Yue Sheng

Great post! We often forget that little ones can be influenced by those in the media as well as adults! Super interesting stats about screen-time as well, and crazy to think that we were all raised before ipads and iphones were even a thing. I remember that if my parents wanted to keep me busy, they’d give me a toy or send me outside to play. Nowadays, it’s much easier to give a child an ipad to watch videos or play games. Crazy how technology shapes everything – even child-rearing!

Hi Colleen – Your post resonated with me as my son is very much influenced by social media, specifically YouTubers. He has been an avid follower of several Minecraft social influencers. DanTDM was one of the more popular ones for a few years and he created his own toy line, so at Christmas my toy purchases were heavily influenced by DanTM, we have several figures and stuffed animals around our house now. He was his favorite around 8 now that he’s 10 his preference for toys has changed and just recently a lot of the YouTubers are adding their own merch, so I’m forever getting asked to buy some YouTubers merch, no idea who it is, but I do know it’s one of the many revenue streams for these YouTubers…guessing it’s how they amass millions of dollars! So it’s no wonder this generation see’s being a YouTuber as a way to make millions with “very little work” or at least that’s how my son see’s it. I’m pretty sure it takes a lot of effort to make all those videos; ideas, props, paying “friends” and giveaways/challenges. I’m glad to know I’m not the only mom who’s being influenced by social via our kids. 🙂

Hi Yue!

This is great! I have noticed the same thing in researching our Capstone project. We are continuing work on a solution that involves marketing to performance/non-profit arts ticket buyers. In doing this research, I was pointed towards Capacity Interactive (https://capacityinteractive.com) which does arts digital marketing support. The reports and tools they have available for download all require an email address, and I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by the depth of content they have that is relevant to this program as well as how it relates to my field. I’ve downloaded a whitepaper on ticket buyer media usage (this is amazing; I haven’t found a similar report from any other arts support organization) and a social content calendar specifically aimed at arts marketers.

Of course, now they have me as a lead, both as a potential customer (or potential future employee, please hire me Capacity Interactive!). They’ve taken me deep into their content marketing, including a podcast series and case studies on specific digital efforts of various arts organizations across the country. The content is great, but it is also a hook for their various workshops and bootcamps that I could plan on participating in with professional development funds.

Because it is all relevant information, this has been feeling like a really magical experience.

I’m curious, Colleen, do you still follow up with personal outreach after the automated reply?

I can see how the automation helps minimize some of those lost opportunities, but, to your point on Westerman, I’d imagine the human follow-up is still critical to using technology to advance the experience (rather than to replace the human element)..

While I’m sure this has increased your initial fulfillment, have you seen it improve conversion (getting those samples into paying customers)?

Interesting post, Yue! I don’t have an Alexa or Google Home, but I can definitely relate this to when I have tried to use Siri on my phone. It drives me nuts! Usually, I am asking Siri a question because I am driving or doing something where I can’t use my hands to Google or find an answer. Instead of telling me the answers or at least saying different options as an answer, Siri just brings up a list of articles that could possibly have it

So, I have to use my hands and eyes to click and read those articles. Not helpful in the moment! It would be great if it was like Watson and could process that info and come back with an educated answer.

Thanks for your comment, Christine! Siri is a good example of intelligent assistants in present market that can only perform basic interaction with human. I had terrible experience with Siri too – some answers are not even related to my questions! Definitely it would be nice to equip Siri with similar system underlying in Watson. The incorporation of diverse algorithms will enhance the capability of Siri in processing unstructured question and data to provide improved UX.

Thanks for your comment, Helen! You got a very interesting experience with Alexa. I did not know Alexa can be installed in Amazon Kindle – it seems a new function or interface of Alexa. Undoubtedly, the technology has been improving the process capacity of intelligent assistants and it will only get better!

Yue, it sounds like it’s a swiss cheese model error. In order for the registers to go down for hours at a time, one must assume that multiple errors occurred on Target’s end. It’s probably some mixture of human error and system error. Target is probably in the process of doing a root cause analysis and figuring out where all errors occurred. It’s just a shame that it takes such a major incident for these things to be fixed. It seems like most companies would benefit from having someone that looks into errors across a company to prevent them from happening again. Construction workers have safety managers in place so that safety issues are taken care of before someone gets hurt. Why should other industries be any different?

Hi Cliff, thanks for your good point! I am sure it is a complicated issue and most likely involved both human errors and design defects. Nevertheless, the system maintenance should be improved in an innovative way to prevent any further process shutdown. The mechanism of ‘safety manager’ for the system maintenance might be not efficient enough to detect any possible error before it happens. Target and other firms will have to improve system design as well as process management to reduce incidents of outage in the future.