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The Storytelling of Content and Commerce in the Entertainment Space May 13, 2024

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Eric Levin, GM and Chief Content Officer at Publicis Media Content and Innovation (PMCI) and executive producer of Impact on National Geographic, joins us to discuss the transformative impact of AI on content creation, funding, and distribution. Leading content innovation for Publicis Media globally, Eric’s team was the brains behind the award-winning CES experiences for Canon and the first-ever brand channel on Roku. He says that because the content landscape is changing so quickly, business models across the entertainment and brand space will have to embrace the power of AI in developing, distributing, optimizing, and customizing content for their audiences. Eventually, he says, commerce and content will be seamlessly interlinked as businesses and marketers will need to strike a balance between technology, creativity, and entertainment.

Toggling: the future of the female brain in the workplace May 05, 2024

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Stacy Feiner and Jack Harris, co-authors of The Sixth Level: Capitalize on the Power of Women's Psychology for Sustainable Leadership. They make the case that current leadership models are missing critical elements and offer an addition to Maslow’s five-model Hierarchy of Needs. Feiner and Harris suggest that this Sixth Level is women’s unique ability to move between the analytical side and the emotional side of the brain which they call the ‘art of toggling’. Mutuality, ingenuity, justice, and intrinsic motivation, they believe, could elevate communities to work collaboratively and justly, and eliminate an outdated model of command and control.
Further reading links:
https://www.thesixthlevel.com/

Talent in the Cloud: the Future is Open Apr 27, 2024

Show notes

John Winsor, Executive in Residence at Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Science and co-author with Jin Paik of the national bestselling book Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges on strategies for harnessing the potential of the global talent pool to address major business challenges and enhance organizational success. A prominent figure in strategic marketing and product innovation, John argues that the future of work is a combination of micro-entrepreneurs and freelancers rather than full-time company employees. As a result of open networks, companies will have to reimagine themselves as open workplaces with leaders driven by an abundant mindset. And in a fast-moving, fluid world, it’s the talent in the cloud that will perform tasks and skills, using cognitive surplus across the globe to get the work done.

The Glass Cliff: Why the Workplace Needs Senior Women Apr 20, 2024

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Sophie Williams, former global leader at Netflix, anti-racism activist, TED speaker, and the author of Millennial Black, Anti-Racist Ally, and The Glass Cliff on the opportunities offered by a more diverse workplace. Her passionate advocacy for more women and Black and global majority people in the industry focuses on growing existing talent and creating a workplace designed to improve the return on its workers' investment. As the Glass Cliff phenomenon identified 20 years ago and replicated in research around the world shows, women are finding themselves being brought in to lead in businesses undergoing a crisis, when their chances of success are limited from the start. Sophie argues that the companies that set out to grow people from all backgrounds are likely to be the winners in the future.

Further reading links: The Glass Cliff

TED talk

UN transcript

Blockchain and the Level Playing Field Apr 13, 2024

Show notes

Kirthiga Reddy, former managing director (and the very first employee) of the social media giant Meta in India, co-founder of Liftery , and the first female investment partner at Softbank is today the CEO of the generative AI and blockchain startup Virtualness. In this conversation, Kirthiga discusses the enabling opportunities provided by Blockchain, Generative AI, and the rise of India.

Kirthiga argues that in the world of Gen AI, blockchain is going to become even more important for creators, brands, sports media, and entertainment. She says that the read-write-own era that blockchain ushers will give new ways to monetize their side hustles (and also main hustles) and leverage them into a fairer, more creative world. She envisions a future where all moments that matter — including awards, certificates, memorabilia -- will be on blockchain.

Kirthiga Reddy links

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirthiga/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirthigareddy

Virtualness links

Website: https://www.virtualness.io

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtualnessio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Virtualnessio

The Art of Thriving: Why recovery matters more than the hustle Apr 06, 2024

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Joey Hubbard, Chief Training Officer at Thrive Global, shares provocative insights into why workplaces mandating RTO need to offer something to “earn the commute”—and how taking care of yourself is the least selfish thing you can do.

The Grether Rule Mar 23, 2024

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Mark Grether, Vice President and General Manager of Uber Advertising on the renaissance of the marketer and the blend of creative analytics, brand and performance. As the man in charge of the acceleration of Uber’s global advertising business and one of the driving forces behind Uber’s success, his insights into the future of mobility media are a must listen. Merging branding and awareness campaigns into performance is the Grether Rule, he says, with the best platform companies already blending data generation with data monetization to fuse online and offline worlds

The Value of News in the War on Truth Mar 16, 2024

Show notes

Lou Paskalis, Chief Strategy Officer of Ad Fontes Media, CEO and founder of AJL Advisory, former president and chief operating officer of MMA Global on the business opportunity that the return to News represents for marketers and how that has the added benefit of bolstering our society. He argues that in the unfounded fears of becoming collateral damage in the culture wars has sidelined many advertisers and deprived news publishers of a valuable source of advertising revenue at a time when they are actively combating disinformation and misinformation in a growing war on truth. News audiences represent the single most attractive cohort for marketers when it comes to household income, cultural influence and the ability to purchase products and build their respective businesses and advertisers are leaving significant money on the table by avoiding news.

"As AI becomes mainstream, the proliferation of misinformation it could create will exacerbate what we are already seeing today. Some bad actors will introduce "deep-fakes" that will be harder for consumers to discern and technology to detect. These ultimately threaten everything from the way business gets done to our society and indeed, democracy itself. At the same time, AI will help news publishers hone the appeal of their core product by helping them easily and efficiently tailor their offerings to disparate audiences. There are big opportunities for savvy marketers to partner with news publishers by investing in news advertising and enabling new technologies to bring both news and their messages forward to grow their business and thus protect it from the same threats that these same technologies represent to their businesses."

Upgrading the Human: The Challenge for Bosses Mar 09, 2024

Show notes

Lisa McCarthy, CEO and co-founder of the Fast Forward group, and author of Fast Powered: Five Power Principles to Create the Life You Want in Just One Year on managing stress and achieving fulfilment in the workplace and in life. Lisa who has spent 25 years at prominent media companies including Univision, Viacom, and CBS, driving billions in sales revenue, has used her own experience of the toll of high pressure to develop a system to create success and satisfaction. Named a ‘woman to watch’ by Advertising Age, and listed on Crains New York Business 40 under 40, she argues that managers need to put the emphasis on coaching and mentoring, and less on bossing. The constant upgrading and improving of our selves, she says, will help us to seize opportunities, which will be even critical in the workplace of the future.

www.fastforwardgroup.net

The Augmented Human Mar 02, 2024

Show notes

Richard Townsend, CEO of Workforce Learning on talent, culture, and the augmented human. His predictions are based on a rich pedigree in communications, from humble beginnings at DMB&B Advertising to launching the digital division of Starcom Mediavest. But it’s his pivot into online learning at Circus Street that has shown him a future where AI will deliver the technological uplift to let us become better at being human. He argues that in a world of AI, everybody will have their own personal chief of staff, research assistant, and designer sitting alongside them as they work. The result, he says, is a future of problem solving, creativity, leadership while the machines get on with the rest of the job.

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