Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight

Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight

 OUR CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK’S NEWS

Happy Wonders & Blunders Wednesday!
 
This week we enjoyed an article comparing AI to electricity, detailing all the industries and everyday tasks it will change in the near future. The photo and reference of Rosie, the Jetson’s robot, sealed the deal for this story’s addition to the newsletter.
 
While we’re eagerly awaiting the Winter Olympics, another story that caught our eye is how Visa is creating gloves that you can use to pay for purchases in South Korea’s Olympic venues.
 
And as we watch bitcoin’s value roller coaster in the news, it’s important to remember that the technology that powers and created bitcoin, blockchain, is not the same thing as bitcoin.
 
Check it out!
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
 
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Is Artificial Intelligence the New Electricity?
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Andrew Ng, Stanford professor and founder of the Google Brain Deep Learning Project, declared AI as the new electricity in a recent keynote speech at an Artificial Intelligence conference. In the same way electricity changed every industry 100 year ago, AI will change every industry in the near future, such as in the advancement of home robots, automated taxis and chatbots.
 
Deep learning is defined as when computers “learn from datasets to perform functions, instead of just executing the specific tasks it was programmed to do.” This AI development took 30 years of refining to improve speech recognition to the point of today’s voice activated assistants such as Siri and Alexa. The next development was “computer vision,” describing how computers read photographs and then categorize or identify objects in them, which is a feature already used on some eCommerce sites such as Alibaba.
 
But AI still has a ways to go before many businesses adopt it. “Around 40% of firms are thinking about it, 40% experiment with it and only 20% actually adopt AI in a few areas,” because “41% of companies surveyed are not convinced they can see a return on their investment, 30% said the business case isn’t quite there and the rest said they don’t have the skills to handle AI.”
 
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Olympic Smart Glove Service
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Visa and Lotte card (South Korea’s main department store) are partnering to create gloves with an embedded NFC chip to allow payment with the gloves, for the February 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeognChang, South Korea. The gloves will allow users to pay for items without removing their gloves, so they won’t need to use a smartphone or grab a card from their wallet, keeping their hands warm in the cold weather. A commemorative Olympics pin and stickers will also allow payment via a NFC chip. A prepaid amount of money will be available on all items.
 
Visa is the official Olympic games payment partner and is managing the payment infrastructure and network of all the Olympics venues, such as the 1000 contactless point-of-sale terminals that accept mobile and these wearable payments.
 
Do you think wearable payment tech such as this will catch on soon, if this test-drive in a hacker hot-zone is a success?
 
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Emoji Index
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Blockchain is not just Bitcoin
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
You’re not alone if you’ve noticed a disparity between executives at big banks telling the public that bitcoin is a “fraud,” while their own companies’ R&D departments are working with blockchain technology. Tim Culpan of Bloomberg Gadfly gives a great description of the differences between the Bitcoin currency and the blockchain technology behind it, technology that is useful for many purposes in addition to digital currency. In essence, he describes how one person can be pro-blockchain and anti-bitcoin at the same time.
 
Blockchain can be used for a distributed public ledger, and for ledgers that are not public, such as the “atomic” transactions Singapore’s R3 consortium is working on that changes ownership of the monetary amount and financial security at the same time. Credit Suisse demonstrated a digital ledger in use for syndicated loans last year, and JP Morgan is looking into “smart” contracts.
 
The term “blockchain tourist” was used and described when a company just talks about blockchain because it is a trendy topic that will get covered in the news, while little actual work using blockchain is being accomplished.
 
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
» IN THE NEWS
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Next Technology wrote about the services of Intrinio in its recent article, “Learning the ‘Secrets’ of Finances.”
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
» BOTTOM LINE: Five Strategies to Successfully Communicate an ICO (Part 2)
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
Our earlier post detailed key steps to identify your audiences, create differentiated messaging and focus on building and maintaining trust to successfully communicate an ICO. Let’s now focus our attention to timing, planning and execution in the second part of this series.
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
»FEATURED CASE STUDY: CCOE
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight
KCD PR was selected to promote the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence (CCOE), a nonprofit organization that promotes alignment and collaboration within the cyber community.
 
KCD PR developed a comprehensive public relations strategy by first thoroughly understanding the nonprofit organization space, then establishing a set of measurable objectives and communications guidelines to guide the overall strategy that would help CCOE position San Diego as the hub for all things cyber-focused.
Wonders & Blunders: Your Gloves Are Taking You Out to Dinner Tonight

 

PR Assistant

San Diego, CA
Close

Our ideal candidate is a news and digital marketing junkie, who loves the thrill of pitching top-tier business media, writing a timely blog post and managing client PR & marketing campaigns. Pitching the Wall Street Journal or TechCrunch? No problem. Searching and networking for the next great speaking opportunity for a client? Of course! You live to see your clients featured in the spotlight. KCD PR is hiring a full-time Senior Associate based in San Diego or virtual (with some travel to San Diego!) to join our growing agency specializing in the financial, fintech and emerging technology industries. This position works directly on a small, collaborative team on public relations, digital marketing and social media campaigns for our diverse roster of clients across the nation in emerging categories like fintech, AI, SaaS, cybersecurity and blockchain. This position promises to offer an exciting, fast-paced work environment, access to clients and the opportunity to grow within the firm. If you enjoy rubbing elbows and supporting some of the brightest names in financial and technology with brand-building public relations and marketing campaigns, we want to hear from you. We have a caring and rewarding culture and a fun work environment – we work as hard as we play!  Expect a fast paced day and plenty of opportunity to shine and be rewarded for your hard work.

What You Will Be Doing at KCD PR:
•  Key contact for clients, supporting daily communications for 5-7 key client accounts
•  Partnering with other KCD PR team members on content creation and support of collateral materials and client events
•  Key role on agency marketing initiatives – creating company newsletter, blog content and digital PR and marketing campaigns
•  Participates in day-to-day media monitoring of client and industry news
•  Creating press releases, fact sheets and various other press materials
•  Strategizing on public relations and marketing goals and objectives
•  Pitching/conversing with national business and technology media on behalf of KCD PR clients
•  Managing social media marketing content for new clients and knowledge to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and YouTube
•  E-Marketing management, blog posts and landing page content creation
•  Utilizing social media to promote client news/events updating/creating pages for clients, web content revisions for client web sites
•  Editing web site content, uploading videos, often first draft of client work

Does This Sound Like You?
(*Must meet all criteria*) Candidates with previous experience working in related roles in the financial services and technology industry will be given priority. No recent graduates will be considered.

At least 3+ Years previous PR or marketing agency experience (with technology and/or financial services clients)
Bachelor’s Degree in related field (Communications, Marketing, Finance, Business or related field)
You have proven skills of integrating and leveraging social media programs, print and broadcast media to heighten client exposure and visibility
You have a strong knowledge of the financial and technology markets and know the trends, opportunities and challenges that face many of the agency’s clients
You’re a communication guru and have a strong portfolio of writing (creative and strategic) and possess a healthy network of media contacts that have helped garner impressive results
Experience managing multiple client accounts and collaborating with a team of internal resources
Superior, proven written and oral communication skills and an obsession with detail-oriented results
Ability to speak with clients, participate on conference calls and maintain high level of professionalism and maintain confidentiality of client information
Knowledge of WordPress, basic website editing and Hubspot marketing software systems a plus (as is Hubspot certification)

Compensation:
Competitive salary based on commensurate experience, bonus program for smart goal performance, 401 (k) retirement plan with full company match and annual company profit sharing contributions, generous group health care plan options, PTO plus paid company holiday from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day, free beer, breakfast and all sorts of goodies at our awesome co-working space in Little Italy, direct deposit, mass-transit/biking incentives.

PR Assistant 2

San Diego, CA
Close

Our ideal candidate is a news and digital marketing junkie, who loves the thrill of pitching top-tier business media, writing a timely blog post and managing client PR & marketing campaigns. Pitching the Wall Street Journal or TechCrunch? No problem. Searching and networking for the next great speaking opportunity for a client? Of course! You live to see your clients featured in the spotlight. KCD PR is hiring a full-time Senior Associate based in San Diego or virtual (with some travel to San Diego!) to join our growing agency specializing in the financial, fintech and emerging technology industries. This position works directly on a small, collaborative team on public relations, digital marketing and social media campaigns for our diverse roster of clients across the nation in emerging categories like fintech, AI, SaaS, cybersecurity and blockchain. This position promises to offer an exciting, fast-paced work environment, access to clients and the opportunity to grow within the firm. If you enjoy rubbing elbows and supporting some of the brightest names in financial and technology with brand-building public relations and marketing campaigns, we want to hear from you. We have a caring and rewarding culture and a fun work environment – we work as hard as we play!  Expect a fast paced day and plenty of opportunity to shine and be rewarded for your hard work.

What You Will Be Doing at KCD PR:
•  Key contact for clients, supporting daily communications for 5-7 key client accounts
•  Partnering with other KCD PR team members on content creation and support of collateral materials and client events
•  Key role on agency marketing initiatives – creating company newsletter, blog content and digital PR and marketing campaigns
•  Participates in day-to-day media monitoring of client and industry news
•  Creating press releases, fact sheets and various other press materials
•  Strategizing on public relations and marketing goals and objectives
•  Pitching/conversing with national business and technology media on behalf of KCD PR clients
•  Managing social media marketing content for new clients and knowledge to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and YouTube
•  E-Marketing management, blog posts and landing page content creation
•  Utilizing social media to promote client news/events updating/creating pages for clients, web content revisions for client web sites
•  Editing web site content, uploading videos, often first draft of client work

Does This Sound Like You?
(*Must meet all criteria*) Candidates with previous experience working in related roles in the financial services and technology industry will be given priority. No recent graduates will be considered.

At least 3+ Years previous PR or marketing agency experience (with technology and/or financial services clients)
Bachelor’s Degree in related field (Communications, Marketing, Finance, Business or related field)
You have proven skills of integrating and leveraging social media programs, print and broadcast media to heighten client exposure and visibility
You have a strong knowledge of the financial and technology markets and know the trends, opportunities and challenges that face many of the agency’s clients
You’re a communication guru and have a strong portfolio of writing (creative and strategic) and possess a healthy network of media contacts that have helped garner impressive results
Experience managing multiple client accounts and collaborating with a team of internal resources
Superior, proven written and oral communication skills and an obsession with detail-oriented results
Ability to speak with clients, participate on conference calls and maintain high level of professionalism and maintain confidentiality of client information
Knowledge of WordPress, basic website editing and Hubspot marketing software systems a plus (as is Hubspot certification)

Compensation:
Competitive salary based on commensurate experience, bonus program for smart goal performance, 401 (k) retirement plan with full company match and annual company profit sharing contributions, generous group health care plan options, PTO plus paid company holiday from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day, free beer, breakfast and all sorts of goodies at our awesome co-working space in Little Italy, direct deposit, mass-transit/biking incentives.

PR Assistant 3

San Diego, CA
Close

Our ideal candidate is a news and digital marketing junkie, who loves the thrill of pitching top-tier business media, writing a timely blog post and managing client PR & marketing campaigns. Pitching the Wall Street Journal or TechCrunch? No problem. Searching and networking for the next great speaking opportunity for a client? Of course! You live to see your clients featured in the spotlight. KCD PR is hiring a full-time Senior Associate based in San Diego or virtual (with some travel to San Diego!) to join our growing agency specializing in the financial, fintech and emerging technology industries. This position works directly on a small, collaborative team on public relations, digital marketing and social media campaigns for our diverse roster of clients across the nation in emerging categories like fintech, AI, SaaS, cybersecurity and blockchain. This position promises to offer an exciting, fast-paced work environment, access to clients and the opportunity to grow within the firm. If you enjoy rubbing elbows and supporting some of the brightest names in financial and technology with brand-building public relations and marketing campaigns, we want to hear from you. We have a caring and rewarding culture and a fun work environment – we work as hard as we play!  Expect a fast paced day and plenty of opportunity to shine and be rewarded for your hard work.

What You Will Be Doing at KCD PR:
•  Key contact for clients, supporting daily communications for 5-7 key client accounts
•  Partnering with other KCD PR team members on content creation and support of collateral materials and client events
•  Key role on agency marketing initiatives – creating company newsletter, blog content and digital PR and marketing campaigns
•  Participates in day-to-day media monitoring of client and industry news
•  Creating press releases, fact sheets and various other press materials
•  Strategizing on public relations and marketing goals and objectives
•  Pitching/conversing with national business and technology media on behalf of KCD PR clients
•  Managing social media marketing content for new clients and knowledge to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and YouTube
•  E-Marketing management, blog posts and landing page content creation
•  Utilizing social media to promote client news/events updating/creating pages for clients, web content revisions for client web sites
•  Editing web site content, uploading videos, often first draft of client work

Does This Sound Like You?
(*Must meet all criteria*) Candidates with previous experience working in related roles in the financial services and technology industry will be given priority. No recent graduates will be considered.

At least 3+ Years previous PR or marketing agency experience (with technology and/or financial services clients)
Bachelor’s Degree in related field (Communications, Marketing, Finance, Business or related field)
You have proven skills of integrating and leveraging social media programs, print and broadcast media to heighten client exposure and visibility
You have a strong knowledge of the financial and technology markets and know the trends, opportunities and challenges that face many of the agency’s clients
You’re a communication guru and have a strong portfolio of writing (creative and strategic) and possess a healthy network of media contacts that have helped garner impressive results
Experience managing multiple client accounts and collaborating with a team of internal resources
Superior, proven written and oral communication skills and an obsession with detail-oriented results
Ability to speak with clients, participate on conference calls and maintain high level of professionalism and maintain confidentiality of client information
Knowledge of WordPress, basic website editing and Hubspot marketing software systems a plus (as is Hubspot certification)

Compensation:
Competitive salary based on commensurate experience, bonus program for smart goal performance, 401 (k) retirement plan with full company match and annual company profit sharing contributions, generous group health care plan options, PTO plus paid company holiday from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day, free beer, breakfast and all sorts of goodies at our awesome co-working space in Little Italy, direct deposit, mass-transit/biking incentives.