Weekly Rundown:: 01.27.22
Each week on the ‘Weekly Rundown’ segment, we highlight stories that were interesting, notable across business and technology. In Episode 051 we highlight stories from CES, Sales and Marketing in a digital age, having fun with fitness thanks to tech, and get ready to build, we have some serious manufacturing data.
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Story-1:: Activision gets Acquired
Overview: Microsoft to buy Activision Bizzard for $68B. They acquire games like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush with this acquisition and long with the roughly 10,000 person staff.
Why It Matters: Through this acquisition, Microsoft becomes more vertically integrated and has more in-house development capabilities for its Xbox division. It will be interesting to see where the Xbox platform heads, and if there are many more desktop large-format game devices in our future, or does Xbox becomes the platform and there are headsets and more streaming. Only time will tell.
Link: MS-News
Story-2:: Meet Chipolo CARD Spot
Overview: The wallet finder that works with the Apple Find My network
Why It Matters: I recently got my first Apple Tag and placed it on my car keys. Thankfully, I have not yet lost my keys, but thanks to solutions like Apple Air Tags and Chipolo Cards, if I ever lost my keys, or my wallet, or well, anything. I can find them. Beyond highlighting that Chipolo cards and little circle dots (Airtags) look great and have a slightly lower cost than Apple. I wanted to talk about the Ecosystem. When Apple enters into a space, they typically don’t just put a single product out and say your welcome. They put out a full ecosystem or a platform to manage that ecosystem. Examples are making music (Logic / Garage Band), listening to music (Beats or Airpods or Homepods), Playing Music (iTunes / Apple Music. Another example is how they released HomeKit as the platform and I believe they have released some hardware. The point here is Apple created a platform to connect and tack devices. One could assume that we will see many new hardware manufacturers enter the Tag space at all different price points. We will also see other services leverage this data in some capability that we aren’t fully aware of now, but is coming down the pipeline.
Link: Chipolo.net
Story-3:: Body composition
Overview: WithThings is a company that has been around for a years, and it is no surprise that you are seeing a new product launch as a result of the fact that CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows was comping up; not sure if many companies are going to host any longer btw. But this new scale is meant to provide more body composition analysis, as compared to just weight. I currently have the weight scale, at it works great, connects to my smartwatch.
Please Note: Because the scale is promising at-home ECG, the device has to go through a more rigorous FDA approval process.
Link: withings.com | withings.com/scales
Story-4:: Know More, Feel Better
Overview: Introducing the new Oura Ring Generation 3. 24/7 heart rate monitoring, personalized health insights, sleep analysis, and so much more. Being a ring, the OURA is in direct and constant contact with the finger’s arteries (vs. a loosely sitting wrist strap). Because of this, the OURA is able to receive ongoing high-fidelity data. For example, the ring tracks heart rate variability (HRV), which is the measure of variation (time) between beats, no Fitbit or Apple Watch today offers this functionality. Professional sports teams are starting to track HRV in their athletes to gauge fatigue. For the consumer, this means you receive a daily “readiness” score letting you know how hard to push yourself.
3 daily scores to guide you.
Sleep - Your sleep score answers, "how'd you sleep last night?" by analyzing your deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep, nightly heart rate, bedtime schedule, and more.
Activity - Your Activity Score answers, "how are you balancing your activity, inactivity, and rest?" by analyzing your daily movement, how much rest you’re getting, and more.
Readiness - Your Readiness Score answers, "how much can you and your body take on?" It takes into account your sleep, activity, and body stress signals like body temperature and HRV.
Why It Matters: The new Oura Ring monitors your heart rate around the clock, giving you the insights you need to make the most out of your days and nights.
Daytime Heart Rate - Learn how your body responds to your daily habits and choices by following your heart rate from morning to night.
Workout heart rate - Record your heart rate during workouts and receive post-exercise insights to see how your body reacts and how your workout impacts your sleep and readiness.
Restorative Time - Oura tells you when your body and mind are in a relaxed state by looking at your heart rate and skin temperature — helping you know if you’re taking enough breaks throughout the day to get the recovery your body needs.
I love looking at data, no matter if it is for work, or personal. But the one thing I don’t love, entering things into spreadsheets, and wasting time tracking. I need it easy, I need it simple. Don’t believe it, check out my macros chart, it is all over the map of keeping very detailed, to not keeping anything…. With Oura ring, you are able to just have it on and move on. What I want to know about the ring is how does it handle working out. Can the devices hold up to Olympic lifts and can it vibrate to wake me up a certain times? Those are probably the two biggest use cases I want to know more about. The other thing I wouldn’t mind to try and this is where it has others beat. It is not cloth-like say a bracelet. So sending a demo unit for a week or two doesn’t really freak me out personally. Would love to try this and compare it to my Apple Watch. What is interesting too, is you see a bunch of the folk’s never really wearing theirs in public where I see bands more often. I would be curious is this just a fashion statement or do they not believe in the product.
Link: ouraring.com | @kar_inthegarage | @lindseyvonn
Story-5:: Never Miss A Customer Call
Overview: Food delivery providers rely on the startup to mask the phone numbers when the delivery partner makes a call to the customer. Relationship managers at Banks, use Exotel to engage with customers with a savings account. Ride-hailing uses the platform to send text messages to its customers.
“This engagement “involves bringing together disconnected channels, bots, applications with siloed customer data across teams,” said Shivakumar Ganesan, co-founder and chief executive of Exotel. “For the first time we are enabling this over the cloud with our full-stack platform.”
Why It Matters: The tools and solutions that are required in a modern business that has high customer touchpoints and or a larger field services organization. These are just a few things that matter that Exotel provides, and for an organization that wants to launch and or wants to modernize, this is a pretty impressive stack. But for an organization that is looking to dramatically increase it’s b2c capabilities in 2022, might be time to look at Exotel, as they just took in $40M in financing and $35M in funding.
Customer support center – set it up in minutes
Makes sales teams efficient
Create remote ready teams
Integrate with the right tools
Connect over VOIP or mobile phone
Link: exotel.com
Story-6:: Traditional Vs. Digital Marketing, What is Better
Overview: There is no way to say exactly which type of marketing is the best, different things work for different people and businesses, and different demographics will be targeted best through different mediums.
Why It Matters: Understanding who you are targeting, and where they are most likely to engage with your content, is your first step. Digital marketing and Traditional marketing both have pros and cons that make these both worth engaging in. Trade shows are also useful for many businesses. For start-up businesses, digital marketing is the easiest place to start due to low costs and easy audience access to build your consumer base. After this, engaging in different marketing strategies will help your business grow and branch out.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Story-7:: Measurable Goals For B2B Content Marketing In 2022
Overview: Every organization that believes in an inbound marketing strategy is keen on developing goals for their content marketing that have the SMARTS: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely objectives, and to that we add, successful ones.
Why It Matters: The Top Goals for Content Marketing, You can call them the Big Three: brand awareness, credibility, and education. These are the top three goals marketers achieved through content marketing in the last 12 months, according to the report.
80% report success in achieving brand awareness
75% say they are building credibility, which leads to enabling trust among their audiences
70% say their content marketing efforts are effective in educating people about their companies, products, and services.
Among the areas of investment in 2022, more than half of the marketers expect increased spending in video, events (digital, in-person, hybrid), owned-media assets, and paid media.
Link: Web Article | Study Output | Youtube
Story-8:: Linkedin Data
Overview: Did you know about LinkedIn's tool for measuring the effectiveness of your profile? Cristina (Guerra) Smith shared this awesome tool this week with our marketing team! Check it out to assess how well you're leveraging LinkedIn to boost your personal brand and engage with your target audience: https://lnkd.in/dm3p9Pw8
Why It Matters: Your Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. It is updated daily.
Attributes of Measure:
Establish your professional brand - Complete your profile with the customer in mind. Become a thought-leader by publishing meaningful posts.
Find the right people - Identify better prospects in less time using efficient search and research tools.
Engage with insights - Discover and share conversation-worthy updates to create and grow relationships.
Build relationships - Strengthen your network by finding and establishing trust with decision-makers.
So, if you look at my scores, I am ranking top 5% for people in my industry and for people in my network, I am 45 out of 100. So there is work to do. What is interesting, is these four attributes of measure are essentially driving users to engage with the platform more, rather than having like buttons and saying post-post-post. They are framing it in a more data-driven, professional manner. It is interesting to say the least, and something that I have carved out 2-hours a week to tackle over the next 8-weeks to see if I can make a meaningful impact on these scores; doing this by blocking time in the calendar, and have put a marker for the back side of March to review scores again.
Link: Linkedin.com/sales/ssi
Story-9:: Be Inspired by Fun
Overview: With Quest 2, you're not just burning calories to the best VR fitness apps and games, you're making fitness fun—with workouts in exotic locations, real coaches and a community of support.
Why it Matters: We are going to be spending way more time in our homes when compared to years past. Working out on a bike, tread mill will ultimately get dull. The fact that the Oculus (VR) can put you in different environments and allow you to have a bit of fun with the workouts is something that is very interesting. It will be interesting to see what ‘games’ aka workouts that companies come out with. It will also be interesting to see if people end up in joint classes. Think ready player1.
Link: oculus.com/fitness | Youtube.com
Story-10:: Get Smarter Sleep
Overview: Sleep Number is announcing the latest upgrades to its 360 smart beds, improving some of their built-in sensors and adding on surrounding tech like lights and mobility accessories that it calls “smart furniture.” The idea, according to Sleep Number, is to create more accessible smart beds so that people can age more comfortably or recover from injuries.
Sleep Number says the new 360 bed can continuously monitor a person’s general wellness, sleep health behaviors, chronic sleep issues, and generate real-time insights and suggestions for sleepers, their caregivers, and doctors. It also says that over time, the bed’s AI can identify abnormal events and notify the sleeper that something is off.
Why It Matters: White light, blue light, coffee, caffeine, adult beverages, email, yelling kids, constant ping, alerts, stress, life. These are just a few of the many things that people deal with on a daily basis. Well maybe not people, but I know I sure do. So it is nice to be able to monitor your sleep, see how you are performing, and also get adjustments to help you sleep better. I tried a competitor SMART bed out the other day, I was impressed. Looking forward to trying this bed and would love it if they were in say a hotel, where I could try it out for a few nights and see if I wanted to buy one for my home.
Link: Techcrunch.com
Story-11:: CohnReznick Manufacturing Checkup Survey
Overview: Full Disclosure, I work for CohnReznick, but this post is not sponsored by them, I am just highlighting it on this site. Corporate functions are critical to operational efficiencies and sustainable profitability in manufacturing. But how are manufacturers performing in core functional areas? In the CohnReznick Manufacturing Checkup survey, leading manufacturers provided data on how they are performing in areas such as:
Enterprise
Operations
Supply chain
R&D/Product development
Customers
The results help provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of these core functional areas at manufacturing companies across the nation.
Why It Matters: Let’s be 100% clear. I am an employee of CohnReznick and am involved with the study and am thrilled to have the results out and can’t wait for the summary report to come out. I say that to say, CohnReznick did not sponsor this post, and all views in this story and all other stories are my own. The output report is meant to provide those who participated in the survey the RAW data and insight. So if you are a data person, you are going to love this asset. If you are more of a shiny object, clean summarized report person. Well, sign-up for the newsletter and pay attention to January 27th, we the summary report will be published.
Link: Link: CohnReznick.com/Manufacturing
