Mediaboss Marketing

Missy Krasner. (Photo via Twitter)

Amazon has hired health technology executive Missy Krasner, the VP and managing director of healthcare and life sciences at cloud content management company Box, according to a report Thursday by CNBC.

The report cited anonymous sources close to the hiring, which hasnt yet been announced. GeekWire has reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

Krasners addition is yet another example of Amazon edging towards the health technology market. Amazon Web Services is beefing up its HIPAA compliant offerings for use by health tech companies that must take extra safety precautions because they work with sensitive patient data.

Just last month, AWS hired Nicole Bell, founder of Seattle health care startup hub Cambia Grove, as a liaison to the healthcare industry.

Although Krasners new role at Amazon isnt clear, she has an expertise in a wide array of health technologies and specifically cloud technology. Before Box, she advised Silicon Valley venture group Canvas Ventures on health technology investments and formerly spent five years at Google, two of which she spent designing and launching Googlesonline medical records and wellness platform.

At Box, Krasner led the healthcare and live sciences industry teem, overseeing sales, marketing, product and business development in that area. Box is the largest HIPAA compliant file-sharing solution in the world.

B2B marketing analytics platform Bizible announced a dream come true for its founder and CEO, Aaron Bird: The company has added entrepreneurBrewster Stanislawto its leadership team as VP of product and strategy.

Ive been trying to work with Brewster for about 7 years now, Bizible Founder and CEOAaron Bird explained to GeekWire in an email. Back in 2010, before I left Microsoft to start Bizible, I came very close to joining Brewster as their founding CTO in what eventually become Inside Social.

Stanislaw founded Inside Social in 2012 along withJoey Kotkins andAlan Balasundaram. The company provided social media data for marketing teams, helping prove return on investment for social marketing campaigns.

The company was acquired by Simply Measured in 2015 and Stanislaw served as Simply Measureds Head of Product until he joined Bizible in March. But Bird said that, in a different world, things might not have worked out that way.

[W]e came pretty close to acquiring Inside Social (but Simply Measured bought them instead). Apparently, the third times a charm and Brewster and I are now working together, he said.

In his new role at Bizible, Stanislaw will head product direction and strategic technology partnerships.

Seattle-based Ranku, an ed tech startup that helps online degree programs reach more students, made headlines when it was acquired by publishing giant Wiley in September. Now the companys founder and CEO, Kim Taylor, is leaving Wiley to return to her native San Francisco, where she first started Ranku.

Wiley told GeekWire in an email that she is making the move to be closer to family and friends. Shes also going to take a break from working for a while.

After spending 10 years in the online degree space Im going to be taking some time off to travel and get married, she said. Im also advising and investing in education companies before starting a new project.

Taylor moved Ranku to Seattle in 2014 after taking the company through theTechStars education accelerator in New York City.

Social media analytics company Simply Measured announced the addition of former Expedia finance leader Cecilia Cayetano as the companys new VP of Finance and Operations.

Cayetano joins Simply Measured from legal tech startup Avvo, where she served as the companys corporate controller. She previously held senior finance positions at travel giant Expedia and also spent seven years as the senior manager of risk advisory services for global business consultant Ernst and Young.

I am inspired by Simply Measureds leadership in data-driven social marketing, passionate customer base, and talented (fun!) people, Cayetano said in a press release. I look forward to working with the Simply Measured team to support our companys continued success.

Workflow and content automation company Nintex announced the promotion of VPJosh Waldo to be the companys first Chief Customer Officer.

Waldo first joined Nintex in 2014 and served as the companys VP of channels and strategy until taking on the CCO role. He formerly spent eight years at Microsoft, most recently working as the senior director of cloud partner strategy for the companys Azure cloud computing platform. He also held roles at Oracle and Seibel Systems.

As CCO, Waldo will lead the companysglobal customer support organization and also take charge of external partnerships.

During his three years at Nintex, Josh has developed a best-in-class partner program and channels organization and a product marketing team that is driving our market success and technology advances, Nintex CEOJohn Burton said in a press release. Joshs experience and skills enabling the ongoing success of our 7,400-plus customers and partners worldwide provide an excellent background to assume this new role and to bring Nintex to the next level of providing a superior customer journey and heightened success.

Link:
Tech Moves: Amazon reportedly hires Box health tech exec; Bizible adds Inside Social founder as VP; and more - GeekWire

Kate Mara in "Megan Leavey."

Two days before the June release of Kate Maras latest film Megan Leavey, the House of Cards actress was promoting the movie at an event in Washington.

But Mara wasnt attending a premiere or a promotional junket for the biopic about marine Megan Leavey and the bond she formed with Rex, her military dog, while serving in Iraq. Instead, she was speaking at a rally calling for the restoration of online animal welfare records held outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The rally was broadcast live on Mail Online, and an accompanying Care2 petition calling for the release of animal welfare records attracted 160,000 signatures. Megan Leavey, meanwhile, ended up a modest indie hit, grossing nearly $13 million.

That a rally held outside a government building may have been among the films most effective promotions highlights the increasing coordination between movie marketing and political and social advocacy. The boundaries between films and social causes are blurring in todays on-demand, streaming-centered cultural landscape.

Movie studios are now aligning with good causes to support the release of films in ways that they never used to, says Cynthia Parsons McDaniel, a former Head of Marketing and PR at three different film studios, who says Twentieth Century Fox FOXA, +0.18% which partnered with the Teenage Cancer Trust with 2014 teen romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars.

Whether its by doing a film or working with charities or doing certain docuseries, what Im trying to do is spread positive messages, actress Cara Delevingne, star of the new film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, recently told WWD.

Hollywood has always been purpose-oriented, both on the screen and off with prominent actor-activists ranging from Ronald Reagan to Angelina Jolie. But now causes are gaining in prominence and priority.

Take Sonys The Emoji Movie, to be released July 28. While the movie is on one hand typical family oriented summer fare, a key component of its marketing is an antibullying campaign.

Sony and the I Am a Witness campaign, run by nonprofit organization The Ad Council, released a trailer showcasing footage from the movie that relates to confronting oppression.

Emoji! I thought the conversation just got dumber, exclaims a green troll in the trailer. Internet trolls just ignore them! replies Hi-5, the hand emoji, voiced by James Corden.

The campaign aims to give the movie a layer of social worthiness the comedy might otherwise have lacked. You wouldnt have seen something like The Emoji Movies antibullying trailer accompanying the release of a family movie a decade ago, said Parsons McDaniel.

The biggest blockbusters now associate themselves with the worthiest missions. The Star Wars: Force for Change program, a charity launched by Lucasfilm and Disney in 2014, harnesses the power of Star Wars to empower and improve the lives of children around the world, according to its website.

The Force for Change program might not exactly be in danger of eclipsing Han Solo in minds of Star Wars fans, but it is by no means an insubstantial part of the galaxy.

A recent fundraising campaign, held to coincide with Star Wars 40th anniversary, raised $3.4 million with proceeds benefiting Unicef and Starlight Childrens Foundation. (Rival sci-fi franchise Star Trek also runs a number of charities overseen by its distributor Paramount.)

Investing in good deeds amounts to loose change for a Disney DIS, -0.25% or VIA, +0.74% franchise. For some films, however, an association with a cause can carry significant risk.

The Promise, a drama starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac set against the backdrop of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks that began in 1915, was released in 2016. The films budget, reportedly just under $100 million, was funded by late Armenian-American businessman Kirk Kerkorian.

Despite wide distribution and a release coinciding with a movement for Congress to promote a bill requesting that the U.S. government highlight the killings, The Promise attracted mediocre reviews and grossed just $8.2 million in the U.S. Its mission was further derailed by a vociferous social media campaign in which Turkish websites flooded popular film database IMBD with one-star reviews.

The renewed emphasis on philanthropy is changing how filmmakers view their creative projects. Yet some movie industry creatives think the emphasis on messaging can go too far.

Causes are at the forefront of movies more than ever and the activism among actors, suppressed for a long time by the studios, is now considered a positive, says Emmy-winning screenwriter Jake Jacobson. But its getting to be product placement for ideology. I dont see what benefit it is for a film to do that other than preach to the choir.

Twenty years ago, you could have just told a story and people would have read into it what they wanted, said Ernest Thompson, who won an Oscar for writing 1981 tear-jerker On Golden Pond and directed 1969, a 1988 Vietnam War drama. Now audiences are hungry for guidance and inspiration to step outside of the norm.

Thompson is now developing a movie entitled Allegiance Farm about child abuse. My intention is for the girl I cast to become a spokesperson for other children to have the courage to speak out, he said, using her stardom and social media to boost advocacy on the issue something he says wasnt possible three decades ago.

Now the girl who gets cast [in Allegiance Farm] can get peoples attention and tell other [abused] children where they can get help and give them ideas, Thompson said. The implications for this are limitless.

Yet Thompson still believes subtlety is key for entertaining, rather than just educating, an audience. If a movie is advertised as a message, youve got a problem, he said. If you can make an audience laugh and think, youre accomplishing your goals more effectively.

Excerpt from:
Hollywood is using social causes to sell movie tickets - MarketWatch

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Simply Measured, the pioneer in social analytics, today announced the release of its third annual State of Social Marketing report. This comprehensive piece of primary research expands on prior reports by providing insights from more than 2,700 social media professionals in 111 countrieswith the perspectives of both brands and agencies.

At the end of the day, your job as a marketerany kind of marketeris to sell. This is true even if you are tasked with increasing brand awareness and cultivating a community on social, as three-quarters of our survey respondents are, said Scott Fallon, vice president of Marketing, Simply Measured. It just means that your target market is closer to the top of the funnel. As more budget is devoted to socialsocial spending is expected to rise to 17.3 billion by 2019 social marketers will be pressed to make the link between engagement and conversions. Social marketers wont stop paying attention to engagement and amplification metrics, but they will be asked to set and meet conversion goals, too.

There is a severe gap here today: 90 percent of marketers surveyed struggle to measure ROI and/or tie social to business goals. The report positions 2017 as the year of contradictions, with social ad investment increasing, but a lack of industry-wide goal-setting, and more than half of brands saying that influencers are vital to the success of their social programs, but over 76 percent of brands saying they have no dedicated budget for influencer marketing. Brands are saying one thing and doing the opposite in multiple categories covered in this report, whether due to unsubstantial resources, lack of expertise, or both.

Agencies, however, are pushing for results from social more than brands: 73 percent of agencies set goals for either web traffic or conversion goals, while only 57 percent of brand marketers do. This indicates that social marketers at agencies have stronger goal-setting (and achieving) baselines than social marketers within the brand environment.

Whether brand or agency, social media is a foundational marketing strategy thatif properly tracked and analyzedhas the ability to impact the buyers journey at all stages in the funnel, explained report author Lucy Hitz, head of Marketing Communications, Simply Measured. However, marketers still find difficulty quantifying the impact of social media and are unsure of how to distribute resources to generate the most value from their social campaigns.

In-house marketing teams and agency professionals experience unique challenges and are offered different opportunities. If youre an in-house marketing team, youre focused on a long-term, constantly evolving brand. If youre an agency, youre brought on to achieve specific goals and have to show your value in a specific amount of time or your clients will go elsewhere, Hitz commented. We wanted this report to reflect both sides.

The third annual report highlights findings to pinpoint how marketers can fully leverage the power of social media.

Key Report Findings

The report compares the results of brands and agencies to gain perspective on the unique experiences of these two sectors, and the challenges and successes that accompany different sectors of the marketing industry. 64.8 percent of respondents were brands and 35.2 percent of respondents identified themselves as agencies.

Summary of report findings:

The report was expanded this year to include the global marketing community. Responses were collected from marketers in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, and more.

The report findings reflect a global perspective about changes in social marketing staffing, the universality of budget constraints, and how social marketings role is evolving in the minds of business leaders, commented Fallon.

Download the full report here.

About Simply Measured

Simply Measured is the worlds leading social analytics provider, offering the industrys only full-funnel social analytics platform. Simply Measured helps marketers measure everything from conversations to conversions, so you can prove socials impact and improve performance.

Read more from the original source:
Simply Measured Research Finds Increase in Social Marketing's ... - Business Wire (press release)

As a small business with limited time and money to get your brand out to your customers, its critical to focus on the strategies and tactics that will deliver the greatest impact. But where do you start and what should your playbook be?

In my experience, an aggressive combination of social media, email marketing and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is a powerful and effective marketing mix for small businesses.

Social media marketing is, for the most part, completely free. It will require consistency and time to stay dedicated to putting out a unique blend of meaningful content that is engaging to your audience on a routine basis. Not only will that serve your customer base, it will teach you to think outside the box of just constantly asking for the sale. You will need to keep your audience engaged with a variety of interesting tidbits and nuggets sprinkled in with the occasional offer that they can opt into. While you are doing this, you are establishing brand equity, reputation, and a strong social media presence. According to Arch Digital Agency CEO Ahna Hendrix, getting social media marketing traction requires consistency as it is a marathon, not a sprint. Youre building brand equity over time. Once youve built out your social media marketing program, you will be ready for Step 2: email marketing

Email marketing is a terrific mechanism for staying top of mind (and top of inbox) of your customers who have opted into learning more about your business or products as well as those you feel could be candidates to become future customers. Remember, you have slowly and steadily been building your online presence and reputation via social media so now you can link all your profiles to all the email marketing campaigns you send out. Your email marketing messages should be just as engaging and well thought out in terms of content so as to not come across too salesy. You also will need to segment your email list depending on where your audience is in the funnel, to better target your email marketing campaigns. Everyone knows you are here to make a sale, but its critical that you add value first and when your customer needs what you have to offer, they will seek you out. Unless you have enough meaningful content or a specific reason to do so (such as a major product or service announcement) try not to send more than two mass emails per month, lest you end up being caught in your prospective customers spam filter abyss.

All of that leads us to our third and final point: now, you are ready to scale up and put your brand on the map with digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.

DOOH advertising is a unique form of advertising available on high definition digital billboards and digital signs and screens. From highway digital billboards to screens at the gas pump and digital signs inside bars and restaurants these screens serve as a perfect way to elevate your brand image and create that subconscious brand recognition that major corporations pay billions of dollars per year to obtain through traditional TV advertising. Thanks to technology, DOOH is more accessible than ever. You can launch a digital billboard campaign within a specific geofenced area, e.g. the San Francisco Bay Area, with a weekly budget that works for you and for whatever date range you desire to reach a large segment of your local target customer base.

Your creative for these billboards should be simple, large and brand focused. You are trying to get peoples attention for just a few precious seconds and make that lasting impression that causes them to want to pull out their smartphones and search you out for more information or drive straight to your location.

This Pinterest page for sample effective digital billboard ads. Your DOOH advertising campaign will connect the dots between both your offline and online marketing efforts.

In summary, in order to make your small business grow into a large business, the right marketing playbook for success includes a healthy combination of social media advertising, email marketing, and digital out-of-home-advertising.

Also Read: AdSemble is a marketplace for the digital OOH industry

Link:
The Local Marketing Playbook From Social to DOOH - MarTech Series (press release)

Free Webinar | August 16th

Find out how to optimize your website to give your customers experiences that will have the biggest ROI for your business. Register Now

Ever since the founding of Facebook in February of 2004 and Twitter in March of 2006, marketing has completely changed. Brands that once built campaigns to push market awareness through standardized marketing channelsare now using social media to drive brand awareness and sales.

A prime example is the streetwear industry, which does a great job of using social media to control supply and demand. Instead of focusing on pushing a lot of low-priced items, these brands sell out a limited number of extremely marked-up items, which are fueled by social media hype and promotion. Combining social media trends and viral content allows them to leverage the hype and causes the demand to far exceed the quantity available.

I absolutely love this business model, which led to me connecting with Elie Neufeld, founder of DHTK. After identifying streetwear as a major trend in fashion, he launched the brand to merge a variety of major trends, creating one lifestyle brand. By leveraging trends in sports, fashion and other facets of youth lifestyles, DHTK demonstrates the end result of correctly executing on marketing trends. While talking to Neufeld about his growth strategy for DHTK, he shared his gameplan for viral growth, which is universal and can be applied to any industry.

Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful

Being active on social media gives you a glimpse at whats popular in todays society. In recent years, LeBron James has grown from being one of the top basketball players, into a worldwide cultural icon. Between appearances in blockbuster films, brand alignments and switching from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat and back again, James has become a larger than life on and off the court.

DHTK accurately identified sports as a cultural trend with a number of top performers -- LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry all push culture forward with their massive following and influence. Turning to social media can provide you with the insight to clearly identify the major trends that people are talking about.

Many brands and entrepreneurs are able to spot major trends, but simply following them is not enough. You need to be able to understand what the cool factor is and leverage it to grow your brand. If you are able to associate your brand with a trending cool factor,you ride that wave, drawing attention to your company, which is fueled entirely by that trend.

For example, when Drakes album If You Are Reading This It Is Too Latedropped, DHTK combined hip-hop trends, Drakes growth, unique album design and typeface styles, which resulted in the release of the first It Is Too Late-inspired designs. It was a success because it combined the unique album design with the company'sown brand style.

Related: 5 Habits of the Wealthy That Helped Them Get Rich

Building brand awareness requires you to identify content that will work with the specific trend you are going after. It doesnt matter if we are talking about a brand in the fashion, music or sports industry -- each requires a unique style of content the consumer demographic wants to consume.

DHTK understands it fits into both sports and fashion, so it creates social media posts that work with both niches. Determine relevant trend niches, identify the prominent hashtags, and spend time determining what content styles your target audience enjoys interacting with. When you do this correctly, the outcome is more engagement and more potential customers discovering your brand.

Influencer marketing is one of the most promising trends -- consumers want to be able to relate to the people they follow on social media. Associating your brand with influencers can result in consumers automatically relating with you, based solely on that relationship with someone they follow on social media. Its important to make sure an influencers brand story aligns perfectly with your brands narrative.

You do not need to necessarily establish a paid relationship with influencers in order to associate with them. DHTK, which stands for Dont Hate The King, has clear associations with the common phrase people recite when referencing LeBron James (also known as "King James" in basketball circles). This association combines the respect and power of LeBron with the power and aesthetic of the DHTK brand story without any formal partnership.

Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

No matter what industry you are in, leveraging marketing trends can help you boost viral engagement and increase brand awareness and revenue. Pay attention to what people are talking about, thenfigure out how to do something interesting to get people talking about your brand.

Jonathan Long is the founder ofMarket Domination Media,a performance-based online marketing agency, blerrp, an influencer marketing agencyand co-founder of consumer productSexy Smile Kit&trade...

More:
4 Ways to Leverage Marketing Trends for Viral Growth - Entrepreneur