Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood put on a grotesquely sexy runway show at Paris Fashion Week. To set the mood, three towering gothic gogo dancers gyrated on elevated podiums to an industrial beat, while models walked the runway wearing loosely designed approximations of the hijab paired with stripper heels, and burqas by way of Leigh Bowery, which veered into fetish territory when it became apparent they had no panels for the eyes. Considering how Gucci’s Fall 2018 collection was slammed for cultural appropriation for its use of turbans and headscarves, it seems odd that there’s been nary a peep from the fashion establishment considering whether these designs veer into the territory of cultural appropriation. While “ethnic futurism” has become a buzzword this season thanks to Gucci and Etro, Westwood’s designs still came across as somewhat clueless. Odder still, the collection was described as an “homage” to Vivienne by Kronthaler, whom he described as “my collaborator, my friend and partner, my teacher and of course as my muse” in a love letter distributed to guests. Dame Vivienne herself is, as far as public record goes, not a Muslim. Also strange was the self-imposed plagiarism controversy the appeared after the show on Instagram. Hours after the show, Westwood posted an apology on Instagram for lifting the text of a t-shirt from Rottingdean Bazaar, a new British independent label, and the squiggly writing on top of the text from Louise Gray, a designer who has been described as “a worthy heir to Dame Vivienne Westwood’s throne.”
The apology on Westwood’s Instagram read, “Dear @louisegray_ and @rottingdeanbazaar. We are sorry. The use of your graphics on our t-shirt was only ever meant to be a celebration of your work. We got caught up in a last minute frenzy and did not contact you to ask permission. We are truly sorry about this mistake and want to make it up to you.” Mistakes happen, understandably, but this is not the first time Andreas Kronthaler has stumbled in the ‘asking for permission’ department. In 2016, Spanish artist Roberta Marrero had found that Westwood had slapped one of her works, a collage featuring a man with a mustache surrounded with doodles, onto a t-shirt for which they charged 300 Euros. The shirt was again, reportedly designed by Kronthaler, the brand also described that incident as a “mistake.” At the time, Marrero told Spanish newspaper La Provincia that the label had contacted her about the incident and they were “negotiating to correct it.” And yet, the mistake seem like less of a simple flub in the context of the advice Westwood once gave to fashion students: copy, copy, copy. “I taught fashion, and I started off getting students to copy things,” the 76-year-old designer said in an interview with Fashionista in 2015. “That’s the only way to learn things. A young person has experience up to a point, and they can do something and it might be very good, but you can’t do something for very long if you don’t have the ideas coming, you know.” It all seems rather rich considering a designer named Anthony Knight was once threatened with jail time for allegedly copying some of the slogans on her infamous 1970s punk t-shirts including “Too Fast To Live, Too Young to Die,” and “Let it Rock.” However, he also reportedly copied her trademark-protected orb logo which is indeed a criminal offense. An accident is just that because no one intends for it to happen. But Kronthaler’s unfortunate history of lifting other people’s work and passing it off as his own is more evidence of sloppy work ethic than genuine mistake. Vivienne Westwood has PR and communications people working for the brand, so it seems suspect that there wasn’t one person who thought to reach out to Rottingdean Bazaar and Louise Gray before the show pictures went up on Vogue Runway. Since her fashion career began in in 1970s, Westwood’s primary goal has been to provoke. By pairing swastikas with Jesus on an inverted cross on a t-shirt Westwood’s goal was to give a giant middle finger to the old fogies who had actually lived through WWII and tiptoed around the subject. But it’s time to admit that provocation as a means to jostling people into a state of awareness has aged terribly as a tactic of engagement. Now, there’s no way subverting an offensive symbol (like a swastika) or one with specific religious meaning (like a hijab or burqa) and blaming the offended party for being too sensitive would be considered anything other than inconsiderate and unrepentantly mean. Westwood’s pairing of Muslim religious garments with stripper heels is the oldest trick in the book – pairing two things that traditionally oppose each other – to create the friction of juxtaposition. At The Cut, Stella Bugbee writes that when glamour is predicated on transgression it often comes at a human cost. She may have been referring to the fetish fantasy that many male photographers have used to push boundaries in their work, but the concept can also be applied to the way fashion garments are created, styled and presented. At this point, fashion needs take a deep breath — perhaps spend an hour in a sensory deprivation tank — and accept that boundary-pushing isn’t as valuable an artistic currency as it once was. via lindyhunt https://fashionmagazine.com/fashion/vivienne-westwood-plagiarism/
0 Comments
“I’m retired, you know,” says my cab driver, Rick, as he navigates his way into the heart of Auckland—New Zealand’s largest city—after my 14-hour Air New Zealand flight from Vancouver. It’s 6 a.m. and still dark, but he’s quite plucky. “I drive because I love to talk with people,” he confesses before skimming over the highlight reel of his life: his former job with Paramount Pictures, getting “piss drunk” with Robin Williams, sitting next to Tom Cruise at the premiere of Top Gun. Rick is my first introduction to New Zealand, and I quickly learn that its people are friendly, offbeat and—seemingly without exception—wildly happy to be alive. I need that dose of enthusiasm when I arrive on North Island, the smaller of the country’s two land masses located far off the southeast coast of Australia. It’s been more than a year since my engagement ended, and now, at what would have been my one-year wedding anniversary and on the cusp of my 30th birthday, I really need a lift. It’s my first solo journey ever, and, admittedly, I’m anxious about travelling without a partner in crime—but I envision this as a crazy adventure that will be filled with breathtaking views and daring feats to push me out of my comfort zone. However, instead of just untamed forest, picturesque waterfalls (though, yes, they’re everywhere) and adrenalin-spiking thrills, I find a world of creativity that I never expected. Walking down Ponsonby Road and Mackelvie Street in Auckland, for example, I discover a seemingly endless parade of local fashion brands, like Lonely (a boho lingerie and clothing maker), Deadly Ponies (a line of handmade leather handbags) and Zambesi (an avant-garde design house for men and women)—evidence of New Zealand’s heightened creative spirit. With Paris about 18,500 kilometres away and more than 14,200 kilometres separating New Zealand from New York, the residents had to build their own fashion hub. So they did.
At the Weta Workshop in Wellington, skilled artists—and the awe-inspiring fruits of their labour—are plentiful. This is the studio that produced the conceptual designs for the film Mad Max: Fury Road and the physical effects for movies like The Lord of the Rings and Blade Runner 2049. While there, I see the alien assault rifle from District 9, a film for which the studio created about 500 designs for the tech alone; as a writer, I’m familiar with the editing process, so I cringe at how many hours must have gone into this. At a table inside, I watch a man sculpt a fantastical clay fish with a long tail floating in a gentle wave. He’s able to manipulate its movements with a bendable wire armature that he built at its core. It’s a personal project, he tells me—a little piece of art while he waits for the next big film project to come along. After being in a fog of sadness for so long, I find it a revelation to see how these people transform dreams into reality. I also find that despite its low population of 4.7 million, the South Pacific country has produced an excess of passionate eccentrics. During a bike tour through the rolling hills of the Hawke’s Bay region, I meet a man named Morton Osborne. A clinical psychologist, he started his boutique winery, Akarangi Wines, in the ’80s and likes to preside over tastings in a relocated 19th-century church—preferably without wearing a shirt.
Then there is Anthony Grant, a young-spirited 69-year-old lawyer who gives me a speed tour of his brand-new Matakana-based “sculptureum,” a word he coined to describe the sculpture garden meets museum that he curated with his wife. “One of my goals is to show people how they can make their environments more interesting,” he tells me. “You can make art out of ordinary things. You don’t have to be a very special person.” After meeting Osborne and Grant, I am left with this lingering sensation that I need to worry less about what people think and listen more to my childhood self, who dreamed big and believed she was capable of anything. I wouldn’t say it’s a great epiphany or turning point. (This isn’t Eat Pray Love or Wild, after all.) However, I am struck by the fact that because I don’t have a travelling companion or a human buffer on this journey, I’m able to get a new glimpse of the world—one that’s filled with spirited people who inspire me to be a more weird and wonderful version of myself, whether there’s anyone to bear witness or not. Want to discover everything New Zealand has to offer? See it all with this road trip!1/4 Auckland, New ZealandHead 40 kilometres west of Auckland to Piha Beach. New Zealand’s famous surf destination is known for its black iron sand. Take a tour of the region, which includes nearby rainforests, with Bush and Beach. 2/4 Napier, New Zealand412 kilometres southeast of Auckland, nestled in the hills of the Hawke’s Bay region, Elephant Hill is a lush oasis that overlooks the Te Awanga coast. The family-run winery makes just 21,500 cases a year. Stay for lunch (and wine) on the restaurant patio. 3/4 Wellington, New ZealandFor the last leg of your journey, head 322 kilometres southwest of Napier to bring home a piece of New Zealand from Kura Gallery. This artistic hub sells works from the country’s artists, including members of its indigenous Maori population. 4/4 Wellington, New ZealandStick around in Wellington to visit Zealandia. A short drive from downtown, this eco-sanctuary aims to return 225 hectares of forest and freshwater ecosystems to prehuman conditions. via lindyhunt https://fashionmagazine.com/lifestyle/travel-new-zealand/ As sophisticated as we consumers of pop culture are, sometimes the opinions and impressions we have of certain characters bleed unconsciously into our feelings toward the actors portraying them. It’s like that hazy feeling of dread you get when you put on a fragrance you last wore during a breakup: You don’t quite know why a scent you love suddenly makes you feel sad or uneasy. Something similar happens to me when I hear from Yvonne Strahovski, the 35-year-old Australian actress who stars in The Handmaid’s Tale. She has arrived for our cover shoot but isn’t sure if she’s at the right place. I’m a little nervous to go outside to retrieve her. And while there’s usually a bit of nerves before I meet any celebrity, my uneasiness has a slightly different, lived-in flavour. It’s almost as if we’ve met before and it didn’t go well. We haven’t, of course. But I have become somewhat familiar with the chilling character Strahovski plays on the award-winning zeitgeist-defining show. Rationally, I know she and Serena Joy aren’t the same person, even though they look remarkably similar. Still, it’s jarring, in a very good way, to see the difference up close. The only reason the difference between Serena and Strahovski is jarring at all is because Strahovski embodies her character so perfectly. It’s a role that doesn’t come easy. “She’s so harsh, but at the same time I want to find the humanity in her,” Strahovski tells me. “She’s so unrelatable, but I try to make her relatable through what she’s going through emotionally, even though I feel like she resents her own emotions.” A quick character recap for those who haven’t followed the series (or read the Margaret Atwood modern classic upon which it is based): In the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, most women are infertile. In a now-theocratic United States (renamed Gilead—and, actually, it’s not the entire country), religious zealots force women into a brutal class system wherein the few remaining fertile women are given to couples as surrogates—never by consent, of course. Serena and her husband, Fred, are given a handmaid played by Elisabeth Moss. What would already be a difficult and cruel situation—having your husband ritually rape another woman so you can have a child—is made more complicated for Serena by the fact that as an author and a religious activist in the world before, she helped bring about this new society in which women are without rights and unable to work or even read. Serena’s sense of betrayal inspires even greater cruelty toward her handmaid. It’s an astounding performance—sad and infuriating and utterly compelling. Watching her, you wonder how Strahovski finds her way into playing such an icy character.
“I had to strip away all the judgments people place on Serena, because she is basically a nasty, awful bitch,” she says. “I thought about how she was betrayed by her husband. I also thought about how she had had a voice in constructing this society and how her intentions came from a pure place. She was trying to inspire women to go back to their biological destiny to produce babies in this time of dire need. But along the way, she lost her voice, and she lost a lot of her own rights, so there’s this emotional space that she’s in, where she’s lonely and bitter, knowing that she put herself in this spot. But she has to play along.” And despite what some actors say about the thrill of playing villains over heroes, Serena doesn’t seem like much fun to play. When the show took off last year, so many of Strahovski’s interviews included her talking about how hard the whole experience was. She’s an emotional person, she says—a crier—so playing a role that inflicts so much pain on others isn’t exactly fun. Fulfilling, sure, but that’s different. “It’s hard because my heart breaks often on the show for what is happening to someone else,” she says. This isn’t Strahovski’s first major role—or even her first complicated one. Yet being a part of The Handmaid’s Tale does represent a kind of newish chapter for her. After graduating from theatre school in Sydney (and starting and briefly running her own theatre company with a friend), she came to America when she was 24. She wasn’t expecting—or even looking for—her big break. She just wanted to make some impressions and learn a little about how Hollywood operates. Instead, she landed a lead role on the action/comedy series Chuck. For five years, she played a CIA agent—the kind that could shoot, fight and run away from explosions. After that came a role in the mini-series 24: Live Another Day (a continuation of the original TV show 24), where she also shot, fought and, presumably, ran away from explosions. More action roles came, too, both in films and, interestingly, in video games. “I think all of us have some idea of how we think things are going to go in our lives,” she muses. “I always thought I would be doing period movies, because I grew up doing theatre, doing Shakespeare. I really enjoy reading all the classics. And then I landed Chuck.”
It’s not that Chuck wasn’t valuable or interesting, but it carried a different weight than The Handmaid’s Tale does. During her Chuck era, Strahovski was cast as a kind of male fantasy—albeit a tough one. She says that she’s well aware of how actors can be typecast and how limiting that can be for their careers. “People take one look at you and they put you in a box,” she explains. “Whatever your race, culture, look, height, size—all of it. I think my pigeonhole was also specific. When you’re running around with guns, playing a CIA agent, it can be hard to break out of that.” But it wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. After a couple of seasons on Dexter and a play on Broadway, she felt confident enough to push for the role of Serena Joy. And—nothing against the genre fare she cut her teeth on—it’s exciting to see an actress move into a different stratum. Today she’s on an award-winning show that has become a cultural touchpoint for the #MeToo movement. In a way, Strahovski’s career path—and the characters she’s played—mirrors the goals and arc of this post-Weinstein feminist wave. It’s not just about women being heroic and badass (that’s an important step, of course); it’s also true that creative equality offers women the freedom to play any well-rounded, nuanced, self-directed character, regardless of whether that character is good, bad, liked or unlikable. “I think I have a pretty good handle on how to survive in this business,” says Strahovski. “So much of it comes down to just being myself. It reminds me of the feminist movement that’s happening right now. It’s about being able to tell your stories and not having to be prim and proper. And it’s probably also because I’m getting older.”
She’s also better at coping with her demanding role on The Handmaid’s Tale. “Last year, it was harder to decompress. I was alone—and I also don’t do well in this freezing-cold weather!” she explains, adding that things are better now that her husband and two dogs have joined her in Toronto, where the series is being shot. “We did an emotional scene last night, and we were joking around between takes,” she says with a smile. “And then we would go back into these serious faces with tears dripping out of our eyeballs. We’re getting to the point where we can kind of joke around.” It’s not surprising that it took a year, a husband and two dogs to help her handle the weight of her new role. It can be hard separating the actress from the part, after all. Find Yvonne Strahovski on the cover of FASHION Magazine’s April 2018 issue, on newsstands March 12.1/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiDress, $1,715, Preen by Thornton Bregazzi. Swimsuit, price upon request, Salvatore Ferragamo. Earring (on left), price upon request, Altuzarra. Earring (on right), price upon request, Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection. Gloves, $55, House of Etiquette. 2/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiDress, $15,545, Valentino. Top, $170, House of Etiquette. Earring (on left), $280 for a pair, Emporio Armani. Earring (on right), $5,650 for a set, Marli New York. 3/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiDress, $1,715, Preen by Thornton Bregazzi. Swimsuit, price upon request, Salvatore Ferragamo. Shoes, $785, Alexandre Birman. Earring (on left), price upon request, Altuzarra. Earring (on right), price upon request, Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection. 4/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiTop and dress, price upon request, Coach. Earring (on left), $430, and ear cuff (on right), $495, Erickson Beamon. 5/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiTop, $1,575, Simone Rocha. Skirt, $1,100, Dolce & Gabbana. Bodysuit, $185, Fortnight. Earring, $540, Erickson Beamon. Necklace, $495, Fallon. 6/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiJumpsuit, $3,010, and skirt, $3,260, Dior. Hat, $25, Topshop at Hudson’s Bay. Ear cuff and earring (on left), $5,650 for the set, and necklace, $2,130, Marli New York. Earring (on right) price upon request, Altuzarra. Choker, $375, and ring, $290, Fallon. 7/7 The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne StrahovskiDress, $1,715, Preen by Thornton Bregazzi. Swimsuit, price upon request, Salvatore Ferragamo. Earring (on left), price upon request, Altuzarra. Earring (on right), price upon request, Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection. Gloves, $55, House of Etiquette. via lindyhunt https://fashionmagazine.com/culture/handmaids-tale-serena-joy-yvonne-strahovski-april-2018/
China Pak are offering investors the opportunity to invest in the world’s fastest growing city, dubbed the ‘project of the century’6th March 2018, London, UK – Leading private investment house China Pak Investment Corporation are offering investment opportunities on the $62 Billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its Gateway City – Gwadar, tipped to be the ‘new Dubai’. It has been quoted as “the project of the century to Pakistan” by the Financial Times.... Source: RealWire
via lindyhunt http://www.realwire.com/releases/Invest-in-Gwadar-dubbed-the-new-Dubai Before you break any email marketing habits or best practices, it’s important to first understand why they work. Once you’ve mastered basic email content creation, you'll be in a better position to experiment and test certain components of your strategy. In today’s ultra-competitive email landscape, you need to perform tests in order to find out what drives your specific recipients to open, read, and click. While the right content and design are necessary components for email success, running tests will help you understand how to stand out in your readers’ inboxes. And to understand what to test, it’s helpful to revisit your current strategies and consider which email habits might be appropriate to mix up, or break altogether. In this post, we'll explore a number of commonly overlooked email habits you should start breaking and experimenting with to find the best strategy for your company. 9 Email Marketing Habits It Pays to Break1. You Always Use the Same Sender NameHow to Break It: Get Friendly With Your “From” Name While it’s helpful to set certain expectations with your email recipients, don’t limit yourself to only sending messages from your company name, or from one team member. Experimenting with “friendly froms” can increase open rates. For example, instead of simply sending an email from the name of your company, you might provide an employee’s name, such as “Tim at Awesome.com” But before you go crazy, always ensure your email activities do not violate the CAN-SPAM act. Your froms should not be false or misleading. However, there are ways your organization can make adjustments that delight your recipients. Chubbies, a men’s fashion company with over 1.5 million Facebook followers, is well-known for getting creative with their from names. While their approach is very specific to their organization’s tone, style, and audience, you can look to them for inspiration. One study found that while Chubbies’ messages had slightly lower inbox placement rates, their “fun and unusual friendly forms” saw higher read rates and lower “delete without reading” rates. Here’s an example of how Chubbies gets creative with the friendly from: Chubbies also makes sure their fun “friendly” from names go with their subject lines and preview text. This synchronization allows them to use every space available to them in your inbox to grab your attention and make a lasting impression. Again, before testing strategies like this yourself, consult with a law professional about the CAN-SPAM act to ensure you’re not in violation. 2. You Treat Your Subject Line Too LiterallyHow to Break It: Write Copy That Visually Stands Out Consumers are inundated with emails all day long, which means your subject line is the one factor that will get someone to open your message. Consider the following example: What stands out? Caps lock text? Numbers? The use of an emoji? Personalization? Humor? White space? To catch someone’s attention as they scroll through their unread messages, it’s important to consider how your subject line appears next to others visually. While your subject line text should reflect the contents of your message and match your organization's tone and style, it’s important to use this space as creatively as possible. Test small tweaks with your audience to see if anything helps grab their attention. 3. Your Preview Text Is Auto-PopulatedHow to Break It: Use That Hot Preview Text Real Estate If your email client supports preview text, also known as pre-header text, you can optimize it for every email you send. Allowing this text to auto-populate is a lost opportunity to grab attention or delight your recipients. Though it takes some code, the use of this space will help you stand out from others who do not go to the same lengths to make theirs unique. Experiment with clever, related text, like how Chubbies does in the example above, or try using just a few words to create more white space. In the example below, Crate and Barrel writes preview text that is an extension of their subject line and creates eye-catching white space. And in the following example, the Skimm uses their preview text to address a previous technical error in a light-hearted manner. 4. Your Copy Is So Professional It’s BoringHow to Break It: Develop a Distinct Tone of Voice Your organization’s tone of voice can be one of your biggest differentiators. Whether you use a certain style of humor or strive to sound as academic as possible, a well-crafted voice allows readers to connect with your organization on a human-to-human level. In a time when technological advancement has us fondly looking to the past and remembering more intimate times, businesses can struggle to both scale and maintain the “humanness” of a mom-and pop-shop. Your tone can help you combat that struggle. The answer is having a personality. According to one of Chubbies’ four founders, Tom, they thought, “Everything’s a little too serious in men’s fashion.” To stand out and attract people to their brand, he says, “We wrote our emails like we were writing to our friends.” In a podcast interview by Smart Passive Income, he advised organizations to think about their own brand as a unique person. “Think about it like a person with a personality. More often than not, that personality is going to be yours—as the business owner, as the person who’s going to be writing or creating this content. Write about the things you care about, write about the things that have an emotional connection with you, and that’s where you’ll start to find kernels. We were not knocking it out of the park every time we wrote but because we were passionate about it, it enabled us to keep testing and keep driving.” When you approach your communication under this lens, you’re bound to create content that doesn’t just deliver a message, but also forms a connection. 5. Your CTA Is LiteralHow to Break It: Get Creative With Button Copy Every inch of your email is an opportunity and each word should be intentional, especially the areas that ask your readers to take an action. Here a few favorite examples of ways to get clever and entice your reader to click. Today’s consumer is well aware of the fact that you’re trying to lead them to a desired action. With that in mind, you might experiment with your call to action copy and use each “click here” spot as a chance to delight.
InVision uses witty copy and bright colors to catch the eye and entice their readers to click. Classy, an online fundraising platform for nonprofits, similarly uses the CTA as an opportunity to be more playful with their copy and create a memorable experience for their blog subscribers. 6. You Keep It Short and SweetHow to Break It: Experiment With Length The Skimm’s 6 million email subscribers prove that emails don’t always have to be short and sweet, or highly visual to be successful. While some data points to ideally having relatively short email copy, the Skimm’s emails can get quite long (though they are broken into sections for digestibility). And while they don’t typically include very many visual components, they focus on making one thing very easy for the reader. Sharing. In this example alone, there are nine opportunities to share the email with a friend or colleague. Which leads us to our next habit: 7. You’re Focused on ContentHow to Break It: Consider How Design Feeds Growth If content is King, design is Queen. Your content could be strong and interesting, but if your design doesn’t include the ability to easily share your message, you’re holding your content back. According to Bernadette Jiwa, author of Marketing: A Love Story, “Growth hacking is really the practice of creating and leveraging word-of-mouth with intention.” She continues, “Growth hackers optimize their business to acquire new customers by first delighting one customer and then making it easy for that customer to share the store with friends.” You work hard to ensure your content delights—don’t send it off to die in the bowels of your clientele’ inboxes. Incorporate tools that give your email the legs it needs to grow. 8. You Use Personas to Make AssumptionsHow to Break It: Demonstrate Intimacy As marketers, we have to make assumptions. We can’t possibly know each of our audience members intimately. While segmentation and building personas is important to delivering relevant content, today’s consumers are expecting you to know more about them than ever. If you can’t demonstrate intimacy, you’re going to fall short. If marketers aren’t using segmentation by now, they’re at least aware of the tactic and how other organizations benefit from it. While developing personas and lists to send more personalized messages is a step in the right direction, we can take action to further personalize our content and show readers we’re paying attention—and that we’re listening. Consider what data you might share with your readers to develop a sense of intimacy or help them learn about their own behaviors. For example, Spotify uses data to demonstrate how well they know their users. These unique messages feel “one-of-a-kind” because they are. Each user receives a message with personalized data and insights around their own actions. 9. You Talk Too Much About YourselfHow to Break It: Send an Email, Just Because It can be easy for messaging to get a little out of balance. After all, your marketing efforts are intended to make your audience aware of the value of your products and/or services. But to become a brand that people identify with in a meaningful way, you need to do more than just keep them updated on your latest deals and features. You need to add value to each person’s life. Develop a cadence for connecting over something unrelated to your sales efforts, but very related to your organization’s core values and culture. This will help you to grow a following of like-minded individuals passionate about who you are and how you make them feel, not just what you’re selling. For example, Spotify sends messages to let their users know about upcoming concerts in their area: Additionally, Chubbies sends a “Weekender” email every Friday that doesn’t include links to products. Instead, they round up fun and entertaining bits of information purely aimed at providing a laugh. This fits right into their culture and core values, as indicated by the statement on their website, “We believe in the weekend.” According to Kyle, one of their founders, “It’s all about all the wild stuff in the world and what you should be doing this coming weekend. And the purpose of it is to send you into the weekend. It doesn’t drive sales. It’s for nothing but creating a valuable experience with our customers. And we’ve done that every Friday for six years. That’s part of how we build a real relationship with our customers.” Ready to Switch Things Up?While best practices emerge for a reason, if you’re not regularly experimenting in this competitive communications landscape, your efforts will soon appear stale and your growth, stagnant. Build time into your team’s workflows to reassess your current best practices regularly to allow for ample creativity. via lindyhunt https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-habits-to-break In November 2017, Facebook began internally testing Messenger Broadcast: a service for businesses that allows them to send marketing content to users, without building a bot. Last week, the social media platform announced that Messenger Broadcast would be available for testing to select Page administrators in the U.S., Mexico, and Thailand. While several businesses have been using Messenger as a customer service communication method, that's been largely restricted to those who can build bots: software that simulates a conversation with humans on messaging platforms. Many Messenger users see them when they first reach out to a brand with a question or when they execute a task.
But despite these functionalities, which are still emerging, Messenger is still in somewhat early stages of use as a direct method of broadcasting promotional content from Pages to users. As with any new feature, there are pros and cons. The ProsAt first glance, this feature seems beneficial to small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) that might not have the in-house coding talent or budgets to build bots. That limits the way these brands can interact with users on Messenger, as any communication they receive requires a manual response. With Messenger Broadcast, however, businesses facing this issue can use a fairly comprehensive messaging setup -- which appears to be similar to creating a promoted post on a Facebook Page -- to compose a title and text, add visuals, and create a call-to-action for the message recipients. And, similar to promoted posts or ads, Page administrators can also target recipients according to interests. Source: TechCrunch According to TechCrunch, Messenger Broadcast is free for businesses to use -- for now. Prior to the recent display of ads, Facebook had not outwardly monetized the platform, despite a user base of 1.6 billion. Broadcast might provide another method for doing so -- and if its trial is successful, Facebook could begin tiering charges for Pages according to targeted audience size. The news comes at a time when many SMBs are experiencing some frustration with Facebook due to a declined reach following the channel's algorithm changes surfacing less Page content. But "by building tools like Broadcast into Messenger that allow SMBs to better communicate with their customers," says Dylan Sellberg, HubSpot's associate product manager for messaging, "Facebook has a shot at earning back the good graces of this massive market." That's especially true for those who are already working with limited resources, for whom "building chatbots is a technical skill far out of the realm of possibility," Sellberg continues. "Creating basic experiences on Messenger that solve for a specific use-case, like customer support or disseminating popular information, is something businesses can lean into. After all, they've been executing on this playbook via email for decades." It's that likening to email, however, that causes concerns about Broadcast. Between the display ads -- and the potential to receive messages from Pages -- some wonder if the introduction of promotional content on Messenger defeats the purpose of Facebook's algorithm change to emphasize friends-and-family content. "This is reminiscent of Facebook’s 2012 experiment where anyone could message anyone else for as little as $1 and as much as $100 for Zuckerberg himself," says Daria Marmer, HubSpot's product lead. "That failed, I think, because it was totally outbound -- users didn’t have to show any interest in the message or who it was coming from." And while Marmer recognizes the doubts around this latest feature, she says it's different than the discontinued Messenger experiment of 2012. For starters, Page administrators can only send this content to users who have proactively reached out to them on the platform before. "This time, Facebook is taking a more of an inbound approach in letting businesses message only customers who had previously interacted with them," she explains. "I think this inbound strategy will work both for Facebook as a revenue stream, and for marketers, who will be able to use Messenger as a better converting channel than email." Sellberg, for his part, also understands the concerns -- but also believes the protocol to disallow businesses from cold-messaging users could make a better user experience. "Many will look at Broadcast and say that it will create a poor, spam-filled, end-user experience," he says. "But I think this is an opportunity for businesses to create high-quality, end-user communication -- something that stands out and really delights." The ConsNot everyone is quite so excited about Messenger Broadcast. As someone who personally uses Messenger more than Facebook itself -- primarily to avoid rogue content from Pages and individuals to whom I'm not particularly attached -- I certainly understand the concern that Messenger could morph into a new-school email inbox, of sorts. Even the protective protocols -- the ones dictating Page administrators can only send this contact to users who have already messaged them -- are not entirely different from email opt-in rules. What's more, it isn't entirely clear how users can "unsubscribe" from Broadcast messages, though it could be as simple as the options to mute conversations with or notifications from Pages that are already available. Some believe we are, in a way, "going back to square one" in terms of best practices for creating and sharing content. "If Facebook doesn't teach people how to make valuable, non-intrusive experiences" with the introduction of Messenger Broadcast, says HubSpot Conversational Marketing Manager Connor Cirillo, "this is a disaster waiting to happen." That's where the analogy to opting into emails becomes particularly salient. While users, in this case, have expressed some level of interest in communicating with the business by messaging it in the first place, that doesn't mean the future communication -- like a Broadcast -- will be contextual or valuable to that user (or group of users, since the option allows sending the Broadcast to multiple users at once). "Messaging is intimate. As businesses, we have to respect that," says Cirillio. "If a brand doesn’t know how to chat with someone, and only knows how to talk at them, users will get turned off." Which means, Cirillo explains, even if a user initiates communication with a Page, what it does in response might not necessarily make for a delightful experience if the content of the message isn't relevant or helpful. "Just because I asked the pizza place when it's open," he says, "doesn’t mean I want untargeted coupons blasted at me." It's About Quality Content ... AgainWhen both sides of the argument are evaluated, the key takeaway on Messenger Broadcast is essentially the same as it is for any new medium of this kind: Content that's high-quality, relevant to the user, and helpful is the most likely to succeed. Even with the cons in mind, if brands using this service can figure that out -- they're more likely to see better results. And that, says Sellberg, might serve as a barrier to entry for brands who aren't quite ready to use this feature -- for the business and the user alike. "Plainly, I don’t think marketers who haven't leveraged Messenger at all will not use this tool," he explains. "However, even if they do, they can only Broadcast to those who have messaged them first," which could minimize the intrusive nature of any messages they send. Because the feature is in its earliest stages, how or if this ultimately plays out has yet to be determined. As always, feel free to weigh in with thoughts or questions on Twitter. via lindyhunt https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/are-messenger-broadcasts-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen For certain types of email subject lines, the answer is ... Probably. That might be surprising to marketers. For a long time, AI has been either an over-hyped set of technologies that didn’t deliver on their promises or it’s been a pie-in-the-sky idea that didn't translate into real-world applications. My, how the times have changed. AI is a term for a group of related, but distinct, technologies. "AI" includes things like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing -- to name a few. Many AI technologies are still in their infancy. They look good on paper but haven't reached their potential. But other AI technologies have advanced rapidly to become game-changers. It’s this second group that is driving the very real AI explosion we’re seeing today. Two technologies in particular have driven AI progress: natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG). NLP is when a machine "reads" text. It turns that text into code a machine system can then interpret. NLG is when a machine uses that code to then generate its own words. Both are AI technologies. These technologies power Siri and Alexa, ushering in an exciting new age of voice search. In the process, how marketers get found is changing. (In fact, HubSpot is leading the charge for voice search friendly marketing.) NLG and NLP also power highly accurate Google translations, where you can translate between almost any language. Google has even added this functionality to earbuds that translate speech in foreign languages. And these technologies are found in AI-powered marketing tools like Acrolinx, which uses NLP to assess your content and recommend improvements. One other major use case enabled by NLP and NLG is, you guessed it, writing email subject lines. There are AI tools today that write email subject lines better than people. Two players in this space are Persado and Phrasee. Persado has $66 million in funding and offers AI email subject line writing, in addition to automatic social media and language generation for enterprise marketing. Phrasee, on the other hand, uses AI to write and test email subject lines, email copy and generate email CTAs. You feed it email data and it analyzes the data to learn what works. It generates optimized subject lines that do better than 98% of human ones. And it uses what it learns from your emails to stay consistent with your brand. In one case study, Phrasee helped Virgin Holidays increase their open rates by 2%. That may not sound like much, but it was worth millions in new revenue. The tool also streamlined a process that used to take weeks; today it takes seconds. Both tools operate without much human involvement at all. That's actually a good thing. See, humans aren't that great at writing and split testing emails, social media, headlines, etc. We get too married to creative ideas. We fail to dispassionately pick the best subject lines based on the data. Heck, sometimes we just aren't great at writing or do split testing wrong. In this case, AI is better equipped than us at this task. It excels at analyzing vast volumes of data and extracts insights from that data. Phrasee routinely uses 100,000+ emails as a dataset. So, yeah, often AI can write email subject lines better than humans. And that's good news for marketers. Why? Because it makes your marketing better. Marketers are drowning in data and don’t ever seem to have enough time or budget to maximize performance. Strategically applied AI can automate and augment processes in a significant way. They both improve performance and free you up to do other, higher-value tasks. In a lot of cases, this is a win-win scenario. Marketers get better results and get to do more of what benefits their brand most. (Which also happens to be the most interesting stuff anyway.) But this is why marketers need to start seriously experimenting with AI now. You need to begin to understand what tools are out there and what they can do for you. Because certain marketing AI possibilities are very promising. But if your competitors start using this when you're not, you could be in deep trouble. AI in marketing right now has a very "first-mover advantage" to it. Let's say I start using a tool like Phrasee to write my email subject lines. I improve performance almost immediately. I reinvest hours each week into building better campaigns in every area of our marketing. And I collect more and more data on what subject lines work best, improving performance even more. It's a virtuous cycle. A flywheel that spins faster and faster the longer you stick with it. In other words, the advantages of using AI the right way compound over time. It's hard to catch competitors with a sizable head start. Someday, that may change. But right now marketing AI is in its infancy. Brands using it possess an outsized advantage over those who don't. No matter what type of marketing you do, one thing is clear: you need to start exploring AI's possibilities. We started the Marketing AI Institute to help. It’s a content hub that provides actionable information on AI for marketers. It features real-world use cases and expert advice from leading companies like HubSpot. We encourage to check it out today. via lindyhunt https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ai-email-subject-lines
Company Co-founder Josef von Rickenbach to retire after 35 years of leadership; serve as Chairman of the BoardBOSTON, March 6, 2018 – PAREXEL International Corporation, the world’s leading innovator of biopharmaceutical services, today announced the appointment of Jamie Macdonald as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) effective March 15, 2018. Josef von Rickenbach, who co-founded the Company, will retire from his daily CEO duties and continue as Chairman of the Board. “It is a tremendous honor for... Source: RealWire
via lindyhunt http://www.realwire.com/releases/PAREXEL-Appoints-Jamie-Macdonald-as-Chief-Executive-Officer
London, March 06, 2018 – The Everstone Group backed Servion Global Solutions has acquired Innoveo AG (formerly known as Pactera Switzerland AG), an InsurTech Cloud software provider, headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. Founded in 2007, Innoveo AG has offices in Zürich, Hong Kong and Budapest and services some of the world's largest insurance companies with its product Innoveo Skye®. This is a multifaceted, cloud-based technology suite, which enables digitalization of insurance processes and accelerates insurance product... Source: RealWire
via lindyhunt http://www.realwire.com/releases/Everstone-backed-Servion-acquires-Innoveo-AG A flag is a signal. It's vivid, abstract and it represents memories and expectations. A constitution is studied, dissected, challenged, amended, fought over. That next thing you're working on as you build your culture, your practice, your brand, which is it? No sense arguing over the design of your flag. Better to focus on what it stands for instead. via lindyhunt http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/530543146/0/sethsblog~A-flag-or-a-constitution.html |