line, I had in mind, the perfect plan to reach my racing goal. Over the next four hours, I was dealt some serious, unexpected roadblocks that jeopardized me reaching the finish line. The more I reflected on what happened, the more I related my experience to the day in and outs as a project manager at Yalo. 

Before starting a project with a new or existing client, there is always a plan in place for resources, timelines, and smooth processes. However, obstacles and bumps in the road are commonplace, especially over a long-term project. Things happen and will.

I believe preparation is key in life. Not just in sports, but in all that we do personally or professionally. I certainly thought I was prepared for the race. I had a game plan from nutrition to run times per mile. I knew I was going to reach a certain time at the end of the race. 

As with anything, the perfect plan does not exist. I started out the gates just great, thinking I am going to rock this thing! However, my plan was tossed…no, completely thrown out the window! 

First came really bad thunderstorms. Then the physical pain hit hard. I started cramping for miles, which I had not experienced before. But, like the obstacles we face in life and work, finding a way to the end goal is non-negotiable. We have to think quickly, adapt, put a plan in place and set small goals to accomplish the end objective. Inch by inch and half mile by half mile I kept going. I was way past my goal time, but at this point I was driven to finish. 

In the end, it’s about delivering a great product for our clients. This all depends on how quickly the team can pivot and work efficiently as a team to reach the goal. It’s critical to have an agile team that can be flexible enough to figure out a way to deliver on deadline. 

When s**t hits the fan, how can you get back on the road to reach a successful completion:

1. Identify the problem: thunderstorms, timing, design disconnects (oh my!)
2. Re-group and re-align with your team 
3. Keep the team positive, hydrated and focused
4. Keep the road to resolving an issue clear and simple
5. Over-communicate and move in unison towards the objective 

Just like I’ve had time to reflect on the race, a post-mortem is also important. Identify the failures and successes to improve for the future. For running, I reflected on what caused my setbacks and asked myself some tough questions. With work projects, it’s important to reflect on how you can improve communication and planning to deliver a great product. In the end, be agile and always keep going…you will have great success!

AI has two approaches in programming intelligent machines: supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Supervised learning requires data with defined input/output relationships (labeled data). The comparison being taught by a supervisor or teacher. The resulting supervised learning algorithm uses the learning to predict outcomes from new input data. Over time the model must be maintained to ensure that the labeled data is both current and complete.

Unsupervised machine learning requires no supervision. Using this approach, the model works on its own to infer information from unlabeled data. There is no information on the outputs, the model identifies patterns from the data. This approach supports more complex processing tasks when compared to supervised learning. Unsupervised learning can be more unpredictable when compared to other learning methods.

Supervised Learning Advantages

Supervised learning takes advantage of collecting/developing data from existing experiences. This provides an approach for optimizing a model’s performance.  Supervised learning is valuable in addressing computational problems.

Unsupervised Learning Advantages

Unsupervised learning is adept at discovering unknown patterns in data. The identification of the patterns occurs in real-time and labeling is completed in the presence of the learners. Using unlabeled data, unsupervised learning does not require the data labeling effort. 

Supervised Learning in Action

Supervised learning trains the machine to complete a task. Suppose you wanted to predict how many games a pitcher will win in an upcoming season using prior year performance. The process requires the collection of a data set of pitching performance by pitcher. Example data could be:

• Games won
• Games lost
• Strike outs
• Walks
• Ground balls
• Fly balls
• Home runs
• Runs allowed

These inputs for a particular pitcher would be collected and the model determine the output, number of games won.

The labeled data defines a training data set used as an input for training the model. The model may conclude that more strikes and less walks are desirable. Similarly, more ground balls and fewer flyballs. The learning process takes this training data, isolates attributes and develops an algorithm(s) which become the model. 

Unsupervised Learning in Action

Unsupervised learning uses data with no labels. An example for unsupervised learning would be if you went to a baseball game and had no idea how the game is played, you would watch and make observations to develop an understanding of how the game is played. You would notice

• There are 9 players on the field
• Each team puts 9 players on the field while the other team’s players take turns hitting the ball
• If the batter misses hitting the ball three times the next batter comes up
• When the batting team has three players who swung and missed three times the team in the field gets to bat.
• And so forth

You would be learning baseball without any assistance. The learning would have occurred by identifying patterns that were not previously known.

Summary – Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning

The learning methods differ on how data is used. Input data is labeled for supervised learning and unlabeled for unsupervised learning. Supervised learning uses the output data to learn and outputs to new inputs. Unsupervised learning does not use output data. Supervised learning is a simpler method with learning performed offline versus unsupervised learning being computationally more complex and occurring in real time.

The major unsupervised learning drawback is that without labels, complete information on data grouping and output data is not available. Supervised learning requires the classification of the data. Supervised learning is considered a trusted process with accurate results, whereas, unsupervised learning in more unpredictable.

Both of these processes and more contribute to the fascinating power of artificial intelligence. In the workplace, Yalo is using our new sentiment analysis services to leverage AI for social media monitoring and actionable insights for our clients. Request a demo in order to understand how these amazing tools can help to build and boost your brand.

What is Intelligence

First, some agreement on what constitutes intelligence is necessary. Depending on the discipline different attributes are valued and therefore constitute intelligence.

• Effective speakers select words considering the sounds, grammar and meaning
• Musicians create and communicate based on sound affect, pitch and rhythm.
• Mathematicians utilize relationships without actions and abstract complex ideas.
• Physicists can visualize/change/recreate images independent of referencing physical objects
• Athletes/dancers control part of or the entire body using motor skills to manipulate objects

A person’s intelligence within a discipline would be recognized by their mastery of the discipline’s attributes. An argument can be made that a machine can be intelligent by mastering one set or multiple sets of attributes.

Elements of Intelligence

When evaluating something as intangible as intelligence, what elements should be considered? It starts with reasoning processes that support extending observable facts/events to general beliefs and/or take general beliefs consider alternatives in coming to specific conclusions. For a baseball player it is baseball IQ; the musician it is a sense of timing or beat; physicist the thought experiment in visualizing the abstract. It includes learning by training, observing and experience which expands the understanding of the discipline. 

Depending on the discipline, listening, recalling experiences, duplicating physical activities and drawing conclusions by relating environmental cues are all techniques for expanding knowledge. These techniques make a decision or choose a process which resolves an issue. They must also consider their surroundings, sensing valid inputs and providing structure. Generating value and knowledge, machines must also have communications skills to understand inputs and document results.

Machine Intelligence

Humans rely on recognizing patterns in applying their intelligence. Each pattern, learned or experienced, has its information and heuristics for a situation. Familiar or stressful situations are facilitated by quick thinking in applying the most familiar pattern. New or complex situations require more thoughtful thinking in perceiving differences, altering existing or developing new patterns. 

Machine intelligence is programmed with attributes focused on a specific discipline. This intelligence relies on taking general beliefs, considering alternatives and arriving at conclusions. This can include understanding that a mistake has been made and avoiding it in the future. 

Intelligent machines evaluate inputs as data by applying sets of rules. While humans search for patterns, machines learning relies on rules/algorithms. Two different techniques are used to develop learning in machines. Supervised learning uses sample data with matched outputs (labelled data) to teach machines to approximate outcomes for new inputs. Unsupervised learning does not rely on labeled outputs – the learning occurs by inferring the natural structure of a set of data points. A differentiator between machine intelligence and human intelligence is in situations with incomplete or distorted inputs – humans can still determine outcomes where intelligent machines can have inconsistent results.

Yalo is embracing machine intelligence/AI with the arrival of our new sentiment analysis services that can recognize language patterns in order to determine social media feedback and popularity for a brand, amongst several other tasks. We are bringing AI to bear on the Web 2.0 world in our relentless pursuit of excellence for our customers. AI rocks!

The world is fast evolving, with Artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront in changing the world and the way we live. AI is everywhere — at our workplace, in our homes, cars, in our phones and laptops — in short, in the things that have become integral in our lives. Moreover, AI devices know what kind of TV shows and movies we like, what we buy, and how we operate. Let’s explore this world a little deeper…

AI By Definition

It is the ability of a computer to imitate how we think. It is accomplished by learning from previous experience, object identification, language mastery, decision making and problem resolution. These and other capabilities can be combined to perform functions that would be performed by a human. Like a human, with AI, machines can combine input from multiple sources (sensors, digital), analyze information and act on analysis results. Designed by humans, these machines are expected to reach conclusions based on real-time analysis.

AI Explained

Today AI applications are not “artificial,” but focused and contained in functions and features we experience daily such as: word completion while typing, travel directions, eCommerce buying, and television watching recommendations. Although the value of these AI applications is taken for granted, there’s some degree of confusion on terminology. Key terminology that is used includes:

• Artificial Intelligence –used when discussing any computing alternative that demonstrates some human intelligence capability.
• Machine Learning – a subset of AI applying input data to a machine improving its mastery in completing a specific task.
• Deep Learning – a type of machine learning, without human intervention, is self-teaching in completing a specific task with greater proficiency.
  

AI runs the gamut of specific task completion to duplication of human activities by choosing and solving multiple problems without human intervention. The former we experience daily with new applications enabling humans to complete tasks with ever increasing efficiency and accuracy. The latter is currently theoretical and exists only in the realm of the TV series Next.

AI Applied

AI has found its way into our daily living. Some great examples include:

• Speech Recognition – enabling fast and accurate speech transcription in multiple languages for a variety of use cases as seen with IBM Watson
• Natural Language Processing – understanding, interpreting, and generating text, think of email filters, smart assistants, search results, and predictive texts. Learn about a more few prominent examples.
• Machine Vision – identifying/classifying visual images. As a fun example, consider a fill-level inspection system at a brewery. Each bottle of beer passes through an inspection sensor, which triggers a vision system to flash a strobe light and take a picture of the bottle. If the system detects an improperly filled bottle—a fail—it signals a diverter to reject the bottle to then be filled properly.
• Recommendations – suggest purchases/media based on past purchases/viewing. Do you ever wonder why your favorite stores or Amazon suggest certain products or why Netfllix curates certain shows for you? Recommendation engines play a huge role with collaboration filtering.

These use cases depend on machine learning and data analytics combined to deliver intelligent decisions. To remain relevant, they learn from and adapt to information changes in their environment.

What’s Next

Imagination is the only limitation where AI can improve lives but many questions remain.. What is machine intelligence? What tools are most appropriate for different AI use cases? What is the right balance of replacing humans performing tasks vs. supporting them? Want to know what comes next and how to balance the future of machine learning?

Let us help you navigate your business with AI-driven solutions. Yalo uses AI with our new Sentiment Analysis services to help your brand build content, segment customers, and leverage social media more successfully across the board. You don’t need a computer to know a smart idea when you hear one.

There are a lot of ways to express ‘100.’ A few that come to mind are “Benjamins,” “Perfect score,” “Hundo,” “Aces.”

But the best way I can express the pride and satisfaction that comes with having signed our 100^th client with our agency is “WHOA!”

Through our eight-year journey, from a one-man shop to our 100^th client as a growing creative agency in Atlanta & Cleveland, we’ve had some great moments. Some twists and turns in the road. But, always moving forward, onward, and ahead.

This blog is my dedication of our gratitude and gratefulness to all who have contributed to Yalo along this amazing journey.

First off, you can’t get to 100 without a few firsts. A big bear hug goes out to the firsts.

• Our first client was Novelis, an aluminum manufacturer. Thank you to the team for their trust and confidence in getting us started.
• Our first team member was Denise Cowden, as a contractor, who by the way is still with us! Incredibly thankful and grateful to have Denise still with Yalo.
• Our first full time employee was and is Anne Dawson, who again, is still with us! Anne is our equivalent of Renee Zellweger when she leaves her big office job to join Tom Cruise in, Jerry Maguire.
• Our first acquisition happened this year when we acquired Ninja Multimedia, a dev agency adding new chops, clients, and team members to our team.

Eight years seems like a long time. You can’t be in business this long without some long relationships. A high five goes out to our long-term clients.

• We enjoyed a more than three-year partnership with Jabil Circuits where we did everything you can imagine under the sun for marketing, lead gen, engagement, experiential, and innovation projects.
• Star2Star has been with us for seven years, and I am proud to say, still a client of ours. We have enjoyed a great working partnership with the whole team at Star2Star over the years covering all variations of marketing and sales assets, content, and collateral including web, video, mailers, strategy, and more.
• We were the small fish in the big pond that Primrose Schools believed in three years ago when we won the RFP to take over the UI/UX and development of their website. It is awesome to reflect on all the joint successes in three years.
• Another client that took a chance in selecting a small agency over the other options is Plante Moran, a top 20 CPA firm in the US, to help support and maintain their website over three years.
• Once again, we threw our hat in the ring for another RFP and came out on top at JacksonEMC to design and produce their monthly printed newsletter. It has been a great relationship and partnership for five years now.
• One of the most fun and willing clients was Hissho Sushi. We worked productively together for almost four years until Covid hit. We loved working on everything from branding, naming, focus groups, website, store openings, menus, packaging, and much more. Such a wonderful team and client.
• Our two-year partnership with M&T Bank is so multi-faceted, I can’t even begin to describe it. But at the core, we support M&T’s business units in all things digital design, helping them extend and expand their relationships in the market, including website, emails, ads, and videos. 

People will tell you that you should do what you love. Well, who doesn’t love doing kick a$$ projects? We are always looking to push the envelope with our clients on how they can differentiate and connect better with their targets. A ‘giddy up’ goes out to those that were willing to go to the edge and do something truly unique. Here are some of the most creatively fun projects we have done, which also produced amazing results.

• We created a three-dimensional hologram video for Jabil Circuits. Script, storyboard, 3D graphics, animation, to production, it was a complete success. Run time was seven minutes, generating awe in their customers that visited their customer experience center in San Jose, CA.
• StruXure wanted to put their customer ‘inside the product’ to generate sales. The CEO even coined the phrase ‘just go Yalo-fy it.’ So, we redesigned their website that included an embedded VR patio that customers could ‘sit in.’ Spoiler alert, we won an award for it noted below.
• When Covid hit, companies were looking for a new way to connect with their customer base. We delivered a virtual event for Imperial Distributors where their customers could browse, shop, and purchase all through a digital event experience.
• When Microsoft came to Atlanta, so did many of their technology partners. One of those partners wanted to tap into the 25,000 attendees. So, we created MetaFest for Metalogix. We shut down a main artery of downtown Atlanta for a little shindig of 3,000 people from 5pm to 10pm. We flew in four bands from around the world and had an award-winning comedian MC the event.
• Mailers can be blah, but not if you make them something people don’t expect. For Star2Star, we concepted, developed, and delivered a dimensional mailer that engaged and incented both customer and sales reps to actually meet in person. We shipped 220 packages and scored 210 in person meetings which amounted to over a 95% success rate. Needless to say, the CMO was jazzed.

Along this journey and leading up to 100 clients, we have had our share of recognition because the work we have done for our clients does truly make a difference.

• We were recognized as the Technology Association of Georgia 2018 and 2020 Agency of the Year in Georgia.
• We won the Horizon Awards Best in Category for B2B websites for our work on StruXure (noted above). It was ONE website out of 350 other websites to receive that honor.
• Our work on the Jackson EMC Newsletter received a silver award in the best external news publication category for JEMCO News.

As you can tell from the stories above, we creatively deliver a wide range of products for our clients. I half-joke that the only consistency in our work is the inconsistency of what we get asked to create for our clients. That means every day is a new day, and with it comes new challenges, new adventures, and new opportunities to produce something great for our clients. We take pride in delivering the impossible for our clients and seeing the joy in their faces when we outpace their expectations. 

So, you might ask, who is our 100^th client?

Our 100^th client is Bridge House Advisors, an environmental governance professional services company. We are rolling up our sleeves, getting to know their business inside and out, to help them better position their brand to their target market while improving overall lead generation. Just like we have done for our previous 99 clients.

It has been an exciting path throughout these eight years. We have had fun and enjoyed ourselves and the work along the way. But, most importantly, we didn’t get here without the trust and commitment from our clients. Thank you, thank you, thank you to our first 100, and we are looking forward to the next 100. You, new reader, might be in that next 100! Take a look at what we have to offer in terms of our creative services. And meet the rocking Yalo team while you’re here.

Digital Yalo was recently selected as a featured Small Business by Hometeam & Hamilton. Sharing Yalo’s passion for sports, co-host Brandon Leak is a staple in Atlanta sports media. A member of the Hawks in-house media team, he has one of the most recognizable voices in sports talk radio. Joseph Fitzgerald Hamilton is an award-winning, former American college, and professional football player. A quarterback for three different professional leagues in his past life, he also played for Georgia Tech’s Yellowjackets.  

The interview aired live on Atlanta’s 680 The Fan and Xtra 106.3. Yalo CEO, Arnold Huffman, talks shop, services, and how we navigated 2020. Click the audio link below to listen.

Getting On-Base and Scoring

Campaign planning through social media and other marketing channels has set up the opportunity, it has gotten eyeballs to your “home plate,” your website. They now depend on the site’s capabilities. How do you make sure that you convert a sale or engage for services? How do you round the bases and score?

Getting to 1^st

Getting to 1^st, depends on the user experience.  The experience needs to be friendly and intuitive to keep the user engaged. During the execution of the campaign it is important to quickly identify friction points. Error clicks (dead, error, rage) and slow loading pages are several sources of user frustration. Monitoring the actual user sessions and technical error dashboards isolate, prioritize and make available issues for technical team resolution. Without which, opportunities are missed because users abandon the site.

Advancing to 2nd

By analyzing sessions by user segment, we can confirm that our target audience is advancing to 2^nd. It is necessary to monitor user behavior, not just rely on the original design/intent. Are the users navigating the site consistent with campaign outcomes?  Where are the users moving the cursor on the screen, are there long delays in the navigation, are they getting lost and giving up?  Having all the sessions available for playback is a powerful tool to capture and diagnose issues.

Accelerating to 3^rd

Gaining 3^rd base requires analysis from a business perspective on campaign performance. KPI’s are the scorecard and early warning system for campaign success. What is the trend for cart size, product page visits, contact requests or Sessions with replay where issues are occurring? These key takeaways need to be sent to technical teams for resolution from both a business and technical perspective. Real time feedback and alarming can result in game time changes in content, offerings and page design. The scorecard breaks down organizational silos and engages the business in the campaign execution outcomes.

Rounding for Home and Scoring

In going for home, we have the users engaged in the conversion funnel.  Now this funnel needs to be closely monitored for leaks. Leaks that will impact the bottom line. The value of a lost business opportunity at each point of the funnel should be monetized for establishing priority for resolution. Which sectors are buying which items? Is it consistent with the campaign plan? Are there revelations that should be quickly implemented in web and page design to maximize business returns?

The Next Game

In baseball there is another game to plan for, in business there is the next campaign or opportunity. All of this knowledge must be retained about the customer behavior in using the site. In addition, analyzing the detailed activities within sessions provides additional insights on how the site is being used. What are the similarities/differences between converted business and lost opportunities? Data analysis of all page events can be used to isolate trends beyond user activities on the site.

Team Benefits

Engaging campaign management and execution has benefits for all team members.

• Product Managers – gain feature adoption and increasing market share
• Technical Teams – clear definition and isolation of issues
• Customer Support – resolve complaint queue in an expeditious manner
• Marketing – visibility of conversion rate variability and causes of funnel performance decay

A Winning Team

FullStory is the toolset that supports campaign management by linking the analytics to the user experience. Application of FullStory’s search, session replay, dashboards, and data export for analysis and integration to other business tools defines issues and opportunities.  Yalo is utilizing this tool and applying our award-winning design and implementation team to better user experience and maximize the return on your social media and website investment.

So, for most of the world, it has been 6 months now of this work from home (WFH) stuff. And if you are an owner/CEO, maybe now after 6 months, you might be considering, “Hey this isn’t so bad. For one thing, we could be saving a ton on rent/real estate.” Depending on which industry you are in (especially professional services & consulting), few would argue with you. Alas, there can be a silver lining here, but first, you need to make sure, as a leader, that you’ve adapted your mindset and adopted some key best practices to successfully transition to a WFH model.

Well for Yalo, it has been 8 years of a very flexible work program that has been predominantly WFH. I often have joked over the years that I can “hear the eyes roll” when I request that we all meet in the office for a brainstorming session or client meeting. Before Covid-19, for many of our staff, it would not be uncommon or unusual for them to not see the office for up to 6 months at a time. For Yalo, the day before shelter in place began was no different for us as the day after. We continued to steam ahead supporting our clients, doing great work, and havingfun…together as 1 team, 1 tribe. So, I do feel that we’ve gotten very good at this WFH thing.

As a CEO, I wanted to share with other leaders some of our key tips and thoughts that have helped Yalo succeed with WFH.

• First and foremost, trust is at the center of it. As a leader, you have to put your faith and trust in your team that they share a similar vision and business code for success. This will empower your team while freeing up some of your time to focus on growth plans or operational improvements versus over-managing or micro-managing your team.

• Make sure you have the right technology in place. Tools such as Asana, Zoom, DropBox, and Viber, gives us the technology needed to keep the team tethered together and delivering as a team for our clients. Having these types of tools in place will keep your people honest, connected, and accountable. On our team chat (we use Viber), we have a team-wide channel that we partially use to inform about work or business things, but we equally use it for fun and relaxed banter, funny things, birthdays, etc. We have also created a Fantasy Football league amongst the team where we trash talk via Viber.

• Schedule social breaks for the team. As the leader, it is a required part of your job to get the team out of their day-to-day routine at home. Take people to lunch. Grab coffee together. Create reasons to meet up.

• Focus on culture and invent ways to bring the team together. Schedule team outings to have fun, like bowling, an arcade, a sporting event, a foodie tour, and things like that.

• Schedule quarterly or bi-annual team offsites. Meet somewhere that can be fun but also productive at the same time. For example, we have met in New Orleans and in Nashville the last 2 years. My wife thinks these are boondoggles, but in reality, they are very productive, and we cover a lot of ground together. For example, in Nashville, we covered 120 slides over nearly 2 days of meetings while we ate well and cut loose at night. We even did a field trip during the day to Third Man Records (Jack White of the White Stripes record shop).

• Stay connected with your team. As the leader, you need to be connecting with the individuals on your team on a consistent basis. Schedule 1:1 calls have quick IM chats, set catchups, and give kudos. This is essential for you to be doing daily and weekly to stay plugged in with your team, but also so they know that you care and are interested in their work efforts.

• Maintain a bi-weekly team call with your team. Every 2 weeks, a different person is in charge of leading the call. The leader typically selects a fun topic for the team to comment on or contribute to such as summer reading lists, favorite songs, craziest thing you’ve done, and things like that. The call is also for updates on various projects, sales, our own marketing, and communications plans, and operations. We cover a lot of ground in 1 hour. We’ve also attached virtual concerts to these calls as well where the team swigs a few brews while we watch and listen to great indie bands/artists that we know. Some of our recent virtual concerts include Yawpers, the Smokey Brights, Joe Pug, Jared & the Mill, and Low Cut Connie.

• Track your operations data. Be sure to have reports that give you insight into each person’s level of effort and hours being put forward each week and each month. This will help you balance the workload between and across team members.

• Keep each team member’s plates full or as I like to say, fill their dance card. What I mean by that is to give them additional work to continuously work on when there is downtime on client work. This includes internal tasks like blog writing, social media contribution, market research, technology research, etc.

There are numerous benefits to making WFH work for you and your employees. To name a few: greater work productivity, less wasted time in traffic, less money spent on going out to lunch or on gas, a happier team, seeing your kids more often, much lower rent, and the list goes on. As you can see, these benefits are both monetary as well as intangible benefits for your team’s mental state. Hopefully, this blog gives you, as a leader, a few new ideas on your path to a successful and rewardingWFH model while reaping all the benefits that come with it.

You can follow Yalo on Facebook and Instagram to see our WFH culture in real time.

This summer we took on four interns from Case Western Reserve University, the alma mater of Yalo’s CEO Arnold Huffman. As they took part in their Remote Entrepreneurship Program, they were able to work within the different teams of Yalo’s tribe on projects ranging from internal communications, to client work, to tech development assistance. Hear from them below to see their perspectives on getting a taste of the agency and entrepreneurial lifestyle as they grow into up and coming professionals.

Marketing Budgets & Social Media  

Anticipation is high for the payback of social media marketing investments. The verdict is out for capturing any quantifiable results. A recent CMO poll completed cosponsored by Duke Business School and Deloitte Touche indicated the following:  

• 86% of the executives surveyed have social media marketing in the budget 

• Average percentage of marketing budget spent on social marketing – 13% 
• Increased spending has only resulted in moderate perceived value (3.4 on a 7-point scale) 
• Percentage having a good idea of the qualitative and not the quantitative impact – 37.6% 
• Percentage not having shown any impact to date – 32.4% 

Isolating Social Media’s Value 

With only 30% being able to show demonstrated quantifiable value, it is a bit surprising that a five-year growth projection of social media becoming 21.5% of the marketing budget. These views are held with a social media ecosystem that is in a constant state of flux. Simplifying the challenge, social media is an ecosystem where there are 3 broad forces in play: two which must be sensed and adapted to for survival and one with mindful choices it is possible to influence. First, at any given moment, it is impossible to anticipate what is happening on the internet in general or specifically with social media. Second, we are victims of “original sin,” what has been posted in the past and what followers have grown to expect. But it possible to influence the third force by what is actually introduced and how it is shared. How it is constructed and shared influences how it will be received.  

“It’s in the way that you use it.” (thank you Eric Clapton). 

Value Tracking with Lagging Indicators 

To achieve a quantifiable benefit, social media must drive to outcomes with business value. Driving users, clients, or customers through the marketing funnel. For eCommerce, the outcome is getting a loaded shopping cart and committing to buy. For concerns offering services and/or building a brand image, it is attracting eyeballs “from the wild,’ and migrating from reach/impressions to followers. Followers that value the trust relationship and are willing to repurpose posts and keep the migration process going. The most frequent approach tracks progress by using standard analytics based on lagging indicators. The intent to determine what was an effective post, but resorts instead, to just comparing summary statistics for a given time period. This can show that the process is directionally correct but: 

• There is no detailed data on how the present position was attained. 

• No clear direction on how to maintain or change course for the future. 

Sentiment Analysis Influences Desired Outcomes 

So, for a particular campaign or post, what is the “right” post content, word choice, and composition for influencing the desired outcome. This can be accomplished using a two-pronged approach. First, is the evaluate the overall context and sentiment of each sentence. Then the contribution of each word of the sentence needs to be determined. The goal is to determine the predilection, sentiment, required to influence the desired outcome. Word level lexicons exist indicating the sentiment that a word can generate. Due to the “beauty” of the English language, some words can generate multiple sentiments. The bottom line, the words matter. 

Sentiment Tools Focus Intent 

The process for addressing these challenges starts with screening the post using AI natural language tools. This identifies the sentence level sentiment (degrees of positive or negative). Select tools also define the words from within the sentence with their respective sentiment and how they contribute to the overall sentence sentiment. After the screen, there may be an opportunity to replace negative words or replace less positive words with appropriate synonyms. The sentiment of synonyms can be assessed through the use of open-source lexicons (nrc, bin, afinn) which can be customized for specific business use. After changes to the post, resubmission to the AI tool will assess the impact of the changes. When satisfied the reviewed text can be posted. 

Analytics are then used to track the posts’ performance. Post analysis establishes a valence score by combining the values of all the sentiments of the words used, and word usage at the post level. This approach is not intended to be prescriptive, like taking a pill and always getting the desired outcome. The creative resources building the content must consider followers, trending topics, and branding guiding principles in developing posts and campaigns. 

Focusing Sentiments for Value  

This approach and set of tools assist in building a set of leading indicators to be proactive in the social media ecosystem. It is important to remember, that there are two forces that we cannot control and need to understand the associated indicators to monitor so that it is possible to adapt as the ecosystem changes. It is the variability of all three forces that should keep us grounded by George E. P. Box’s counsel, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” Assessing and maintaining usability is a constant task given the nature of the social media ecosystem. 

Value Guiding Correlating & Searching for Causation 

Before the days of satellites, there was celestial navigation, where three heavenly bodies were used to determine a fix or location on the ocean as an input on any required course corrections. At Yalo, we use a combination of pre-post screening, analytics, and sentiment word analysis to asses our ability to influence funnel efficiency. These three techniques determine where we are in the social media ecosystem and how we plot our course going forward.   

From hilarious to heartfelt, to a brand thanking customers for not using their services, COVID commercials have hit home. Literally. 

Like most people, we stream our shows. To be honest, it’s been a while since anyone has seen an actual commercial. But watching live news updates during quarantine has created a captive audience for ads. Many not only hold our attention, but make us (ugly) cry.

So the tribe gathered their favorites and shared why these spots resonated with them.

Walmart: Lean on Me

In the agency world so often what we see is staged, overproduced, edited and–bottom line–not real. This piece, however, delivers Walmart’s message of positivity and support so authentically with real people and employees contributing content. –Rachel S.

Dove | Courage is Beautiful

Very raw and real, it shows nurses and doctors working on the front lines and how courageous they truly are. The visuals really make me grateful for those men and women fighting this disease. –Maggie

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A St. Patrick’s Day Message From Guinness

I’m not Irish, but something about the Irish culture of music and sentiments always touches me. I hear bagpipes and instant tears. This piece acknowledges that time is different with smart, yet subtle nods to their brand like “raise a glass of Guinness on St. Patty’s day.” But Guinness reinforces that what matters most is being with people you care about at home. –Rachel G.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBfLlC9En3Q&feature=youtu.be

Zillow: The Real Value of Home

Music is what grabs me right out of the gate. Their music choice for this spot is powerful. It’s one of those commercials you hear before you see. –Lance

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Smirnoff: Hang out from Home

Simple, to the point with a twist of patriotism. –Eric

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https://youtu.be/jOhhsN_Le3E

Netflix’s Spoiler Billboard

A funny approach to punishing those who decide to ignore the potential damage they can cause by continuing to gather in groups. – Max

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Uber: Thank You For Not Riding

They do an excellent job of capturing the new normal while capturing our hearts. Their commercial also thanks us for not using them which is a selfless act for a brand to do in these times. – Denise

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN6T6XePyJw

Popeyes: We are NOLA Strong

Being from Louisiana, this one put a smile on my face. Eating a bunch of fried chicken to help support a wonderful cause seems like a win-win to me. Well done, Popeyes! –Scott

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Coor’s Light: Sports Re-runs

This is a great use of an existing commercial and introduces some levity about watching sports re-runs. – Jon

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https://youtu.be/nmVRFui61U4

Jack Daniels – With Love, Jack

The Jack Daniels commercial really strikes at the heart of the world situation right now. It shows how people are all coping with social distancing and making due in their own ways to stay connected with family, friends and humanity. Delivering the point of view from within these individuals’ daily lives and homes makes it very real. Lastly, having the commercial wrapped in a classic 80’s song done on piano by just a regular guy connecting with someone he loves, that really is excellent packaging. – Arnold

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Dunkin Heroes – We’ve Got Your Back

Dunkin. Quick, easy to understand message while keeping brand in focus. – Kevin

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Tylenol Stay Home

This commercial is touching, hopeful and shows gratitude for healthcare workers. I also like that it’s not the same “we’re in this together” message that is being overly used and sometimes seems insincere. – Kate

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https://youtu.be/IsQ7Wto0FJg

Burger King Stay Home of the Whopper

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for the touching commercials of late always featuring somber piano music and heartfelt images of all of us staying connected through this time. This commercial is not that. It’s just Burger King being Burger King – purposely silly and a little bit dumb – which is great for a couple of reasons. For one, it feels way more authentic and beyond that – what’s more comforting than a little return to normalcy right now? I’m ready to live in a world with ridiculous commercials that make me laugh again. – Tim

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Ohio Department of Health Mouse Traps

Reason: Because Science. I like how this commercial attempts to explain the biology of how fast viruses like SARS-COV-2 can spread in a simple, yet powerful analogy. – Brian

NFL Stay Home Stay Strong PSA

The NFL encourages their fans to stay strong and remain home until we overcome this pandemic as they emphasize the importance of spending time with family. – Cline

Budweiser One Team

Very clever use of sports team names to relate to our everyday heroes, and of course it gets you right in the feels. – Chris M

Grubhub Restaurants Are Our Family

This is the best one I’ve seen. I don’t watch much tv but this pops up on YouTube all the time and with a newborn, we definitely appreciate restaurants right now. – Brandon

Ford Built to Lend a Hand

Ford Lends a Hand is my favorite, because it reminds us that there have been challenges before. Now, this is our test and our time to shine. – Rich

Apple Creativity Goes On

Instead of just surviving the pandemic, Apple hits home with this spot and inspires us to not just live but thrive through this time with the help of creativity, human connection, and, of course, their products. – Drew

Tokyo Olympics NBC 2020 Date Change

Moving the Olympics was a huge change and the announcement of the change kept the athletes in focus, with a message of hope and a really smart use of font to change 2020 to 202ONE. – Annie

Bulleit Bourbon New Drinking Buddies

Fun and creative ad with a catchy beat playing; Being able to see faces in everyday objects shows that a kids imagination never leaves you. – Chris D

If you like how we think collectively as a branding agency in Atlanta & Cleveland, why not give us a chance to show you the kinds of branding strategies we can create for your company’s needs? Conversation is free – let’s have a chat!

 

The final piece of our Content Calendar for Professional Growth entails some heavy lifting. But not to worry, we don’t expect you to carry the weight of the content load.

To recap, part one helped you identify themes, goals, and responsibilities, while part two mapped out your calendar. In part three, our final part of your professional content planning, we’ll show you how to maintain the forward motion of your new roadmap.

Setting something up for success doesn’t always make it a success. We are all as strong as the tools we put in place.

Make your life easy, use the tools

• Adopt a Platform. 
  There are new tools and subscription services appearing daily to help manage calendars and schedules. Review a few and choose the one that works best for you. Managing teams and clients, we use various tools to create process and efficiencies for communications. I’m a fan of Asana, SmartSheet, Google sheets, Trello and Evernote as options. I prefer to avoid paid subscription until the use and adoption validates the investment. If you see an opportunity for larger team adoption, bring it up with your team for testing.
• Set Reminders.
  Whether it’s an email or a push notification to your mobile device, every app has the option to keep you informed. Most allow you to customize how many reminders and how far ahead to go. Let the tools be your own personal project manager.
• Connect Devices. 
  Make it easy for yourself to stay on task whether you are in front of your computer or checking your smartphone during a meeting. Download the app and sync it to your calendar. There is no need to check multiple places to ensure you are staying the course.

Test and measure

• Set Success Metrics.
  Put realistic numbers in place and work towards those goals. As marketers, we know how critical it is to set up parameters to measure growth. Review the numbers regularly to gage your trajectory toward success.
• Not Working? Change it.
  You wouldn’t continue to dump money into a marketing campaign that wasn’t generating new leads. The same is true for professional growth. It’s easy to get sucked into the busyness of your new calendar schedule. Remember, you didn’t set up thoughtful ideas and meetings to keep yourself busy. You created a plan to foster growth.
• Identify Gaps. 
  As you continue to test and track, take a step back to ensure you aren’t missing key themes. Maybe the board you joined sounded right on paper but, in reality, it’s not challenging you in the right way. Stay true to your goals to ensure where you spend your time has the most impact on the bigger journey.
• Continue to Evolve. 
  Remember, you put together a plan to work for you. Everyone moves at a different pace. Are you getting the right information to help you stay the course?

As the first six weeks of the new year come to an end, now is the best time to finalize and execute your plan for professional growth. Whether you map out the next year or a few months, just get started.

If you need a solid place to start, tick through the first part of our blog series to kick things off!

A three-part how-to blog for 2020 planning: Part 2

Earlier we talked about five considerations for identifying themes, goals and responsibilities for your personal content calendar.

You’ve (hopefully) honed in on your themes, made clear goals and put some parameters around accountability. Setting up a schedule is the next step. But I’d be preaching to the marketing choir if I said slating something onto your calendar goes far beyond the date and time. It requires a much higher-level point of view.

So, before you start color-coding your Google calendar with a timeline of what’s ahead, here are five key considerations to think through.

Create your schedule

• Determine your cadence. 
  With your newly identified themes, skills and goals outlined, determine your cadence for these items. Will you pop into one networking event a month, or do you need more? How many articles on maketplace trends should you consume? Does a block of time for email responses and project tracking make sense? What does your professional content calendar look like for the month? How do your themes and goals line up for your calendar view? Creating a cadence gives you accountability to your new goals and a schedule to follow. And, it can always be reevaluated and adjusted.
• Establish a workflow. 
  Establish a process to check progress and updates. In order to reach your goals, you need to create a workflow that fuels you toward your deadlines. There are dependencies in any timeline and schedule, make sure you note them as part of the process.
• Build Your Library. 
  What resources do you rely on? Maybe there are new ones to explore. LinkedIn or Facebook Groups are a consideration. Influencers and thought leaders are as well. Build a library of assets and resources to help create your plan that tie back to professional goals.
• Create more with less. 
  No one likes to reinvent the wheel. Outside of the documents and processes we use daily, google is your best friend for finding what you need. Research what you are looking for to create efficiencies in your planning. A likeminded person has probably shared something that you can copycat for your own purpose.
• Set and celebrate milestones. 
  A little reward goes a long way. We all remember visiting the prize bin as a kid. And let’s be honest, grown ups need incentives to stay on course. Set clear deadlines with your new calendar to celebrate your milestones! Whether it’s new certifications, a 30-60-90 days analysis of campaigns or google analytic trends – milestones will give you a runway to reach your goals.

Keep in mind your schedule will look different from everyone else’s. It has to work for you. But don’t go too easy on yourself. Make sure it’s challenging enough to foster growth. 

Congratulations! You’ve made it through Q4 planning, budget meetings, yearly hindsight reviews, the holidays with your family and you’re feeling refreshed and inspired for 2020.

Or, maybe you’re wiped out.

Sitting at your desk, thinking about what lies in the year ahead can be a little overwhelming. Especially when you start mapping out all the details.

As marketers, we’re all about the strategies. We make plans for execution, creativity and measurement to show organizational impact and growth. When it comes to our clients, this exercise comes naturally. When it comes to us, not so much. So, what would happen if we applied the same thoughtfulness to our professional goals?

I love creating plans for our teams to be successful. From digital campaign development to technical development solutions. From online to offline to in-person connections, we need to consider every angle, being agile in our approach.

A core piece of any marketing strategy is a content calendar. These handy documents are roadmaps created to keep the team focused on goals from month to month, ensuring we stay the course throughout the year.

Starting the new year got my wheels turning: what if we used this content calendar to guide our professional growth as well? 

We have the structure for success. We know how effective it can be. Why not create one for the work week?

The great part of any content calendar: it’s completely customized. It can have a 50,000-foot view to outline goals or capture something as granular as “yoga at 6PM on Wednesdays.”

In this three-part blog series I will outline the nuts and bolts to help get you started on building a content calendar. For this post, we will focus on step one:

Identify your themes, goals and responsibilities

• Personalize. 
  This is your content calendar. It needs to reflect what is important to you and your professional goals.
• Keep Learning. 
  Interested in a new skill or department? Add it to your list to learn more and look for ways to get involved.
• Community. 
  Find your people! You don’t have to look hard to find a networking or industry group to join. But, you do have to be thoughtful about where you spend your time. Peer development is important for professional growth and expanding your network. Engaging in these groups provides perspective and real people to bounce ideas off of. You get out what you put in.
• Collaborate. 
  Bosses and mentors and peers (oh my!). Want a promotion or a new area of expertise? Share your goals and those people will help pave a yellow brick road to get you there.
• Balance. 
  Work isn’t your only priority. Whether you’re a parent or a rock star or both, we all have things to get done outside of the office. Putting some structure around those priorities helps maintain the work-life balance that is essential to being a positive, productive professional. 

We’re used to advising teams and clients to best practices and marketing success. Across platforms and programs, people and priorities. If we take these tried and true strategies for personal and professional growth, they will provide perspective on opportunities for growth and a working guide to get you there.