WWDC23 program is unveiled, showcasing an exciting slate of online events for Apple developers around the globe to experience

Apple unveiled the lineup for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including the timing of the keynote and Platforms State of the Union presentations, and shared more information with developers about what they’ll learn and experience. Free for all developers, WWDC23 will take place in an online format from June 5 through 9, with an opportunity for developers and students to celebrate in person at a special experience at Apple Park on opening day. The packed week of events and activities will help developers learn about the latest technologies, tools, and frameworks coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Throughout the week, developers will be able to connect directly with Apple engineers and experts through one-on-one labs and activities in Slack for guidance on building innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games.

Apple Keynote

June 5, 10 a.m. PDT

The biggest and most exciting WWDC to date launches with a first look at exciting updates coming to Apple platforms later this year. The keynote address will be available via apple.com, the Apple Developer app, the Apple TV app, and YouTube, with on-demand playback available after the conclusion of the stream.
Platforms State of the Union

June 5, 1:30 p.m. PDT

Developers will learn how they can take their apps to the next level with a deeper dive into the new tools, technologies, and advances across Apple platforms. Platforms State of the Union will stream via the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.

Apple Design Awards

June 5, 6:30 p.m. PDT

The Apple Design Awards recognise and celebrate the art, craft, creativity, and technical expertise of Apple’s developer community. This year’s Apple Design Award winners will be unveiled via the Apple Developer app and website.

Access to Experts

Featuring 175 in-depth session videos, WWDC23 brings together the latest tools and technologies to give developers the chance to learn how they can create the next generation of apps and games. Developers can get answers to their technical, design, and App Store questions — including how to improve their app’s presence on the store — with Apple experts in one-on-one online lab appointments. From June 6-9, session videos will be posted daily on the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.

Activities

In addition to session videos and one-on-one labs, Apple engineers and designers will host activities all week online in Slack to help developers engage in technical discussions, get answers to their questions, and connect with each other. Participate in a technology or design Q&A, watch a session video and ask the presenter questions, or build community in an icebreaker activity.

Developer App

The Apple Developer app is a great way to experience WWDC23 on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, with daily updates and notifications on the latest news, content, and activities. Developers can browse content by topic, register for online Slack-based activities and one-on-one labs, watch videos with their peers using SharePlay, copy code directly from session videos into Xcode, read feature stories, and more.

Developers can also access all WWDC content, registration, news, feature stories, and documentation at developer.apple.com.

Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor has said, he will consider retiring from politics "either in 2024 or after five or six years".

Replying to questions in Rajat Sharma's show 'Aap Ki Adalat', that telecasted on 3rd June, 2023 on India TV, Tharoor said: "I am not the kind of politician who will stay in politics till the end...When you start feeling that you are not able to bring a big difference in people's lives, then I would like to either watch cricket, read books or spend time with grandchildren. When that time comes, I will decide. Maybe in 2024 or five to six years later. I have already made up my mind."

On whether he would accept some leaders' proposal to become the Congress CM candidate in Kerala, Shashi Tharoor replied: "I will examine all options. The people of Thiruvananthapuram have reposed their trust in me and I will not betray them. If I have to become a candidate, I will have to serve them. About the second prospect, if I get a chance to lead the party and bring some changes in my state, it will be a good conclusion to my political journey (yatra). But to decide on that, I need time, and obviously I will have to listen to my party's opinion. I will have to listen to other people's opinions too, and then I will take a decision."

On Rahul Gandhi's recent remarks in the US about India's domestic issues, Shashi Tharoor said, personally he would never like to speak about India's domestic issues in foreign lands, but, at the same time, he sought to defend Rahul Gandhi by saying that Rahul never sought foreign help to solve domestic issues.

"He (Rahul) never said that. The allegation is incorrect. Rahul Gandhi Ji said, our democracy has so many challenges. At the same time, he also said, it is the responsibility of ours, not others, to solve them. You must understand that if India remains democratic, it will be beneficial for the whole world. But he never asked outsiders to come and help us."

The Congress MP said, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who first mentioned India's domestic issues on foreign shores. Tharoor said, "I have been saying since years, India's foreign policy is not Congress' or BJP's foreign policy. Our foreign policy is based on India's interests. In the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, I said in this spirit. Look, we can have political differences, but they end on our country's borders. Our differences must not reach outside. But it is also a fact that BJP and Modi Saheb broke this policy first. Modi Saheb had said in foreign lands that nothing has been working good in our country till now and those who governed our country badly for 60 years never created a sense of pride so that people could say that they are Indians. Modi Saheb started giving this type of speeches in foreign lands. I was surprised. Never did our Prime Ministers spoke about Indian politics in foreign land. Modi Ji started all this."

Tharoor also said that no Indian politician should criticize our Prime Minister abroad. He said, "I want to tell this, I never levelled personal allegation against anybody, neither against Modi Saheb nor against anybody else. But in our democracy, we have to give respect to a position, because people have elected our Prime Minister. Till the time, that person occupies the position of Prime Minister, he must be given respect. We can be political adversaries here in India, but when we go abroad, he is our Prime Minister. I never criticize him abroad."

SUNANDA PUSHKAR'S DEATH

After a long time, Shashi Tharoor spoke on the legal problems he had to face after the mysterious death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in a hotel in 2014. Tharoor was exonerated from all charges, including abetment to suicide, by a Delhi trial court in 2021.

Tharoor said, "I never speak personally about politicians, but I have two or three persons in mind, whom I will never forgive. They knew it was a lie, and yet they continued telling lies. It's not possible to forgive."

The Congress MP spoke about his relationship with Sunanda Pushkar. he said: "It was a relationship of love. Naturally. Look at the arrangement, between a Kashmiri Pandit and a Keralite. We married after falling in love, but some people tried to make political use of her death. I had to go to courts for many years, and at last the judge threw out the case saying "it is all 'bakwas', there is no evidence of suicide, no evidence of murder. The judge discharged me saying there is no case at all. The case must end."

Shashi Tharoor said: "Imagine how one would feel. Those who know me personally, know I cannot attack anybody. I never raised my hand even on a child. Her two brothers, and the only son, they were all with me and told me, we know it can't happen. But outsiders, who never knew us, found a political opportunity. In early stages of our politics, such attacks or remarks against anybody's personal life was never considered appropriate. Nobody used to comment on other politician's private life. So many people knew about Vajpayee Saheb's private life. They used to talk among themselves but never used the media. But I think, nowadays our culture has changed, and that too, for the worse."

On his reported differences with Sunanda Pushkar before her death, Tharoor said, "If you read her tweets, you will know, it was not so. She had some mental issues. One day, she used to write a loving tweet and the next day, something else. She was never a bad girl, she was mentally ill. (Woh bilkul bhi buri ladki nahin thi, beemar ladki thi.) One should have some sympathy for her. I said in Parliament, when the bill relating to mental health was brought, that you can offer sympathy to a person who has a broken leg, but there is no sympathy to a person who has a mental breakdown. This is very sad."

Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics company, today announces the launch of Kantar BrandNowTM, an always-on brand performance tracker.

BrandNow delivers daily benchmarks and short-term forecasts for 25 product and service categories* to steer brand performance. Brand owners can now measure the impact of market factors and marketing activities, while also tracking long-term brand success.

BrandNow generates real-time data that is robust and reliable. In addition to interviewing real people at scale, on a daily basis, it combines proprietary and differentiating IP from across the company, including:

• Kantar’s Trend AI technology to cancel the ‘noise’ in the data that distort short-term metric movements, and lets customers see category trends with no time lag.

• Kantar’s Meaningfully Different Salient (MDS) equity measurement framework to deliver robust insights, allowing accurate and timely interventions to grow brand equity, optimise campaign planning and media spend, and mitigate crises.

• Kantar’s new market-leading fraud and bot detection AI, Qubed, to keep panels clean and human, ensuring real responses from real people.

“Market conditions change in real-time. Brand tracking has now evolved to address that challenge. Shaping brand performance requires a combination of human expertise and technology”, said Ted Prince, Chief Product Officer, Kantar. “Whether as a standalone tracker or a real-time supplement to a customised brand tracker, BrandNow provides the real-time signals and movement in brand equity that every research, marketing or brand executive needs.”

Kantar’s unique IP, alongside the industry’s foremost experts to advise on strategy, makes BrandNow the right platform for customers to use as basis for investing marketing resources in the right place and the right time. Kantar’s always-on brand tracker will also make it possible to understand customer perceptions of brand purpose and sustainability attitudes, an increasingly important attribute for consumers.

BrandNow is part of Kantar’s newly launched BrandTek portfolio – a complete suite of brand guidance products, including dedicated solutions for brand tracking, equity measurement and campaign impact management.

Kantar Media, part of Kantar Group Holdings, today announces the appointment of Patrick Béhar as Global CEO, effective September 2023.

He will lead an organisation with the world’s largest audience measurement and media research footprint. Chris Allen, who has successfully led the executive team since 2022, will now focus exclusively on his role as Kantar Media Global CFO.

Mr Béhar brings more than 25 years of international experience in the media industry. He currently serves as Chief Business Officer for Sky Group, a part of Comcast, and Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster. In that role Patrick has been managing and expanding all of Sky’s relationships with content and distribution partners, as well as driving Sky Media’s advertising revenues.

On his appointment, Patrick Béhar commented: “Media markets are undergoing unprecedented transformation, accelerated by new technologies and changing audience behaviours. With the widest and most rapidly expanding cross-media audience measurement footprint, Kantar Media is at the forefront of this transformation, uniquely positioned to unlock audiences and drive growth and value for clients. I’m looking forward to leading this amazingly talented team, working closely with the board, our Chairman Adam Crozier and Chris Jansen, Chief Executive at parent company, Kantar Group.”

Adam Crozier, Chairman of Kantar Media, added: “Patrick brings a unique combination of first-hand client experience in equipping media companies to grow in a cross-media age and deep global advertising expertise. His appointment will strengthen the Kantar Media leadership team. As we continue to drive our innovation agenda forward, I am confident he will fulfil the ambition we have for the business to cement its position, unlocking insight opportunities for our clients.”

Kantar’s Outstanding Innovation Awards celebrate the most innovative brands worldwide and show how they consistently used innovation as a driver for growth.

How can brands stand out and innovate in inflationary times? How can innovations be meaningfully different in a crowded marketplace? And what is the secret to successful innovation?
To address these innovation challenges and many more, we mined multiple Kantar data sources (Kantar BrandZ, Brand Footprint and Dx Analytics) to identify the brands perceived to be the most innovative brands worldwide – in the eyes of consumers.

Kantar's BrandZ shows that among the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, innovative brands grew at over twice the rate of other brands and that the strongest brands are meaningful, different and salient. Further, it is being different that really makes the difference. Meaningfully different brands grow 25% faster than other brands, and brands that are both meaningful and are perceived to be innovative (shaking things up and/or creating well-designed products) grow 54% faster than other brands.

Brands that are meaningfully different AND innovative grow faster

Top brands use innovation as a lever for growth

Five lessons learned from successful innovators

All of our winners have a track record of using innovation to drive sustained growth. And we learned a lot from analysing the data for our winners and interviews with the winning brands. These are five common themes we observed that have helped our winners achieve growth through meaningfully different innovation.

1. Embrace a consumer-first mindset

A revolutionary technical advance in materials, functionality or design may offer potential for innovation, but unless that innovation solves a real consumer tension it is unlikely to be successful. This is even more true in challenging times when people’s needs are evolving. A consumer-first mindset involves identifying tensions and blind spots in a specific usage context.

It was clear when talking to our winners that they were looking for this human tension, beyond just whitespaces to focussing on blind spots. They also thought about the factors that influenced choice and designed their innovations to address these. So, check-in with your target audience at critical stages throughout the innovation journey.

“I think sometimes people tend to use the word innovation to refer to product, packaging, and formula. I think the way we see it is looking at how can we create a different set of experiences for people to interact with Coke. For us, the first thing is to really start with people first and how they experience Coke.” - Selman Careaga, President, Global Coca-Cola Category

2. Be fit for your brand

From consumer-centricity to brand-centricity. Our winning brands were all clear about their brand foundations and had a clear purpose. They built on this clear understanding to help them ensure their innovations are fit for their brand, getting the balance right between protecting the core and looking for incremental growth. Always looking for new ways to be meaningful and different. To do this you need to check your innovations support your brand purpose and the broader portfolio, and look beyond short-term sales to understanding the long-term impact of your innovation on brand equity and growth.

“We have built our purpose into a growth driver. It requires a lot of business modelling and learning - ensuring you do purpose in a commercial way, never loosing track of the business impact but also in a very authentic way, delivering positive change in society.

We got to a point where we really finessed the model and showed that Dove creates strong social impact which in turns creates goodwill with consumers. Purpose simply becomes a considerable accelerator of our growth..” - Alessandro Manfredi, CMO Dove, Unilever

3. Learn, test and learn

Our winners are on a continuous innovation journey and are willing to learn from their mistakes. They break from the traditional stage-gate thinking to focus on testing assumptions, looking at the unknowns and putting more energy upfront to get to more meaningfully different opportunity spaces. They also spent energy on how they executed and how they understood the performance of their innovations in market.

Shifts in underlying demand caused by the pandemic have yet to play out, but innovators can’t wait for that to happen. They must anticipate the future and continue to test their critical assumptions and sense-check their progress. So learn, test and learn.

"Be willing to try and fail"

President, Global Coca-Cola Category, Selman Careaga says he is proud Coke has a culture where they are willing to try stuff. Selman explained that his teams had found success by giving them full decision rights and empowering them with a sense of urgency. "You can talk about ideas forever and ever, and then then don't launch them... that’s why I think that the sense of urgency, it's very important."

4. Better for the planet, better for you

Kantar’s Sustainability Sector Index 2022 (SSI) reports that 79% of people want to buy environmentally sustainable products, but a similar proportion believe that it is the responsibility of companies to make sure their sustainable products are affordable. This presents a big challenge for many brands, but the evidence suggests the payoff is worth it. Brands rating highly on sustainability in BrandZ 2022 grew their brand value by 31% over the prior year, outpacing the average for the Top 100 Most Valuable brands. While all our winners acknowledge the need to develop more sustainable products, here we call out The Vegetarian Butcher as a brand committed to a more sustainable future.

Many of our winners put sustainability at the heart of their thinking.

“The footprint of plant-based is sustainable, but every day we work on being more and more and more sustainable.”- Karlijn Ris, Global Marketing Director, The Vegetarian Butcher

5. Shape the future

The first step in future-proofing your innovation strategy is to step outside the boundaries of what exists now and anticipate what the future might bring. Innovation is a driving force that not just shapes a brand, but also the future of the category and market. These innovative brands, as market leaders with an innovation track record, have continued to safeguard and grow the entire category.

Technology companies are often at the forefront of shaping the future – but it applies to all brands, big or small in any category. Future-shaping is about systematically bringing in holistic outside-in and inside-out thinking lenses to address long-standing and evolving human tensions.

“At the heart of what Oreo does differently is to not blindly follow trends, but start from the brand and consumer, and then exploring ways to bring the playfulness spirit together with these trends -maybe tapping into a new occasion to stretch the brand in the right direction.” - Eugenia Zalis, Global Head of Marketing and Brand, OREO

What next?

Our winners demonstrate that for innovation to drive growth it must combine a clear strategic business intent with solving a real consumer tension. It must be a win-win for the brand and its consumers. To do this requires a learning mindset and a future-focused perspective designing for the planet and for people. And the evidence shows that if you get it right it benefits long-term brand building and growth as well as shorter-term sales – and hopefully the planet too.