Humantel

As a new generation of breakout stars has proven, women’s sports are having a major moment — especially among younger fans. 2 in 3 Gen Zers and Millennials recognize that as athletes like Caitlin Clark, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, and Angel Reese quickly become household names, women’s sports are becoming a bigger part of our cultural conversation. Right now, the rise in popularity of women’s team sports presents an exciting opportunity for advertisers who want to show up for a fast-growing audience of engaged superfans. Women’s sports are symbolic, representing celebration and growth, which is not how we've all traditionally covered sports: a tribalistic, "us vs. them" mentality. This perspective is antithetical to what fans of women’s sports fans want, and acknowledging the inherent differences requires a different lens for storytelling and coverage.  This was on full display during the Olympics by the athlete's themselves. What are the key drivers to women’s sports and how do these fans wish to engage? We found that, while the success of women in sports is nothing new, today’s women’s sports fans are more active, excited, and inspired than ever. Our research with Humantel aims to help marketers understand the major differences in how fans feel and connect today with this new growing fanbase. - A very special thanks to Julia Goorin, Loren DiBlasi, Abigail Aronofsky, Becca Hafter, and Kelly Neuenschwander - Check out what we are doing on Vox Media, PS, New York Magazine, SB Nation - Steve Kantscheidt, Andy Borinstein, Jessica Sterling, Emma May-Bradley, - Creative by Diana Y.

Every few months, someone writes an article about the threat that YouTube or perhaps TikTok pose to traditional media. The argument goes something like this: social video (or short form, user generated content or creator content, take your pick) is growing really fast, it is encroaching on consumption of professionally produced content and Hollywood is in denial or asleep at the switch. It might seem like I just set up a straw man to knock it down with a theatrical flourish, but I didn’t. I agree with all of it. Still, there are a few unanswered questions: How big is social video viewing, really? Will it keep taking share? And what can the big media companies do about it? * Based on Nielsen’s The Gauge, YouTube is already >11% of viewing on TVs (not the 10% that is usually cited). This excludes YouTube viewing on mobile/PC, TikTok, Reels and all other social video. * It’s hard to get a holistic view of all video consumption, but triangulating data from Activate, eMarketer and a new dataset called Media IDentity Graph (MIDG), I calculate that social video is now ~25% of all video consumption and it grows every year. * There are many reasons to believe that this share will continue to grow unabated. * Among them: most younger consumers express a preference for social over professionally-produced content; for many viewers, their definition of quality is changing to include attributes that favor social video (authenticity, relatability, digestibility, etc.); social video triggers much more dopamine release per viewing minute, so this isn’t just a fad, it’s enduring brain chemistry; social is structurally more surprising and innovative; it’s muscling in on Hollywood’s turf with longer videos and episodic stories; and GenAI promises to make video storytelling much more accessible to the massive creator class. * For Hollywood, social video is a problem. It will never be as financially attractive. It is still regarded as “less than.” And most attempts to cross over social stars to traditional have failed. * But it is big and getting bigger, so traditional media companies need cohesive strategies. A more holistic approach might include not only tapping into social video for marketing, but more extensively for franchise development and perhaps even a bolder push into influencer marketing and social commerce. https://lnkd.in/efWx2dvv

Happy 8/8th. So proud to be a part of the journey that Zoe and team are leading. #weare8 #thepeoplesplatform #lovenohate #everyvoicematters

I've always wanted to do a campaign around people "gathering" together. Years ago, I pushed for a campaign for a major television maker called "Gather Around," which was never presented. In elite circles, "gathering" seems to happen at "convening" events where the monied, "successful," and powerful meet in a far-off places; I once suggested a "People's Davos," but was quickly told why that could never happen. Yet, during the following two weeks, I've seen gathering events pop up seemingly overnight -- or within a few days -- in a magnificent fashion. Last night we were able to choose between between Progressives for Harris, Elders for Harris and Comedians for Harris. Last Monday kicked off with the now famous White Dudes for Harris event, building on gatherings of Black women, Black men, LGBTQ people and White women -- I know I am missing many. On the White Dudes event, more than 200,000 participated throughout the 3 hour gathering, raising $4.2 million dollars that evening. Two weeks, thousands engaged, millions raised. Four learnings: 1. Gather around joy and for something. 2. Simplicity works better. 3. We can organize and mobilize with speed and efficiency... 4. ...and do in a way that is easily accessible and more kind to our planet. I truly believe we have entered a new era, one of participation, where the many vs the few, can be included. And that they belong. Caroline Dettman Julie Jack-Preisman Tina Kaiser Alan T. Kercinik Lorenz Esguerra Lauren Cohen Tara Rush Janelle Zwiren Matthew Gallagher Matthew McDermott Marc Johnson Jennifer Banovetz-Bastian GiGi Downs Bjorn Trowery Theresa McDonnell

Travel is a powerful tool for self-discovery and emotional well-being and regulation. For Gen Z and Millennials, it's an essential investment and a financial priority. The bucket lists we use to make are no longer exclusively about destination, but how locations and experiences unlock personal passion and growth. A number of years ago, Katie Hendrickson and I talked about social's impact in creating the "pinnacle moment" for travel and our desire to mimic through capture on social platforms (we were all trying to copy those Insta photos... don't lie.. Katie said it perfectly). What Lindsay Schrupp writes about is how socially memorializing where we traveled has evolved to unlocking personal actualization. A poignant but critical point. Some other fun facts from Julia Goorin: "the tour group and cruises are a part of the travel plans for young consumers. 80% of Gen Zers would explore the world more if they had someone fun to do it. Half of Gen Zers and Millennials say cruises are well-suited for them." The study findings show that travel has evolved post pandemic, giving insight to those who service travelers and marketers who wish to more richly connect with people who do. Thrillist gets this, come read more. - A special thanks to Lauren O'Connell and Manali Doshi's beautiful art - Research & narrative lead by the talented Julia Goorin - Research partner at The Circus - Vox Media https://lnkd.in/g4Xvi67g

Understandably, many creatives have a visceral negative reaction to anything "AI." It may threaten creative jobs. It raises legitimate ethical and legal questions, including whether training models on artists' work without attribution or payment is theft. For some, it threatens their very identity. But in this piece, I explain from a technological perspective why GenAI is foremost a creative tool. * Fundamentally, GenAI models are impenetrable—because they are based on sub-symbolic systems that humans can’t easily understand or modify—and unpredictable—because their output is probabilistic. Their unpredictability is a feature, not a bug. * The cutting edge of research is focused on ways to improve their reliability, such as through increased scale (of compute and training sets); agentic workflows that spread tasks among many models; and augmenting or conditioning them with known information. But today, they are primarily concept machines, not answer machines. * As a result, they aren’t currently well suited to many use cases, especially high-stakes environments that require definitive, precise answers that are costly to verify. * Instead, they are very well suited to the opposite: conceptual, low-stakes, iterative tasks where the quality of output is easily verifiable. * In other words, GenAI tools are great creative assistants. They dramatically speed the creative process by providing faster feedback; they make it possible to try out a wider breadth of ideas, including riskier ones; they help give shape to partially-formed concepts; and they increase the “surface area of luck.” * Creatives have a long history of rejecting new technologies as unnatural, threatening and unartistic that later become integral. * It isn’t possible to stop technology, even if we wanted to. Legislating it, regulating it, shaming it or wishing it away probably won’t work. GenAI is just another tool. Progressive creatives would be wise to learn how it might help their process. https://lnkd.in/eQ8NFRGE

My problem with our obsession with data is two fold, one is obvious and frequently discussed. OBVIOUS - We are obsessed with what we can measure. I've complained before about our obsession over measuring anything, everything, precisely, and in real time, and how we're now subject to near endless meetings about things which actually have zero meaning........ and because people LOVE numbers, we can spend 4 hours over any TLA which measures any number divided by another, which people REALLY love, because they are often not round numbers, so it feels sciency......but this is old news. ------- NOT OBVIOUS - The corrorally...We have lost ANY remote interest in ANYTHING we can't measure, regardless of how utterly vital it could be. I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything that happens offline. - A high end distributor of Kitchen equipment could be selling nothing because it's not open at weekends, and nobody would care because it's not on an online dashboard. I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything thats subjective - A car dealership could be selling no cars, because all the sales staff are extremely rude and lazy, and since there likely isn't a way to put numbers on this, nobody cares I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything that happens a long time after the event. - An advertising campaign could ensure that a price increase in 2 years time, goes through without any decrease in sales, due to brand favorability, and nobody would care. I keep being in meetings where amazing things can happen and we don't know - Sponsoring a stadium can lead to brilliant meetings in fancy pants corporate hospitality suites that save a company from bankruptcy, but thats not going to show up in a dashboard. The closer we get to data, the further away we get from common sense. The more we obsess over data, less we understand people. The more that we look at what we know, the more we refuse to look for what we don't. And for 95% of companies, it's likely you have 0% visibility into about 95% of things that matter. For 95% of companies the stream of data is so strong, and narrow, it's blinding, not illuminating And about 50% of the time, the data we do get access to, is of such unusual customers, behaving in rather atypical ways, it actually does a brilliant job of totally misleading us. We're obsessing over and tweaking strategies based on borderline lunatics, or at least statistical anomalies. We are driving the car with almost no understanding of ANYTHING, while we focus maniacally on what we can see, in precision, in real time feeds, despite it AT BEST meaning ABSOLUTELY nothing.

“The average attention span today is only eight seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish. I’ve found that presenting data visually is very helpful because people absorb and process visuals much more quickly than they absorb words.” It was such a pleasure to connect with Donna Foti of KIND and get her best practices for communicating data. Donna talked about using the “granny test” and storytelling narratives, as well as leveraging designs and visual assets. She also discussed her approach for leveraging consumer insights to optimize marketing mix modeling. #CustomerInsights #DataStorytelling Link in the 1st comment 👇

Excited to share that I'm wrapping up some fantastic brand strategy consulting projects next week and will soon have availability for new opportunities. If you're looking for expert insights, strategic guidance, or innovative design work, I'd love to connect. Feel free to share this with your network, and let’s collab this summer! Eliza #brandstrategy #insights #branddesign #strategy #consulting #innovation #design #marketresearch #linkedin