Mediaboss Marketing

Take a look at Kleins new website, and youll notice clear section headings, consistent text colors and fonts, concise information and a comprehensive tool to help prospective students find the majors they are interested in. These features enable easy navigation and access to information, creating a seamless user experience.

In a vast internet landscape it can be difficult to establish a distinct digital presence. Thats where Temples web collaboration center (WCC) comes in. Since 2016, it has been tasked with improving the infrastructure of the universitys web presence by ensuring it contains accurate information, displays a consistent brand identity and uses a single content management system (CMS).

You know youre at a Temple site no matter what school youre looking at, said Rhoda Charles, associate director of web content in Strategic Marketing and Communications. Temple has a great presence here in Philadelphia, and going forward people beyond our region can use our site as the key to getting to know us.

Prior to the existence of the WCC, Temples web presence consisted of hundreds of independently operated websites, which meant millions of web pages published using dozens of different CMSes. Important academic information appeared in multiple places with sometimes inconsistent or outdated information, creating a headache for all members of the Temple community.

The WCC is a collaborative effort of teams from both Temples Information Technology Services (ITS) department and the universitys centralized communications department, Strategic Marketing and Communications. ITS creates web services; the web technology team codes and develops tools; the user experience (UX) team conducts user research; web content producers write web page copy; and project managers organize it all.

It's great that we are leveraging core Temple systems and data to drive real-time information on the web, said Joshua Wharton, director in Information Technology Services. This collaboration between Strategic Marketing and Communication and Information Technology Services led to an immediate and substantial jump in interest in Temples programs and is setting the university up for future success.

One of the WCCs most important projects has been to transition degree program information to a university degree search tool to make it easier for prospective students to find it. In partnership with Temples 17 schools and colleges, the WCC is in the process of migrating academic content from roughly 100 sites to this one centralized tool and hopes to complete the migration by November 2023, with Klein College of Media and Communication and Fox School of Business having recently made the shift.

Drupal 9 is the central CMS being used. It is an open-source CMS that allows users to directly log in, manage their content in a user-friendly interface and publish real-time changes. Working with a few schools and colleges at a time, the WCC has assisted these campus partners through increasing the visibility of programs in search, ensuring programs are properly vetted through the universitys data hub, and benefiting prospective students by providing web-friendly, easy-to-read, actionable content.

Weve established a foundation that allows Temples digital presence to speak with the same voice and visual language thats reflective of Temples broader brand expression, said Tom Cassidy, senior director of web technology in Strategic Marketing and Communications.

The WCCs work has significantly improved the universitys online presence and user experience. Temple ranks high in search results for many different keywords, as well as for schools and colleges and certain topics.

How all these pieces work together and look alike creates continuity and a great experience for users, said Olga Dressler, associate director ofUX strategyin Strategic Marketing and Communications. Theyre finding us more easily and feeling more confident that theyre getting the information theyre looking for. Research shows that people before were having trouble finding information because of the inconsistent and differing sites, but now users can complete the expected tasks and see we have a modern, consistent experience.

Schools and colleges benefit from the WCC as well by eliminating the cost of an external vendor to build and update their webpages, playing an active role in the development of their content and presence and maintaining their individual look and feel while still falling under the general Temple brand.

This spring, a new financial aid websiteFinancing Your Educationlaunched, creating more transparency early in the enrollment cycle around financial aid types and the financial aid process for prospective students and their families.

In addition to finishing the degree program pages and continuously updating the content and framework, the WCC is working with Temples various administrative units to get them on Drupal. The teams ultimate goal is to bring every Temple page onto it.

What we do on the web enhances what we do elsewhere within our marketing and advertising, Dressler. The way we make decisions based on data and research is not how a lot of other universities approach similar work. Were a unique presence in higher education.

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Temple's web collaboration center strengthens brand and user ... - Temple University News

By Jennifer Weiss

How Matt Choon, the founder and CEO of Bowery Showroom, turned his interests into revenue

Matt Choon got his first taste of investing with sneakers.

He started trading them for fun when he was around 12. As a teenager, he didn't have much money, and he recalled the rush of taking $200 in birthday cash to SoHo to buy a used pair of statement sneakers from a stranger on Facebook.

"Teenage Matt definitely was obsessed with the internet and looking cool," he said.

When he came home with his 2003 Nike SBs, his mom "flipped out" at the price he'd paid, he recalled. But as he bought more sneakers to resell or trade for a profit, "she realized it was me becoming an entrepreneur."

Choon, 26, went on to found multiple businesses: Potion, a CBD brand; Bowery Showroom, a retail space and hub for creatives in Lower Manhattan; and Bowery Agency, a marketing firm. The showroom and agency are part of Choon's Lower East Ventures LLC and have pulled in five figures of revenue per month in recent months, according to records provided to MarketWatch. Choon said all three businesses are consistently profitable and gross five to six figures per month combined.

A native New Yorker, Choon grew up on the Lower East Side and went to elementary school in Chinatown and middle and high school in Chelsea. In middle school, he met his best friend Takeshi Fukui, now his business partner and roommate in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

After high school, Choon got into CUNY's prestigious Macaulay Honors College, which allowed him to study tuition-free at Baruch College. He switched gears there from studying finance to entrepreneurship, and got his feet wet starting an app and hustling through business competitions.

He tried and failed at day trading, and recalled the pain of losing a hard-earned $3,000 by the time he closed his Robinhood account.

His luck changed with crypto. Choon told MarketWatch he sold stocks and put the cash in his bank account into Ethereum -- most of what he had at the time. He saw the low five figures he invested soar to more than $100,000 and then fall, he recalled, still landing, at the time, at more than double what he'd invested. He went on to earn much more.

He worked as an economics tutor during college and said he took $1,000 of his earnings from that job to start his CBD brand, Potion. The brand started in fall 2018 when he bought a bunch of CBD gummies from a local deli, which he repackaged, rebranded and resold for a profit at the Hester Street Fair.

He went on to get a 9-to-5 digital marketing job at a crypto firm and sold CBD gummies on the weekends at parties and street fairs, growing the business. He was earning enough from Potion that he decided to leave his full-time job in August 2019.

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic era. Choon owned a pair of vintage Air Jordan 4s that he took to a shoe repair shop in Bushwick. He recognized the owner as a shoe designer who used to have a store in the East Village. After a conversation, Choon said the man took him to the back, where he had a slew of vintage designer clothes, and told him there were even more in a warehouse. Choon bought a black garbage bag stuffed with clothes for $300.

"We're talking about like $500 T-shirts that are crumpled up, smelled like bleach, dirty, disgusting," Choon recalled. "But to me it was like a treasure." He bought many more bags from the seller, and washed, ironed and tagged them to get them ready for sale. He posted what he was doing on TikTok.

He returned to the Hester Street fair with cannabis products and this time, vintage clothes. Interest exploded thanks to his TikTok posts.

"So now I'm this micro influencer overnight," he said.

As he continued to buy more clothes to sell at fairs, he needed a place to store them. He found a store on Craigslist, "really cheap because it was still during Covid," and in serious need of repair.

He used some of his crypto earnings to get the space ready for a sample sale, and at that sale, he sold enough to fund renovations.

These days, the Bowery Showroom is a retail space for clothes and cannabis products, and Choon is CEO. Brands pay to have their clothes displayed in the store, which attracts creatives and influencers. A tattoo artist and a direct-to-garment printer add to the offerings.

Through his marketing agency, Choon offers services from concept ideation to completion, employing videographers, editors and social media writers to make content. There's also a hospitality component.

Looking back, Choon noted he never had business plans for his businesses before he started. He learned as he went along.

"My biggest teacher is the experience itself," he said. "Understanding what my customers wanted, what I wanted, what performed well, trial and error, those are all things that got us to this point. But my professional background, things I was interested in when I was young, provided me the foundation."

Julia Barrett-Mitchellcontributed to this story.

-Jennifer Weiss

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-05-23 1538ET

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This 26-year-old went from trading Air Jordans to starting three ... - Morningstar

The following article was written by Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow at Wharton, adjunct professor at Penn Engineering, and chief digital officer at EVERSANA; and Hamilton Mann, group vice president, digital marketing and digital transformation at Thales.

In recent months, the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), exemplified by OpenAIs software ChatGPT, has propelled AI into the global spotlight. However, amidst the fascination with the new super-human capabilities offered by AI, there is an emerging algorithmic divide fueled by both disparities in technology access and literacy, along with cognitive biases inherent in AI models trained on available data. Bringing these challenges to the forefront will allow us to openly manage them across industry, creators, and society.

While the ubiquity of AI in our lives is evident, it is important to acknowledge that its impact is not uniform across the globe. Beyond the well-known digital divide, the development and proliferation of AI have given rise to an algorithmic divide. This divide separates regions where AI thrives from those where it remains largely unexplored. Brookings Mark Muro and Sifan Liu estimate that just 15 cities account for two-thirds of the AI assets and capabilities in the United States (San Francisco and San Jose alone account for about one-quarter). As humans increasingly interact with algorithms, we are bound to undergo adaptations that could reshape our thinking, societal norms, and rules. And while new AI technologies such as large language models are poised to disrupt white-collar jobs maybe even more so than blue-collar jobs, professionals from underserved communities face a major gap in access to broadband and computing technologies that are vital to upskilling ahead of this shift. The algorithmic divide needs to be front and center for business and political leaders as we navigate this new wave of AI-driven transformation so this disparity does not get worse.

As AI becomes an integral part of our lives, its imperative to examine the ethical and responsible principles associated with its presence in society. While the focus often rests on biases transmitted from humans to machines, it is essential to recognize the vast array of biases ingrained in human cognition. These biases extend far beyond our individual or collective awareness and include confirmation bias, survivor bias, availability bias, and many others. Acknowledging these biases is crucial because attempting to eliminate them from the intelligent systems we develop is an unattainable goal for humanity. Just as data privacy has become more of a universal right for citizens, proposed legislation like the European Unions AI Act and The Algorithmic Accountability Act in the U.S. are attempting to add transparency and protect consumers against AI bias.

Eliminating one bias often introduces another. The impact of AI on human existence becomes a paramount concern, surpassing the issue of biases themselves. Creators of artificially intelligent entities bear the responsibility of continuously auditing the societal changes caused by these systems and optimizing positive effects while minimizing harm. As cognitive biases can have profoundly negative consequences, their amplification through AI raises critical questions. What are the potential negative effects of artificially augmented cognitive biases when computing power acts as an amplification factor? Are companies prepared to take responsibility for the unintended consequences that AI-based agents may impose on humans as we rely more on machines to augment our decisions? Can AI aid in reducing biases in datasets, and how do we determine which biases are tolerable or dangerous?

The algorithmic divide needs to be front and center for business and political leaders as we navigate this new wave of AI-driven transformation so this disparity does not get worse.

A vital concept for AI creators to grasp is that the introduction of one AI in society inevitably gives rise to another a counterpart or alter ego. As AI advances and achieves unprecedented efficiency, a complementary AI emerges to restore equilibrium. This Dual-Sided Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) effect ushers in an era of machine-to-machine interaction and competition. It is crucial for AI creators to ensure that human agency remains central in this landscape. The defects and qualities of AI, which derive from their human creators, present a superhuman challenge due to the often-invisible biases inherent in these systems. OpenAI has developed its own classifier to allow users to understand if a written response was generated by a human or AI and also the ability to reference where the underlying data was sourced from.

As the new wave of AI technologies propels us towards a new paradigm for work and life with both promise and peril ahead, what can leaders do now to head off the looming algorithmic divide that will grow if left unchecked?

The algorithmic era, already unfolding in various parts of the world, necessitates contemplation of humanitys role in the face of AI-driven machine-to-machine interactions. Developing responsible practices that prioritize humans is not merely a competitive advantage or a localized endeavor. It is not a competitive advantage that would be the exclusive property of any specific company. Any other practice could not, and should not, be contemplated.

Just like any other disruptive tech wave like the internet, it will be critical for society to guide the evolution of generative AI in a direction where the benefits are available to the full spectrum of innovators and end-users who want to leverage this powerful technology, especially those with the least access today.

Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and notable scientists are asking for a break on the development of artificial intelligence superior to version 4 of ChatGPT. Now is the time for leaders to define the fundamental and universal principles to guide their organizations use of powerful AI technologies in the future, to ensure we shape an ethical AI landscape that serves humanitys best interests.

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The Looming Algorithmic Divide: Navigating the Ethics of AI - Knowledge@Wharton

Stuff

Ikea held a ceremony last week to kick off construction of its first Auckland store in Sylvia Park.

Ikea has acquired a 12.5% stake in an Auckland company that turns plastic waste into roading and resins used in the creation of flooring and furniture.

Six-year-old start-up Nilo and a subsidiary of the Swedish furniture giant have entered into a development and access agreement that will see Inter Ikea able to use Nilos patented plastic waste-derived adhesive in the production of wood-based boards.

Nilo converts waste plastics into commercial resins that replace harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, still commonly used for engineered timber.

Andrew McIntosh of Ikea Innovation Ventures has joined Nilos board of directors to help accelerate the technology, as part of the buy-in arrangement.

Nilos team of chemists and engineers were motivated to create technology that repurposed plastic waste after finding just 9% of the 350 million tonnes of plastic waste generated every year is recycled.

Nilos approach to the creation of this adhesive shows real potential, and we are hopeful the collaboration will be mutually beneficial, McIntosh said.

Ikea is committed to our strategy of being people and planet positive. The investment in Nilo shows our commitment to working with innovative startups that can support and help accelerate the Ikea material innovation agenda.

Ikea last week held a groundbreaking ceremony in Auckland to mark the start of construction on its first New Zealand store in Sylvia Park. The 34,000m store is set to open at the end of 2025.

Nilo won financial backing from Sir Stephen Tindalls K1W1 fund and Icehouse Ventures Sustainable Technology Fund two years ago.

At the time Icehouse commented on how Nilo was making an impact by transforming waste streams into wealth.

Supplied

Waste plastic like this can be turned into resins and roading by Nilo.

The business was founded by internet marketing entrepreneur Tim Williams, who currently serves as managing director, and is led by chief executive Glen Willoughby, an adviser to the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and virtual CIO for San Francisco-based Singularity Labs.

The companys original investor was an indigenous tech company which invited First Nation Canadian and Mori investors on board, including a collective of more than 50 Mori whnau.

Chris McKeen/Stuff

Ikea madness has building in New Zealand for almost three years now. This clip of the announcement that Ikea is committed to New Zealand is from 2021.

McIntosh said the performance and physical qualities of Nilos technology showed promise. We want to support Nilo and help develop the adhesive with a mutual ambition to get it into scaled trials. From our position as a shareholder we can support the path forward and look forward to working closely with the management and board.

Nilo chief executive Glen Willoughby said Ikeas investment in Nilo was a fabulous moment.

Our team has worked tirelessly on this, and to have our technology recognised by one of the worlds leading firms with deep expertise in the wood-based board market provides huge validation of what Nilo has created. The knowledge and expertise Inter Ikea will bring will help Nilo progress our technology immensely.

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Ikea invests in Auckland plastics deep tech firm Nilo - Stuff

In early 2011, Miguel was a rising R&B singer who had just released his debut album, All I Want Is You, and was seeing his single Sure Thing gain traction on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. The song would eventually reach No. 1 that May, while also climbing to the summit of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and peaking at No. 36 on the Hot 100, where it spent 23 weeks between March and August, when it fell from the chart. After 59 weeks on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, it eventually fell from that chart in 2012.

And that was the extent of its chart run until this year, when a TikTok trend led to an explosion in streams, catapulting it back onto the charts and to entirely new territory. Earlier this month, Sure Thing broke the record for most weeks on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at 76 (it is now at 78), and this week it achieved a mainstream crossover, 12 years after its initial debut on the charts, by reaching No. 1 on Pop Airplay, the longest trip to the top of that chart from a songs release in history.

Its the latest example of older songs being reinvigorated and reaching new chart heights in recent months, following The Weeknds Die For You (after a remix featuring Ariana Grande) and Lady Gagas Bloody Mary, which also benefited from a TikTok trend. And it helps RCA senior vp of digital marketing Tarek Al-Hamdouni earn the title of Billboards Executive of the Week.

Here, Al-Hamdouni explains how the track came back after such a long break, and how RCA helped spur it into a new realm. We know activity can spring up at a moments notice, and when it does, the best labels are able to move quickly and turn a spark into a flame before it goes out, Al-Hamdouni says.

This week, Miguels Sure Thing reached No. 1 on Billboards Pop Airplay chart, 12 years after its initial chart run. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?

The climb to No. 1 began in November of 2022 when we first saw the signs of organic growth and engagement on Sure Thing across socials and streaming services. The first major decision came in us validating the opportunity and investing in sustaining the activity across TikTok, Reels, Shorts & Snapchat. The initial goal was to see how far we could take the trend, knowing every jump in creations and streams was broadening our listener base and building familiarity, which would eventually result in bigger opportunities.

We knew the record was already a favorite among fans since its release, but the key component to this new activity is that it was coming from new listeners. This led us to make the key decision to treat Sure Thing as a new record in our marketing efforts, also giving us the new task of turning listeners into fans. To connect the dots, we worked closely with Miguel who deserves all the credit in the world for leaning in with curiosity, passion and optimism around this new activity to start to engage with fans and content across socials.

Our promotion team did a fantastic job in following along with all the activity we were generating and timed their impact such that we were already receiving pull from the markets and stations. The last key decision Ill offer up is the move to leverage the activity around Sure Thing to prime the market for new music from Miguel, something that we kicked off with his new single, Give It To Me.

In its original run, the song was an R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay hit. Why did the song work at Pop radio this time around?

I think the beauty of an artist like Miguel is that hes always been ahead of his time. While often thrown into the R&B box, his music and artistry have always pulled from diverse corners of the music spectrum. And when you look at the freedom streaming has given Gen Z to bounce from record to record and genre to genre with such ease, its no wonder they gravitate towards a forward-thinking artist like Miguel.

Its also worth noting that the dynamic between data and radio has strengthened at a rapid pace over the last few years. This has given us the opportunity to build our case in advance of an impact, showing the audience potential and, in a lot of ways, letting the story and streams reach critical mass with core Gen Z music fans before taking it to the broader audiences that only radio can reach.

The songs resurgence originated on TikTok with a sped-up version. How did that come about? How often are these sped-up versions of tracks spawning new life for songs?

The sped-up version of Sure Thing emerged purely as organic UGC on TikTok. It wasnt necessarily a surprise to see the activity come from such an edit, as sped-up sounds have been a trend on TikTok and across UGC for quite some time now. That said, I do think its fair to say that sped-up sounds hit a bit of critical mass in early 2023 as we started to see platforms like TikTok create specific playlists centered around the phenomenon, all of which gave us more editorial placements and ways for Miguel to lean in.

The opportunities to breathe new life into a record through a sped-up sound are plentiful, but its important to note the viral success of a record like Sure Thing is still a huge outlier in terms of how much effect a campaign could have. At this point, I expect most singles to be accompanied by a sped-up version at some point in their life cycle.

This is the latest example of an older track coming back to be a force at radio and in pop culture something that almost never used to happen. Are you guys increasingly focused on working catalog songs in a similar manner to new songs?

We dont focus solely on the catalog aspect of any record at this point as much as were focused on using the influx of data we receive from social and streaming platforms to ensure we never miss an opportunity. We know activity can spring up at a moments notice, and when it does, the best labels are able to move quickly and turn a spark into a flame before it goes out.

The reliance on data is important because our core mission as marketers is to create this activity and engagement out of the gate. By collaborating with our internal data teams, we can build tools to monitor the key aspects we believe drive streaming growth while spending the majority of our time and energy collaborating with our artists and building next-level marketing campaigns.

Although to be fair, I think the rediscovery of music by the next generation of listeners is something that has happened for quite some time. Prior to shortform video, syncs played a huge role in this rediscovery, going back to examples like Nick Drakes Pink Moon in Volkswagens 2000 Cabrio commercial to the much more recent lift of Kate Bushs Running Up That Hill off the back of its inclusion in season four of Stranger Things.

The song also broke the record for most weeks ever spent on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, now at 78. How did you help market the track beyond radio and TikTok?

Outside of those two platforms, we worked to ensure this record and Miguels content was spread far and wide across the internet. We built custom campaigns for Instagram and YouTube, we drove awareness and engagement through savvy ad spends and boost campaigns. And we worked closely with media accounts and press outlets to drive consistent presence in front of a wide range of audiences.

What have you learned from the songs surprise success that you can use moving forward on other projects and songs?

When you zoom out far enough, you start to see that the equation were chasing with a resurgence is new context for a great record with a new, young and engaged audience. Additionally, the benefits of driving engagement through a catalog record doesnt require the type of success were seeing on Miguel to be meaningful. Going forward, we see this as a key way to drive engagement and build demand for new music for any artist with an established catalog.

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How Miguel's 'Sure Thing' Topped Pop Airplay 12 Years After Its ... - Billboard