March Madness is around the corner, so I’m busy completing my bracket. If you’re a marketer looking to bet on the most insane basketball brand collaboration of the season, I have your winner: March Madness Vasectomies.
AI & Marketing
How might AI benefit marketing teams and agencies? We’re starting to see clues. Some agencies are starting to use AI to optimize media plans and conduct keyword research. Others are using AI to help produce creative – like these spots for Nike and for Coca-Cola. What role does an agency play in all of this? I liked this quote from Ian Schatzberg: “It will cause a sharpening of the role of the agency as arbiter, curator and conduit into culture.” So, more impact on production than ideation. The problem for agencies is that production is what clients often pay for. There’s an interesting conference coming up in NYC on the intersection of marketing and AI. Road trip anyone?
I love seeing how smart folks are discovering practical new uses for AI. Check out this time-saving example that uses a Chat GPT Chrome Plug-In to create customized email messages for a targeted prospect list via LinkedIn. I find these small, smart use cases more helpful to envision where AI is going than dramatic industry pontification. Martech giants like Salesforce are also jumping on this email automation trend big time.
Spotify & Tiktokification
Spotify is the app I use most, so I’m always keen on product updates. The company recently announced that it will be introducing a new UI with a vertical scroll à la TikTok to encourage more engagement with video and content discovery – and possibly attract a younger demo. Interesting language used in this quote from the president of Spotify: “When you have your phone in your pocket, when you’re listening to a playlist, we’re really good at finding similar songs. But there’s another part of the discovery journey, which is foreground discovery. We don’t only want to rely on other platforms to do the foreground discovery.” Never thought to frame content on a screen as foreground, and audio as background – but makes sense (i.e., active vs. passive). Spotify also announced a pilot that allows music companies to token-gate playlists for owners of NFTs.
A new entry into the "if you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should do something" category: TikTok is coming to cars. Mercedes-Benz is launching a new E-Class with a selfie-camera and a giant touchscreen that integrates with TikTok. Add this to the already oversized, interactive in-vehicle touchscreens that take up to four times longer to use than old-school buttons. Can’t wait to be stuck at a red-light behind someone perfecting the latest in-vehicle #tiktoktrenddance.
Digital Advertising & Commerce
Eric Seufert refers to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) as “an almost extinction event within the digital economy" in this super-smart interview with Contagious. He does a great job of explaining the second order impacts of less precise targeting for small D2C companies (very bad) and Apple’s bottom line (very good).
Remember when voice-based ads via Alexa were expected to be all the rage? These smart assistants never really took off beyond being glorified alarm clocks, and Amazon is pivoting away. Instead, the company is focusing on growing its $40B advertising business which is characterized perfectly by Ben Evans: “Are Amazon Ads advertising, marketing, slotting fees, trade dollars, discounts or price discrimination? ‘Yes’.
Smart Reads
Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies (HBR): If you’re caught in the classic argument / dilemma of “is this a strategy or a tactic?”, check out the helpful example used in this article.
Resetting the Bar on Brand Communication (Marc Pritchard): The P&G Chief Brand Officer describes how the company is using 1st party-data, in-house capabilities, and customer insights to modernize marketing.
Generative AI Founders Aren’t Thinking Big Enough (Jiarui Wang): Great post by a VC on how generative AI start-ups are focusing on building tools, not products. Love this smart, simple visualization of the difference:
Cool Beans
Anyone App: A new / old-school social media app concept that allows users to schedule 5-minute calls with strangers – no scheduling, messaging, following, or video.
Rollable Smartphone: A new (and I assume very breakable) mobile phone concept from Motorola that allows users to physically increase the size of the display. You have to see it; I can’t explain it without making an off-colour joke (and I already mentioned vasectomies).
Presidents with Mullets: Great generative AI art requires great artists to tell the tools what to create. Lucky for us we have Cam Harless who has curated a gallery of US Presidents with mullets, and a gallery of US Presidents as professional wrestlers.
Shaping Thinking
Last year, I put together a quasi-periodic table of visual elements that can be used to help bring more clarity to presentations. Each box includes what I want to communicate (the client’s question that I want to answer) and a visual element to help me do so. As a trainer and consultant, I find that incorporating the right visuals into a presentation or workshop can help me explain things more clearly, structure sessions more effectively, direct the attention of participants, and ultimately influence outputs. If you’re looking for frameworks top help shape thinking, check out the KickframeToolbox with over 55 editable templates to download :-)
