I realize that it’s late for wishing you Happy New Year, but it’s been over a month since I pressed send on a Kickframe newsletter so it somehow feels ok. Either way, I hope you had a fantastic holiday break and that your 2023 is off to a great start.
BEST OF 2022?
Every year, my father used to buy the CD with all of the Grammy winning songs on it. To this day I’m not sure if he was trying to stay current with music or just looking for more reasons to complain about how bad current music had become. I carry on his tradition by reviewing Best of 2022 lists to try and find a few new things to get into. Here’s a list of the best Albums (Pitchfork), Movies (BBC), and Podcasts (Vulture) from 2022. I’ll let you know if I come across anything that I can declare, in the words of my father, “this one’s not that bad”.
From a marketing and technology perspective, here are a few 2022 retrospectives that I found interesting:
22 Things / Campaigns I liked in 2022 (Vikki Ross): A solid round-up of clever 2022 campaigns. Lost in all of the Musk-chaos is an outdoor Twitter campaign that I love.
A Year in Memes (Born Social): In this report, Born Social includes a fun look back on a year in memes (aka what drove everyone insane on the Internet, by month).
The Greatest Innovations of 2023 (Popular Science): A fascinating range of innovations. Love the innovations in travel – including smart bag tags and personalized airport screens.
TRENDS & PREDICTIONS
I wrapped up my last newsletter of 2022 with a round-up of my favourite trend decks. Since I’ve rebooted in 2023, a few more have trickled across the interweb that are worth a skim:
Digital Marketing Trends 2023 (Brandwatch): 10 trends with practical tips for brand managers and agencies with real-world tactical examples.
Consumer Trends 2023 (The New Consumer): 88-slide deck with fresh research and useful charts on post-COVID consumer attitudes and behaviour.
Commerce Trends 2023 (Shopify): The annual report from Shopify based on their proprietary data. Interesting to see ecommerce trendlines normalize from the COVID 2021 spike.
Life Trends 2023 (Accenture): My favourite trend report of the year. It presents business / marketing / tech trends from a human lens – not the other way around.
If you’re looking for more trend decks, Spacecadet has a library of links along with a newsletter that I highly recommend subscribing to. And finally, Scott Galloway and Casey Newton published their tech / business predictions for 2023 (including grading their prediction performance from last year – not bad!)
AI & USE CASES
My feeds are filled with posts about AI, spurred by the interest in ChatGPT. It seems like ChatGPT has taken something that most people are only conceptually familiar with, and made it real. Using it is easy, and it “works” – even for Ryan Reynolds. Ben Evans has a great essay on this phenomenon – an “Imagenet Moment” – that poses smart questions about what generative AI can create and how humans might be involved. I find the most useful way to explore a new technologies is through prospective use-cases – how technology can provide value in practical and specific terms. Mark Schaefer put together a list of use cases recently, and Sam Szuchan posted 43 different AI-powered tools to boost productivity. If you’re keen on keeping up (as I am) on the utility of this technology – here’s a useful map of the Generative AI landscape and a directory of applications. For the record, this newsletter is still written by a human.
COOL BEANS
Spotify is launching a Playlist in a Bottle feature that is a time capsule for the music that you’re listing to today (to be opened next year). For more data-driven Spotify Wrapped fun, check out these websites to analyze / criticize your listening history.
Lots of cool examples of artists these days using AI to create new types of artwork. Here’s a pretty fantastic gallery of images from an artist (Julian A.I.) that features superheroes taking the subway home after a long day or rough night.
Wired has a wrap-up of CES 2023 with highlights and oddities. Check out Rollkers – a gadget you strap to your feet in order to double your walking speed. Perfect for people looking for more ridicule than from just wearing plain old roller skates to work.
