Janet Balis

If transformation is an undeniable imperative for organizational growth, then driving successful transformation, for the business and its people, is crucial. Despite this imperative, 67% of senior leaders have been part of at least one underperforming transformation in the last five years. How can transformations be more consistently successful?

As the pace of digital transformation continues, marketers are now taking center stage in their organizations, connecting the dots across customer needs and data, business priorities, and the digital agenda. Balis recommends five actions marketing leaders should take to aggressively drive growth and create value.

How should brands take their first steps into the metaverse? For that matter, what even is the metaverse? While the idea might feel like a novelty right now, there’s arguably huge potential for brands — if they can figure out where to start. New technology always requires a curious approach, but brands should follow a few guidelines: pick your targets, watch what the competition is doing, look for new applications, plan your entrance, and keep your balance.

The Covid-19 pandemic upended a marketer’s playbook, challenging the existing rules about customer relationships and building brands. One year in, there’s no going back to the old normal. Here are 10 new marketing truths that reveal the confluence of strategies, operations, and technologies required to drive growth in a post-Covid-19 world.

The coronavirus crisis has led to new consumer behaviors and sentiments. The author recommends five ways for brands to serve and grow their customers, mitigate risk, and take care of their people during this difficult time: 1) Present with empathy and transparency; 2) Use media in more agile ways; 3) Associate your brand with good; 4) Track trends and build scenarios; 5) Adapt to new ways of working to keep delivering.

It is human ingenuity that determines how technology is exploited to effect better human outcomes. Human judgement and creativity drive the innovation that frees us to focus on what really matters. And human insight is what’s required to navigate the limitless choices – the opportunities and threats – that a digital world presents.

Q&A with The Economist on how to drive consumer-centric and design-forward strategy.

In 2016, She Runs It commissioned a study we revealed during Advertising Week. "Accelerating the Path to Leadership for Women in Marketing and Media," conducted by EY and LinkedIn, combined the power of rich data and strategic expertise. The goal: to illuminate specific actions we can take as individuals or companies to fast forward to gender parity.

A guide to specific models for innovation in a rapidly evolving business landscape. Inspired by the EY Innovation Summit: Innovation Realized 2016 in San Francisco, CA.

An elite group of leaders from EY were invited to tour the battlefields of Gettysburg last summer and, for me, the experience yielded some remarkably relevant and modern insights about business.

As diversity and inclusion become greater priorities, we must not only embrace diversity of who we are demographically but also what experiences we bring to the table. This piece is based on a talk I gave at the Stages Summit in Chicago in summer 2016 about my experience dabbling with a strong sense of purpose.

At the code conference, business leaders and innovators from Elon Musk to Sheryl Sandberg took the stage to talk technology and growth. This article summarizes the key takeaways from this high profile, invitation-only event.

Following on EY's Innovation Realized event for chief innovation and digital officers across a range of industries, this piece summarizes key models for innovation.

Digital strategy is no longer independent from enterprise strategy. Technological innovation and disruption require digital thinking to sit at the heart of strategy and operations - across all aspects of the business.

There is no question that the media industry is experiencing dramatic disruption on many fronts—in the way it creates content, distributes content to consumers, and monetizes audiences. These changes are driven by seismic shifts in consumer behavior and an explosion of both consumer- and B2B-facing technologies. This article poses three strategic questions that need to be answered to contemplate the future of the media industry.

Interview of Janet Balis on Disruption in the Media Industry during Advertising Week 2015.

Sesame Street’s move to partner with HBO came as a surprise to some, but it makes a lot of sense given the broad trends in today’s media industry. The new world of media prizes both high quality content and high quality technology. In fact, to thrive you really need both. And for that reason, Sesame Street Workshop made a smart move to bolster distribution and fill gaps in its business model.

OTT is a well understood concept in the context of online video. And an emerging concept in messaging. What happens when brands adopt an over-the-top approach to marketing? #OTTBranding

In world where mobile dominates consumer behavior, brand marketers must master the art of storytelling in a new medium. This article provides some guiding principles for building effective brands stories built for this critical mobile consumer experience. #storytelling #brandadvertising #mobile

Reprinted here for viewing: https://medium.com/digital-innovation/b7785863b01b

Content marketing offers brands an opportunity to tell their stories and connect with consumers. Done right, content marketing strategies not only tell the brand story but enhance it. The original brand stories are more than familiar — from :30 spots to beautiful, glossy full-page ads — but the digital landscape presents a continuously evolving palette from which to paint. This moment opens many paths to more flexible and creative models for content marketing but requires a keen understanding… Show more

Content marketing offers brands an opportunity to tell their stories and connect with consumers. Done right, content marketing strategies not only tell the brand story but enhance it. The original brand stories are more than familiar — from :30 spots to beautiful, glossy full-page ads — but the digital landscape presents a continuously evolving palette from which to paint. This moment opens many paths to more flexible and creative models for content marketing but requires a keen understanding of the digital landscape into which brand content is injected. Show less

Brands are unquestionably shifting to “real-time” marketing. For some, this means accelerating from “brand as publisher” to “brand as newsroom.” The word “newsroom” conveys the commitment to high-quality storytelling and the urgency required to keep pace with the social landscape.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/196335/developing-a-real-time-strategy-in-the-age-of-twit.html#ixzz2WhlTRFPq

Content marketing is not a new tactic. From the days of advertorials in print, to content hubs built by online publishers, to brand integration within programming on television and digital media, brands have long recognized that content can often be more powerful than advertising to deliver a story. But content marketing is undergoing a revolution as brands move beyond “one-off” executions to full-blown continuous storytelling.

Read more:… Show more

Content marketing is not a new tactic. From the days of advertorials in print, to content hubs built by online publishers, to brand integration within programming on television and digital media, brands have long recognized that content can often be more powerful than advertising to deliver a story. But content marketing is undergoing a revolution as brands move beyond “one-off” executions to full-blown continuous storytelling.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/192997/content-marketings-revolution-from-one-offs-to-c.html#ixzz2KGxX6y7B Show less

Interview about HuffPost and CES. Convergence of consumer electronics, health, and content.