strategy+business: TECH AND INNOVATION
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<p>In <a href=”https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2020.html?utm_campaign=sbpwc&utm_medium=site&utm_source=articletext” target=”_blank”>PwC’s 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey</a>, which was undertaken before the COVID-19 pandemic, 74 percent of CEOs said they were worried about the availability of key skills. At the same time, we know that many of today’s youth — the people who will become our employees, customers, and, ultimately, our successors — aren’t getting the access to digital technologies and skills that enable them to thrive.</p>
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<p>When schools around the world closed due to the pandemic, one in three young people — some 463 million — lost their only avenue for learning. According to a <a href=”https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_emp/—emp_ent/documents/genericdocument/wcms_742817.pdf” target=”_blank”>May 2020 survey</a><sup>PDF</sup> by the International Labour Organization, approximately 90 percent of technical and vocational education and training centers in 126 countries reported complete closure. And more than 40 percent of employed youth were <a href=”https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_745963.pdf” target=”_blank”>working in sectors hit hard by COVID-19</a><sup>PDF</sup>. More than ever, it is imperative that we take steps to close the youth digital divide.</p>
<p>The pandemic has accelerated existing trends and exposed, in a stark light, structural weaknesses in institutions and economies. Inequalities are rising at alarming rates for the most vulnerable in every society, particularly for the unconnected half of the world. As more facets of everyday life become increasingly digital — including education, work, healthcare, news, leisure — youth who are excluded from the digital world will almost certainly suffer long-term or permanent social and economic disenfranchisement. Unless we take action.</p>
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<p>Youth who are excluded from the digital world will almost certainly suffer long-term or permanent social and economic disenfranchisement. Unless we take action.</p>
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<p>This is a moment to turn a crisis into an opportunity — not only to address the economic and social impacts wrought by the pandemic, but to rebound in a way that reverses long-standing challenges and puts youth on a more equal future footing. At the same time, we can also improve the economic fitness of societies at large, giving millions of workers the skills and resources necessary to participate fully in a society and economy that are increasingly digital. To achieve these ambitious goals, however, stakeholders — including businesses — will have to think differently about the roles they play.</p>
<p>As <a href=”https://www.pwc.com/digital-divide?utm_campaign=sbpwc&utm_medium=site&utm_source=articletext” target=”_blank”>Stepping forward: Connecting today’s youth to the digital future</a>, a report written by our colleagues at PwC and UNICEF, notes, there are four stepping stones that put disenfranchised youth, and thus society as a whole, on the road to a better future.</p>
<p><strong>• Connectivity.</strong> The technical elements that allow youth to get online and access the internet and digital platforms: reliable power, digital infrastructure, and devices such as computers, mobile phones, and routers.</p>
<p><strong>• Access.</strong> The non-technical elements that allow youth to take advantage of opportunities once they’re connected. These include cultural acceptance of online activity, family engagement and support, native-language content, wellness and emotional resources, and mental healthcare.</p>
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<p><strong>• Digital literacy.</strong> The basic knowledge and skills needed to participate online. Elements include relevant educational curriculum, digital literacy programming, and awareness of online risks and dangers.</p>
<p><strong>• Work-ready skills.</strong> Once they are equipped to learn in a digital world, youth need the advanced digital skills and access to trade or higher education, internships, and vocational training that allow them to succeed in the 21st-century workplace.</p>
<p>As we strive to deliver a more equitable future, every stakeholder has a vital role to play. Governments provide the resources, infrastructure, and regulatory framework. Communities — including schools and local NGOs — bring an understanding of local needs and expertise. Youth and youth-serving organizations champion, design, and implement pilot programs. Corporations and private capital have an essential role to play — as employers, engines of the digital economy, and investors in communities. There’s a great deal businesses can do — on their own, or in conjunction with other stakeholders.</p>
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<p>Two such examples are Generation Unlimited and Reimagine Education. Generation Unlimited, founded in 2018, is a multi-stakeholder partnership platform that brings together public, private, not-for-profit, and multilateral organizations to expand education, training, and employment opportunities for young people across the world. As part of that objective, it is supporting Reimagine Education, a flagship initiative launched by UNICEF to connect every child and young person — some 3.5 billion by 2030 — to world-class digital solutions that offer personalized learning to leapfrog to a brighter future. By capitalizing on its unique strengths and membership, GenU helps achieve large-scale results by attracting investments, technical and financial resources, high-level advocacy, and engagement with young people.</p>
<p>Closing the digital divide among young people and equipping them with the access and skills they need to step into a new digital reality achieves multiple objectives. But such a complex challenge can be addressed only through an approach that examines the challenges in a fresh light. Maryam Elgoni, a youth leader from South Africa, sums up the mandate for working on these important issues: “Connecting young people to a digital future means so much…. It means that we create a future full of promise and prosperity. It means that we create a future where no one is left behind.”</p>
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<h2>Author Profiles:</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Bob Moritz</strong> is Chairman of the PwC Network.</li>
<li><strong>Henrietta Fore</strong> is Executive Director of UNICEF.</li>
</ul>
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<p>by Juliet B. Schor, University of California Press, 2020</p>
<p>A decade ago, advocates touted the sharing economy as an alternative to corporate capitalism. Digital technology was opening vast, new peer-to-peer marketplaces: TaskRabbit and Airbnb were founded in 2008, Uber in 2009, RelayRides (now Turo) in 2010, Postmates in 2011, Lyft in 2012. These platforms promised that people would be able to make a good living while working when and how they wanted — selling their time and skills, and renting out their cars, spare bedrooms, and that dusty camping gear in the attic.</p>
<p>“You will know by now that things haven’t turned out exactly as expected,” Juliet Schor wryly notes in her new book, <em><a href=”https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520325050/after-the-gig” target=”_blank”>After the Gig</a></em>. Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College, and her team at the <a href=”https://clrn.dmlhub.net/projects/connected-consumption.html” target=”_blank”>Connected Consumption</a> project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, studied gig workers and platforms of the sharing economy from 2011 to 2017. The result is a more nuanced view than has been offered by previous books on this topic, which typically focus on either how companies can build their own platforms or how platform companies prosper by evading regulation and exploiting workers.</p>
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<p>Among the insights: The less you actually need a gig job, the more likely it is that a gig job will work for you. “Workers’ experiences are not uniform, with variation in pay rates, job satisfaction, and how they do the work,” Schor explains. “As we saw these differences playing out at individual companies, we realized that they are explained by how dependent the worker is on income from the platform to pay basic living expenses.” Schor’s team found that supplemental workers — that is, workers who are <em>not</em> financially dependent on their platforms — make more money, have more autonomy, and are more satisfied with their gigs than platform-dependent workers. Moreover, the former group comprises 34 percent of the workers in the sample the team studied; the latter was only 22.5 percent. (The rest, nearly half of platform workers, fall between the two extremes.)</p>
<p>This finding partly contradicts the headlines of worker abuse that have generated a lot of <a href=”https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/4/21539335/california-proposition-22-results-gig-economy-workers” target=”_blank”>political <em>Sturm und Drang</em></a> lately. At the same time, it is clear that the gig economy can’t really substitute for a full-time job. As Schor concludes: “With some exceptions, our data suggest that being dependent on a platform is not a viable way to make a living.”</p>
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<p>With some exceptions, our data suggest that being dependent on a platform is not a viable way to make a living.“</p>
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<p>And that was before COVID. Schor reports that, even as unemployment was remarkably low and wages were rising before 2020, gig worker pay was falling, especially on labor-intensive platforms, such as those of ride-hailing and delivery companies (versus capital-intensive platforms, such as home- and car-sharing companies). Now that the ranks of the unemployed have roughly doubled, exceeding 11 million people in the U.S., for example, it’s likely that some of those individuals will turn to gig work and create more downward pressure on pay rates.</p>
<p>Still, Schor, an economist by training, isn’t ready to give up on the potential of the gig economy. In the final chapter of <em>After the Gig</em>, she mostly dismisses the idea that regulation can pave the way for a sharing economy in which gig workers get an equitable share of the rewards, citing the overwhelming market power of the dominant platform companies and their unwillingness to relinquish their data. Instead, she proposes a rebooting of the sharing economy through the development of <em>platform cooperatives</em> — picture an Uber or Airbnb that is owned and controlled by its workers.</p>
<p>Schor points to Stocksy United, a platform owned by the photographers who sell their images on it, as an example of such a business. The photographers make all the major decisions concerning the platform, and hire staff to run day-to-day operations. They also earn more on the platform than on other photo sites because founders and investors aren’t siphoning off a third or more of its revenues, as is common on other sites. (Reportedly, the co-op’s annual revenue in 2018 was US$11–$12 million.) “While Stocksy isn’t perfect,” writes Schor, “it <em>is</em> a genuine success story — with satisfied artists, strong revenue and growth, and commitment to its values.”</p>
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<p>In promoting this solution to reclaiming the techno-utopian promise of the sharing economy, Schor harkens back to W.E.B. DuBois, who wrote, “For working people to be free, they must seize control of the means of production.” She is not the only academic to see the means of production as the key to overcoming the negative effects of digital technology: In a <a href=”https://wol.iza.org/articles/who-owns-the-robots-rules-the-world” target=”_blank”>2015 paper</a>, Richard B. Freeman, the Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, argued that the only way a jobs apocalypse could be avoided was if workers owned a partial stake in the robots that threatened to replace them.</p>
<p>As appealing as the idea of platform cooperatives sounds, it’s hard to figure out how it squares with the research findings that precede it in <em>After the Gig</em>. Schor admits that Stocksy is “one of the few” successful worker-owned platforms. How would gig workers mount a challenge to the corporate-owned platforms that already dominate most, if not all, major peer-to-peer markets? Where would the needed funding come from to reach platform scale — and to defend that platform, if there were real money to be made? Schor says that city governments could create protected zones for worker-owned platforms. But thus far, few cities have succeeded in reining in any of the major corporate platforms, let alone shutting them out.</p>
<p><em>After the Gig</em> offers a nuanced, research-driven view of the first decade of the sharing economy. But it’s hard to turn the last page without concluding that the innovations that were supposed to transform our working lives for the better haven’t yet delivered on their promise.</p>
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<p>In turn, leading influencers can earn <a href=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/veenamccoole/2018/07/29/behind-the-scenes-of-instagrams-million-dollar-influencer-brand-deals/?sh=40898c2c329b” target=”_blank”>millions</a> of dollars a year spreading hype about new products, apps, and services. And marketers seem to think the investment is worth it: A 2019 <a href=”https://mediakix.com/influencer-marketing-resources/influencer-marketing-industry-statistics-survey-benchmarks/#gs.0xjefn” target=”_blank”>survey</a> found that 80 percent of marketers were pleased with their influencer campaigns, and 89 percent reported that the return on investment from influencers was better than or comparable to that from other marketing channels.</p>
<p>But how can companies best wield this new promotional tool? The authors of a new <a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000768132030032X?via%3Dihub” target=”_blank”>study</a> reviewed the latest research on consumer psychology and analyzed case studies of high-profile influencers; the study provides a framework for marketing managers who are considering whether influencers would work for their firms. Finding the right type of influencer (or mix of influencers) for the target market is the key to success.</p>
<p>The fact that people consume more media online has fundamentally altered how advertising appeals work, the authors write. Online consumers tend to be goal-driven, meaning they <a href=”https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.2004.10639175″ target=”_blank”>don’t</a> want to be interrupted by intrusive ads; instead, they’re more likely to respond positively to conversational and authentic <a href=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0743915618818576″ target=”_blank”>approaches</a> (twin hallmarks of influencer engagement). And unlike traditional media, social networks like Twitter or YouTube thrive on users’ 24/7 interaction and shared interests, which makes it hard for ad agencies geared at mass audiences to penetrate them, but ideal for influencers targeting specific niches.</p>
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<p>Because an influencer’s audience consists of followers who’ve opted in, influencers connect with consumers organically — and allow their sponsors to do the same, minus the costs associated with an ad campaign. Consumers often closely identify with the influencers they follow in terms of age, location, and life phase (going through pregnancy or college, for example). As a result, posts by influencers tend to be <a href=”https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305694058_Transforming_celebrities_through_social_media_the_role_of_authenticity_and_emotional_attachment” target=”_blank”>viewed</a> as candid and real expressions of their opinions, and are likely to garner more <a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681314000937″ target=”_blank”>attention</a> — in terms of engagement and response rates — than ads from the company itself.</p>
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<p>Because an influencer’s audience consists of followers who’ve opted in, influencers connect with consumers organically — and allow their sponsors to do the same.</p>
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<p>The authors break influencers down into five types. <em>Celebrities</em> are people who were famous prior to joining social media and have an enormous follower base. The rest are categorized according to their follower count. <em>Mega-influencers</em>, the so-called internet famous, are recognized because they have a million-plus following on social media, but they have little currency outside of that realm. <em>Macroinfluencers</em> have between 100,000 and 1 million followers and typically concentrate on one subject area. In contrast, <em>microinfluencers</em> may be able to make a career out of their work on social media, but they operate on a smaller scale, with between 10,000 to 100,000 followers, focusing on specific geographic markets or brands. Finally, <em>nanoinfluencers</em> have fewer than 10,000 followers but are perceived as approachable and highly authentic.</p>
<p>Indeed, influencers play many roles — product endorser, content producer, social media manager, marketing strategist, and PR representative — that are simply outside the scope of an ad agency. Accordingly, the authors offer some words of advice for marketing managers as they consider whether handing over some (or all) of these functions to an influencer would be more effective than traditional ad campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Use influencers as a one-stop shop.</strong> “The interplay of deep audience insight, creative expertise, and experience managing social media make for a powerful combination,” the authors write. Whereas ad agencies typically focus on a single aspect of a marketing campaign — such as market research, social media outreach, or content creation — influencers do it all, and, by tapping into their deep knowledge of your brand, do it quickly.</p>
<p><strong>Get the most bang for your buck, but don’t undervalue what they do.</strong> Number of followers can act as a <a href=”https://digiday.com/marketing/what-influencer-marketing-costs/” target=”_blank”>proxy</a> for an influencer’s popularity, the authors write, but this may fail to account for the full impact of the influencer’s organic reach, engagement, and post quality. Some assessments <a href=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrettwissman/2018/03/02/micro-influencers-the-marketing-force-of-the-future/?sh=588e2f186707″ target=”_blank”>suggest</a> using micro- and macro-influencers may be more cost-effective than celebrities or social media stars, because smaller accounts tend to have higher engagement rates. (And celebrities’ relatively low engagement rates come with a hefty price tag; some <a href=”https://digiday.com/marketing/what-influencer-marketing-costs/” target=”_blank”>charge</a> $250,000 per Instagram post.)</p>
<p><strong>Pick and choose.</strong> The whole point of influencer marketing is its targeted appeal to a specific audience. So, the authors advise marketing managers to use different types of influencers in the same campaign, offsetting celebrity charisma and mega-influencers’ expertise with the more intimate and personal appeals of a nanoinfluencer.</p>
<p><strong>Be aware of the risks.</strong> Of course, turning over some (or all) of a firm’s marketing campaign to an influencer is not without peril. The most obvious danger is a scandal associated with the endorser; brands that associate closely with tainted figures can be <a href=”https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1749″ target=”_blank”>caught</a> in the backlash themselves.</p>
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<p>On a more prosaic level, performing cost-benefit analyses on influencer campaigns can be challenging. Many influencers have been known to purchase bot accounts to inflate their follower counts. People can, however, look for suspicious patterns in follower counts. Marketers must also make sure influencers properly disclose their relationships with the firm, in line with trading guidelines.</p>
<p>Influencers represent the latest step in the evolution of marketing into a collaborative industry, wherein consumers and companies alike share in the branding efforts of new products and services. “Marketing managers should be prepared to use influencers within even their broadest marketing campaigns,” the authors write, “and to consider how this emerging marketing phenomenon may improve their overall brand strategies.”</p>
<p><strong>Source:</strong> “<a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000768132030032X?via%3Dihub” target=”_blank”>More than meets the eye: The functional components underlying influencer marketing</a>,” by Colin Campbell (University of San Diego and Swinburne University of Technology) and Justine Rapp Farrell (University of San Diego), <em>Business Horizons</em>, vol. 63, no. 4, July–Aug. 2020</p>
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