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Is diversity and inclusion at the top of your agenda?

Diversity and inclusion is one of the most important ethical and strategic priorities for businesses in 2021, but is it top of your agenda?

Over the last month we’ve been busy collating some of the best answers from our amazing guests on The Tech That Connects Us podcast. Every week we ask the big question on diversity and inclusion and get insight into what they’re doing to make that positive difference.

In this white paper we’ve compiled 10 fantastic insights and tips business leaders need to think about if they want to begin the process of building a truly diverse organisation, filled with talented individuals from different backgrounds.

This white paper will provide you with some tangible actions, that will build momentum and have a positive impact on diversity within your business.

If you’d like to talk to us about what we have learnt or the experiences of others in your industry please get in touch.

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What are the biggest challenges to the TV industry and video industry moving forward?

On episode 43 of The Tech That Connects Us John Clifton and Tim Meredith were joined by Nuno Sanches, General Manager for Telecom and Media at Kaltura.

When it comes to the TV and video industry there are a lot of challenges as we move forward, here’s what Nuno thinks are the biggest.

“In the media and professional TV industry, the biggest challenge we currently have is understanding the role of each of the agents and players. The structure of the industry itself is not settled. 

 It’s not clear if there’s market potential for a distributed content model, where we’ll have many providers providing content directly to many customers, or if we’re going to see the reaggregation of the intermediary where you then have half a dozen large aggregators that intermediate with a larger group of customers. 

 
This is the biggest risk but also the biggest opportunity, the winners and losers of each of these two configurations are dramatically different. Right now the question that will shape the industry is, can people be successful and meet the needs of the customer but reach them directly and profitably without having to be aggregated as it used to be. The question itself is still open, but we have a very interesting data point with Netflix in the fact that Netflix itself has stopped growing. Which has put all the projections about what the industry can be into an upheaval. 

 
We now have three or four players who could legitimately be at an equivalent scale in a couple of years that starts to make it clear that the winner takes all model doesn’t exist. But it still has not eliminated the fact that you could go back to essentially a US media company driven half by media and half by tech and have five giants who then consolidate everything like back in the days of paid TV. 

 
It’ll be fascinating to see whether this new world will emerge or if the old world of content aggregation will come back under a new banner of Video on Demand and non-linear content. 

 
For video, the biggest challenge will come from privacy. People do not understand the full impact of the videofied world we live in. This is why we’re only now starting to process the enormous implications of fake news and social media. We’re starting to grasp with personal exposure, if you’re putting up pictures of your kids or you out drinking then that’s something that could potentially come back to haunt you when it comes to a job interview. We’re only now understanding these implications. We’re starting to grapple with all this but the regulations around this have come afterwards. 

 
For example, does an employer have a right to record a meeting whilst you’re working from home? We’ve decided that this is now acceptable for everyone. So something could happen in the background and it’s ok for your employers to be recording it even though that’s in your home. We’ve made these decisions without fully understanding the implications.  

 
Over at Netflix, someone got fired due to some comments which were critical of the management team but on a channel they thought was private. If you’re adding video to these situations due to the depth of information you can get for a video the number of things that can go wrong goes through the roof. 

 
So a huge challenge for the video application world is how privacy will work, and we need to know the implications of these situations. One question we should be asking is how can machine learning and AI be used not for exposing your privacy but for protecting it? Can we use blockchain to make sure we control our own video feeds and keep the rights to them as if it was an NFT for example?  

 
If something happened that you didn’t want to be recorded then you’d have the ability to correct it in the master distributed file. These are important topics that may not come today because we’re all at home and privileged just to be talking to each other. But tomorrow they will come and they’re important discussions and the biggest challenge around video for the next decade.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What are the Emerging Marketing Trends Within Cyber?

On episode 42 of The Tech That Connects Us John Clifton and Jake Sparkes were joined by global Cyber marketing expert Reuben Braham

In the episode, we heard Reubens thoughts on the marketing trends that are emerging in the cyber industry. 

“Anything that we talk about regarding marketing trends, is actually a bit different to what we’d be talking about 18 or 19 months ago before we had the COVID 19 pandemic. 

Before the pandemic, it was different because we could travel and meet people face to face and be present. What I’m seeing now is that the world is ready for a more hybrid model of business, so our marketing needs need to focus on gearing up and being part of the virtual events and conversations, we’re having over Zoom right now. It’s something that is now more acceptable even for business meetings with CEOs, CMOs etc. So, we have to be ready for a hybrid business model.  

On the other side, we need to understand that people are going to be hit with a lot of virtual requests and that ‘Zoom fatique’ is real. All the different vendors and suppliers will want to have virtual briefings which will start to take its toll on our customers. 

The best strategies I’m seeing currently are around creating thought leadership content that can be circulated to your target audience, companies need to be building more blogs, building more thought leadership content and educating your market. 

When you’re building content you should be focusing on your perfect customers, understanding their pain points and doing your best to help them by being consultative with your approach. 

As a marketing department, you must be doing targeted research, and then use an account-based marketing approach, not just a shotgun approach trying to hit everybody. If you can build a library of very good content that can educate your audience and continue to educate them then that’s something that will have a massive impact on your business. 

In my first 6 months at Cyberint, our first task has been to build up our content library, I really believe that creating great engaging content will work wonders for not only engaging with your current and potential clients, but it’ll really help with our website SEO. Once you’ve built up that library of content potential customers will understand that you’re a player in the marketing, and they’ll start to differentiate your business from the competition.  

Virtual meetings and virtual events are starting to have their toll on people, and people would rather consume content at their leisure rather than at a set time. 

There’s also a lot to be said too for building out good automation and allowing 70-80% of your customers journey to be done through marketing automation. The more content you can give your potential client the more they’ll know about you and the more they’ll see you as the business to work with over your competition.” 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.