C­suite harmonyIT and marketingchiefs are workingtogether but keeptheir own domainsPage 2

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Make the mostof social mediaTips for successinclude avoidingcute animal picsPage 3

Watch this spaceWall Street­styleautomation willtransform how adslots are tradedPage 6

Reality but notas we know itOverlay techniqueturns adverts intolive experiencesPage 7

The fine printPaul Taylor checksout inkjet printers –do they stack upagainst laser rivals?Page 8

FT SPECIAL REPORT

The Connected BusinessWednesday May 28 2014 www.ft.com/reports | @ftreports

It is enough to make anyone’s headspin. Rocket Fuel boasts that itsartificial intelligence delivers real-time advertising results. Millen-nial Media vaunts its cross-screen

targeting capabilities. Criteo pitchesits ad personalisation technologies.Rubicon Project touts that it has engi-neered one of the largest real-time, bigdata solutions for advertising.

The companies are among hundreds– if not thousands – that haveemerged in recent years selling mar-keting technologies sometimesdesigned by actual rocket scientists.

They launched and solicited billionsof dollars in funding on the bet thatthey could strike it big by streamlin-ing the process for creating, buyingand selling ads across a proliferationof digital devices – and then instantlymeasure the effectiveness of market-ing campaigns.

The flurry of marketing technologystart-ups was meant to transform theart of advertising into an organisedscience. But the opposite occurred.

“It is confusing for a lot of people,”says Quentin George, a digital adver-tising veteran who left a big ad com-pany to start Unbound, a consultancyto help marketers sort through thenew ad technology landscape.

“They don’t know what they don’tknow. Even if you paraded 10 compa-nies in front of them, they have noframework for knowing which com-pany is better than the other.”

Marketers report being moreperplexed than ever before amid the

proliferation of media and new tech-nologies, along with growing uncer-tainty about whether or not digitalmarketing delivers business results.

Only a third of marketers believethat their companies are highly profi-cient in digital marketing, accordingto a recent survey by Adobe, the soft-ware company. Marketers expressuneasiness about personalisation andtargeting technologies, advertisingacross a mix of media, social media

and mobile marketing – and ulti-mately, how to measure it all.

Yet two-thirds of marketers saidthat companies would not succeedunless they had a digital marketingstrategy, the survey found.

“The issue of fragmentation is thebig problem for all of these guys.The underlying value of each adgoes down. You can’t even treadwater then,” says Rett Wallace, chiefexecutive of Triton Research, which

analyses new tech firms. “Marketers’budgets don’t go up because the frag-mentation does.”

The broader uncertainty becomesmore vexing as marketers devote alarger share of their advertisingbudgets to digital media. Global dig-ital ad spending is expected to surge15 per cent this year to $138bn, repre-senting about a quarter of total adspending, according to research firmeMarketer. By 2018, digital is expected

to capture about one-third of advertis-ing budgets worldwide.

AOL, the internet company, isputting more emphasis on its ad techbusiness. The group has pointed to aso-called “technology tax” as addingto the broader turmoil and threaten-ing to hold back the shift of ad dollarsfrom traditional media, such as maga-zines and television, to digital outlets.

Continued on Page 2

Marketers are all over the shopA f lurry of technologyis vexing advertisersbut it is vital to makethe right decisions,writes Emily Steel

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2 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2014

Fujitsu used to produce aprint magazine for informa-tion technology executives,but the possibilities createdby internet technologymean the Japanese groupnow targets them via itsI-CIO digital platform.

“Technology has given usthe ability to be very quickand personalised in reach-ing our customers,” saysSimon Carter, the Japanesecompany’s executive direc-tor of marketing for the UKand Ireland.

“As big data comes alive,that ability to be able to usethis great library of infor-mation and hone it down towhat is important to cus-tomers will become verypowerful.”

There can be few market-ing operations that havenot been touched by digitaltechnology. And, as MrCarter suggests, many areonly beginning to graspwhat is possible with dataanalytics.

Yet as the marketingoperations have becomeinseparable from IT, thereis evidence that the skills ofmarketing professionals’are also evolving to create anew kind of role which mar-ries marketing expertisewith a high level of techno-logical knowhow: the mar-keting technologist.

A report this year byGartner suggests that 81per cent of organisationsnow have the equivalent ofa chief marketing technolo-gist (exact job titles vary);another 8 per cent plan toadd a chief marketing tech-nologist in the next twoyears.

Businesses with revenuesof $500m-$1bn have thehighest percentage of peo-ple in this role, with thehigh-tech, communicationsand retail sectors leadingthe way.

Laura McLellan, vice-president of marketingstrategy at Gartner, seesthree main advantages inhaving such a person.

“First, companies withCMTs tend to have betterprocesses to decide what toinvestigate and test, and todecide what works.

“Second, there is so muchnoise from software provid-ers offering software tomarketers that companiesneed an expert filter.

“Third, a CMT is the per-fect way to build a bridgebetween IT and marketing.”

The problem, however, isfinding the right person todo the job.

The skills of the chiefmarketing technologist arefundamentally differentfrom those of the tradi-tional marketing profes-sional, says Mara Swan,executive vice-president ofglobal talent and strategyat ManpowerGroup, therecruitment company.

“Traditional marketingpeople are left-brain, crea-tive, extrovert; they havean idea a minute,” she says.“With market technologists,you are talking about askillset that is left-brainand right-brain, much moreanalytical.”

There is a shortage ofprofessionals with thatmix of abilities, recruitmentexperts say, and thosebusinesses that do find aCMT are likely to have topay a premium.

Deborah Op den Kamp,co-leader of the chief mar-keting officer practice atRussell Reynolds Associ-ates, an executive searchgroup, says there are twostreams of people who aresenior enough to be market-ing technology chiefs butlack the combined experi-ence that companies arelooking for today.

The first group, she says,came up through thebrands route and isunlikely to have been verydigitally grounded, whilethe second started in thetechnology field but neverhad to have strong brandexperiences.

“A very rare breed of per-son has both sets of experi-ence,” she says.

Companies looking fortechnologists will be facedwith people who claim theyare technologists but lackthe range of skills, says MsSwan.

“You hear marketing peo-ple say, I know socialmedia, I know technology;but they don’t understandhow to use it to make deci-sions and for insight.”

Until the job marketcatches up with the needsof the chief marketing tech-nologist role, companieswill have to look at otherways to cover it.

Michael Stull, vice-presi-dent of global marketingat ManpowerGroup, says:“There are a few companiesthat can find this talent andpay for it. But the rest aregoing to need to thinkabout investing and devel-oping those skillsets them-selves.”

Some companies areappointing combinedteams to do the job, adds

Ms Op den Kamp. “Youcover all those skillsets in ateam, as opposed to tryingto find them in a singleindividual,” she says.

Nevertheless, Matt Beck,vice-president of marketingsolutions consulting atFICO, an analytics com-pany, says he has yet to seewidespread demand formarketing technologists.

“If you take an organisa-tion such as a retailer or agrocer, I don’t see some-body who is a deep technol-ogist aligning themselveswith the marketing func-tion,” he says. “I still seethem aligning themselveswith the technology func-tion; that’s where theywould see their careerpath.”

And Mr Carter at Fujitsustresses that marketingdepartments will still needpeople who have basic mar-keting skills.

He says: “Click-throughsand Facebook likes are easyto measure, but the ques-tion I always ask is: ‘Sowhat, how much have yousold on the back of that?’

New role unitesmarketing andtechnology

Skills

Finding people withthe right expertisecan be difficult,writes Paul Solman

‘There is so muchnoise from softwareproviders . . . thatcompanies needan expert filter’

For every dollar spent ondigital ads, as much as 75cents is estimated to bespent on technology ratherthan the advertising space.The ratio is reversed whenmarketers buy TV ads.

Exacerbating the confu-sion is the growing threatof advertising fraud in thedigital marketing business.Botnets, malicious softwareand other schemes are pro-liferating as scammersexploit the fast growingmarket.

More than a third of webtraffic may be fraudulent,according to a recent reportby the Internet AdvertisingBureau, an industry tradegroup. That fraud costsinternet and advertisingcompanies as much as$10bn a year in the US

Continued from Page 1 alone, according to industryestimates.

About a third of advertis-ing agencies believe thatthe portion of fraudulenttraffic on the web is higherthan what the IAB reported,according to Strata, a com-pany that provides dataabout ad buying.

Joy Baer, president atStrata, notes: “Ad agenciesrevealed an interestingdichotomy within theadvertising industry; agen-cies are displaying highlevels of confidence and areincreasing their ad spend,while questioning the accu-racy of reported web trafficnumbers and the inflated[ad rates] they may com-mand.”

He adds: “Another inter-esting paradox was the opti-mism many agencies feltwhile considering rising

ad costs a major concern.”That turmoil is forcing

the world’s largest adver-tising companies to raceto build next-generationsystems that will helpmarketers sort throughthe thousands of emergingtechnologies.

Indeed, when Publicis andOmnicom pitched their nowfailed $35bn merger lastyear, executives outlinedhow a new advertising levi-athan would lead the wayin today’s media and mar-keting world, which isincreasingly dominated bytechnology.

John Wren, chief execu-tive of Omnicom, said:“Publicis and Omnicomhave the combination ofboth Mad Men and MathMen who are going to berequired to win in thefuture.” He was referencing

the popular TV drama MadMen that depicts the NewYork advertising industryin the 1960s.

The merger – whichwould have created thelargest advertising com-pany in the world by reve-nues – fell apart. But as itdid so, both companiesunderscored their commit-ment to investing in tech-nologies and systems thatwould help clients sort outthe digital future.

“We were in great shapecoming into this, and wewill remain in great shape,”Mr Wren said in a recentinterview. “The key toremember is that it is reallyabout the insights and notjust about the data.”

Some technology compa-nies, such as AOL, areattempting to ease market-ers’ fears by building a

one-stop shop for buyingads using these new tech-nologies across TV, theweb, mobile and socialmedia. To help marketersbetter understand the per-formance of their ads acrossthe various media, AOLrecently paid $101m forConvertro, an ad measure-ment company.

Convertro specialises inmeasuring the performanceof marketing campaigns,from the moment a person

first sees an ad until a prod-uct is bought. The tool aimsto help marketers analysethe full scope of their dig-ital advertising rather thanthe last ad a person clickson before they buy.

Tim Armstrong, chiefexecutive of AOL, said in arecent interview: “Theindustry now is on a last-click basis for measuringadvertising. Over time, thatwill prove rudimentary.Convertro is an importantand strategic piece of tech-nology for our advertisingstack.”

Some industry executivessay that among the flock ofad tech start-ups, advertis-ing groups and big internetcompanies trying to per-suade marketers to usetheir services, few are look-ing out for a brand’s bestinterest.

“People will make claimsabout what their productcan do or how a productdoes what it does that areinconsistent with the way itactually operates,” says MrGeorge at Unbound.

“For a lot of marketers, itis really difficult when youhave 255 companies eachtelling you how they can doanything.”

Mr George, who previ-ously was chief digital andinnovation officer at Inter-public’s Mediabrands,started his new business tohelp advertisers and mediacompanies decide which adtechnology to choose.

“The reason we are hav-ing this conversation isbecause digital marketingworks,” he says. “That iswhere the consumers are. Ifyou do it right, there istremendous upside.”

Flurry of innovation leaves marketers all over the shop

Marketing and IT mayhave their differences,but they have a growingamount in common, too.Both suffered budget cuts

during the recession, with their activi-ties seen as optional, rather thanessential.

“Both functions are [considered] dis-cretionary spending,” says JenniferBeck, a vice-president at Gartner, thetechnology analysts. “People think: ifthe numbers don’t look good, let’s cutIT and marketing.”

More recently, both areas have seenrenewed growth. Spending by market-ing departments on technology – fromapps to social media and “big data” –is one of the fastest-growing areas ofcorporate technology. But much, ifnot most, of it is being managed out-side the IT department.

This has led to suggestions by ana-lysts that the chief marketing officerwill spend more on technology thanthe chief information officer.

Projections by Gartner suggest thispoint will be reached by 2017,although as Ms Beck points out, thisdoes not mean that the CMO will betaking over the CIO’s role. The jobsare, and are likely to remain, verydifferent.

“The CMO is a very creative func-tion, despite the fact that it hasbecome more data driven, but CIOslike a more disciplined approach,” shesays. “CMOs and digital marketersare big risk takers, and digital tech-nology allows them to take greaterrisks, for example by experimentingin social media.”

Other analysts suggest, though, thatwhile marketing technology spendingis growing rapidly, it is doing so froma low base. “CMO tech spending is 0.1

per cent to 0.3 per cent of revenue,against an IT budget of 2 to 3 per centof revenue. It is growing, but wouldhave to grow very quickly to make upthat difference,” cautions ShvetankShah, executive director at CEB, thebusiness advisory group.

“It is a myth that CMOs want to runIT,” he adds. “What CMOs are inter-ested in, is rapid experimentation.”Marketers want to test ideas, andhand those that work on to otherdepartments, such as IT, sales, oroperations, to scale up and run.

Nonetheless, marketing nowaccounts for some of IT’s largestprojects. Anita Chandraker, head of ITdelivery at PA Consulting Group,says: “With the rise of digital chan-nels, a lot of marketing-led IT spend isidentifying customer needs, and pre-dicting what customers are going todo.”

Adobe, the creative software com-pany, now spends more on digital thanany other form of marketing, and notjust because the company also makesdigital marketing tools, says AnnLewnes, chief marketing officer.

“At Adobe, 74 per cent of our mar-keting spend is on digital,” she says.“Last year, our second largest IT pro-gramme was our marketing pro-gramme,” notes Gerri Martin-Flick-inger, CIO.

IT involvement, though, is essential

if marketing projects are to be effec-tive.

Five years ago, Thomson Reuters’intellectual property and science divi-sion introduced a marketing automa-tion platform. Rather than relyingjust on an email system, the softwarebrings together online activity as wellas email responses and leads fromevents such as trade shows.

“It transforms how we are doingmarketing. We can communicatemore efficiently, and effectively,” saysKim Yeatman, director, marketingoperations.

As critical is the way the marketingsystem integrates with other businesssoftware, especially the company’scustomer relationship management(CRM) application.

“Our platform synchronises datawith CRM, which is maintained bythe technology team. It is a two-waysync. CRM is the system of record,”says Mr Yeatman.

It is analytics and ecommerce, how-ever, that are really driving market-ing and IT closer together. CMOs andtheir teams might be comfortabledeveloping mobile apps, or managingsocial media and content marketing,but these are often discrete areas ofoperations.

Once systems start to share datawith core business applications, asthey will if they want to draw onoperational data, projects are far morelikely to need the support of IT.

Some mobile apps, too, fall into thiscategory: mobile apps may havestarted as purely promotional, or as ashop window. But if they involvemobile shopping, or mobile banking,then operations, IT, security – and forphysical goods, the supply chain –will need to be involved. This is some-thing marketing is unlikely to be ableto support on its own.

And analytics projects will, inevita-bly, need access to business data, aswell as offering the potential to passdata back to other business systems.

“We are looking at big data, interms of being able to bring in dispa-rate data sources, and give tools [tomarketing] to turn that into usefulinformation,” says Jolyon Ingham,CIO of building supplies companyGrafton Group, and a member of theCorporate IT Forum Advisory Group.

“In terms of what marketing is look-ing for: analytics is the key. It’s aboutdriving that capability . . . I do seemarketing and IT working moreclosely together.”

This is prompting marketing depart-ments to become more technically-minded, but also IT to become morefamiliar with the tools that marketingdepartments need to use.

“It does change what IT does,” saysBrian Whipple, global head of Accen-ture Interactive. “The marketing andsales technology that exists today isstill fragmented. There are fewer peo-ple on the IT side who have grown upwith this technology; a lot of folk inIT are not familiar with marketingtools. These have grown up on theCMO side.”

But, he says, IT will “skill up” tomeet the demand.

What matters less, though, is whoowns the budget; in fact, digital initia-tives are now so important to manybusinesses that funds are allocated atboard level. Even where they are not,marketing and IT are increasinglylikely to pool resources.

“Who pays is not important. It ishow the programme helps our cus-tomers, or helps our sales,” saysAdobe’s Ms Lewnes.

Digital advancesdrive functionstogether and liftIT spendingManagement Ecommerce , analytics andmobile apps are forcing CIOs and CMOs toco­operate, says Stephen Pritchard

The Connected Business

‘The key is toremember that itis really about theinsights and notjust the data’

At Vail Resorts, chief marketingofficer Kirsten Lynch is proud ofthe job her team does tellingpotential customers about theholidays the US ski resortcompany offers.

“But it’s so much morepowerful when our guests telltheir own family and friendswhat a fabulous time they’vehad at our resorts,” she says.

Increasingly, she adds, theydo that through social media, soover the three years she hasbeen at Vail Resorts, she hasworked regularly with RobertUrwiler, chief information officer,to launch a string of digitalservices designed to help guestsmake the most of their vacation.

“We tend not to look at ourwork as a series of projects thatrequire input from bothmarketing and IT,” says MsLynch. “It’s more about workingtogether on an ongoing basis toaddress the company’s strategicpriorities.”

Says Mr Urwiler: “What makesthis relationship work is that weboth respect each other’sdomain, and each other’sexpertise within that domain –but we don’t stick to rigidboundaries in ourdiscussions.

“We’re notat all shy inweighing inwith ouropinions oneach

other’s issues, challenges andopportunities.”

Perhaps the most visiblemanifestation of their jointefforts is Vail Resorts’ web andmobile application, EpicMix. Firstlaunched in time for the 2010­11ski season, EpicMix uses RFID(radio frequency identification)chips, embedded in seasonpasses and daily tickets, to trackskiers’ and snowboarders’progress around the company’s10 US resorts.

By collecting data throughhand­scanning and automaticreaders at turnstiles, ski lifts andon ski runs, EpicMix feeds backdata to guests through theirown, personalised portal, so theycan see the number of verticalfeet they have skied on a givenday and the chairlifts they haveridden. They can also earnpoints and medals for theirachievements on the slopes.

But more importantly, guestscan opt to share this informationwith friends and family onFacebook and Twitter, along withphotos of themselves in action,taken by Vail Resortsphotographers located on theslopes, who identify them viatheir individual RFID chip.

EpicMix has been a big hitwith the young and

digitally­savvy audienceof skiers andsnowboarders whovisit Vail Resorts

each year, says MrUrwiler. “That makesit fun for us, but it’s

also a challenge, becausethis audience does have highexpectations and regularlyinteracts with other high­

end brands all

over the planet.” By the end ofevery ski season, he says, heand Ms Lynch are already hardat work on enhancements toEpicMix for the next season.

For the 2013­14 season, forexample, they introducedEpicMix Academy, which enableslearners – both children andadults – who attend Vail Resortsclasses to track their progressas certified by the company’sski­school instructors.

“The reason Kirsten and I arehere, working together, is not tomaintain the status quo, but tokeep pushing the envelope,”says Mr Urwiler.

“I think some chiefinformation officers tend to thinkof problems as technical issues.

“My advice to them is to getto build a personal connectionwith the chief marketing officerand get to understand newbusiness opportunities.

“Build a consensus on whatsuccess might look like for yourcompany.”

Ms Lynch agrees: “Part of thestrength of our relationship aschief marketing officer and chiefinformation officer is that at theheart of everything we do and

discuss is not a reactionto the latest

technologies, butan understandingof the servicesthat we hope ourguests will useand enjoy.”

JessicaTwentyman

Vail Resorts Marketing and IT chiefs learn to ski in tandem

‘Who pays is notimportant. It is how theprogramme helps ourcustomers or our sales’

Sloping off: visitors enjoy the conditions at Vail’s Beaver Creek centre

On FT.com »

VideoMobile payments‘poised fortake­off’ in USPaul Taylor talks toIsis consortiumchief executiveMichael Abbottft.com/connected

KirstenLynch andRobertUrwiler: ‘werespect eachother’sdomain’

FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2014 ★ 3

Emily SteelUS media and marketingcorrespondent

Maija PalmerSocial media journalist

Paul TaylorPersonal and businesstechnology correspondent

Jane Bird,Stephen Pritchard,Paul Solman,Jessica TwentymanFreelance writers

Andrew BaxterCommissioning editorAndy MearsPicture editor

Steven BirdDesigner

For advertising details,contact: James Aylott,tel +44 (0)20 7873 3392,email james.aylott@ft.com,or your usual FTrepresentative.

All FT Reports are availableon FT.com at ft.com/reportsFollow us on Twitter at:@ftreports

All editorial content in thissupplement is produced bythe FT. Our advertisers haveno influence over or priorsight of the articles.

Contributors »

Now that consumers havea wealth of online reviews,social-networkconversations and price-comparison websites attheir fingertips, almosteverything about the waythey consider and make apurchase has changed.

That, in turn, has hugeconsequences for how themodern marketingprofessional interacts withthem, says Blake Cahill,head of global digitalmarketing at Philips, theelectronics group.

For many years, he says,it was perfectly valid toview the “customerdecision journey” as afunnel: customers startedout with a large number ofproducts underconsideration andgradually whittled themdown to arrive at a finalchoice.

Marketers’ job was totarget customers at a few,well-defined points alongthis funnel, with the aimof influencing their finaldecision.

Now, he says, thecustomer decision journeyis more of a loop: oncesomeone has made apurchase, they not onlyshare their experience withothers, but also with the

brand itself. Since theseconversations may resultin further sales, the job ofmarketers is to listen,respond and take note ofthe feedback they’reoffered.

At the same time, those“few, well-defined points”that precede a purchasehave proliferated wildly.

Mr Cahill says: “Whatmakes this job incrediblycomplex now is the vastrange of platforms andtools where conversationstake place and theaudiences that they canreach.”

“Customers have alwayscommented on productsand services andinfluenced others to buy –but they haven’t alwaysdone it on platforms wherethe whole world can seewhat they have to say.”

Today, he adds, a wholerange of mobile andsocial technologiesmove customersthrough the loop.“As a marketer, ifyou don’tunderstand thosetechnologies welland how they’rebeing used byrelevant audiences,it’s going to make itincredibly tough foryou to do your jobwell.”

This is the thinkingbehind Philips’

Digital Command Centre,launched in March at thecompany’s globalheadquarters inAmsterdam. Here,information about relevantonline conversations iscombined with datarelating to the company’sperformance, and displayedacross a bank of wall-mounted screens anddesktop computers.

“Just standing there,watching the screens, isfascinating to me,” says MrCahill, “but what’s moreimportant are thecorrelations that the teamin the centre is able tomake between a surge inonline conversation abouta particular product, forexample, and the impactthat has on orders at ouronline stores.”

Not every company canafford to invest in its owncommand centre – but allmarketers should at leastbe looking to build theirown awareness of wherepre- and post-salesconversations take placeand how quickly thecompany responds to them,says Mr Cahill.

“We all tend to get a bitcaught up in thetechnology side of themodern customerexperience, because it’s allso new, but what’s moreimportant is making surethat you’re marketing atgreater speed, and withgreater responsiveness andgreater accuracy.

“Part of the marketingskillset now is being ableto use good judgmentwhen it comes to applyingtechnology to achievethose results.”

In his 18 months atPhilips, Mr Cahill says hehas come to see that thisis just as true in business-to-business (B2B)marketing as it is inbusiness-to-consumer (B2C)marketing.

“For me, it’s just asimportant that a cityauthority buying bulbs forstreet lighting has thesame experience withPhilips as a customerbuying one of our airfryersfor their home.

“That’s the real goal –not the technologies we

implement along theway.”

Multitude of tools and platforms‘make job incredibly complex’InterviewBlake CahillHead of global digitalmarketing, Philips

Understanding thetechnology is vital, asis judgment, writesJessica Twentyman

Blake Cahill:marketersmust listenand respondto customers

The Connected Business

Social media have become anaccepted part of a company’smarketing efforts. Around 70per cent of Fortune 500 com-panies have a Facebook page

and 77 per cent have a Twitteraccount, according to a study by theUniversity of Massachusetts Dart-mouth Center for Marketing Re-search. The average company spendsaround $19m on social media a year,according to research group TCS.

But at the same time there is acreeping feeling of dissatisfaction –are those social media campaigns pro-ducing results? Nate Elliot, analyst atForrester Research, sounded thealarm on social media advertising lastautumn, saying that marketers wereless satisfied with Facebook and Twit-ter advertising than many older formsof digital advertising, including emailmarketing.

So what should you do? How do youmake social media marketing workbetter? Here are the key questions:

Is there a different social mediaplatform I need to be on?Maybe – but don’t rush.

A number of new social media plat-forms are becoming increasingly pop-ular with both users and advertisers,including Pinterest and Instagram.The latter, which is owned by Face-book, recently teamed up with Omni-com, the advertising agency, to startregularly showing ads.

Pinterest, the image-focused pin-board-style social network, is interest-ing, says Simon Mansell, chief execu-tive of TBG Digital, the digital adver-tising company, “because even thoughthe numbers are lower, people are onthere in a buying mood”.

Some companies are experimentingwith new messaging apps such asWhatsApp and Snapchat. AbsolutVodka, for example, used WhatsApp,recently bought by Facebook, as partof a launch campaign in Argentina.Fast-food chains McDonald's and TacoBell have used Snapchat to publicisenew products.

There is also a growing number of

“secret” social networks, on whichusers are anonymous. Sites such asWhisper, Secret, Truth and YikYak –are growing in popularity and maybecome areas for advertisers to con-sider. Whisper, for example, is openabout the fact that it tracks users andis considering targeted advertising.Gap, the US fashion retailer, hasexperimented with using Secret.

However, Mr Mansell urges somecaution. “They are very difficult envi-ronments and it is difficult to putadverts there without it seeming veryspammy. It could work for somethinglike a Groupon, but I don’t see massapplications yet,” he says.

Is it still worth being on Facebook?Yes.

Many marketers are disenchantedwith Facebook because only a rela-tively small percentage of their postsget seen by the target audience. Abrand may have thousands of Face-book fans that have clicked the “like”button on the brand’s page, but it isestimated that less than 13 per cent ofthem will see any message put out bythe company. Facebook regularlychanges the algorithm that deter-mines what posts users see on thesite, often resulting in fewer brandmessages being seen.

But, says Mr Mansell: “Facebook isstill the big reach vehicle. It is stillthe biggest app on mobile devices and

gives you a Superbowl-sized audiencethat can be targeted with pinpointprecision,” he says. “Top 100 advertis-ers still have to be there, that iswhere all the eyeballs are.

“Facebook is not cool any more.[Founder and chief executive] MarkZuckerberg said it himself. Facebookhas become just something that eve-ryone uses to look at baby photos. Butpeople have a lot of connection onthere and use it to log on to otherapps. It is not cool in the way thatelectricity is no longer cool.”

But, says Mr Mansell, marketersmight have to accept that they needto spend more money on paid promo-tions to increase their visibility on thesite. “Organic” posts will not work aswell any more.

Even if you do not pay outright forads, a brand may still have to paymore to create really good socialmedia content that gets noticed, saysChrister Holloman, author of theSocial Media MBA series of books.“Where before it was enough to postsome text or a blog, increasingly com-panies will need to produce videosand infographics in order to benoticed.”

Hang on – I have to spend moremoney?Yes – and you are also going to haveto get better at measuring the returnon your investment.

“I think social media marketershave been guilty of doing things atany cost, without looking at what thereturns are. And while that may befine when you are experimenting withdifferent platforms, now that it isbecoming a more established part ofthe marketing programme you are notable to get away with not measuringthe effects,” says Mr Holloman.

“If a company spent nothing twoyears ago, last year it might havespent £10,000 and this year £20,000.More people are starting to notice thisexpense and ask what the money isgoing towards.

“So marketers have to become more

savvy about calculating ROI,” hesays.

It is not surprising, perhaps, thatmeasurement tool vendors are a fast-growing sector of the social mediaindustry. Social media analytics com-pany Socialbakers, for example,recently completed a $26m financinground and said it had tripled revenuesin the past year.

Jan Hammer, technology investor atIndex Ventures, one of the backers ofSocialbakers, says measurement toolsare becoming increasingly sophisti-cated.

“We can now look at how a brandlike Nestlé is doing vis-a-vis Kraft for

German males aged 25-30 years old, onTwitter,” he says. This, he adds, isstarting to turn social media data intosomething on which action can betaken immediately.

What else could I do differently?Listen more – and stop posting pic-tures of cats.

Gideon Lask, founder and chiefexecutive of Buyapowa, the socialcommerce provider, says most of theworld’s top 100 retailers are still usingsocial media mainly to broadcast mes-sages out, and not to listen. Twothirds of companies, for example,were following just five people onTwitter for every 100 followers theyhad. “It shows that they are not con-sidering it a two-way medium,” MrLask says.

Around a third of retailers are stillputting out more silly posts – such aspictures of cute animals – than mes-sages about their products and serv-ices. Mr Lask points out a Facebookpost of a cute dog by retailer Sears:“Winter’s nearly over! It’s Friday!Hooray! Weekend! Here’s a picture ofa pug!” To which a disgruntled cus-tomer had replied: “Perhaps theyshould have sent the pug to repair mycountertop stove. Probably wouldhave gotten better service.”

A few retailers, however, are find-ing new ways to become more interac-tive with their social media audiences.

Tesco, the UK supermarket group,for example is harnessing recommen-dations from social media influencersin a programme called The Orchard.Shoppers are invited to try out prod-ucts and then recommend them tofriends over social media and in per-son. The social media mentions aremonitored and graded by Tesco andthe better a shopper is at sociallysharing, the more free or discountedproducts they are invited to try.

Brew Dog, the Scottish brewery,meanwhile, asked its social media fol-lowers to help it create a new beer,choosing the flavour, bottles and eventhe name – and then invited them tobuy it.

“Of course it created a ready-mademarket for the product,” says MrLask. “We call it co-buying.”@maijapalmer

How to get ahead in social media advertisingThat’s the spirit: still from YouTubevideo telling the story of AbsolutVodka’s launch campaign in Argentina,which used WhatsApp

Digital campaigns

Facebook may no longer becool but it is still a potentialhot property for marketers,writes Maija Palmer

Fortune 500 Corporate Social Media Usage

Source: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research

Per cent

TwitterFacebook

YouTubeGoogle+

BlogPinterest

FoursquareInstagram

20122113

0

20

40

60

80

6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2014

The Connected Business

Even Hollywood could nothave fashioned a better set toshowcase the glitz and glamof the ad business. Actors,musicians and comedians

mingled with marketing executives atdozens of posh Manhattan theatresand lavish party tents.

The occasion was the annual“upfront” market this month, whereUS broadcast networks attempt tolure marketers into committing tensof billions of ad dollars to the comingtelevision season.

But one announcement – from WaltDisney’s ABC – pointed to a new wayof doing business that relies on tech-nology and data rather than cocktailsand conversations. The US broad-caster unveiled plans to start testingso-called programmatic technologiesfor selling commercial time for itsonline videos.

That means that marketers will beable to plug in to automated systemsthat mimic the technologies of stockexchanges for buying ad space insteadof placing orders via telephone callsand fax machines.

Marketers can use the systems totarget ads in real time at those whoare most likely to be interested intheir products, regardless of the TVprogramme. A new parent watchingthe same series as a college studentmight see an ad about a baby prod-ucts retailer, while the student seesan ad for a hip fashion store.

The news comes as several otherbroadcasters including Comcast’sNBCUniversal experiment with pro-grammatic advertising. While it isstill early days, some advertisingchiefs predict that most ads – fromtelevision to the web and mobilephones – ultimately will be boughtand sold through these technology-driven systems.

“We’ve always believed that every-thing that could become digital

would,” said John Wren, chief execu-tive of advertising group Omnicom, ina recent interview.

Global programmatic ad spending isexpected to surge in the coming years.Marketers will spend $34bn via pro-grammatic systems by 2017, aboutdouble the $16bn predicted for thisyear, according to forecasts by Inter-public’s MagnaGlobal. (The total glo-bal ad industry is set to reach $522bnthis year.)

During a speech at the InternationalAdvertising Association this month,

Rob Norman, chief digital officer atWPP’s GroupM, outlined the tensionsdisrupting the advertising industryamid the adoption of more data andtech-based systems.

A series of barriers are holding backadoption of these new technologies bythe ad industry, he said, includingfears that reliance on data woulderadicate creativity from the business.

There were also, he said, issueswith online advertising fraud, andworries that corporations would abuseconsumer data, that marketers are

paying for ads that consumers neversee, and that a focus on short-termresults could hamper long-term busi-ness success.

Media companies, meanwhile, worrythat the rise of programmatic technol-ogies will force ad rates to tumble.Traditional publishers, such as theNew York Times, have faced strugglestrying to expand digital ad revenues,because marketers no longer need topay top dollar to reach customers byadvertising on the homepage or otherprominent slots.

In his speech, Mr Norman said that,for programmatic technologies to beadopted, advertising inventory mustbe digital. Other issues that must beresolved include the need for mediagroups to determine pricing guide-lines to avoid undercutting their adsales. Advertisers would need todetermine the portion of their budgetsthey are willing to commit to pro-grammatic ad buying. They must alsounderstand better the costs of thetechnology systems and how thesecould be offset by better return onspending.

“The road to the programmaticfuture is rocky, but the destination iscertain,” Mr Norman said. “That cer-tain destination is one in which allinventory that can be traded program-matically will be, apart from excep-tional assets that will, as they dotoday, represent a discrete market-place of the highest value.”

Interpublic’s Mediabrands grouphas set a goal of tapping automatedad buying technologies for half itsmedia investments by 2016. The adver-tising group used these buying sys-tems for about 8 per cent of its $37bnin global billings in 2013 and expectsthis to reach 25 per cent this year.

Matt Seiler, global chief executive ofMediabrands, says the more market-ers rely on technology to automate adbuying, the more time they candevote to developing big ideas andmore creative campaigns.

Adoption has also been held up bythe rise of a wild west of ad technol-ogy companies, each offering a differ-ent service to marketers for automat-ing their purchases of advertisingspace. Some industry executives cal-culate that about 75 cents of everydollar spent on digital ads goes to thead technology instead of the advertis-ing space. That ratio is reversed whenmarketers buy ads for television.

As a result, big media and internetcompanies are rushing to develop sys-tems that create one-stop shops forbuying ads across television, the web,mobile and social media. One of thelatest groups was AOL, which thisyear announced that it was rolling outa new streamlined system. In recentweeks, Comcast acquired FreeWheel,which inserts ads in digital videos, ina deal worth up to $375m.

Buying space takes leaf out of Wall Street’s book

Programmatic adsAutomated tradingsystems have a bigfuture but barriers aredelaying adoption,writes Emily Steel

Time out: Scott Bakula, star of TV’s‘Quantum Leap’, arrives at the CBSupfront afterparty this month Getty Images

‘We’ve always believedthat everything that couldbecome digital would’

FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2014 ★ 7

The Connected Business

Awoman waiting at a busshelter in London in Marchwas astonished to seethrough the end panel aburning meteor apparently

hurtling towards her along the pave-ment.

Other people were treated to simi-larly surprising sights, including ahuge tentacle emerging from a man-hole to snatch a pedestrian, a trio offlying saucers and a tiger on theprowl.

The panel was not clear glass, as itappeared, but a screen showing livevideo of the street on to which thespecial effects were superimposed.

They were created for Pepsi Maxusing augmented reality (AR), a tech-nology that can display computer-generated images on to smartphones,shop windows, virtual “mirrors”,windscreens and wearable devices,such as watches and glasses.

It uses the camera and geographicpositioning software embedded inthese devices to capture and recordthe environs and what the viewer isseeing and doing.

AR has the potential to transformadvertising and marketing, says OriInbar, chief executive and co-founderof AugmentedReality.org, a non-profitorganisation. “It can turn any ad intoa live experience, which is far moreengaging for the viewer and also letscompanies gather information and seehow people react,” Mr Inbar says.

Early versions were somewhat gim-micky, Mr Inbar says. But in the pastyear this has begun to change, withcompanies encouraging customers touse smartphones to scan advertise-ments that connect them to websiteswith advertising and marketing con-

tent that relates to their currentactivity.

“AR promises to fulfil the dream ofevery marketer, because you can siton customers’ shoulders and see howthey are shopping, buying, using andinteracting with products,” Mr Inbarsays. “This will help define, explainand improve products.”

Companies will be able to under-stand where consumers are strugglingand what they do not like, says MrInbar. “They can use this informationto make products that are moreappealing and create a far deeper andmore powerful engagement with thebrand than mere advertising.”

One company trying out the idea isNet-a-Porter, the online fashionretailer. In February, it launched aglossy magazine whose pages readerscan scan using a special app on theirsmartphones. This connects them towebsites where they can buy theitems pictured or discover more aboutthem.

It is not just frivolous fun, saysSarah Watson, group mobile manager,but “adds value and improves the cus-tomer experience”.

With a few taps of the screen, youcan see a pair of shoes in differentcolours, make a purchase or watch avideo interview with one of thedesigners, says Ms Watson.

Eventually, customers will be ableto see themselves in the clothes. “Wewant to keep hold of customers andgive them a more immersive experi-ence,” Ms Watson says. “Meanwhile,we can see which pages and items aremost popular, and use the informationto develop our business strategy.”

AR must include something usefulto be worthwhile, says Mr Inbar. He

cites the TrackMyMacca’s app, whichlets customers research the ingredi-ents of a McDonald’s meal they havejust bought by taking a picture of itsbox with their smartphone.

It combines the customer’s locationwith McDonald’s supply chain infor-mation to pinpoint the source ofingredients and details of individualfarmers, bakers and fish suppliers.

Similarly, Ikea customers can pointtheir tablet or smartphone camera ata piece of furniture in the company’sprinted catalogue to see how it mightlook in their room.

At the moment, most such imple-mentations require people to down-load individual retailers’ apps. Thiscreates a fragmented experience forcustomers, who have to follow a lot ofdifferent steps, says Ms Watson.

“Once AR is built into phone cam-eras as standard, it will be more pow-erful and mainstream, enabling it toreach its full potential,” she says.

The development of smaller, morestylish wearable AR devices will alsoboost uptake, according to ParvazeSuleman, head of customer experiencemanagement for Europe at Virtusa,an IT services company.

Having to point your smartphone atan advertisement in the street isinconvenient; you feel silly, he says.“When people can wear headsets thatlook like normal glasses, the technol-ogy will be adopted more widely.”

Restaurants will be able to transmitads direct to consumers wearingGoogle Glass headsets as they walkpast, for real time advertising such aslunchtime deals, Mr Suleman says.“Ads can become much more focused,less random.”

The industry is experimenting with

the technology and exploring howpeople interact with the real world tohelp develop a fresh approach, MrInbar says.

“It’s like in the early days of cinemawhen the camera was used as if it wasin a theatre pointing at the stage.Then moviemakers learnt to move thecamera, pan and focus close up on theactors’ faces.”

AR should not distract people fromthe real world, he says. “It is verydifferent from the usual screen set-up,or even virtual reality, which makesus ignore what’s happening aroundus. AR should create a deeper engage-ment with where you are and whatyou are doing, and be superior towhat you could do with a computer.”

So what does the advertising indus-try think? Most agencies are holdingback.

Carolyn Nugent, head of digital atKinetic, a media buyer, says the juryis still out on whether customers willwant to be alerted to local restaurantdeals or shop discounts via overlayson their smart glasses.

Bhavin Pabari, digital strategist atGrey Possible, a digital advertisingspecialist, says the technology is notready yet, “It requires too much effortfor consumers and it can be prohibi-tively expensive, he says. “Brandsthink it’s not worth it; they don’t seethe reward.”

AR has not reached the tippingpoint where it becomes core for every-thing, as has happened with mobilephones, Mr Pabari says. “Brands havea lot to gain from being the first tocrack it, and once that happens every-one will copy. But we aren’t recom-mending it and our clients aren’trequesting it.”

Advertisers extend their tentaclesAugmented reality The live overlay technique is in its early days but generating interest, writes Jane Bird

Pavement artistry: augmented reality as used by Pepsi Max has the potential to transform advertising and marketing, say proponents

‘Whenpeople areable to wearheadsetsthat look likenormalglasses, thetechnologywill beadoptedmore widely’

Acxiom already knows a lotabout you and 700m-plusother customers around theglobe. But the data brokerwants to know more.

In recent weeks, the NewYork-listed company hasstruck a $310m deal to buyLiveRamp, a start-up thatconnects information aboutpeople in the bricks-and-mortar world – such astheir political leanings andshopping habits – to theirdigital profiles.

Acxiom now tracks hun-dreds of details about indi-viduals, and the tie-up putsthe group on the path tocreating consumer profilesin unprecedented detail.

Marketers can use thosedetails to target and person-alise ads on the web, mobileand eventually televisionand other digital devices.

The goal is to attain theholy grail of marketing:showing the most persua-sive ad to the right con-sumer at precisely the timethey are most likely to beswayed.

“Acxiom is, after all, adata refinery,” Scott Howe,Acxiom’s chief executive,said during a recent confer-ence call. “We prospect theworld for valuable rawdata, refine disparate datapoints into cohesive datainsights and then buildstandard pipelines to fuelall the supporting data-enabled applications.”

Yet Acxiom came underadditional scrutiny follow-ing its LiveRamp acquisi-tion because of thestart-up’s ties to Rapleaf.

In 2010, Rapleaf faced afirestorm of controversyafter revelations that it wasbreaching Facebook’s pri-vacy practices by buyinginformation about users ofthe social-networking site.

Acxiom stressed that itwas buying LiveRamp, notRapleaf, and that it com-plied with privacy regula-tions and guidelines. Thecompany also is attemptingto shed more light on itsbusiness, launching a serv-ice that shows consumerssome of the information ithas about them.

Susan Bidel, a marketinganalyst with Forrester, theresearch company, said in arecent blog post: “WhileAcxiom is working hard tocement its reputation as aprivacy-conscious data bro-ker, it must still contendwith legislators and regula-tors who are extremely crit-ical of its businessmodel.

“With this acquisi-tion, the companyis asking potentialclients it has neverworked with totrust it with mas-sive amounts ofpersonally identifi-able information, tokeep those datasecure and managehow they are sharedwith a whole host ofother vendors.

“While the marketingorganisation might beexcited about some of theopportunities this offers, weare not sure that privacyand compliance teams willbe ready to take the leap.”

Acxiom and other largedata brokers are alreadyunder fire amid broader pri-vacy concerns.

The US Senate Committeeon Commerce, Science andTransportation and the USFederal Trade Commissionhave launched investiga-tions into the largely unreg-ulated industry. A debate iswaging among lawmakers,regulators and corporationsabout whether the collec-tion and use of data violateindividuals’ privacy and arecause for concern.

Consumer groups worrythat people are unaware ofdata tracking and have littleopportunity to stop it. Theyalso fear lawmakers andregulators are struggling tokeep pace with develop-ments in the industry.

Some US lawmakers arecalling for more regulationfor the data-broking indus-try. One issue under thespotlight is how companiesscore individuals based onfinancial and health dataand then sell that informa-tion without people’sknowledge or consent.

“These scores offer pre-dictions that can becomeconsumers’ destiny,whether they are right orwrong,” says Pam Dixon,executive director of theWorld Privacy Forum, anon-profit research group.“Fair use of scores that con-sumers can see and correctis one thing, but secretscores can hide discrimina-tion, unfairness and bias.

“Trade secrets have aplace, but secrecy that hidesracism, denies due process,undermines privacy rightsor prevents justice does notbelong anywhere.”

Data brokers say they areunaware of instances wheretheir data are being used todiscriminate against people.The industry also argues thatthe data are used to showmore relevant ads to consum-ers, helping pay for themedia they watch and read.

Few laws exist in the USthat protect the privacy ofindividuals’ informationbeyond data that aretracked about children orinformation that could beused to make decisionsabout credit, employmentinsurance or housing.

Data protection laws inEurope are more robust andgrowing more stringent.

The EU has backed a“right to be forgotten”,making it easier for peopleto remove personal informa-tion held by internet com-panies such as Google aswell as newspaper publish-

ers, cataloguesystems and

even publiclibraries.

Data brokersstart to feelthe net tightenPrivacy

Lawmakers andconsumer groupsurge US to bring instronger regulation,writes Emily Steel

A cross between a Dalekfrom the BBC’s Doctor Whoseries and R2-D2 from StarWars could help preventthe deaths of children inschool shootings across theUS, as robots move out offactories and into serviceindustries.

Shiny and white, theautonomous guard robotpatrols an area, using datafrom optical and sound sen-sors along with licenceplate recognition to feedinformation to law enforce-ment authorities or privatesecurity guards.

Stacy Dean Stephens andhis team at Knightscopecame up with the idea afterthe Sandy Hook shootingsat an elementary school inConnecticut in 2012. As apolice officer in Texas, MrStephens thought lawenforcement officers neededbetter technology.

“After Sandy Hook, allthe analysis showed that ifyou were able to get officersinside the school to the sub-ject just one minute earlier,as many as 12 lives could besaved,” he says. “I wantedto look at how we would goabout using technology tohelp achieve that goal.”

The Knightscope K5Autonomous Data Machineuses a combination of robot-ics and predictive analyticsto determine when thepolice or a security com-pany should be alerted to athreat.

Five feet tall and packedwith sensors, it can carrymore than a police officercan fit on his or her backbelt and save them from themost “monotonous, boringand mundane work”, MrStephens says.

The robot is being triedout on the campuses of Sili-con Valley tech companies,which are more able toexperiment than schools.

Knightscope has receivedinterest not only from theeducation sector, but alsofrom organisers of theupcoming Olympics in Bra-zil and Tokyo, large USsecurity companies andother businesses from theMiddle East to China.

The start-up is at the fore-front of a new era in robot-ics, as smarter technologybegins to creep into morewhite collar and even pro-fessional industries.

Erik Brynjolfsson, whoalong with MIT SloanSchool of Management col-league Andrew McAfeewrote the recent book TheSecond Machine Age, saystechnology is being devel-oped that could disrupthundreds of millions ofjobs.

He says that while thefirst machine age, theindustrial revolution, re-placed people’s muscleswith machines, the secondis taking over cognitivetasks done by humans.

“It is going to have somesimilarities to the firstmachine age – there will betremendous bounty – butthere will also be veryimportant differences,” saysProf Brynjolfsson. “Whenyou replace muscle workwith machines, you stillneed humans to make deci-sions about what is to be

done, making human workmore valuable, but in thenext wave it is not asclear whether machinescomplement or substitutehumans.”

Machines can now dia-gnose breast cancer betterthan humans, first-yearlawyers have been almostreplaced by legal discoverysoftware and self-drivingcars have a mental pictureof the blind spots of everyvehicle on the road and cansee one slowing from fur-ther away.

Robots are often cheaperthan humans, work longerhours and can be used to doless safe tasks.

Aethon, a Pittsburgh-based company, sells itsTug robot – a self-drivingtrolley – to hospitals, whichuse it to transport medi-cines, samples for the lab,meals, laundry and waste.

Aldo Zini, chief executiveof Aethon, says hospitalsobtain “nice hard dollarsavings” with a 150 per centreturn on investment over afew years. But he adds:“The biggest advantage isthat robots are good fordoing things that are dan-gerous or not very suitablefor a human to do – wheel-ing a 500lb laundry cart,picking up infectious waste,transporting very expensivechemotherapy drugs.”

But some robots come inless robot-like shapes. Blue

Prism, a UK-based companythat works for the backoffice of customers includ-ing Barclays and the Co-op-erative Bank, sells a robotthat looks just like auto-mated software. Whatmakes it a robot is that itfills in forms and uses com-puter systems just like ahuman, without any extrachanges to the IT platform.

Alastair Bathgate, chiefexecutive, says robots canbe trained to do the work oftens of thousands of backoffice employees.

Clients can still have ahuman answering thephone, but when they takedown the details of some-one’s lost credit card, forexample, they can pass theform-filling to a robot.

“This is not about a loadof P45s [the form given toUK workers when they losetheir jobs]; it is about re-

allocating costs,” he says.Robots, he adds, are not

very good at apologising tocustomers, but are moreaccurate than humans atcompleting the paperwork.

For Illah Nourbakhsh, aprofessor at the RoboticsInstitute of Carnegie MellonUniversity in Pittsburgh,one of the most importantthings companies mustthink about when introduc-ing robots is the effect onexisting employees.

“When you add robotsyou don’t take away all thepeople. Psychologically, itcan have an impact on peo-ple’s relationship withrobots and management,”he says.

“It introduces a wholenew extinction dynamic.”

This article has previouslybeen published at ft.com/connected

White­collar robots roll into schools, hospitals and officesAutomation

New tools can freehumans for lessmundane work, saysHannah Kuchler

‘The biggestadvantage is thatrobots are good fordoing things thatare dangerous’

Scott Howe:data ‘refiner’

8 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2014

Persuading employees to turn offlights and monitors when they finishwork, and unplug phone chargerswhen not in use, can substantiallyreduce corporate energy bills as wellas boosting a company’s green creden-tials. But altering people’s behaviouris difficult, as any manager will know.

This is especially true when you area small department in a large organi-sation, says Steven Uden, head of citi-zenship at Nationwide Building Soci-ety. Software can help by showingpeople what they can do to cut carbonemissions, monitoring their behaviourand rewarding it.

His team of nine has the task ofencouraging 16,000 staff across threeadministrative centres and 700 offices,to reduce the organisation’s carbonfootprint. To help achieve this he isusing Empower, a cloud-based soft-ware application developed by TheCarbon Trust, a UK government-backed advisory group.

“It will not influence somebody whodoes not want change,” says Mr Uden,who has been piloting Empower forthe past year. “But you can lower thebarriers by showing people the smallthings they can do and letting themdecide what action to take.”

Empower gives staff “virtual tours”of their offices to show how muchenergy they could save by takingactions such as turning down a radia-tor, using the stairs rather than thelift, or switching off a monitor atnight. They are encouraged to makepledges, such as “I will reduce energyconsumption by 20 per cent.”

Six hundred Nationwide employeeshave made 4,000 pledges, helping thecompany reduce its carbon footprintby 15 per cent since 2011.

One of Empower’s most useful fea-tures is its interactivity, says JosephWilliams, technical and change man-ager at The Carbon Trust. “It letsemployees give feedback and suggestsideas.”

Most people are willing to do thesethings, Mr Williams says, “yet there isoften a big gap between what they saythey are prepared to undertake andwhat they actually do”.

Using software to tackle greenissues is much more affordable thanpaying for specialist consultants, saysLuke Nicholson, director of Carbon-Culture.net, a social enterprise.

“Software can be deployed on alarge scale both in big companies andin small businesses that have tightbudgets and little time to worry abouttheir carbon footprint.”

CarbonCulture.net has developed aprogram called Scrunch that helpsorganisations encourage staff tochange behaviour by suggesting ideasto them, monitoring their responseand rewarding them with bonuspoints for repeated good practice.

To sustain momentum there needsto be an element of fun, Mr Nicholsonsays. “Winners might receive recogni-tion in the form of an award, or anenvironmentally friendly prize suchas a bike.” Once such software sys-tems have been developed, they canbe deployed across multiple locationsat no extra cost, he adds.

CarbonCulture.net software pre-sents graphs of energy use in a waythat reveals fresh insights and helpsmake rapid improvements. One cus-tomer reduced its gas bill by 10 percent within a few weeks.

Applications that help organisationstackle green challenges are in theirinfancy, but uptake is growing fast.Empower is used in schools, hospitalsand local authorities, and is beingtranslated into Chinese, Spanish andWelsh.

In future, organisations could usesuch applications in conjunction withsocial media to gather staff opinions,understand barriers and motivatingfactors, participate in online focusgroups and co-ordinate activities suchas car sharing.

Social media offer a high-profileway of reacting to feedback, says MrWilliams. “If people say: ‘We can’tcycle to work because there are noshowers’, their employer couldrespond live by introducing showerand bike parking facilities.”

Environmental software lets organi-sations measure and analyse results,which is crucial to low-carbon prac-tices being widely adopted. It can alsopay for itself by cutting fuel bills andwaste.

Empower, which costs from £5,000 ayear, delivers an annual return oninvestment of up to 10 times this, MrWilliams says. It seems you can boostyour green credentials and makemoney at the same time.

Software shows workersthe way to greener future

Environment

Tools such as Empower andScrunch can encourage goodpractice, writes Jane Bird

It used to be easy to chose whattype of printer you bought.Inkjets were for consumerswhile laser printers, with their

lower cost per printed page, were forbusinesses. If you planned to printphotos or marketing materials, youchose colour, otherwise black-and-white was fine. Most business hadseparate copiers, fax machines andprinters.

But the rules – or at leastguidelines – of the game havechanged. Today, colour is often nomore expensive than black-and-white,inkjet speeds have increased sharplyand in terms of performance, thefastest machines are now on a parwith some lasers.

And multifunction machinescombining the functions of copier,fax and printer have become thenorm in both home and office.

So, for example, the machine I useat home is a Samsung C1860FWcolour multifunction laser machinethat costs about $350 (around £275 inthe UK) and is controlled via a 4.3incolour touch screen. In the office, weuse a laser-based Xeroxmultifunction machine that servesthe whole floor.

I was struck, however, by somerecent research from InfoTrends. Theresearch firm focused on the printermarket, noting that, despite aninflux of low-cost laser machines,inkjets are expected to account for56 per cent of printers used by USbusinesses by 2016.

The research suggested that smalland medium-sized businesses (SMBs)

are looking to inkjet technology fortheir printing needs, because of thecost savings, improved speeds andadded functionality that ink delivers.

So I set out to discover whetherHewlett-Packard’s claim that inkjetscould really rival colour lasers wasjustified. For the past few weeks, Ihave been testing one of the latestHP inkjet-based multifunctiondevices aimed at the SMB market.

HP’s Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-Oneis one of three new HP printers thatsupport printing from users’ mobiledevices including smartphones andtablets. The 8630 also supports HP’swireless NFC (near fieldcommunications) touch-to-printtechnology that enables users toprint an image from an NFC-enabledmobile device such as a SamsungGalaxy smartphone simply bytapping it on the printer – a system Ifound worked remarkably well.

The 8630, which costs $400 andwent on sale in the US and someother countries this month, includesan additional paper tray, colourcartridges and OCR (opticalcharacter recognition) software.

I found the 8630 lived up to itsreputation for speed and quality – itdelivers up to 21 pages per minuteand 16.5 pmm in colour and uses fiveindividual ink cartridges, whichmakes it more efficient than inkjetswith a combined cartridge.

It also comes with anadditional 250-sheetpaper tray and canprint on both sidesof a sheet of paperat up to 10 ppm.Scanning is quick atup to 14 ppm anddocuments can bescanned to email,network folders orthe cloud – just likethe big Xerox printerat work.

Overall, I have beenimpressed with the 8630, which is

controlled by tapping andswiping a 4.3in touchscreen and

can be monitoredremotely over theinternet.

For comparison purposes, Ihave also been testing HP’s LaserjetPro MFP M127fw, a black-and-whitelaser machine that copies, scans,faxes and prints at up to 21 ppm. Itcosts $140 less than its inkjetcompanion at $260, but deliverssimilar performance for those who donot need colour.

Like the Officejet Pro 8630, itsupports wireless connectivity andprinting from mobile devices, comeswith a 35-page automatic documentfeeder and is controlled using a 3incolour touchscreen. As I discovered,it is also very easy to set up on a

Windows-based machine usingHP’s Smart Install.

However it cannotmatch the 8630 whenit comes to paperhandling – it has a150-sheet input tray –or “monthly dutycycle”. While the8630 is designed tohandle up to 30,000

pages a month, theM127fw supports a

maximum of 8,000.Traditionally, laser

printers were cheaper torun than inkjets, but that is notnecessarily the case today.

HP says all its Officejet Proprinters produce high-quality colourprints for half the price of colourlaser printers – a significant savingif your business involves printingdocuments with a colour component.

My overall conclusion is thatmodern inkjets such as the HPOfficeJet Pro 8630 can indeed rivalcolour laser printers and produceprofessional colour printing withlaser-sharp text and vibrant images,and provide SMBs with a compellingalternative to a laser-based machine.

Inkjets canmake a splashin battle withlaser rivals

Paul Taylor

HP’s Pro 8630e­All­in­One (left)and the LaserjetPro MFP M127fw(above)Top picture: Dreamstime

The Connected Business