Summer is here, so I’m typing this out between sips of beer on a wobbly patio table. Pardon the typos - I hope you’re reading this in the sunshine 😎
Online Advertising & Effectiveness
The effectiveness of online advertising has been shit on hotly debated over the last few years. Criticism has focused largely on ad fraud, issues with attribution, and the belief that brands can’t “be built online”. Tom Roach has a well-researched piece that counters this final point, including examples of new brands built solely on digital platforms. This builds on the research and perspective shared in the excellent 3rd Age of Effectiveness presentation from the IPA. It has some very useful research on the importance of creating advertising that is native to each digital platform. A must read / watch for anyone creating or investing in online advertising today.
Marketing & AI
How will AI impact marketing departments? Bain recently surveyed a number of marketing execs who are lying to trying to assuage employees’ fear of losing their jobs, while also predicting that AI will help them to cut costs by 13%. The Verge has research on the general public’s use of AI that serves as a useful reminder that those of us in the technology bubble that not everyone is similarly obsessed with these shiny new tools.
Interesting to see generative AI tools make their way into marketing workflows and campaigns. Google highlights ways that generative AI can be used for creating advertising content on the platform – promising boosts in “velocity, volume, and variations”. McCann recently won a Silver Lion for a campaign that incorporated generative AI to produce 42,000 unique signs for Mexican hamburger vendors; exactly what the inventors of AI had in mind for the technology. And as a PSFK fan, I’m keen to try this new service that uses AI for market forecasting: Trend God!
Fresh Decks
Breakthrough Brands 2023 (Interbrand): Cool round-up of 12 breakthrough brands (launched within last 7 years) and what makes them standout. Love the Cake e-bike example.
Culture & Trends Report (YouTube): Research and perspective on the trends driving video creation and consumptions on YouTube, with a spotlight on what's resonating with Gen Z.
Social Media by Generation (GWI): Speaking of Gen Z, this infographic does a great job of illustrating that while everyone is using social media, different age cohorts use it, well, differently.
Cool Beans
Pyramid Chat: Art collective MSCHF launched a new experiment – a pyramid scheme run on Discord where you pay $8 to join and make $5 for every recruit.
Instagram Threads: Meta is apparently launching its Twitter rival this week, and I can’t believe I’m rooting for it given all of the problems on Elon’s Twitter this weekend.
Life Before Cell Phones: A writer interviews people who were aged 27 in 2002 to describe work / life before cellphones, to the amusement of younger co-workers. A few examples made me particularly nostalgic, like: “You’d have bar arguments about what was true or not, and you couldn’t resolve it immediately, because no one could check the internet! It would go on forever. For days.”