Neal's Notes

“Exterminate, exterminate.”

-Briefing warning from the Daleks before firing their extermination rays on various “Dr. Who” episodes

What is one of the most well-known catch phrases on the long-running BBC series, “Dr. Who,” might eventually be uttered by a robot greeting you at your front door to take care of your termites.

Farfetched? Maybe right now, but a robot may soon be coming to your home to spray pesticides, clean your windows, and perhaps even tutor your kids.

ABI Research expects the global market for consumer robots to top $6.5 billion by 2017. BI Intelligence says the market for consumer and office robots will grow at a CAGR of 17% between 2015-2019, seven times faster than the market for manufacturing robots.

And some other key takeaways from BI Intelligence in their ‘The Robotics Market Report’:

• Three distinct categories will dominate the consumer/office side: home cleaning and maintenance; telepresence (i.e., telecommuting to events or remote offices) and advanced robots for home entertainment.

• The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is making it easier to develop robots for consumer and office applications. The report says mobile devices offer designers the opportunity to ‘outsource’ computing and user interface tasks to companion devices, allowing developers to produce app-controlled robots at more accessible price points.

• Robot vendors still face significant challenges – a lot of people are still turned off by robots too humanoid in appearance. “There is also a brewing potential for the kinds of intellectual property battles seen in the smartphone space,” added BI Intelligence.

The robot invasion is well underway. Lowe’s announced last year that the company’s Innovation Labs unit was testing OSHbot, a retail-ready, mobile multilingual robot, designed to help shoppers navigate stores quickly and easily.

Still in development, OSHbot not only knows where every piece of inventory is at all times, but has a telepresence enabling shoppers to connect with off-site experts who can provide useful home projects information.

According to Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, “home improvement is a very high involvement thing so having that ability to ask questions in your native language every time to a robot, makes the expectation that every time you’ll have the same high quality experience.”

A few other quick examples:

Tractica, a market intelligence firm focusing on human interaction with technology, reported that SoftBank Robotics and Aldebaran Robotics have tag teamed to produce Pepper, which their creators say is the first robot able to not only read and respond to human emotion, but also analyze how people are feeling and guide them in the right direction. Tractica says Nestle Japan plans to use Pepper to sell Nescafe machines in home appliance stores throughout Japan by the end of this year.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will introduce Nao at a few of its bank branches this summer on a trial basis. The robot, noted Tractica, can speak 19 languages and uses a camera to detect emotions from customers’ facial expressions.

And last year at International CES, Industry Week reported that the French-based firm Keecker rolled out a robot that can project video or other content from a tablet or smartphone to a wall or ceiling.

“You can enjoy life without being tied to the television set,” said Pierre Lebeau, the company’s founder/CEO.

Lastly, while the sky’s the limit on how robots will be utilized by marketers to sell products and services, how humans control and interact with them is a critical component for success.

Hiring expert Dana Borowka best summed it up:

“A tough challenge for small business managers with robots will be consistently hiring quality people to take care of the robots,” he said. “These devices will need to be set up, programmed, monitored and repaired. No benefit comes without a price.”

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

 –Exodus 20:14

What’s considered adultery really isn’t readily defined in this Biblical passage. And for the numerous online sites that offer a chance to be anonymously naughty, that’s probably good for them – and good for their business.  And it is a big business.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece on how the dating industry has become a global multi-billion annual industry. Market research firm IBISWorld predicts, for instance, that it will be just under $3 billion in four years.

Data on extramarital dating sites is sparse but UK-based The Independent reported these interesting snippets back in February:

Canada-based Ashley Madison, the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, is hugely popular in the UK, for instance; it currently operates in 45 countries with more than 32 million members worldwide. Ashley Madison (parent company Avid Life Media is now trying to raise about $200 million by listing shares for Ashley Madison in London later this year) also claims to be the world’s second largest dating site – only Match.com is bigger.

A 2013 freedom of information request showed that Members of Parliament, peers, and their staff in Parliament had clicked on an extra-marital dating website called Out of Town Affairs 52,745 times. The site’s moniker – “Adult dating with no complications.”

And last year Ashley Madison worked with researchers from New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, analyzing data on more than eight million men who had registered with the site.  The Wall Street Journal reported that the study was one of six published together in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ journal. It examined when people made significant life changes.

The Journal story also stated that “the study found about 950,000 men ages 29, 39, 49, 59 and their numbers on the dating site were 18% higher than what would be expected by chance, according to the researchers.  The study also looked at data for women and found a similar, though less pronounced, pattern.”

And way back in 2007, researchers at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and Cal State University-Los Angeles, surveyed 60,000+ heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals.  They asked more than 100 questions on infidelity.

“Men looked for sexual variety and excitement,” said Dr. David Frederick, assistant professor of healthy psychology at Chapman and the study’s lead researcher.  “Women were more likely to fall in love with someone else or to look for reassurance that they were still desirable.”

Today there are literally dozens of extramarital dating sites; some accept various forms of advertising, some also offer affiliate programs.  Ashley Madison’s, affiliate program, for example, bills itself  as “an easy-to-join system that enables webmasters, affiliates and publishers to earn monthly pay checks by promoting one or more of the sites within our diverse network of offerings.”

Despite the growing popularity of extramarital dating sites, there have been some hiccups.

French site Gleeden has 2.3 million members in Europe, including one million in France. Women don’t pay to register on the site; men buy credit, opening up different levels of access to registered women. Gleeden was hit in March with a legal complaint against the site’s American publisher, Black Divine, in a Paris superior court. The Association of Catholic Families (ACF) filed a complaint about risqué ads splashed on the backs of buses in several French cities. A French court will now decide whether the company is illegally encouraging spouses to cheat.

And there may be some legal precedence, reports BBC News. Article 212 of France’s Civil Code states “married partners owe each other the duty of respect, fidelity, help and assistance.”

“What we are trying to do with our suit is to show that the civil code – the law — has meaning…what makes Gleeden different from other websites out there is that its business model is based on marital infidelity,” said Jean-Marie Andres, ACF president.

No matter the Gleeden outcome, it’s safe to bet that this rather unique segment of the online dating industry will continue to flourish.

“Dave’s Not Here Man”

—Tommy Chong

“They’ve Outlawed the Number One Vegetable on the Planet”

—Timothy Leary

Grass. Pot. Weed. Ganja. Reefer. Wacky tobaccy.

The monikers are infinite.

And apparently, so is the growth potential of the burgeoning cannabis industry. GreenWave Advisors, a marijuana research and financial analysis firm (could anyone have remotely envisioned such a firm a decade ago?) prognosticated last year in a report that if the federal government and all 50 states legalize recreational marijuana, it could be a $35 billion annual business by 2020.

While that’s probably a Rocky Mountain High pipe dream for the near future, another cannabis industry investment and research firm, Oakland, CA-based ArcView Group, said that the U.S. market for legal cannabis almost doubled from $1.5 billion in 2013 to $2.7 billion last year. ArcView also predicts that by 2020, another 14 states will legalize recreational marijuana and two more states will legalize medical marijuana.

Currently four states – Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington – have legalized retail marijuana; Washington D.C. voters legalized recreational use but sales are still illegal.

Erik Devaney, writing in HubSpot, said it’s not just marijuana growers, distributors and dispensaries comprising this potentially lucrative landscape.

“It’s also fertilizer companies, and lighting system companies, and hydroponic supplies companies, and jar & container companies, and analytical testing laboratories – there are even staffing groups that specialize in placing workers in the cannabis industry,” said Devaney.

Sounds like a marketer’s dream, n’est pas?

Not so fast.

Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. So marijuana marketers are still faced with numerous hurdles. Google and Facebook, noted Devaney, forbid advertising marijuana on their platforms. Same holds true for photo-sharing service Instagram (owned by Facebook) – cannabis industry accounts belonging to businesses have been suspended.

“In many cases the online restrictions that marijuana marketers face are simply a result of companies trying to adhere to the law,” said Devaney. “Under federal law, marijuana dispensary operators are classified as narcotics traffickers. So if a company helps those operators sell their product (e.g., through providing ad space, or by allowing them to share photos on a public platform), that company theoretically could be convicted of participating in a criminal conspiracy.”

There are a number of other significant hurdles. A 1982 federal tax code amendment – known as Section 280E – denies tax credits or exemptions to businesses “trafficking” in controlled substances. So a lot of newbie marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and Washington, for instance, are taking a big hit (pun intended) – federal tax rates in many instances have ranged between 60-90 percent. They also can’t write off advertising costs, employee salaries and rent.

And most banks still won’t do business with the marijuana industry so legal weed has become a de-facto cash business. One that is, First Security Bank of Nevada, has opened accounts for about 80 marijuana-related businesses.

“The applicants hold approximately $35 million in deposits,” said John Sullivan, the bank’s president/CEO. “As a small community bank, there are benefits to providing services to the industry in the form of new deposits as well as opening doors to other businesses and services.”

Media companies have by and large avoided selling ad space to cannabis-based businesses too because again, at the federal level, it’s illegal to advertise marijuana and related products.

And trying to patent a marijuana brand is currently impossible right now – the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) won’t issue a trademark for something that’s currently not lawful on the federal level.

Despite all of the aforementioned, the industry continues to grow. Colorado retailers sold $386 million of medical marijuana and $313 million for recreational use last year; tax revenues were $63 million, licenses/fees brought in another $13 million. The state expects annual sales to top $1 billion by 2016.

Private equity groups also see opportunities. Last fall, Seattle-based Privateer Holdings cobbled together more than 40 investors and has raised over $50 million that is being spent on various cannabis industry ventures. One of these is Marley Natural, created by the family of the late Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley. The family launched what they call the world’s first global cannabis brand – it will sell cannabis-infused creams, lotions and various accessories.

Privateer Holdings has made one U.S. acquisition, according to CNBC – Leafly, which bills itself as “the world’s largest cannabis information resource.” Leafly, per their web site, says “we make the process of finding the right strains and products for you fast, simple, and comfortable.”

Creating demand and building brand loyalty will continue to pose challenges over the next few years. John A. Quelch, a Harvard Business School marketing professor, told Forbes that a national mass-market brand of marijuana is not on the horizon anytime soon. Until a majority of states – and the federal government – legalize marijuana sales, large cigarette and alcohol companies won’t take the risk.

Quelch does think some marijuana companies may expand to additional states to carve out early market share.

“They’ll achieve economies of scale that position them to be bought out later by national players. Unlike craft beer, marijuana would be inexpensive to transport across state lines to retail outlets across the country. I think you’ll definitely see a couple of companies get licenses in more than one state,” said Quelch.

Clay Butler, who founded now defunct Canna Cola, a soft drink containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, summed it up:

“My suspicion is that, if some day it is decriminalized, and you can get marijuana products in a liquor store or a 7-Eleven, I really don’t think it would be the big established food companies that would get involved,” Butler said. “I could see them buying out existing brands, which is a lot easier for them anyway. I think the market is going to the early pioneers.”

A recent study at Carnegie Mellon University shows that when people are aware that free smart phone apps may be sharing private info with third parties, they’ll often rapidly move to limit further sharing.

Carnegie Mellon News reported that the study evaluated the benefits of app permission managers (for Android 4.3, known as AppOps) that tell them how many times info like location, contact lists or phone call logs had been shared.

One example:

“Your location has been shared 5,398 times with Facebook, Groupon, GO Launcher EX and seven other apps in the last 14 days.”

“App permission managers are better than nothing, but by themselves aren’t sufficient,” said Norman Sadeh, a professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. “Privacy ‘nudges’ can play an important role in increasing awareness and in motivating people to review and adjust their privacy settings.”

All of this available location data can be a bit of a sticky wicket for marketers, who are trying to drive sales for their products/services, but at the same time, increasingly realizing they need to respect consumer privacy. Marketers, according to Greg Stuart, CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, will pay 10-20 percent more for online ads that contain location information – and because location data can make ads more relevant, that data can be used, for instance, to show an ad for a store to nearby customers.

But even consumers often can’t figure out what they want when it comes to key privacy issues.

Case in point – last year Accenture queried 2,012 consumers, ages 20-40 in the U.S. and the U.K. Eighty percent said privacy is a thing of the past; 87 percent said safeguards are insufficient to protect personal information. Yet 49 percent also said they wouldn’t object to companies tracking their buying behaviors if it meant receiving more relevant offers. And 64 percent would allow text messages while in a store if the on-the-spot offers were in concert with their buying preferences.

Go figure.

Josh Manion, writing in Marketing Land, wondered about what happens when privacy’s viewed as a matter of enterprise strategy based on who your customers are and how you engage them:

“We need to change our focus on privacy as country- or channel-based, and instead, make it an enterprise strategy implemented at the level of individual users,” said Manion. “That way, the consumer directs the brand, “Here’s when and how you can use my data. And here’s what I want in exchange.” That’s how we gain, and regain, the trust of consumers!”

A few months ago a long-standing colleague of mine decided to leave her tech company after 14 years. The pay was good, benefits great, but she came to the realization that she couldn’t breach that proverbial ‘glass ceiling.’ Despite her stellar qualifications, she resigned.

She’s now getting her teaching credential and wants to teach computer programming to high school students. Any high school that hires her will immediately be that much better.

But her story isn’t an isolated one. Tracey Lien recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times that women are leaving the tech industry in droves. It’s becoming a significant issue for the tech economy.

“According to the industry group Code.org, computing jobs will more than double by 2020, to 1.4 million,” said Lien. “If women continue to leave the field, an already dire shortage of qualified tech workers will grow worse. Last summer, Google, Facebook, Apple and other big tech companies released figures showing that men outnumbered women 4 to 1 or more in their technical sectors.”

Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and fellow with Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, said that when women go to venture capitalists seeking financing for their new startups, they are sometimes treated differently from men and held to a higher standard.

In an interview with Stanford News Service, Wadhwa added there are a number of reasons why there are so few women in technology.

“It’s still perceived to be a profession best suited to males. Parents often discourage their daughters from studying engineering because they don’t believe it is for girls. In schools, girls in engineering are ridiculed as tomboys or nerds. When they join the workforce, they may face discrimination,” said Wadhwa.

And on the other side of the pond in the United Kingdom, a survey of more than 600 people in the tech industry taken by The Guardian between Oct. 12 – Nov. 10, 2014 revealed that:

• 73% of both men and women believe the industry to be sexist;
• 52% say women are paid less than men for the same job;
• Structural and cultural sexism is still widespread.

Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization focused on the advancement of women, also analyzed the career paths of almost 10,000 MBA grads from 2007-2014 in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. More than half – 53% – left tech-intensive professions for other work, compared to 31% of the men.

“There is still the ‘brogrammer’ culture in high tech,” said Anna Beninger, Catalyst’s research director. “The tech industry has some significant culture issues, and it’s really damaging their ability to attract the best talent.”

There’s no magic cure-all. Joan C. Williams, law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law and coauthor of “What Works for Women: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know,” told the Los Angeles Times that “companies need to research the biases that prevent women from getting ahead and devise ‘interrupters’ – instead of single training sessions, companies need to make systemic changes.”

Stanford scholar Wadhwa added that companies started by women “achieve 35% higher return on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12% higher revenue than venture-backed male-owned tech companies.”

His parting caveat – “we must level the playing field for women by supporting their startups and removing the hurdles that are thrown in their way. Parents must inspire their daughters to step forth and take their rightful role in the innovation economy.”

You go girl!

A number of years ago I was retained to provide marketing communications services for a San Diego-based dating site. Good concept, decent funding from private sources, number of stories generated across various media genres. Ultimately, however, it wasn’t enough. Competition was too fierce; site just wasn’t attracting enough eyeballs and the venture folded.

Fast forward to 2015. Buddy of mine asked if I knew of any good dating sites as he was, to quote him, ‘back in the game.’ Told him I hadn’t been following the space for awhile but was curious to see how the industry had evolved.

The dating industry has become huge – $2.2 billion in 2014 according to market research firm IBISWorld; $2.7 billion by 2019. And Pew Research says that of Americans in a committed relationship that have used an online dating site, one in three met online.

Decided to have a little fun so did a bit of research/searching for oddball, offbeat and in some cases, truly weird dating sites. All seem to be flourishing; many have attracted advertising. In short, your future significant other may just be a few clicks away, no matter your fetishes.

So here are a few:

Vampersonals – Still searching for that special undead darling? For those with enlarged incisors, this site’s especially for you. Vampersonals boasts “whether you want to meet others like you for simple recreation and a drink, or find that special someone to shine within the dark for you, come check us! We don’t bite…too hard.” Reckon that drink’s probably red-hued.

Women Behind Bars – This started out as a pen pal site but has grown considerably since then. Looking for that special woman doing 5 to 20 but really don’t want to commit to a long-term relationship? This one’s for you then.

Here’s what one satisfied customer posted on the site:

“I purchased an address in January and have been corresponding with a beautiful, warm, funny, loving woman. This past weekend I finally was able to visit her. She is in Texas and I am in Pennsylvania. Well, this woman is the one. I am planning to have her coming home with me when she is released and then both of us want to have our relationship grow (possible marriage). I am just completely amazed that one letter has turned into a great, although long distance, relationship.”

And advertisers apparently like the site’s traffic. According to Todd Muffoletto, who founded the site, Women Behind Bars offers a banner rotation ad program; he says the site has also been the subject of 11 TV and 197 radio interviews and numerous print/web based articles.

Fat Bastard Dating – This site originated in the United Kingdom and boasts ‘thousands of members.’ Tired of working out to impress a date? Forget about it – exhale and let that paunch out and allow those love handles to reign supreme. In fact, the site says “being a fat bastard doesn’t mean you have to be single forever…the fatter you are, the better as far as the members on this site are concerned. Girls like a guy who has got presence and men love a cuddly lass.” The site also says there’s no obligation to pay until “you’ve found a fat bastard worth contacting.”

Kingsnake After Dark – OK, this one admittedly creeps me out a bit. Billed as a ‘herp-centric dating site’ for snake lovers, Kingsnake After Dark is attracting advertisers, albeit most of them, not surprisingly, are reptilian-centric. The home page has an ad running alongside the site’s main logo for Rodentpro.com®, which offers low prices for mice, rats, rabbits, chicks, and quail – everything you need to keep that seven-foot boa constrictor that lives under your bed well-fed and content.

SaladMatch.com – If you’re a steak and potatoes kinda guy or girl, this site’s probably not for you. But there are obviously a lot of arugula-lovers out there. The Facebook page has more than 11,000 Likes; Twitter followers are approaching 4,000. The site was launched by Just Salad, a New York City chain of salad restaurants/cafes. You can find your salad ‘soul mate’ by listing your favorite salad ingredients.

Whatever tickles your fancy, the online data industry’s convinced there’s someone out there waiting for you.

So your 13-year old son is seemingly spending every waking moment hunched over his Xbox, PS Vita, phone, tablet or (doubtful but some pre-teens and teens still use ‘em) laptop playing one endless video game after another. You’ve morphed into an avatar from his perspective; the video games have become his real world.

What do you do?

Well, if he’s really good, let him play on. eSports has finally reached critical mass and has become a multi-billion dollar business, notes market research firm SuperData Research.

Note the following from a trends brief the company put out last April:

• More than 71 million worldwide watch competitive gaming. In fact, about 14.9 million people tuned in to the 2013 World Series; last year 32 million watched the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship – more than double the audience for our so-called ‘national pastime’!

• The average eSports viewer watches 19 times a month; average session is more than two hours;

• eSports is becoming a revenue driver and marketing vehicle for online game publishers and major brands; former like Riot Games, Wargaming and Valve; examples of latter include Coca-Cola and Intel;

• The International 2013: Dota 2 prize pool was more than $2.8 million; total prize money from all prize pools last year was about $25 million.

As reported by CBS News, companies like Amazon also see such potential in eSports that it paid almost $1 billion for Twitch, a social network that allows users to watch/stream video games live.

“Like sports, you want to watch it live,” said Twitch COO Kevin Lin. “You want to be there when something interesting happens. You want to be there for that moment and share it as a communal experience. It’s very much like being in a crowd, only digitally.”

St. Louis-based Clix, a digital marketing agency, added that even the U.S. government and academic institutions are getting onboard:

“Professional gamers from around the world are being granted work visas similar to professional athletes to compete on American soil; even Robert Morris University (Chicago) has fielded a varsity team to compete in competitions for thousands of dollars in scholarship winnings.”

Market research firm IHS Technology projects consumers will not only spend 6.6 billion hours watching competitive gaming by 2018 (up from 1.3 billion in 2013), but video of eSports will be worth major ka-ching too – about $300 million by 2018.

Michael O’Dell, eSports manager for Team Dignitas, said that live streaming services have been a major factor in the dramatic growth of eSports.

“Twitch especially has made it easy to tune in, with its multi-platform accessibility and low barriers to entry for users on both sides of the streaming spectrum,” said O’Dell.

And Anthony Cornish, marketing director for The Pokémon Company, told MCV (a trade news/community site for professionals working within the UK and international video games market), that the social aspects of streaming will accelerate the industry’s growth.

“The fan communities surrounding all games have been galvanized by social media and online play,” said Cornish. “Larger competitive gaming events are also drawing crowds that fill arenas and capturing online views that rival cable show audiences. Competitive gaming has mass appeal and isn’t as niche as many think.”

To wit, at Valve’s Data 2: The International tournament, more than 10,000 gaming aficionados at sold-out Key Arena in Seattle watched team Newbee rout Vici Gaming three games to one (best of five format). The take: just over $5 million of the more than $10 million in prize money.

So if Junior’s a whiz at League of Legends, Dota 2 and Starcraft II, and is only pulling a high C in algebra, cut him some slack. Those flyin’ fingers and that dazzling hand/eye coordination just might yield large dividends someday.

Last week after a nice lunch with my sister, niece, brother-in-law and cousin, I got corralled into following them into Nordstrom’s in downtown San Francisco. I quickly realized that with only two magazines, a book, and a smartphone, it would be a challenging afternoon.

And once my niece pulled about a half-dozen outfits off a rack and said “I just want to try on a few things,” the situation became untenable. Elevated heart rate. Accelerated pulse. Beads of sweat on forehead. If the store had started playing Slim Whitman songs, my head would have exploded, similar to what happened to the little green Martians in Tim Burton’s campy Mars Attacks.

Quickly gave everyone a hug and said I was dashing out to Ghirardelli’s for a sundae (dark chocolate hot fudge; medical studies have indicated dark chocolate’s good for you, ergo, Ghirardelli’s sundaes are healthy. Bit of twisted logic but effective for assuaging any guilt feelings).

But while scraping away the last nanometer of ice cream, it got me thinking about how technology has radically changed the fashion industry in just a few short years.

“Technology is now completely ingrained in our interaction and relationship with fashion retail,” said Arabella James, a futures consultant at The Future Laboratory. “It’s now part of every shopping moment, from inspiration and production to purchase decision and transaction.”

A few examples:

Forbes recently estimated that 3D printing will be a $3.1 billion industry by 2016; $5.2 billion by 2020. Models have already started wearing 3D-printed couture. And Apparel predicts the day will soon be at hand to see it, buy it, and print it shopping – “a consumer will spot a must-have article of clothing, complete the checkout transaction in seconds, and sit back and watch as their personal 3D printer whips up a custom fitted version right in the comfort of his home.”

And Anish Singh, CTO of Fashion GPS, added that we’ll soon see designers in offices, apartments and garages developing accessory prototypes or implementing full-on production sans middlemen.

“Imagine designers creating scale models of – well – of models wearing the designs they’ve created; how might those scale models be used to popularize and sell fashion? The possibilities are endless. The impacts will be enormous,” said Singh.

News.com.au recently wrote about C&A, a Dutch chain of fashion retail clothing stores that launched a campaign combining online and in-store consumer decision making. Dubbed FashionLike, whenever someone ‘likes’ an item of clothing online at the C&A website, the ‘like’ “gets totaled on a screen embedded in a clothes hanger on the rack in store. Consumers can then decide whether they want the more popular clothes with the larger number of ‘likes’ or opt for the ‘less liked’ pieces.”

And designer Rebecca Minkoff opened two tech savvy stores in New York and San Francisco this month. As reported by Elizabeth Holmes in The Wall Street Journal, each store has a large screen where customers can browse merchandise or request items in specific sizes to try on.

The store also texts shoppers when a fitting room is free and inside the room, a touch screen mirror is available to get more items or ask for assistance.

“Merchandise tags equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology track which items customers try on, and provide the store with a precise, real-time view of inventory. Meanwhile, employees use iPads to handle shoppers’ requests and check out from anywhere in the store,” said Holmes.

We’ve also seen innumerable stories about wearables – especially watches – over the past 12-18 months. But there have been a few recent developments with other types of wearables that are generating some buzz.

One of these is MICA – My Intelligent Communication Accessory. The $495 intelligent bracelet (announced Nov. 17) not only has precious gems and Ayers snakeskin, but includes two years of AT&T wireless data service provided by Intel. Opening Ceremony, an international retailer, designed the bracelet; it was engineered by Intel. Intel says the accessory will be available next month at Opening Ceremony New York and Los Angeles, select Barneys New York locations, and online at Openingceremony.us and Barneys.com.

And earlier this year, Cuff rolled out a nine-piece line of wearables, including bracelets, necklaces and, for the men, a key chain, all accompanied by the CuffLinc device. The Cuff app alerts people wearers designate as “first responders” when help is needed. Cuff sends an SOS to people you choose, and it doesn’t stop until someone responds. Designated people receive your location, live audio, and other relevant information to get you (or a loved one) any required assistance.

Lastly, renowned international designer Diane von Furstenberg unveiled Made for Glass – a designer collection for Google Glass.

Von Furstenberg best summed up the mind meld of fashion and technology:

“The definition of fashion is ‘l’air du temps,’ –the essence of the time we live in, so it is absolutely normal that it meets technology.”

Quality content. Content marketing. Mobile-friendly content. Ad retargeting.

Scores of pundits and prognosticators awake and arise this time of year from their marketing crypts to make predictions, outline scenarios on what they see as hot digital marketing trends for the upcoming year. And we see a lot of those aforementioned terms – and others – you know what some of them are – year-after-year, being bandied about and re-purposed.

To use some pirate vernacular, “arrrggggghhhhhh!”

All good-intentioned, most impart a lot of useful info-nuggets but it’s easy to get lost in the morass.

So is there anything really interesting that might help drive awareness of products/services, and ultimately sales next year?

Yup.

Internet Retailer recently did a search marketing survey (full results being published in November) from mid-September to mid-October encompassing responses from 95 participants; about two-thirds identified themselves as working for web-only retailers.

Some interesting survey snippets:

• 46.2% reported increased traffic to their e-commerce sites over the past year through natural, or organic search;

• 32.9% generated at least half of their online sales through their paid search and organic search programs combined;

• 40.3% said their search marketing budgets increased over the past year;

• 53.3% said they would increase their pay-per-click search spending next year.

So the fight for top rankings via natural search will continue to gain traction.

Flip side of that, as reported by Lizetta Staplefoote in Entrepreneur Magazine, is that paid placements are not going away. Staplefoote said that changes to the Facebook algorithm in 2013 resulted in a 44% decrease in non-sponsored brand content in users’ newsfeed.

“LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Pinterest now offer sponsored content placements and ads that promise specific reach. The days of free reach are over. If you don’t pay, your followers very likely won’t see anything your doing in the social realm,” said Staplefoote.

Staplefoote added that another ’15 marketing trend to watch is that marketing automation tools will change the way you play. B2B businesses, particularly technology companies, have long paved the way in using marketing automation tools.

“However, many businesses have struggled to integrate their existing tools into a single system to take advantage of all the bells and whistles automation systems offer. For those who have made the leap, according to research from the Aberdeen Group, using marketing automation can increase conversion rates by over 50 percent,” noted Staplefoote.

Lastly, we’re also seeing executive titles morph and/or change. McKinsey & Company predicts there will be a 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year versus only a five percent grow in global IT spending. And as Big Data continues to have a greater impact on e-commerce, New Jersey-based digital marketing agency Lion Five Studios says the relationship between the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will become even more important:

“The CIO can no longer work in a vacuum…with IT budgets going outside of IT, the new role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is starting to emerge and this trend will only increase as companies place a strategic emphasis on digital content,” noted the studio.

To quote Arte Johnson, best known for his portrayal of a German soldier on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, “verrrrry interesting.”

Watch any NFL game on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and you’ll see a bevy of commercials espousing that a given car or truck model is sleek, rough, tough, cool, fuel efficient, family-friendly, sporty, ad nauseum. Adjectives like these are music to a car/truck marketer’s ears.

What you don’t see or hear very often is that hackers continue to pose a threat to all sorts of vehicle models – and even smart charging stations for electronic vehicles (EV) may be vulnerable to hacking. Granted, there haven’t been any major security breakdowns and security professionals say that auto manufacturers are making inroads in improving software security. In fact, Andrew Brown, chief technologist for Delphi Automotive said recently that “quite honestly, the vehicles, systems and components today are quite robust and resistant to cyber-security threats.  But that doesn’t mean it’s 100%.”

Added Ed Adams, a security expert:

“There’s an awful lot of code throughout the entire supply chain, not just with the auto manufacturers, but with the infotainment systems and applications like Sirius and Harmon. The fact of life is that software is flawed.”

Cheryl Dancey Balough and Richard C. Balough, co-founders of Chicago-based Balough Law Offices, LLC, said today’s cars have dozens of electrical control units (ECUs) embedded in the body, doors, dash, roof, trunk, seats, wheels, navigation equipment and entertainment centers.

“This architecture provides almost unlimited gateways for external hacking and infection with malware. Some entry points to a car’s ECUs require a direct, hard-wired connection, while others can be accessed wirelessly, including using Wi-Fi or radio-frequency identification (RFID). Once entry is gained, a hacker can take over all of a car’s computer-controlled systems.”

The Baloughs added that in one recent example, a former employee of an Austin, TX-based auto dealer hacked into the computer system and remotely activated the vehicle immobilization system, triggering the ignition system in 100+ vehicles.

“This anti-theft system had been installed by the dealer as a method of addressing non-payment by customers. While the anti-theft device was connected to the car’s horn and ignition, the hacker didn’t take further control of the car,” they noted.

And at last month’s Black Hat conference, security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller investigated the ‘hackability’ of two dozen different vehicles.

“We examined how a remote attack might work,” said Valasek. “It really depends on the architecture – if you hack the radio, can you send messages to the brakes or the steering?  And if you can, what can you do with them?”

Both researchers emphasized that their results weren’t definitive assertions about actual vehicle security vulnerabilities – they were flagging potential weaknesses.

One model that ranked near the top of the list was the Infiniti Q50 (ironically, which Valasek owns). As reported by Wired, the car “was a model of insecure architecture.” Wired added that the sports sedan has remote keyless entry, Bluetooth, a cellular connection, wireless tire pressure monitoring and an Infiniti Connection system interfacing with a ‘personal assistant’ app on the driver’s smartphone.

“Within the Q50’s network, those radio and telematic components were directly connected to engine and braking systems. And the sedan’s critical driving systems had computer-controlled features like adaptive cruise control and adaptive steering that a hacker could potentially hijack to physically manipulate the car,” said Wired.

Love those remote door locks? Also at Black Hat, Australian security researcher Silvo Cesare illustrated how easy it is to hack a key fob.  According to Wireless Security Watch, Cesare used a software-defined radio to capture and transmit the wireless signals. All the equipment was off-the-shelf – it took Cesare just a few minutes to unlock his girlfriend’s car.

Got a Leaf, Tesla or other EV? Well, your charging station may be vulnerable too.  At last year’s ‘Hack in the Box’ conference in Amsterdam, security analyst Ofer Shezaf said hackers could gain access to smart EV chargers and obtain access to logins and payments.

Again, there hasn’t been a significant security breach at smart charging stations, but digital news outlet Quartz indicated that other technologies for networking/access are being built into smart charging networks. These include RFID, which allow drivers access to power with a touchless card.

“Like using a default or easily guessed password online, these systems could be broken into with little effort,” says Quartz.   “Some charging systems use cellular data connections or even Wi-Fi to connect to other stations or to be accessed for maintenance, also opening doors for hackers.”

Shezaf added that charging networking providers need to take a closer look at security issues. The technology’s still relatively new, but “this is precisely the time to look at it, before it scales up to whole cities and countries.”

As stated earlier, presently, the threat of hackers seizing control of a ‘smart’ car is still minimal, but Andry Rakotonirainy, a professor at Queensland University in Australia, raised a cautionary red flag.

“A vehicle’s communication security over wireless networks cannot be an afterthought and needs to be considered at the early stages of design and deployment from the hardware, software, user and policy point of view,” he said.

Hopefully car and truck manufacturers will get the message and market with another critically important selling angle – that their vehicles are digitally safe.