In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, host Daniel Newman is joined by Shelly Kramer to take a look at what pandemic marketing looks like for big tech — both now and in our post pandemic world — whenever that will be. There are some major pivots big tech needs to make as they navigate the months ahead (and likely the entire year), and that’s the topic of our show today.
We explored how companies are dealing with the events that they’ve been relying on for decades are cancelled, and what a “new normal” in terms of tech brands connecting with customers and prospects might look like — or at least a temporary normal as we move from in person events to digital events and how long we expect that to go on.
We talked about social habits that need to be revisited, and the fact that what we’re seeing is digital transformation happening at the speed of light.
We examined some of the digital events we’ve sat through these last few weeks and touched on the good (and there wasn’t much) and the not-so-good that we saw along the way — and explored what brands can learn from those early experiences. Brands need to pivot quickly and realize that marketing today shouldn’t be simply regurgitating the same old, same old sales pitch messaging they’ve relied on way too much in the past, and instead messaging should be focused on things like: We know the challenges you’re dealing with right now, here is how we can help.
The marketing mix for technology companies has changed and old habits die hard, but it is possible to change. We shared some ideas on how to replace face-to-face interactions that happen at live events and how brands can pivot to create and/or participate in digital events that look and feel like the next best thing to in person interactions. Being raw, being vulnerable, offering up the human side of the brand is not only possible, it’s incredibly impactful.
We talked about how things like podcasts, webcasts, fireside chats video discussions, online media events, and well-executed digital events can all play an outsized role in how big tech is able to pivot — in pandemic times and beyond.
Want more on that (of course you do!) you can watch the video here — be sure to subscribe to the Futurum YouTube channel while you’re there:
If you prefer audio, grab the podcast version here:
As always, thanks for hanging out with us today.
Note that this show is intended for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors and we do not ask that you treat us as such.
Image Credit: Search Engine Land
Transcript:
Daniel Newman: Welcome to the Futurum Tech Podcast, and webcast. Now, audio and video for everyone out there. I’m your host today, Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst at Futurum Research, joined by my partner this week, Shelly Kramer.
Shelly, how you doing? Welcome to the show. First time in a while we’ve been on together.
Shelly Kramer: First time in a while, yeah.
Daniel Newman: It’s always fun to get us both on the show at the same time. The beauty has been somehow despite the fact that we aren’t traveling, and you traveled a lot, and I traveled even more I’m somehow working more hours, and I think you’ve found the same thing too. It hasn’t necessarily relieved us in any way of the amount of work. It just allows us to be closer to the work all the time.
Shelly Kramer: All the time. I thought that as I was turning off my computer at 9:45 last night, so yes. All work all the time.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, at least it wasn’t one of those edits I send you at like 9:00, being like “Can you deeply edit, and read this for me so I can have this published in the next 10 minutes.”
Shelly Kramer: Right.
Daniel Newman: Famous for it, so every once in a while when you read my stuff, if it sounds really good you might want to check out Shelly Kramer’s stuff because a lot of times she is adding a little bit of spice, little paprika to that chili as I like to say, but no. We have an interesting show here on the Futurum Tech Podcast today. Excited to talk about what we would say Pandemic Marketing. I wanted to call it Post-Pandemic Marketing, but I think I was being a little optimistic when I titled it, so we’re just going to say Pandemic Marketing, and really talking about flooring the marketing shifts in tech, and what tech is going to have to do kind of like now. Well not kind of, actually like now, and in the near future as this state of new normal, which I have very wavering opinions on that term, but that new normal emerges as companies start to try to bring events back, as demand needs to be created, as a lot of our social habits need to be deeply looked at, and of course our digital transformations need to be further explored and investigated, but a really interesting topic, Shelly. Something that’s on our mind a lot, and it’s something we do a lot with for our customers, but things are not the same. Things are not the same no matter how much we want them to be.
Shelly Kramer: And I’m not sure they’re going to be really, ever again, at least for a while, and I tend to lead with optimism, but I think that for me what’s exciting about this, and I feel like I want to look out for stones saying this is an exciting time. But, we’re immersed in the digital transformation space, and we’ve been immersed in that for a decade before we were calling it digital transformation.
So, what we’re basically seeing now is two years’ worth of digital transformation happening in the space of a couple of months, and we’re going to have to keep seeing that continue forward. For me, and I assume for you as well, it’s exciting to see companies who are maybe some laggards, or who really weren’t all in in how we can use technology to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish, whether it’s shifting to remote work or something else. To me, that’s exciting. Don’t you think?
Daniel Newman: I’ll give you the two sides of it. I mean, first of all a quick chronology. This pandemic has sort of created this shift in work that took place in a couple of phases. The first phase was, “Oh wow, we may not be able to travel for a little bit. Let’s have our event on Zoom”, because essentially right up to about Mobile World Congress, late February it was sort of a question mark of just whether would events get canceled.
Shelly Kramer: Right.
Daniel Newman: This is when most of the pandemic was going on. It was in China, and in fact it wasn’t even yet quite called a pandemic in the beginning. It was in that phase where it might be, but we certainly saw the writing on the wall.
Then there was a couple things got canceled. Then a lot of companies are like, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to cancel our event, but we’re just going to throw it up on Zoom, or WebEx, or Teams, or ON24.”
Everyone basically just took their physical format events, and threw them online. They’re just like, “We’re going to do exactly what we planned to do live, and we’ll do it online.” For a few weeks that concept was okay, but boy. After maybe three or four… I remember I did three or four of these events in like a two week period, and it was awful, Shelly. It was really awful.
Shelly Kramer: It’s exhausting.
Daniel Newman: It’s too long. There’s none of the value. Like I said, the thing about events that everybody loves is everything that happens in between the sessions. That’s not to say your keynotes, and panels aren’t important. It’s just to say that it’s those conversations in the halls as you’re walking from one end of the event to the other. It’s the coffees in the morning with people you’ve worked with for years. It’s the dinner and wine with prospects. That’s the stuff that really people go to events, and love. It’s the bands that get brought in, the high end bands that people don’t get to see. They get up close and personal, so that kind of stuff all gone. But, all the meat, and the content was still being thrown at a voracious pace, and it was really, really horrible after a couple of weeks.
Then the next phase is kind of where we’re at now, and it slowly emerged. But, then it was when companies basically said, “We’re going to cancel. We’re not just canceling the physical event. We’re going to cancel the digital event” because we entered a phase that was completely overwhelming. It overwhelmed our system. It overwhelmed our government. It overwhelmed our businesses. People weren’t really, and then when people realized it had landed here on our shores in the US, and there was a trajectory that was not fully understood, and it’s been changing, and it’s continued to change its trajectory.
We heard everything from millions of potential fatalities to a number now that’s still way too high, but companies weren’t going to risk it, so events got canceled, digital events weren’t timely. It was off color for companies to be talking about their product’s marketing, and to be touting their wares at their event, so everything got crushed, and now we’re sort of hitting what I would say is the… It’s not post-pandemic, but it’s mid-pandemic. I don’t know if we’re at the 9th hole. The 13th hole, or the 2nd hole, but we’re starting to get more clarity, Shelly, as to where we’re going to be that we’re not traveling soon. There’s not going to be a live events probably anytime in 2020, and we’re going to likely, or even early 2021. I don’t know if there’ll be a CES next year. Something would have to change really quickly for there to be a CES next year.
We could be probably into the later half of 2021 before we start to see a more regular event schedule, which by the way companies were super dependent on events. Now all the companies, and many of them are working with us, Shelly, are coming to companies like us, the analysts, the influencers, the media, and the technology bloggers, journalists, and saying, “Help. Help us. We need help because we use events. Events is our launchpad. Events is our lead gen. Events is where we meet our customers, and we don’t have them anymore.”
I realize I’m a little long winded here, but I think that’s an important chronology to note because here we are. Companies are like, “Okay, we can start talking about our stuff again.” Still sensitive, still need to be a little bit cautious. Can’t be too gratuitous in our promotion, but we also can’t stop working forever. What do they do? What do you think?
Shelly Kramer: Well, I think that a couple of things. First of all, big tech has been the clear winner as it relates to all things related to the pandemic because a lot of big tech has become essential services, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Facebook even, and these companies also have the benefit of a lot of cash in the bank. Some of these companies are not operating from a place of hurt, but when we look at… We’ve seen all of these same companies that I just named to have to cancel events.
Then we look at another tier of companies, some equally big companies, some not quite so big, and I think that what we have is we have a lot of budget that’s been set aside for events, not that companies haven’t lost money on canceled events and everything else, but I think that what we’re seeing is that brands are looking at how do we take what we’ve budgeted for this in-person events, and how do we try to create… We can’t replicate events necessarily, but how do we create some experiences that are real, and to your point, Daniel, like create in some ways those things that happen in the hall, and allow that interaction to happen? I think that there are brands that are doing a good job, and there are some brands who are not doing a great job.
I’ll give you an example. I sit through a lot of webinars, and events these days, just kind of watching what people do, and I sat through a webinar that a major brand did earlier this week. I had to slap myself seven times to stay awake, and webinar, PowerPoint presentation, the presenters were not very good. What I was seeing on the screen was company branding on one side, and then a PowerPoint on the other side, and I’m sitting in front of a gigantic monitor, and yet I can hardly see what’s on the PowerPoint presentation, and I’m thinking, “This is not going to work.” From a marketing standpoint this is not going to work.
I think that what really needs to happen is I think that brands need to pivot quickly. Some of them we’re seeing do that, some of them maybe not quite so much, but I think to your point about thinking about this isn’t about marketing what it is we sell. It’s about understanding what challenges our customers, and our prospects are dealing with right now, what those struggles are, and how we bring solutions to the table that help them, and to be able to present that in a way. Maybe it’s not a boring webinar, and we already know it can’t be an in-person event, but this is where you can do things. We’ve done a ton of this, podcast interviews, video interviews. We’ve talked with our clients about doing some round table discussions that are video round table discussions.
I was talking with a client earlier this week, and putting together a potential media event that involved… We’ve all done media events with brands before, but this concept that I pitched to them involved inviting members of the media to do a WebEx, or a Zoom meeting, or something like that, and sending them a bottle of wine, or bottle of whiskey, or finding out what their alcohol preference, if any, is, and having some dinner delivered, and having it be instead of a pitch, and a brand presentation just having it be a conversation where you’re sitting around, asking questions. They can ask questions, the brand reps can answer, influencers can be involved, and the brand was really, really interested in that kind of thing. The difference there is that adds a personal element to what is a PR, or a marketing event. I think that’s what people, you know all of us who are working from home right now. I don’t want to be marketed to with some click ad. I want a personal connection with your, or with whoever it is that I’m thinking about working with. I think that’ll go a long way.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, and I think in tech specifically, because that’s where we spend a lot of our time, pretty much all of it now, the marketing mix has changed a lot. I think what’s happening is companies are really doing this little self-inflection point, and they’re trying to decide how to get back on track, but I think there’s a lot of don’t know, and old habits dying hard going on. I think we’re still seeing a lot of companies that want to do an event, two, three days of online. We’re seeing-
Shelly Kramer: I can’t do that, you know?
Daniel Newman: I won’t do that.
Shelly Kramer: Well, no, but part of it when you get me to get on a plane to come to your event, to participate in your event, to do interviews, to cover your events as an analyst you’ve got me for two days of breakfasts, and dinner, and meetings, and everything else, but I can’t do that in a virtual setting.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, and so you’re absolutely right. I could barely do it in a live setting. I’m the worst. My attention is terrible at times, more one-on-one, more direct interaction with the executives always really important. I love a good keynote, but rarely are they good. Sometimes those are really hard to get, and then when you take away that element of… Basically when you add the element of distance, meaning the distance of online, Zoom is not the same as in-person. It is not.
Shelly Kramer: Right.
Daniel Newman: it is good. Being face-to-face is good, but there’s a difference. It goes back to why we’ve gone to concerts for years when you can listen to Spotify. There’s something about being there that we can’t necessarily replace, but having said that we have to. We have to for now.
Shelly Kramer: We have to.
Daniel Newman: We have to replace it for now, and so the mix for tech, especially big tech, a lot of the B2B side of tech, there is a big cry for validation that’s going to need to come in the form of a softer skillset in marketing.
I had a conversation the other day with a tech company that we’re doing these fireside chats for their partner community. As an analyst, and author I’m being involved. I’m talking with one of the executives, and said, “Let’s get a little more raw. Let’s be a little bit more vulnerable”, and I know this sounds cheesy coming from a guy. I said, but, coming from anybody, but the point was I said, “Put me in front of the room. Don’t stage it too much. One or two opening questions.” I said, “Let the group ask questions. Let me answer them honestly. Let me tell them all the uncertainties, and uncomfortable things that maybe we don’t want to talk about right now, that we don’t know if things that have worked in the past will ever work again.” We don’t know if the tactics, whether they be in marketing, or in product launches. Product launches right now are an absolute disaster because you can only launch on a stream so many times before people are going to want a new way. We can’t touch anything. We can’t feel anything. These are very tactical experiences in the sense of you get a new phone, a new device.
I went to Samsung’s launch of their new flip and foldable devices. You can’t touch the things. You don’t get that experience, and then a company wants to sell them for thousands of dollars.
Apple right now hitting some harder times. People aren’t going to have the same disposable economic situations. What’s going to be marketing creativity for a company like Apple that’s lived for the launch for the longest time. Sure, you can stream Tim Cook up in front of the room holding up a device. It’s not the same. You can’t line up outside an Apple store. What, are you going to line up six feet apart? You’re going to camp? You’re going to need an acreage of camping grounds to keep people’s tents far enough apart. [crosstalk] an organic buzz-
Shelly Kramer: Not going to happen.
Daniel Newman: … That you were able to build in the past, but you’re going to still need to build momentum. People want billions of dollars of these devices sold, and if you’re in more of a B2B tech, data center tech, chip tech, you’re even less interesting to the general public, so you’re going to need more specialization, more people that can really understand, decipher, get content in front in multiple tiers, whether that’s to tier one media, whether that’s opinion pieces, whether that’s, like you said, podcasts, and webcasts.
But, what I would say is you need a very complete marketing mix. You need third party validation more than ever before. You need to think about strategies with things like webinars. Yes, they generate leads, but how do you put content around that mix that’s more interesting? Because, we’ll do webinars. We do them all the time. We do white papers all the time, and we understand that’s a key mix for a B2B tech company trying to drive very specific demand, but things like this. This conversation that hopefully you’re watching live right now, but maybe you’re listening to it, that are much more engaging, much more open, much more of a discussion, a little bit like watching a talk show, CNBC, or watching CNN, or Fox, or whatever your things is, something that interests you. That’s what the problem is, is otherwise it’s just slides and words. We’re getting so much of that now.
Shelly Kramer: Well, and I think that brands have been really lazy for a really long time, completely pre-pandemic in terms of their messaging, when it’s email messaging. It’s just so self-centric, so we’re amazing, and I think that now is not the time for that kind of messaging.
You spoke about content. Your content strategy has never been more important than it is right now, and content has always been king. More so now, but creating content, understanding that different people have different preferences. One of the reasons that we migrated to doing these shows in video form also is that we’ve had a podcast for years, but we know that not everybody listens to podcasts, and some people like video, and some people like to just be able to feast their eyes on Daniel Newman in the flesh.
I think that understanding that, and being able to do things quickly. Quick little bites, quick little sound bites of things that are relevant, that aren’t we’re here for you, and we’re all in this together messaging. I think people are already sick of that, but some things people might not be thinking about that I was spending time looking at in advance of this show is digital advertising words. In some instances it’s actually gotten cheaper. Cost per impression on Facebook ads has dropped substantially, and their traffic has surged. You’re maybe saying as a B2B technology brand, “Ah, Facebook”, but you know what? That’s where people are. People are hanging out on Facebook. People are hanging out on LinkedIn exploring what you and your team are doing on LinkedIn. I have seen over the course of the past year LinkedIn… I’ve always been a big LinkedIn user. I know you have been too, but LinkedIn has really gotten on people’s radar screens, and LinkedIn has really gotten on brand’s radar screens.
I shared with our team yesterday, our team of analysts in a conversation that I was having a meeting with a major technology brand yesterday, and we were talking about in advance of an event that I’m helping them with, and they were talking about the fact that they’re watching impressions and engagement on Twitter, and the benefit that they’re getting from that decrease, and they’re really seeing an upswing in what’s happening for them on LinkedIn. Brands are making that shift. Sometimes you have to put digital ad dollars there, but also smart media partnerships. I think that’s really important.
You talked about this earlier in your conversation. Media partnerships, relationships with in the most unbiased way possible, relationships with analysts, relationships with influencers, and knowing that what an analyst, or an influencer brings to your campaigns, your initiatives is that we have our own opinions. We’re not going to say something that the brand wants us to say just because a brand’s paying us. That’s not how we built our reputations. It’s not how we built our credibility. We bring our audiences to the table when it comes to conversations that we have with brands. We expand reach, and I think that what brands are finding right now, and not only from a marketing standpoint, but from a sales standpoint, for those of us who understood the value of social channels for a long time.
We built really deep, really strong, really valuable networks, and a lot of people haven’t done that. A lot of sales haven’t done that. A lot of people have eschewed the use of any kind of social channels, and now they’re playing a game of catch up.
You made the point earlier that brands need to really re-think what they’re doing in social, what they’re doing in content. I would add to it advertising as well.
Lastly, I think that we cannot ever forget how important email is. There’s a whole lot of people out there who don’t like email that I’ve thought in more than one instance, and I can’t tell you how many clients I encounter when I ask, “What does your email list look like? How are you connecting with your customers on a regular basis? How are you using email as part of your demand gen, as part of just staying connected to current customers” and clients sometimes look at me with glassy eyes. I think that all of those things are a really important part of the equation for marketing, and for tech marketing moving forward.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, I think you bring up a number of great points. I like the idea of considering what social channels are working. This isn’t even really a pandemic playbook, or marketing at all to just like using data and analytics.
Shelly Kramer: Right.
Daniel Newman: We decided very early on with our family of companies, and a lot of people might know us for Futurum Research, but we have Broad Suite Media Group, which is a media arm that has millions of contacts of decision makers in business. We have an agency in B3B that we own that provides back office type operations for social, for digital, for content. We did those things very intentionally, and while Futurum is that front facing, analyst, research, influence brand we realize that having data driven, convertible type of outcomes that we could actually speak to in our proposals, in our customer discussions were going to matter, and this was years ago when we started this when we realized that this can’t just be about impressions.
Every phase of social and digital there’s been a gamification aspect, when that was early on. Remember Twitter, you do follow first, and people would build huge followings because it was all follow, follow back….
Shelly Kramer: Right.
Daniel Newman: … 300,000 followers. They must be influential.
You see tagging strategies on LinkedIn, and on Facebook, and even on Twitter where people tag 10, 12 and as many as they can. Of course there’s always people, so the metrics, the reach, the it looks good. Then of course there’s cheap redirecting traffic on the web. You can buy traffic.
I always say to customers, and we have a really good reach organically, and that stuffs good, and that’s helpful, and it’s measurable, and the traffic is legitimate, but I’ve always told customers, especially in tech marketing. It should be in most cases conversion focused. If you’re a consumer type tech that might be a conversion where the customer clicks, and buys something. In big tech, which is where a lot of our resources go, that’s probably a lead in the funnel.
I’ve always said, “If you’re just using third party validation and hoping for success you could spend a lot of money because working with analysts is not inexpensive, white paper, appearances, webcasts, expensive, expensive, expensive.” We love this business by the way.
But, the point of it is that if you can say, “We put X customers, X prospects in funnel through that webcast, through that paper, through that research, through that event”, that’s really what the playbook. The strategy of the marketer needs to be right now is how do we determine ROI. Don’t tell me you can’t measure ROI in digital marketing, and if you meet someone, if you’re a marketer in a tech company, and you talk to an analyst firm, influencer, blogger, and they want to sell you impressions, run. Just hang up and run.
Shelly Kramer: But, data you know what? To be perfectly fair, Daniel, I have conversations with brands on a daily basis who are asking that same question. Now, what kind of impressions can we expect? Sometimes that level of knowledge even on the brand side, the marketing team side, the social team side, is still very tied up in some things that are easy to gamify, easy to buy, and that don’t really have great value.
We always try when we’re doing something, when we’re producing, maybe we’re partnering with a brand to do a podcast, or a webcast like this in a particular topic, and it might be tied to a topic on which, or they have developed a piece of research, or a white paper, or something like that, so including a call to action. Here you can slide over here, and grab this white paper, and collecting that lead, and putting it in the funnel. That needs to be a really significant part of what your efforts are, and I think we miss that a lot when people get tied up in, as you say, impressions.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, well it’s a marketing mix, Shelly. It’s a marketing mix that needs to incorporate a lot of different aspects. I think that’s what we think a lot about, and that’s what I hope those leading product management, marketing, business units that are sort of exploring the landscape of events, and third party validation. I want to share a little bit about what we’re doing with everybody out there because this is something we thought a lot about.
When this first happened we pivoted, and we’ve tried to be the… Both you and I, Shelly, have talked, written, and done a lot of our own work on digital transformation, trying to be the agile company that we’ve proposed everyone else to be, whether that was becoming agile.
We did a podcast blitz straight away. That started off to be a podcast blitz event focused for all the events that were being canceled. It became a pandemic focused podcast blitz where we helped companies crystallize messaging, and got executives to join us to talk about how companies were responding to this COVID-19 crisis, and that was a tremendous experience. It was. For us as an analyst firm we go to learn a lot about what companies were doing which campaign out in the work, but also came out in the things we were able to publish, the writing, the social.
Then the next phase was our media experience lends well to us doing a bigger broader event than just podcasts, so of course we’re continuing to do podcasts, feels like a ton.
Shelly Kramer: Every day.
Daniel Newman: I feel like I’m podcasting every day right now, but we’re launching a big idea summit at Futurum that will start this summer, and go into the fall. A lot of you know that I do a podcast series with Patrick Moorhead at Moor Insights called the Six Five. We’re going to do a big event that’s going to feature the analysts of more as well as our whole team, Shelly and I’s team here at Futurum, and we’ll probably have 40 or 50 big tech vendors involved in this event, and it’s a thought leadership event. But, we were very careful to think about this event, and the opportunities for that media mix. That’s kind of that marketing mix that we talk about. It’s important that there’s a promotional aspect. There’s a thought leadership aspect. There’s a chance for executives to be featured. There’s a demand generation aspect. There’s a bolt on marketing deliverables, whether that’s additional lead gen, whether that’s additional podcasts that all of our participating companies are going to have a chance, and yeah. I know I realize I might be sounding like I’m selling a little bit now, but the thing is what we were doing is we really thinking of what do businesses need.
Businesses that need to pivot, and so every one of our events, it’s not just about, “Hey, let’s jump on the web, and do a webcast, do a video, do a podcast. Let’s think about an integrated marketing strategy that we can take our tech know how, our market influence, our research and analysis, and let’s couple it up with company’s needs to put their thought leaders forward, their voices forward, and the narrative, and show tech leadership in a digitally transformed way.
No, digital events aren’t new. We think what we’re going to do is going to be a little newer, a little cooler, a little hipper, and a little more measurable for most companies that get involved in it in the past, but I think, Shelly, that it’s really important right now that companies are cautious, companies are careful. But, my last word, and I’ll give you one of your own, is if you are fortunate enough, and many of our tech customers are, to not be in a really bad economic state due to what’s going on, and trust me we empathize. We’re a small company. We’ve been very carefully monitoring our business. This affects everybody, and everyone’s dealing with this situation, but if you’re fortunate enough to have business, and a lot of companies just based on the earnings this week are in pretty good shape, don’t let yourself become paralyzed by what’s going on. There will be a back side of this, whether that’s 3 months now, 6 months, 12 months, there will be an end.
As time goes on the sensitivity to this particular outbreak will diminish. We’ve seen it in history, whether it’s been 9/11, whether it’s been the credit crisis, whether it’s this pandemic. People will get back to a more normal, and what will interest them in hearing about will be more normal.
I can tell you a few of the big companies that have cut off efforts, have frozen up, and this isn’t just short-term. This is because there’s a pipeline doing events, doing podcasts, doing white papers, doing research. If you stop today it means you’re going to have nothing in July, or August, or September, so if you are fortunate to be in the financial situation to keep marketing don’t stop marketing. Be more sensitive. Try to more on tone to what’s going on in the world, but don’t stop because the riskiest thing a business can do is stand still.
Shelly Kramer: Well, and I think that the important thing is that this is not marketing advice. This is advice from tech analysts. You can’t sit still, and I think that the point you made at the beginning of this was that the key to success, and you said this when we were talking about how we put together a strategy for our forward movement as we began to navigate through this pandemic, and the key thing there is so easy. What do our customers need right now, and how can we help them? That’s it.
Daniel Newman: Yeah.
Shelly Kramer: It really is that simple.
Daniel Newman: That was nicely said. It was so good. I didn’t realize you were done talking, but no. I think that’s a great question, Shelly, and it’s a great way to end this show is what do customers need, being more sensitive. We’ll go ahead, and we’ll share some resources in the show notes of this show because we’ve written about this. You’ve written about this. I wrote a Forbes article that was exactly about this topic. There’s a lot of advice out there, most of it stinks. Ours is good, so listen to ours.
No, I’m just kidding, but there is a lot of advice out there. Do think carefully whom you’re listening to. We hope it’s to us. Thank you so much for tuning into the Futurum Tech Podcast, and Futurum Tech TV today. Hopefully you’re watching us, but if you’re not watching hopefully you’re listening. Hopefully you’re consuming it in a way that makes you happy, and that’s our goal is to try to make this available to you in as many formats as possible.
But, for this particular episode Shelly and I have to say goodbye, but we hope you found it valuable. Hit that subscribe button, and we’ll see you again very soon. For now, we’re out of here.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
