Mother's Day Marketing

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Motherhood may be priceless, but there actually is a price tag associated with Mother's Day. Given that the market for this particular holiday is expected to hit a record-high this year, savvy marketers have already put their brands in the game.

On the second Sunday in May, Americans take time out to show appreciation to their mothers, typically with cards, flowers, dinners out, and other assorted gifts. All that adds up to $23.6 billion, according to NRF's forecast.

In anticipation of this substantial spending occasion, you'd expect to see massive marketing campaigns. But it seems that brands are not doing quite as much as they could. I popped into Target and saw only minimal signs of the imminent holiday represented by a few Mother-themed mugs in the front section, as well as the usual cards.

I shared what I've seen with Mike McMaster, VP of Lead Generation at JumpCrew. He said he noticed the same at a mall he visited over the weekend. With the exception of Macy's, he observed very little Mother's Day marketing.

The stores who fail to address the upcoming holiday in their setups are missing out on “the two Ps in marketing,” McMaster says. That refers to “placement and promotion” with targeted positioning of merchandise that ties into the promotional theme of Mother's Day.

Read more in Mother's Day: Price Tags and Hashtags

AI Transforms Business Data Models

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As big data continues to grow, extracting value from it calls for new tools.

Increasingly, businesses that rely on data to drive decisions are applying AI to surface actionable insight quickly and accurately.

Finding innovative solutions to the problems raised in data analytics, particularly with respect to adapting machine learning to credit scores, is what they've been working on for the past six years at Experian's DataLabs. The EVP and Global Head of the labs, Eric Haller, spoke to All Analytics about the new direction for predictive modeling.

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AI, Machine Learning Power Transformation

Google browser to block unacceptable ads

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How offensive or annoying is that? That's a real question for those in the business of assessing what types of ads viewers might consider beyond the pale: Especially now, when ads that don't make the cut may be blocked before any human sees them.

Ad blocking software is what many people rely on to stop annoying popups and noisy videos that play online when they want to watch or read something. However, those extensions required downloads and sometimes fail. They could prove far more effective if they are integral to the browser. Google has plans to do just that in Chrome, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The standards Google would apply would be based on the research of the Coalition for Better Ads. Its Initial Better Ads Standards drew on over 25,000 consumer ratings of digital ad experiences in North America and Europe, this past March. 

Marketers who ignore the standards, thinking that it will only affect some of their ads, may suffer unanticipated consequences. According to the Journal, Chrome may keep out “all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves." Like the one bad apple, one bad ad can spoil the entire marketing barrel, which is a very high price to pay for poor judgement.

Read more in Google Chrome to Ride Shotgun on Unacceptable Ads

AR gets real and social

“We're making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” declared Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference. That's where he showed off some of the AR effects the social media giant is making accessible to anyone on a mobile device. Whether you want to break the boredom of breakfast by setting some virtual sharks to swim around your bowl, see people's faces replaced by emojis, or turn a tabletop into the site of a video game, you'll be able to do it with just your smart phone. You can hear him and see the effect in this Cnet clip:

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AR Takes Off on Facebook

Analytics for the Anderson Center for Autism

Concerns about retaining the staff prompted the Anderson Center for Autism to seek a tech

pic from http://www.happygreenbee.com/autism-spectrum-disorder-asd-facts-myths/

solution that was compatible with the center's people-first philosophy.

The Anderson Center for Autism is a nonprofit organization based in Staatsburg, N.Y. that operates a school and 100-acre residential campus comprising 20 buildings, as well as 25 adult houses across three counties. The center uses more than 400 desktops and data centers connected by fiber optics. The entire IT infrastructure has been in the cloud since 2012.

The picture for this organization was very different in 2001, when it was suffering from a lack of funding and inefficient processes, as well as high turnover. Then a new CEO took the helm and brought about a major transformation. Over the next decade, the center set up a cloud-based IT infrastructure and predictive analytics, which streamlined processes, cut down paperwork by 95 percent and reduced turnover significantly.

In 2003, Gregg Paulk was hired as the first IT manager for the center and was tasked with building out the infrastructure. He recalls, "We were in the dark ages."

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/cloud-computing/cloud-mobile-and-analytics-help-retain-employees.html#sthash.LGb5pYyb.dpuf

AR for Logistics

According to Digi-Capital’s latest forecast, augmented reality (AR) will constitute an $83 billion market by 2021.  While a good chunk of that may go to popular games in the mode of Pokémon GO, AR also can also serve wholly practical purposes and improve logistics.

Among the items covered in the Tech Trends 2017: The Kinetic Enterprise from Deloitte University Press was a look the benefits of mixed reality (MR) offer industry.  It enables access to “actionable information to any location where work is done—on site, on the shop floor, or in the field,” and that can take logistical operations to a whole new level of efficiency.

DHL’s report Augmented Reality in Logistics details four areas in which the technology can effectively be applied:

• Warehousing operations
• Transportation optimization
• Last-mile delivery
• Enhanced value-added services

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Augmented Reality Gets Beyond Games to Help Logistics

Car analytics and AI

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Today's cars are all about mobility -- not just the kind that transports people and things, but also data mobility. Today's cars are more connected, and they are generating a lot more data that car manufacturers are working to collect, process, and apply to AI developments.

When the average person thinks about the connected car -- whether it is fully automated or packed with sensors that alert the driver to possible dangers -- what comes to mind is the experience for the person in that driver's seat. In fact, the information the driver sees represents only a tiny fraction of all the data collected through the sensor system. The amount of data collected is indeed vast, and car makers are now working on ways to ingest and process it effectively.

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Car Makers Drive Hard Towards AI Advances