Although this week’s focus is squarely on TED2006, there’s always room on our radar screen for speakers from TEDs past. Especially when that speaker is the incomparable Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. For those like me, who scan each week’s New Yorker for his byline, we can now get a more regular fix. Yes. It had to happen. Malcolm has a blog.

With the Fed raising rates this week, the monetary policy debate on the next step will commence, focusing on whether or not the Fed made a mistake in raising rates too soon, and what it should do going forward. There is clearly no consensus regarding the Fed decision. Some economists vehemently oppose raising rates in […]

10. Louis Vuitton – From 2012 at the age of 70 Mohammad Ali appeared in this ad, it ran in magazines and newspapers in 60 countries and captures him in private reverie. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz in his Phoenix backyard.

9. Ford Motorcraft – Ali travels to Alaska for this ad from 1978.

8. Louis Vuitton – In July 2012 Louis Vuitton presented a dedicated digital experience celebrating the inspirational words of Muhammad Ali, with the participation of calligrapher Niels Shoe Meulman and word artist Yasiin Bey (formerly know as Mos Def).
Ad Agency: Ogilvy Paris

7.Adidas “Impossible Is Nothing” – From Zaire 1974, this ad campaign taps into athletes desire to push themselves further, to surpass limits and break new ground.

6. Apple Macintosh – Ali was featured in on of several “Think Different” print ads for Apple in 1998.

5. Pizza Hut – The Greatest surprised us all in this Super Bowl Ad from back in 1997.

4. Under Armour – In 2015 the sporting wear company launched the The Muhammad Ali collection with this web film.

3. Dr Pepper TV Spot “/1 Americans” – Ali was featured as in this Dr. Pepper commercial from the “Always One Of A Kind, /1 Americans” campaign.
Ad Agency: Deutsch Inc.

2. 2016 Porsche 911 “Compete” – Three legendary competitors go head-to-head against themselves. Muhammad Ali takes on his doppelganger in the ring, tennis champion Maria Sharapova hits the court with her copy and grandmaster Magnus Carlsen challenges his other self to a game of chess. After intense competition, all three matches end with the better version of each person reigning victorious. A narrator says that this philosophy of greatness coming from within informed the creation of the 2016 Porsche 911.
Ad Agency: Cramer-Krasselt

1. 2015 Toyota Camry “How Great Am I” – Amy Purdy, paralympic athlete and “Dancing with the Stars” contestant, stars in Toyota’s Super Bowl XLIX commercial featuring audio from one of the greatest speeches of all time by Muhammad Ali.
Ad Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi LA

You will be missed.

The first days and weeks on the job for new employees are crucial. They can literally make or break a new employee’s impression of your company and determine whether or not they want to stay.

Based on recent data from the ADP® DataCloud, a Big Data platform that allows business leaders and HR professionals to generate actionable insights from the workforce data embedded in their ADP HCM solutions, more than 25% of employees left their jobs within the first 60 days.

These are pretty startling statistics and constitute a real challenge for recruiters. That’s why after successfully attracting and recruiting talent into your organization, a positive onboarding experience is the next step to ensuring you retain them.

All too often, new employees are emailed a packet of intimidating forms to fill out and told to come back when it’s completed. Today’s workforce expects more and the talent you invite into your organization deserves a better experience.

Organizations should strive to create an onboarding solution that incorporates the latest best practices and trends, emphasizes employee socialization, increases engagement, and speeds the employee’s ability to contribute to your organization’s success, as well as their own.

A Fresh Approach to Onboarding

Every organization has its own version of the complex process of onboarding, but introducing the latest technology can benefit companies across the board.

If your onboarding experience is not using technology to the fullest, consider incorporating these four popular techniques:

Simplify. Make the onboarding experience easy and enjoyable for new hires. Use technology to communicate regularly and boost engagement. Enhance the user experience and simplify the process to make completing the required forms easy instead of tedious. Most importantly, seek feedback and continually work to improve the process over time.

Build Connections. Tap into social tools to introduce new hires to their team members and help them feel connected even before Day 1. No one is better suited to teach new hires about your organization, culture, and roles than their new colleagues. Facilitating relationship building early on will help them feel comfortable and bring them up to speed in record time.

Remove Friction. Ensure that onboarding is the beginning of the employee journey where information flows to the HCM system to avoid hours spent on repetitive data entry by HR and employees. The less time spent on data entry and paperwork means more time for assimilation, network building, and productivity.

Assume “Mobile-First.” According to the Nielsen® 2014 Digital Consumer Report, nearly two thirds of Americans own a smart phone and use it for everything from getting directions to online shopping. Today’s workforce has high expectations when it comes to accessing information at their fingertips. Developing a streamlined, intuitive onboarding processes with forms and social tools that can be easily read and accessed from a smart phone should be a major initiative.

Going beyond technology innovations, an overarching theme of any effective new hire experience is that onboarding is a continual process throughout the journey of work, not a single event. Bringing a new employee into an organization or on to a new team goes beyond a week of orientation and should include several conversations over time to allow the new hire to fully assimilate to their role and to the organization. Take time to clarify the company culture; check in often over the course of the first year of employment to ensure your new hire remains on a good path, and establish a follow-up plan to monitor how they’re faring.

Convert New Hires to Engaged, Productive Employees

Your organization gets one chance to do onboarding right, so go all-out to make it a meaningful experience for your employee. With the importance of recruiting and retaining talent at an all-time high, business leaders must understand that effectively integrating new hires into the organization is an important step to ensure their success.

Above all, the onboarding experience is a personal one. If new employees are treated as valued contributors from the start, it increases the probability that they’ll be engaged, and remain engaged, as they disperse throughout the company.

This article was written by By Dave Imbrogno, President of National Account Services for ADP’s Global Enterprise Solutions unit. He is responsible for many of the company’s Human Capital Management solutions, including Human Resources, Payroll, Time and Labor Management, Comprehensive Outsourcing Services, Talent Acquisition and Talent Management.

Transforming Onboarding to Help Maximize Success

Transforming Onboarding to Help Maximize Success

Los Angeles-based Central Films North’s award-winning director Rodrigo Garcia Saiz captures the unwavering pride and devotion of a father in the touching spot “I Am Your Fan” for Special Olympics, out of Young & Rubicam Mexico. The spot depicts a footballer anxiously and gleefully awaiting the arrival of his first child—a boy. When the birth finally arrives, we see that though the child brings an unexpected surprise with her arrival, his love continues as strong as ever.

Creative Credits:
Client: Special Olympics
Agency: Young & Rubicam Mexico
Global Executive Creative Director: Tony Granger
Chief Executive Officer: Hector Fernandez
Chief Creative Officer: Saul Escobar
Creative Director/Copywriter: Manuel Guillen
Creative Director/Copywriter: Mario Vivanco
Regional Creative Director: Martin Goldberg
VP Account Director: Britta Dahl
Agency Producer: Bernardo Salum
Production Company: Central Films North
Director: Rodrigo Garcia Saiz
Executive Producer: Mauricio Francini
DP: Mateo Londono
Art Director: Oscar Carnicero
Post Production: Cluster Studio
Audio Producer: Benedicte Leclere

Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room is part-brand story, part-flagship retail, part-working roastery, and a complete brand experience.  Take a look at this video audit and analysis to see why this special store might be Starbucks next big move to make specialty coffee more mainstream.

DLYohn Brand Experience Brief: Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room from Denise Lee Yohn on Vimeo.

other Brand Experience Briefs and related posts:

Starbucks 3.0 Caffe Bene Zappos corporate office A Tale of Two Re-brands:  Syfy and Starbucks

transcript:

It’s been called the “Willy Wonka of coffee.” “The Disney World of coffee.” “Retail for the 21st century.” I’m talking about Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room, a very special Starbucks location in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, Washington. This brand experience brief takes you inside the 15,000 square foot store.

Actually calling it a store is really an understatement. It’s practically a shrine to coffee and it is comprised of different areas where you can worship, I mean, experience coffee. And the location is a working roastery, where coffee is produced in small batches for sale there and in other Starbucks’ locations.

There is a huge retail area sells coffee and everything related to it — cups, presses, makers, servers — plus you can browse all sorts of unique cultural paraphernalia including prints, vinyl records, and vintage souvenirs.

There are two bars where you order and get your product. On the main level, you can order special coffees, coffee drinks, coffee flights, pastries, and recommended pairings of coffee and chocolate. The wraparound bar is lower than the ones at most Starbucks so you can see the baristas preparing your order as well as the beautiful Clover machines and other cool coffee preparation gadgets. I ordered a Mole Mocha and it was exquisitely served in a dark cup with the Reserve star logo. The lower level features a set up more like a regular bar with a bartender serving up drinks to patrons sitting on bar stools.

The Roastery & Tasting Room appeals to all five human senses — plus some. First, there is so much to see. Even before you enter the place, coffee beans adorn the sidewalk. Once inside, you’re greeted with a sign explaining the concept — and other messages are scattered throughout the space. The store design retains many of the original features of the early 20th-century building, including the terrazzo floors and ceiling beams. There is a 32-foot-high Copper Cast where coffee beans are stored, the open roastery where you can watch the coffee being produced, and all sorts of equipment.

The sense of sound is appealed to in the way the coffee beans lightly rattle as they make their way through the pipes in the ceiling and fall into glass silos above the bar. And there’s the clacking of an old-fashioned train-station flap display board which changes every time a new batch is being roasted.

Paper menus as well as unique furniture and fixtures deliver on the sense of touch and the smell of fresh ground coffee beans wafts through the space.

For taste of course the freshly roasted and prepared coffee is distinctive and the sides like a Key Lime Meringue Pie are delicious. If you’re hungry for something more substantial, a unit of Tom Douglas’ pizzeria, Serious Pie, is located in the space.

Beyond these senses, the place also appeals to community and knowledge with its library of more than 200 books related to coffee and a place for meeting. And friendly, aproned employees stationed make you feel welcome and answer questions.

This is truly high end retail — my small drink was $6.50 and an eight-ounce package of coffee beans sells for between $13 and $50 — so it doesn’t seem to have the same mass appeal of a regular Starbucks. But when I visited on a weekday afternoon, the place was packed with regulars working and meeting as well as tourists. And I remember when Starbucks first opened and paying $4.00 for a coffee drink seemed expensive, so this could indeed be the company’s next big move — making specialty coffee more mainstream. It just announced it will open a second Roastery & Tasting Room in the heart of New York City’s Meatpacking District in 2018.

The post brand experience brief: starbucks reserve roastery & tasting room appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

This post is first part of a two part series, in which I describe how the web is providing you relevant information from the ever swelling ocean of information. 

1. Think of the ‘10 minute’ shower you took this morning. Now think about this – in 2013, we are creating the same amount of data every 10 minutes that we did from the beginning of recorded time until 2003!

2. Imagine you entered a search query on a multibrand flight ticket web-shop to see rates of Amsterdam to Vienna flights for a certain date. How do you feel while the website makes you wait for 15 seconds by displaying ‘one moment please’ before it returns the results?

The above two cases underline two very fundamental aspects that are shaping internet based business ecosystem: we are generating content at an exponentially growing rate, and we expect to have relevant information at our fingertips.

In order to provide us with relevant information from ever swelling ocean of information, companies need to organize new information continually and present relevant information in an easily assimilable way. However, no internet based company has the complete answer to what is the best possible way to do so. And to add to the woes of the companies, the challenge only gets tougher by day as the amount of content grows and our average attention span decreases. It turns out that today the pursuits of companies is a work in progress. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to take a look at the various strategies that are applied in organizing and presenting information. Below I describe some strategies that I have identified.

Organizing

1. Rated/Tagged by people
The most basic form information organization on internet is based on rating or tagging by people. When people rate an app on Google Play, vote up an answer on Quora, or rate a restaurant on Yelp, they are basically participating in the process of organizing information. When people hashtag their tweets, or fill in details such as location, price and bed-type while posting their apartment on Airbnb, they are once again participating in the process of organizing information. Simple and versatile, rating and tagging are two unsung heroes of internet.

2. Curated by people
There are many websites which enable people to curate content in a way people consider meaningful. 8tracks lets people create and share playlists. Flipboard lets people create and share their own virtual magazines. YouTube lets people create and share their own video channels. The basic idea behind enabling people to curate content is to organize information in chunks that have some sort of ‘soul’, which results from the unique tastes and preferences of the person curating it.

3. Curated by company
Oftentimes internet based companies curate information in way the company considers it to be appealing to its target customers and fitting to its own business objectives. Examples: Amazon’s books, movies, music and games, among other things; and Delivery Hero’s restaurant menus.

4. Tagged/Rated by machine
All of us know how amazing Google Search is. Google’s servers work incessantly to index content from across the web and the process involves advanced forms of tagging and rating. The amount of computing that goes on to enable Google’s super-fast search is unimaginably massive. The search function of many other websites, such as that of a multibrand flight ticket web-shop, is also algorithm driven, but they are of much modest scale and scope.

When it comes to organizing information in a meaningful way, companies apply several strategies in combination to deliver the best possible results to people. Let’s consider an example. As I write this, I am listening to Bonobo’s ‘Stay the Same’ in the playlist ‘Cigarette & cold morning’ on 8tracks. It turns out the playlist creator retrieved the song from SoundCloud. Most probably she searched for the song using the song-title and/or the artist tags. She put together the playlist ‘Cigarette & cold morning’ by selecting songs that suited the theme she was trying to create. She tagged the playlist with words – relax, chill, smoking, morning, french. When I searched for playlists on 8 tracks using the tags – ‘french’ and ‘chill’, I got a list of several playlists. I glanced through the list of playlists, and chose ‘Cigarette & cold morning’ because of several reasons – number of plays and likes were high, the other tags looked acceptable, and the cover art and description were attractive. Interestingly, I was able to glance through the list of playlists, and register information about number of plays and likes, the tags, and the cover art and description within just a few seconds. As we discussed at the very beginning, presenting information in an easily assimilable way, is as important as, organizing information meaningfully.

I discuss some of the strategies that are applied to present information in an easily assimilable way in my next post. Click here to read Part 2/2.

What is your take on doing business in today’s internet based business context? Would you like to add something to the information I presented in the post? I would love to know your views.

To stay tuned with me Follow @nbhaskar888

Monday, May 20, 2013

Global Press Institute Founder Becomes Ashoka Fellow

Fellows are recognized for their innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Global Press Institute founder Cristi Hegranes was elected into the Ashoka Fellowship on May 15, 2013.

A coveted honor for social entrepreneurs throughout the world, Hegranes was one of 5 U.S.-based changemakers to become an Ashoka Fellow last week.

A global organization, Ashoka supports those who share qualities traditionally associated with leading business entrepreneurs – vision, innovation, determination and long-term commitment – but are committed to systemic social change in their fields. Ashoka Fellows are recognized for their innovative solutions to some of society’s most pressing social problems.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Cristi into the Ashoka Fellowship,” says Michael Zakaras, a member of Ashoka’s Fellow selection team in the U.S. “Her idea, combined with her leadership, will improve the quality, diversity, and sustainability of international journalism. And by equipping women around the world with the training to report on their communities, GPI will undoubtedly spur important social change in the process.”

Global Press Institute (GPI) is an award-winning, high-impact social venture that uses journalism as a development tool to educate, employ and empower women in the developing world to produce high-quality local news coverage that elevates global awareness and ignites social change.

GPI is building a network of professional women journalists throughout the developing world who earn a fair wage for reporting on their local communities. Their unique coverage of issues overlooked by mainstream media contributes directly to the development and empowerment of their communities, brings greater transparency to their countries, and changes the way the world views their people and cultures. Today, GPI trains and employs 135 women in 26 developing countries.

“It has been an incredible experience to see Cristi help transform the lives of so many women, and to watch them in turn write stories that bring about social change and solve a problem plaguing the global media industry for more than a decade,” says Ryan Blitstein, a member of the GPI board of directors and CEO of Change Illinois. “Even after several years on the board, I am still amazed by the unique model Cristi envisioned, and her tireless efforts to make it a reality.” Blitstein nominated Hegranes for the Ashoka fellowship in 2012.

Hegranes is also the recent recipient of the Grinnell Prize for Social Justice Innovation, a Jefferson Award for Public Service and the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism. After working as a feature writer with Village Voice Media in New York and San Francisco, Cristi founded GPI at the age of 25.

“This is an incredible honor,” Hegranes said of her election to the Ashoka Fellowship. “It is the dream of every social entrepreneur to join this incredible network!”

Hegranes holds a master’s degree from New York University, served as a fellow-in-residence at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg and received a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

“I am so grateful to the women of GPI around the world,” Hegranes says. “They have given life to this dream and they continuously prove that journalism is a development tool capable of extraordinary change.”

To contact Cristi Hegranes call +011-415-516-7831; email [email protected]

What do Hurricane Katrina, the stock market crash of 1987, and the U.S. federal government shutdown of 2013 have in common? They were all shocks that temporarily impacted U.S. consumers and, as a result, consumer confidence. None of these events, however, led to a recession. As the Consumer Confidence Index® (CCI) has shown over more […]

If you’ve watched TV shows like “Criminal Minds,” you’ve seen FBI agents analyzing crime scenes, searching numerous government databases and interviewing both suspects and witnesses to solve a case.

With advances in technology and new streams of data available to employers on an almost daily basis, it doesn’t take an FBI profiler to figure out who would make the best candidate for a specific job opening. As we spend more and more time online and on our smart phones, we’re generating unprecedented amounts of data, leaving behind digital breadcrumbs that can be mined for talent identification purposes.

New analytics technologies are empowering HR leaders with the data and insights needed to help attract, hire, manage and retain the talent they need to drive business success. By combining internal data with behavioral analytics and other technologies, employers can better predict who would be the best fit for a particular role, and even gain insight into how to elicit that candidate’s best performance.

I recently attended a Harvard Business Review webinar that touched on some of the fascinating ways our digital footprints are being translated into talent scores that can help employers compare large pools of candidates worldwide.

These are some of the interesting points I took away on new methods used in identifying talent:

Mining Facebook “Likes” – According to research conducted jointly by Stanford University and the University of Cambridge, mining Facebook “Likes” using computer-generated algorithms may predict a person’s personality better than most of their friends and family. After analyzing the videos, articles, artists and other items a person “Liked”, the computer was more accurate in identifying psychological traits such as agreeableness and conscientiousness than in-person interactions. While social media analytics can be used to identify traits that may predict a candidate’s suitability for a job, it’s important to note that there are laws and regulations which may govern who should analyze an applicant’s social media profile and who should not.

Tapping internal Big Data – Another interesting concept is that critical benchmarks for talent and performance can be derived from existing organizational data. The premise is that by measuring everything people do at work you can infer how they will perform in the future. For example, an employer can map how groups interact and how ideas spread throughout the organization. The data collected can help identify the most suitable teams for certain projects, and which individuals are essential resources based on their strong connections with colleagues.

Applying gamification – When taking assessment tests, the user experience can be shortened or jazzed up by applying techniques from the video game industry. For example, companies like VisualDNA profile people using visual personality quizzes which reveal psychological traits such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The quizzes couple questions with images of people doing things to trigger a rapid emotional reaction from a participants’ subconscious to reveal their personality makeup. Keep in mind that it is a best practice for employers to ensure that any tests/assessments applied within their workforce are job-related and do not expose protected characteristic data.

Employing digital profiling – Digital interview providers such as HireVue mine around 80 million data points from a 20-minute interview. The data is then linked to personality and performance analytics to infer relevant talent signals derived from the interview.

While some of these methods may sound a bit futuristic to HR professionals, the employment world is moving toward an environment where intuition and references are but starting points to profile job candidates. One day hiring talent may be as easy as finding the person in the closest proximity with the right skills for the job similar to Google Maps showing what businesses are nearby. In the meantime, employers should continue expanding their evaluation methods in their recruiting activities and, to stay competitive, they should embrace analytics to help better inform their talent management decisions.

This article was written by Amit Jain, Division Vice President, Strategy & Business Development of Major Account Services at ADP.

4 New Ways to Help Analyze Talent Pools

4 New Ways to Help Analyze Talent Pools