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Brits falling victim to fraud via social media

Social media could be responsible for an increasing number of young Brits falling victim to fraud, new research has revealed.

Data shows that 47 per cent of payment scams in the last year were among under 30s, with over half (52 per cent) believing they have been approached by scammers on social media.

A massive 85 per cent have shared details on Instagram that could leave them open to ID theft, and a shocking six per cent say they would allow someone remote access to their bank account.

A further four in ten also say they would provide personal and security detail to somebody phoning up claiming to be from their bank.

In a bid to educate young Brits about scams and fraud Santander has teamed up with Kurupt FM from BAFTA-winning BBC TV show People Just Do Nothing to launch its latest fraud awareness campaign, ‘MC Grindah’s Deadliest Dupes’.

The three episode mini-series follows MC Grindah as he goes undercover to investigate the murky underbelly of scams and fraud and has been created to grab the attention of younger audiences online.

They will feature identity theft, online scams and money laundering as the focal topics, and are set to run across Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube to capture the key audience.

Susan Allen, Head of Retail & Business Banking, Santander UK, said: “We’re committed to fighting financial crime and work hard to raise awareness of fraud and scams with all age groups.

“We recognised that to engage younger audiences with these important messages, we needed to do something different and memorable.

“We hope that everyone, no matter what age, will enjoy Deadliest Dupes and learn how to stay safe so they Don’t Get Kurupted.”

Deadliest Dupes follows previous fraud awareness campaigns run by Santander including its Phish & Chips van which toured the UK handing out free fish and chips and a side portion of advice on avoiding scams.

A Scam Avoidance School introduced in branches in 2018 has been attended by over 100,000 people to date.

A new online hub has been set up to support the campaign.

Those at risk can find out more about the tricks used by online fraudsters and test their own ‘scam smarts’ with a specially designed quiz.

Public demands social networks combat ‘fake news’

85% of people agree that social media companies have a responsibility to remove fake news, according to new research by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

The vast majority (79%) of people also believe that social media companies should be monitoring for fake news on their platforms. Only four in ten (39%) believe government shares this responsibility, running counter to points raised by former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg now of Facebook, earlier this week.

The results of a nationwide survey of over 2,000 adults is being published ahead of the close of the Government’s consultation on online harms on 1 July and will feature in CIM’s submission to the consultation.

The results point to the fact that the Government’s White Paper doesn’t address the presence of fake news on social media unless it is causing a specific harm. Our research uncovered a widespread expectation that social media companies are responsible for removing fake news from their platforms.

Chris Daly, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, said: “At CIM, we are concerned about the damage fake content has upon public trust. As marketers we spend £3.9bn on internet display advertising with the aim of bringing value to our customers.* Our professional members and the marketing industry as a whole needs confidence they are spending their marketing budgets wisely.

The public are unequivocal in their belief that it is the responsibility of social media companies to find and remove fake news from their platforms. Yet the Government’s proposals for regulating social media platforms will not require them to monitor and remove it. In other words, even after the introduction of regulation, fake news may continue unchecked.”

Half of adults (51%) with a social media account say that they have seen something they would consider to be fake news in the past three months, with a third of people (31%) saying they had seen fake news in the past week.

This prevalence of fake news on social media is the likely cause of declining confidence in the accuracy of social media content. In a similar survey in 2014, the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that 62% indicated that they trusted content on social media (giving a score of 6 out of ten or more). By 2019, this had fallen to 34%, with only 1% saying that they are very confident (a score of nine or ten out of ten) that information on social media is accurate or genuine.

The Government’s proposals also provide an exemption for private messaging. However, when asked as part of the survey most of the public believe that there should be some level of monitoring of private messages on platforms like WhatsApp.

  • Monitoring of messages made by people with a history of problematic behaviour online is backed by 41%
  • While 31% believe private messages should be monitored for “buzz words”
  • Only one in four (26%) said that they did not believe private messages should be monitored

Image by Pixelkult from Pixabay

Retailers ‘neglecting Twitter and Facebook for customer service’

Retailers are neglecting social media when it comes to customer service, and are not listening to consumers to drive customer experience improvements.

That’s according to the 2019 Eptica Digital Trust Study, which found that while retailers successfully answered 59% of routine queries asked via web self service, chat, email, Facebook and Twitter, there were wide variations in performance between channels.

Retailers provided answers to 83% of queries on their websites but only responded correctly to 38% of tweets and 50% of Facebook messages. Performance had worsened on many channels since 2017 – then retailers answered 73% of emails.

By 2019 this had dropped to 68%, despite the continued popularity of the channel with consumers, who use it for over a quarter of their interactions with brands.

As part of the study, 20 fashion and food & drink retailers were evaluated on their digital customer experience, alongside brands from other sectors, by testing their accuracy and speed at answering relevant, routine queries, repeating research conducted since 2012. Questions included asking about ethical sourcing policies (fashion) and allergy labelling (food and drink).

Additionally, 1,000 consumers were asked for their views on customer experience.

Fashion (answering 60% of all queries) and food and drink (59%) were the top sectors surveyed but still failed to respond to 4 in 10 of all routine queries.

The research also demonstrated a direct link between trust, listening and loyalty. 89% of consumers surveyed said they either will stop buying from brands that they don’t trust or will spend less. Building trust begins with delivering on basic promises – 59% ranked giving satisfactory, consistent answers as a top three factor in creating trustworthiness, while 63% rated making processes easy and seamless as key. Just 8% of consumers felt that brands were listening to them all of the time, with 74% believing brands pay attention to their views half the time or less.

“The move to digital has transformed the retail landscape,” said Olivier Njamfa, CEO and Co-Founder, Eptica. “Greater choice means consumers are becoming more demanding and are actively seeking out brands that they can trust and who listen to them. While retail brands have made some improvements since 2017, they have slipped back in others, damaging trust and ultimately customer loyalty and revenues. If they want to succeed they need to listen to customers and use their insight. Only those who do this will thrive and stay ahead of the competition.”

Retail Accuracy 2019
versus 2017
Average speed 2019
versus 2017
Web 83% vs 70% n/a
Email 68% vs 73% 10hr 19m vs 24hr 12m
Facebook 50% vs 28% 43m 24s vs 3hr 34m
Twitter 38% vs 50% 1hr 56m vs 1hr 43m
Chat 35% vs 25% 8m 43s 4m 24s
Total 59% vs 55%

Speed of response also varied widely between channels – and even within sectors and brands. One fashion retailer answered a tweet in 17 minutes, yet another took 50 hours to reply. A food and drink retailer responded on Facebook within one minute but needed nearly 23 hours to provide an answer on email. Overall response times on chat doubled from 4 minutes back in 2017 to 8 minutes this year. Facebook had the fastest average speed of response, at 43 minutes, 24 seconds – over twice as fast as Twitter (1 hour 56 minutes) and nearly 15 times faster than email (10 hours 19 minutes). This is despite exactly the same questions being asked across these channels.

The study evaluated 50 UK brands, split equally between the fashion, food and drink, travel, insurance and banking sectors. Brands were rated on their ability to answer five routine questions via their websites, as well as their speed, accuracy and consistency when responding to email, Twitter, Facebook and chat. Additionally, 1,000 UK consumers were surveyed on their attitude to trust, its relationship with customer experience and on loyalty and brand reputation. All research was completed in H1 2019.

A full report, including the study results, graphics and best practice recommendations for brands to transform customer experience is available at https://www.eptica.com/19cxretail.

An infographic on the results is available at https://www.eptica.com/state-uk-retail-customer-experience-infographic-2019.

Do you specialise in Social Media management? We want to hear from you!

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in May we’ll be focussing on Social Media.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Social Media solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

May – Social Media

Jun – Brand Monitoring

Jul – Web Analytics

Aug – Conversion Rate Optimisation

Sept – Digital Signage

Oct – Brochure Printing

Nov – Creative & Design

Dec – Online Strategy

For more information on any of the above topics, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Article 13 has implications for marketers

The European Union’s decision to pass Article 13, which will introduce more stringent copyright laws online, has implications for marketers, argues Andy Barr Founder and MD of www.10yetis.co.uk…

On the face of things, Article 13 sounds as though it could stifle the creativity of millions of internet users who create funny and original content. However, it does look as though the law will make exceptions for “parody or pastiche” content, which means our GIFs and memes might be safe, for now.

The real headache here will be for the platforms on which people freely share content of this ilk, that may have vague copyright confusion surrounding it. Channels such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will have to police uploads even more carefully to ensure content uploaded by its users doesn’t violate anything outlined in Article 13, or else be held accountable in some way.

They therefore may have to build even more robust and intelligent upload filters, which could be both time consuming and expensive. How exactly these systems will be able to differentiate between prohibited content and light-hearted, spoof postings is anyone’s guess.

This could cause problems for the social media industry, because memes and GIFs have historically been such an easy way to – for want of a better term – “go viral” and now content that teams create could get blocked for copyright issues under the watchful eye of these new upload filters that will have to spring into action; despite the fact that they may not actually breach any rules if the leniency with GIFs and memes is to be believed.

If anything, though, this will encourage social media teams and marketers to come up with more creative, original content – which to be honest could be a breath of fresh air for the industry.

Finally, the new “link tax” that is implied in Article 13 could leave platforms such as Google or Facebook with hefty bills for linking out to content which may have copyright implications, because paying publishers to link to the content from their platform could simply not be feasible on the scale it currently happens out.

Google has already hinted that it may have to shut down Google News, which is detrimental to the PR and media industry as it means that stories might not get as much reach. Hopefully, the implications of this will mean that some sort of solution is thought up to benefit everyone, instead of creating such a restrictive environment for sharing on the net.”

GUEST BLOG: The secret sauce for measuring social media ROI

By James Carroll, Digital Marketing Manager, Tableau

If you’re a digital marketer, social media is probably a key part of your marketing strategy. But if the idea of proving out the ROI of your social media presence to your marketing leaders keeps you up at night, you’re not alone. Research from DMA shows that “only 48% of marketers agree that social media gives them any return on investment”. Gathering and analysing social media data comprehensively and connecting it across all platforms to show the value of your social programs is no easy feat.

So how do you know if your team is measuring performance with the right social media metrics? To answer this, you need to understand what problems you’re trying to solve. Before diving into the data, you must have key performance indicators (KPIs) that support your objectives and align with revenue attribution models. Each social platform has unique audiences and definitions for metrics on engagement, reach, and more, as well as native reporting. So, before you step in front of senior leaders to report on social media performance, understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your programs and have clear goals in place.

Approach social media data with metrics in mind

When you’re determining which social metrics matter, be cautious of committing to KPIs that may not be measurable. If you don’t have access to the right data to back up a KPI, don’t plan to include these metrics in your goals until that data becomes available. Understand that some in-platform metrics help measure impact or influence on business goals—like reach, website visitors (returning and net-new), actions on your website or app, and the cost for those actions, such as cost per acquisition (CPA). Other metrics may require tying together a social post or ad impression and click with business-critical actions, such as: filling out a form, submitting credit card information, or buying something in-store.

Depending on the maturity of your analytics strategy, you may already be answering the below questions, but review them to frame your thinking and 2019 planning. Here are things to consider:

  • What are you using your social channels for? (e.g., grow awareness, convert leads, engage with clients and community, etc.)
  • What are your paid social goals? What are your campaign goals?
  • Can you measure success with platform data alone or do you need additional data sources?
  • Do you understand who your website visitors are? Can you compare them with your social followers?
  • Are you able to quantify the cost of acquisition and lifetime value for each customer?

Formal social metrics need data points to map back to and establish a method by which your stakeholders and leaders can track performance.

Social analysis is relative to analytics maturity

Once you’ve determined metrics that are aligned with marketing analytics goals, you’ll need to access and analyse social data to measure success. Sounds simple enough, right?

Viewing insights natively within Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook is straightforward. Analysing data and identifying trends across platforms is another story. If you’re trying to create a comprehensive view of performance so you can slice and dice the data, it’s necessary to export your social data outside the platform.

How should you approach deep analysis of your social data? Start by being honest about the maturity of your marketing analytics program. Early on in your journey, you should be able to track your basic performance and report by platform. As your analytics organization matures, reporting on your social data across platforms and campaigns should be happening on a regular cadence. Next, focus on gathering insights across platforms and attribute social data to benchmarks that inform platform ROI and plan your budget accordingly. If your social analytics program has the previous steps in place, you should be in a comfortable position to predict and forecast investments across channels and regularly report on the ROI of all your platforms.

For reporting, there is a variety of approaches also aligned with your analytics program maturity. Application programming interfaces (APIs) offer direct and automated access to your social platform pages and advertising data, allowing you to access all of this information in in one place. If you’re using third-party tools like AdStage, SproutSocial, or HootSuite, these platforms aggregate data and assist you in focusing on different priorities with their report templates.

Other APIs that connect with a BI platform, like Tableau, and social data sources help you access your data and create high-level, aggregate dashboards for your team, senior leadership, etc. When you create social media dashboards in Tableau with a live API connection, you have more control over the data and how you visualize it, customizing the view for your audiences to tell a compelling story. This particular set-up means you only need to create dashboards once and they will update automatically on a monthly or quarterly basis—depending on your reporting cadence. These dashboards offer quick insights into the performance of paid social ads, the paid social budget for the month, or anything else your marketing department is reporting on.

When comparing your platforms next to each other, look for macro trends, especially in different regions. Are fluctuations in performance seasonal, related to campaign launches, or caused by something else?

Monitor your cost per click or acquisition throughout the week and see if there are ebbs and flows that you can take advantage of—potentially optimizing your ads on a daily basis. As new trends and technologies emerge, you’ll need to prepare your strategy—and your reporting—to reflect these changes.

Understanding the clear goals you’re trying to achieve with your social channels and the business problems you’re trying to solve will ground your organic and paid social programs—and show your marketing leaders that you have data at the core of your social media analytics.

Sony launches immersive media experience with New York pop-up

Visitors to Sony’s ‘Lost In Music’ pop-up space in New York are being invited to create a personalised song as they move through the immersive experience.

Now in its third year, Lost In Music – produced by creative agency Ralph – unites Sony Music artists with Sony technology to produce creative, unique and shareable music experiences.

Through a weekly online show as well as the physical pop-up, Lost In Music showcases various innovative Sony technologies combined with exclusive interviews and performances from multiple Sony Music artists.

The groundbreaking Lost In Music experiential installation analyses the way each attendee moves and interacts with the cutting-edge technology throughout the space, combining it with the rhythm of their own heartbeat and adding musical components to create a unique, downloadable track.

Within the space, located at 201 Mulberry St. in New York City, visitors can get creative with:-

Heartbeat Chamber– This sets the BPM of the track by taking your heart rate.

Interactive Dancefloor Sequencer– You can dance over the LED floor to create a looping rhythm.

Drum Spheres– Hitting these will record drum loops based on your movements.

Vocal Booth– A microphone records, autotunes and loops your vocals.

Theremin– Your motion is captured and used to bend the pitch of your track.

– A camera on stage will record your movements. This is then combined with your finished track to create a shareable, personalized music video.

Also demonstrated at the Lost In Music pop-up is Sony’s latest multi-dimensional audio technology, which enables visitors to be entirely immersed in a track as it plays around them.

Additionally, guests will be able to get hands-on with the latest Sony products.

Finally, fans can tune in to the Ralph-produced ‘Lost in Music’ weekly online show to watch exclusive sets, interviews and tech highlights. Each episode of the show is available at www.sony.com/lostinmusic.

“It’s been tremendously exciting to work on this year’s Lost In Music campaign, which builds on previous years to really push the limits of what’s possible in terms of creating an immersive, interactive experience for music fans,” said Chris Hassell, Founder at Ralph Creative. “Combined with the live performances and complementary YouTube channel, Sony is able to connect with an extremely wide audience across multiple content and technology types.”

Social platforms and alcohol brands team up on responsible advertising

The eleven leading beer, wine, and spirits companies that form the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) have teamed with Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube to set advertising standards.

Signatories on the beverage side include big hitters ABInBev, Asahi, Bacardi, Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg, Diageo, Heineken, Molson-Coors, Pernod Ricard and Kirin.

The partners say the agreements means they can achieve new levels of responsibility in the advertising of beer, wine and spirits across social media. This will be achieved by:

  • Ensuring the most-up-to-date safeguards are used so that marketing communications relating to beer, wine and spirits are directed to those adults who can lawfully buy these products;
  • Exploring what changes can be made to further diminish chances of those underage seeing such advertising
  • Exploring ways people can have greater control over whether they see alcohol advertising and opt out of receiving advertisements for alcohol products.

In addition, the partners have stated that they respect different cultural backgrounds and recognise that there are people who do not wish to see marketing communications from beer, wine and spirits producers on their social media.

In joint statement they said: “We believe our partnership has the potential to go beyond our individual companies and could create change across a range of platforms and advertisers, ultimately benefiting the thousands of businesses who want to advertise responsibly and the billions of people who use digital platforms every day.”

More information can be found at http://www.iard.org.

Irish Government planning to monitor social media

Ireland’s Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has issued a controversial tender for firms that can supply it with social media monitoring services.

As reported by the Journal.ie, whoever wins the contract will monitor keywords on social media platforms and provide analysis in email updates or digests.

While it’s not clear exactly what will be monitored or how it will be reported, the initiative has raised concerns among privacy campaigners.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties said it could have a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression, while Digital Rights Ireland questioned whether it was legal.

News of the social media monitoring plans actually emerged from a wider tender that the Irish Government put out that also required print and broadcast media monitoring.

It’s thought the contract will encompass up to 6,500 articles per month, split between 4,500 from print media and 2,000 from digital media.

Journal.ie says print media analysis will be provided in a digest each morning and digital media updates will be provided at regular intervals throughout the day.

The broadcast media service involves providing email updates showing the relevant coverage on all national, regional, and local radio and television stations across Ireland.

Sportstar Influencer tracks sports player social stats

Filter Digital has launched an index for sports players that seeks to evaluate marketing value through a combination of social following, engagement metrics and team performance.

The platform – Sportstar Influencer – uses social, engagement, media, and sentiment datapoints to rate and rank sports players against each other, comparing them at a local, national and international level.

The launch of the platform includes the first public dataset – the Barclays Premier League. Providing an individual score for every single player in the league, and ranking both players and teams in order of their index score and their social following, the Influencer List shows where each player ranks against their peers and on each social network.

Filter says that by understanding how players rank against each other in their own sports, as well as across multiple sports, brands and sponsors can take better decisions over where they spend their budgets.

The SSI platform provides an opportunity for those with less internal resources to find sports players that match their requirements, or work with the team on more complex needs – such as understanding target demographics, real-time sentiment and media buzz.

Oliver Morrison, Filter Digital CEO, said: “Whilst working on a report for a client, it became clear that no single index existed for how influential sports players are, and how they compare to each other. Sportstar Influencer changes that, allowing brands to understand which players can provide the most effective return on investment for marketing spend.”

The Premier League is the first dataset available publicly, and for free. In June, the dataset for the World Cup 2018 in Russia will be launched, shortly followed by a move into tennis in July to coincide with Wimbledon.