Digital Trends: 04.01.23

This newsletter is a bit late as I’ve been busy completing a certification course in change management. I took the course to better understand how to more effectively manage the people-side of change in my digital transformation projects. I’ve run into so many cases where a senior client shares that they “bought the Ferrari” of martech solutions, but the team can’t properly drive it. While the name of the luxury sportscar changes from client to client, the story remains the same: technology investment alone does not produce the changes that the organization is looking for. People need clarity, motivation, training, and ongoing support to make it happen. This course provided me with a few more tools for my change management toolbox. If you have a Ferrari stuck in your garage and need a hand, reply back and let’s chat!
 

AI & Marketing Prompts

It’s hard to keep up with what’s happening in AI. In fact things are moving so fast that experts are calling for everyone to pump the breaks and/or stop AI development altogether. Maybe it’s because I can’t completely wrap head around the implications of AI (or perhaps I'm just naturally averse to contemplating the end civilization), but I’m drawn to new AI-powered tools and use cases that are practical and ready to use. Every day new products are being launched that use AI to help:

 
I just downloaded the new book PROMPT: A Practical guide to AI-powered brand growth with ChatGPT. It includes examples for how to use ChatGPT for marketing planning work, including recommendations for structuring prompts (your input / description of the task). It highlights the tasks that ChatGPT currently excels at, including research, creative writing, ideation, and summarizing data. The area that I found most useful was how to train models to structure results in a specific format and style. The authors also offer a helpful framing for how to consider AI in your own marketing planning work. You can check the book out here.


Luddites & Nostalgia

I never considered being a Luddite to be a lifestyle choice, but apparently it’s a trend with Gen Zs looking for “self-liberation from social media and technology”. A rise in awareness around the negative impacts of social media along with interest in nostalgia are driving this trend. Gen Zs are now using digital cameras from the early 2000s, choosing wired headphones, and are increasingly buying “dumb phones” to limit screen time. Fun to see OG camera app Hipstamatic picking up on this trend and making a return as the Anti-Instagram – only photos shown in chronological order. If any Gen Z Luddites are reading this, I have a beauty of a Fuji digital camera available. You might just need to erase a few photos from SARSstock.
 

Trend Decks

  • Ad Creative Trends (Nest): Useful round-up of format and messaging trends for digital ad creative, particularly vertical video. Lots of examples with tips for optimizing paid social campaigns.

  • Video Marketing Playbook (Hubspot / PlayPlay):  Trends and tips from 500+ marketers. Good overview of the value of video marketing (if you’re trying to sell it in), and useful tips for scaling effectively.

  • Tech Trends (Future Today): Detailed report on tech trends mapped to different industries. Really clear and useful prompting questions for businesses / brands to ask themselves for each trend.

 

Research & Resources

  • The a16z Marketplace 100, 2023: An up-to-date list of the largest consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies based on annual gross merchandise volume. Interesting to see the fastest growing companies (see Whatnot).

  • Music: This Audio Culture Report identifies trends from listening habits, and this Global Music Report 2023 provides data on insights on revenue and industry trends. Taylor Swift FTW!

  • Experience-Led Growth: New research from McKinsey that highlights the bottom-line benefits of improving experiences for existing customers. If you’re looking to sell in the value of CX, some great stuff in here.

 

Cool Beans

Digital Trends: 03.14.23

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

 

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 :-)

Digital Trends: 03.01.23

March already? Yikes - 2023 is going fast. I hope the year is going well for you. Lots of interesting news, trends, and products surfacing with this new wave of AI-driven innovation. Here’s what I’m reading and thinking about these days:
 

AI & Marketing

To start, I’m keen on finding practical applications of AI for marketing teams. Generative AI is fascinating (like using text to image tools to create these novel brand collabs), but I suspect there’s greater short-term value in refining vs. creating marketing assets. For example, I can see a ChatGPT-type of tool being used to adjust the tone of email copy for different audiences – helping marketers build more relevant content at scale. Nestlé is apparently using an IA tool to filter brand creative against internal guidelines – automating the brand police. Smart.
 
From a strategic planning perspective, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT for some research work. It feels a bit like a shortcut to summarizing headlines from 50 open Chrome tabs. A potential time-saver if you’re familiar with the subject matter (to spot errors) and if you know what you’re looking for. Here’s an interesting list of examples of using ChatGPT for "innovation" work. And if you’re sick of ChatGPT, you can always try CatGPT.
 

Social & Shopping

My experience with live shopping involves Ron Popeil hawking Dial-O-Matics, Veg-O-Matics, and various other O-Matics on the Home Shopping Channel. Well, live shopping is massive in China and Amazon, TikTok, and YouTube are apparently trying to bring this “new” phenomenon to North America. Shopify is launching a new live video commerce service. A number of new services are blending TikTok-style video with commerce, including Trendio for beauty shopping and TalkShopLive for celebrity partnerships. It’s interesting to see that Instagram is moving away from this area, focusing instead on advertising – and presumably product discovery. I have to think that Shopify and Amazon (shopping platforms) are in a better position than Meta or YouTube (social / media platforms) to win here. Anyone in a rush to upload their credit card to TikTok?
 

TikTokification & Engagement

Rival IQ published a new Social Media Benchmark report that shows engagement rates are declining or remaining flat for all social platforms not named TikTok (lots of interesting data here broken down by platform and topic area). This explains why other social platforms like Instagram are prioritizing short-form video / vertical swiping (see Reels). Even non-social platforms like Spotify are planning to integrate vertical swiping of content to attract a younger demographic, in addition to a pretty awesome AI-powered personalized DJ. Another platform that continues to evolve is Twitch. I love this approach where Twitch tells streamers what is being tested each month through an experimentation hub (instead of covertly soft-launching features that confuse and annoy users).
 

Advertising & Media

Unless you work in retail or in CPG, you may not be that familiar with retail media networks – particularly in Canada. In a nutshell, these are advertising platforms owned by retail companies that third party brands can use to advertise on. In Canada, Amazon, Walmart, and Loblaw are the dominant players with others on the horizon. In fact, Amazon advertising has grown so fast that the revenue that made last year from advertisers was comparable to the entire global publishing ad market! A new report by the ANA (US) shows that marketers are attracted to these networks primarily for access to retailer first-party data and use these networks primarily for conversion-focused campaigns (not awareness).
 
Another area of advertiser growth is in gaming. According to a new YouGov report, 42% of American adults play mobile games for at least an hour per week. It has a useful breakdown of gamer types. Contagious has a free webinar tomorrow (March 2nd) that I’ve signed up for on the topic of Brands & Gaming. Lots of opportunity here.
 

Cool Beans

  • Immersive Memories: Wist is a new service that turns your photos into immersive experiences you can relive via VR / Mobile AR. Pretty sure I saw this in Total Recall, which did not end well.

  • Undeniable Street View: Amazing use of Google Street View, visualizing different streets in Ukraine before and after battling from the war.

  • Flexible Speakers: Apple has patented a new version of its smart speaker that can be bent and wrapped around different surfaces.

  • Before Midnight: Finally, the greatest innovation of all – dance parties that end at a reasonable hour so old farts like me can stay awake and get to bed at a reasonable hour!

 

Kickframe Toolbox

Whenever I teach a digital marketing or strategic planning course, participants always want to get their hands on the templates and frameworks that I use. So, I decided to post them all online. You can access all of these frameworks along with instructions at KickframeToolbox.com. If you’re interested in accessing editable versions for your presentations (PPT, Google, PDF) and video lessons for choosing and using, you can do that as well by purchasing the Marketing Template Kit - or in the words of Ron Popeil – the Template-O-Matic. I’ll refund any purchases for those who aren’t satisfied – no questions asked :-)

Digital Trends: 02.14.23

Why does everyone hate February? According to ChatGPT, “February’s dislike by some is due to factors like cold weather, short length, and lack of festivities, but whether someone dislikes February or not is subjective and varies from person to person.” Sounds about right. Hope your February is going ok :-)
 

Learning AI & Marketing

One of the most effective ways to understand a new technology is by actually using it. In my digital marketing training courses, I often incorporate ‘homework’ for participants to try out and reflect on new tools. It not only helps participants to get more comfortable with the technology, but it also gets everyone thinking ‘how might I actually be able to use this?’ I’m starting to weave generative AI tools into my training programs; for example, when we cover:

It’s still early, but I’ll share if any useful marketing use cases emerge.
 
The area of generative AI emergence that I’m most interested these days is how it will impact search. Google recently announced its ChatGPT-rival Bard, and demonstrated how the technology might work in the context of search. Will online search become just become chat? Will generative AI kickstart the flatlining smart speaker market? How will publishers acquire traffic if links are not provided? What does this mean for the future of Google and its ad-supported business model? It feels like there will be different search services for different search modes (e.g., looking for options vs. looking for answers).
 

FRESH REPORTS

  • The New Gatekeepers: No one tells stories through charts better than Ben Evans. His latest presentation points to what’s next in tech, and covers retail media, ecommerce, and of course AI. I found his ‘What is ‘TV’ Anyway?’ section really thought-provoking. A must read.

  • Digital Culture Review (We Are Social): Smart deconstruction of what's working in social content (and why it’s working). These trends are so unique to TikTok, no wonder companies are looking to hire for the specialty. For what it's worth, I’m loving the ‘soothing and suspenseful’ posts - like those from my man The Bread Guy.

  • Challengers to Watch 2023 (Eat Big Fish): From the authors of one of my fav biz books – a super smart and fun round-up of the themes and brands driving the challenger ethos. The featured brands are smart and creative, including a product that’s making its way onto my Father’s Day Wishlist.

 

WHAT’S TRENDING

  • 11 Tech Trends to Watch: These trends were identified by CB Insights by apparently analyzing investment activity, earnings call transcripts, media mentions, and patents. Not sure I’m bullish on the ‘digitizing of scent’, but we’ll see?

  • Dentsu Creative Trends 2023: Smart deck that’s worth a download. Interesting to see how many trends are a direct response to our collective COVID experiences – like looking for more joy and ‘cultural shock’.

  • Meta Trending Trends 2023: Matt Klein does an admirable job of clustering and naming trends from 50+ trend decks. Interesting to see how he illustrates the evolution, collision, and combining of trends over time.

 

COOL BEANS

Digital Trends: 01.30.23


CHATGPT & MARKETING USE CASES

It seems like everything in my feed these days is a pontification on the future of A.I. It’s either going to "change everything" or die as a "gimmick" – nothing in between. That’s why I enjoyed this episode of the Plain English podcast with guest Ben Thompson (of the great Stratechery newsletter). He talks very pragmatically about the technology and its real-world implications on search, business, writing, and art. I also dug this essay from Garbage Day (another excellent newsletter) that draws smart parallels between the early days of Web 2.0 (fuelled by social) and Web 3.0 (fuelled by A.I.) It includes the perfect concluding sentence on the topic: “Everything on the internet is dumb and shameful until it’s not.”
 
While marketers have been using A.I. for years (built into martech products), I’m interested in finding new, non B.S. ways that tools like ChatGPT can help my marketing clients save time and money (like this simple use case of gathering the URLs of all of your competitor’s social handles). If you discover anything interesting, please share and I’ll include it in a future newsletter. I’ve bookmarked a few helpful resources below:

 

FRESH RESEARCH

  • Where Did All the Podcasts Go? (NeimanLab): Did you know that the number of new podcasts launched dropped by 80% between 202-2022, and that listening has fallen for the first time in 10 years? I didn’t. This article points to COVID for the podcast boom, and poor podcast discovery for the decline. The author references Yogi Berra to capture the state of podcasting “Nobody ever goes there anymore — it’s too crowded.”

  • State of Mobile 2023 (Data.AI): A comprehensive and up-to-date review of what’s happening in mobile that spans gaming, finance, retail, travel, sports, and emerging trends. Great stats & charts – worth the download.

  • State of Marketing (Salesforce): A useful skim for marketing leaders looking to benchmark the maturity of their teams in terms of collecting and using data for communication purposes. The survey results square with what I’m see with my larger clients.

  • 2023 Global marketing Trends (Deloitte): This survey of marketing executives describes a few big picture trends. Interesting to see that 38% of marketing leaders are making plans for the metaverse this year, and 41% have plans for implementing blockchain. Curious how detailed and committed those plans are...

  • Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2023 (Reuters): Fantastic research / perspective on media trends (e.g., use of A.I., shift to audio / video, newsletter subscriptions). Filled with examples of publishers not thinking or acting like publishers.

 

GOOD DECKS

  • The Speakery Presentation Canvas (Marcus John Henry Brown): As a fan of clever planning canvases and Marcus, his new template for mapping out your next presentation is gold – check it out.

  • Trends in Email Marketing (Litmus): If you’re looking for some design inspiration for your email marketing, this is a useful resource. Make sure to check out / subscribe to Really Good Emails if you don’t already.

  • The Future 100 Forecast (Wunderman): This is a fun one to browse through with a work buddy – it goes far and wide in highlighting different trends that marketers / businesses should be noodling. Lots of examples of ‘VR meets X’...X being customer service, travel, health, and (gulp) dating.

 

COOL BEANS

  • 10 Minute Text: I love this news media format from Semafor with a text-based interview. Very fun – surprising it hasn’t been done before. It’s now sponsored by Verizon.

  • VR Headsets that Kill: Looking to bring a little more drama and realism to your VR gameplay? Might I interest you in a headset that actually kills you when you die in the game?

  • Roboticists Want to Give You a 3rd Arm: If given the choice, I’ll pass on the detonating VR headset for an implanted 3rd arm that I can control with unused neurons. To quote the scientists: “If humans could easily add and control a third arm, they would likely use them in new behaviors that we can’t yet even imagine.” I can imagine a few, and none are worth an implant.


MODERN MARKETING TEMPLATES

I’ve made some updates to the Kickframe Toolbox. It will now be focused only on marketing planning templates, along with lessons for choosing and using. If you’re looking for frameworks to use in your work that can be downloaded and edited, check it out. Why waste your time creating templates in PowerPoint / Google Slides when I’ve already wasted mine ;-)

Digital Trends: 01.17.23

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.


Digital Trends: 12.15.23

Trendapalooza

I refer to this edition of the newsletter as Trendapalooza – a round-up of all of the decks, docs, and sites published over the last month that predict the year ahead for marketers. It’s interesting to see the themes that bubble up across different sources – this year it’s the metaverse, wellness, privacy, social commerce, AI, and marketing ethics. Lots of interesting stuff. Below are the 10 sources that I found most useful:

1. dentsu Media Trends: Interesting report on how the media landscape is changing and what brands should do about it. It covers content, commerce, and community and includes specific recommendations for brands. Highlight: Gaming is now mainstream (think Wordle, Heardle…basically all the -rdles) which provides brands with new canvases to advertise and new opportunities for platforms / publishers to attract audiences and build first-party data.
 
2. GWI Global Trends: Includes useful data and trendlines across different facets of online and digital media use over the years. The report uses the GWI global consumer survey data, which is all super recent. Highlight: The average adult is awake for 15 hours a day, and in that time 6 hours and 43 minutes are spent online. However, online time is actually starting to decline from record highs during the pandemic. I’ve reviewed time-spent-online charts for 20+ years, and this is the first time that I can remember that the line has not gone up and to the right.
 


3. Trend Hunter 2023 Trend Report: Super interesting report that outlines 11 categories of trends with examples and smart workshop questions. Each trend is also scored according to popularity, activity, and freshness. Highlight: The Health & Wellness Insights section has a huge cross-section of examples that illustrate how technology is helping people with everything from moods, physical fitness, physical intimacy – followed, of course, by parenting.
 
4. Contagious 2022: Contagious reports are always great to catch-up on the most interesting and buzzworthy creative campaigns for the year. There is plenty covered in here that blurs advertising with product. Highlight: The case study on the Contagious brand of the year - Liquid Death. Covers the philosophy behind its bold and PR-worthy campaign ideas, such as its Dismembered Momentsluxury candle.

5. Pinterest Predicts: A fun, visual report that covers global consumer trends based on search behaviour on the Pinterest platform. Highlight: Loads to choose from here, but my favourite trend is ‘All Aboard’ – people are increasingly searching for train travel and train travel aesthetic. This is leading to the rise of one of the least pretentious flexes of all time - “train bragging”.
 

6. Mintel 2023 Global Consumer Trends: A smart, data-backed report on 5 global consumer trends (Me Mentality, Power to the People, Hyper Fatigue, International Localism, Intentional Spending). It includes short and long-term extrapolations for each trend. Highlight: Me Mentality represents how consumers are eager to refocus on themselves coming out of the pandemic. For many, consumers are apparently “re-entering the post-pandemic world keen on redefining themselves”.
 
7. Foresight Factory Trending 2023: Provocative report that hypothesizes that the dominant consumer trends are coming from a place of rebellion (from perfection, authority, surveillance, and restraint). Highlight: The Rebellion Against Surveillance section is super interesting, with research that illustrates how more people feel that anonymity is important online. Related trending services include platforms for anonymous online search and “automatic mouse movers” for remote workers looking to avoid detection from their employers monitoring their activity.
 
8. Next Atlas Predictions for 2023: A set of trends based on an interesting methodology - an analysis of unprompted social media posts from early adopter profiles. The report also visualizes how each trend started and will evolve over time.d Highlight: Scaling-Down – a trend that involves consumers reducing spending and brands minimizing packaging for environmental reasons. Also referred to as “Reducetarianism” - because a trend isn’t a trend until it is given a cringy name.


9. Deloitte TMT Predictions 2023: A round-up of predictions from across the technology, media, and technology space. The screens and media section has some great perspective on advertising and commerce within a changing media landscape. Highlight:Social shopping– which is projected to surpass $1USD trillion globally in 2023. Some useful data here that points to more people buying products on social, right after they discover them via influencers.
 
10. 99designs Graphic Design Trends: As a non-designer, I love these roundups of graphic design trends. I find it helpful to put names and language to different designs that I come across. This report has a wide variety of 12 graphic design trends with examples. Highlight: It’s a toss-up for me between the Mix Dimension and 90s Space Psychedelia trends. My design expertise stops at choosing fonts for PowerPoint SmartArt so perhaps don’t follow my lead.
 


If you’re not ready to look forward to 2023, check outthis awesome NYT featurethat captures the Internet-driven ‘micro-news’ from 2022. You can also check out last year’s highlights frompeople using TikTokand from peoplesearching Google. I’d share mySpotify 2022 Wrappedbut I’m afraid it would lead to a spike in unsubscribes.
 
Finally, a big thank you to all of my readers, clients, and collaborators from this past year. 2022 was a challenging year, and I appreciate all of your feedback and support. Have a wonderful holiday.
 
Time for eggnog.

Digital Trends: 12.01.23

Apologies to any non-Canadian subscribers but this newsletter is dedicated to my fellow hosers.
 
Twice a year I update a document that synthesizes all of the Canadian-specific data that I can get my hands on relating to digital media, e-commerce, and marketing. I provide it to my training clients, but I’ll share it with you as an early Christmas present (sorry, no gift receipt!)
 
All of the reports and most of the data points are from 2022, so it’s a handy resource to update any of your presentations or use as an input for your plans next year. You can download it here. I hope you find it helpful.


 For you non-Canadians, I’ll be back next week for a final newsletter before logging off for the holidays. In the meantime – some classic humour from the Great White North.

Digital Trends: 11.23.22

I hope you’re well. According to Year Progress, 2022 is 89% complete so just let’s get to it.
 

Music & The Internet

My office is above The Fox – the longest running independent movie theatre in Canada. I recently went there to watch the documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom (not during office hours). It covers the post 9/11 alt-rock scene in New York and it’s great. Karen O is one of the performers featured, and she recently gave an interview where she discussed creating music before the Internet. Back then, they created music using “art as their influences rather than influencers.” Ouch.
 
I’m more interested in how people embrace change and find new ways to use technology. Here’s a good profile of how artist Lil Nas X has blazed a trail by performing in Roblox (i.e., the metaverse). Other artists and labels are responding to trends on Tiktok, like speeding up their songs. And one of my favs Dan Mangan was just awarded funding on Dragon’s Den for his start-up Side Door that uses technology to connect artists to fans to organize shows.
 

TikTok & Influence

Speaking of TikTok, it represents both art and influence (see how good I’m getting at these transitions ;-) The platform and user experience are so unique, that it seems like brands are trying to learn and speak a new language at the same time when engaging on it. For example, some brands are adopting a more sassy tone when providing customer service via TikTok (bad idea). Others are trialing TikTok live social commerce - here is a great resource on how to do so.


To understand TikTok, it’s most useful to look at who is succeeding natively on the platform. Here’s TikTok’s Discover List 2022 that showcases the most successful new creators (lots of foodies). And here’s a new ‘TikTok Series’ where someone hangs out with NYC cab drivers. Brands need to learn this language quickly since TikTok users now spend on average 96 minutes per day on the app, which is 5X more than Snap and 2X more than Facebook / Instagram.
 

AI Generative Art

If TikTok feels like a new language, AI-generated images feel like a new style of art. My feed is full of them. Now there are exhibitions devoted to the form and artists selling their (?) pieces as NFTs. Anyone can now create their own AI-generated images starting with, what else, profile pictures. Why spend hours perfecting your lighting and makeup when you can just spend $19 to create an AI-generated profile pic as your new Tinder profile. Here are a few AI-generated images of me from FaceTune – would you swipe right?
 

Fresh Decks

Trend & Prediction Season is around the corner – here are a few good early reports for reference:

 

Cool Beans

  • VW Electric Office Chair: Forget the stand-up desk, stay seated and mobile forever in a chair that moves 20 km / hour and comes complete with a seatbelt, music system, and horn. Honk!

  • The Conspiracy Chart: As a visual thinker, I love this interactive infographic that organizes popular theories from ‘grounded’ to ‘detached from reality’.

  • Classic HCI Demos: Go way down the user experience history rabbit hole with this awesome gallery of first-generation Human-Computer Interaction demos. I showed this to my 14-year-old and it might as well have been hyroglifics.

Digital Trends: 11.10.22

I hope you’re well and enjoying this fall weather. I’ve heard that it’s ‘shoulder season’ here in Toronto. Is it? I’ve never really understood the term. Google tells me that it refers to non-peak travel time. Peak for who and for where? What does traveling have to do with shoulders? I don’t get it.
 

Twitter (Product) vs. Elon (Person)

If you’ve managed to avoid the coverage of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, well done - I envy you. It's dominated by rants fuelled largely by political beliefs and personal options about Musk. I’m far more interested in the product, not the person. How might a first-principles thinker challenge accepted beliefs about what a modern social media platform is? For a product that has historically been stagnant, he has quickly instituted an $8 subscription model for verification and is exploring a new paywall and the resurrection of Vine. Meta’s product roadmap is based on copying popular features from other social platforms (see Snapchat ‘Stories’ and TikTok ‘Reels’). How might Elon’s Twitter zig (or is it zag?) You know what I mean.
 

Personal Brands & Social Content 

Is social media posting burning us out? As more professionals are using social to build their personal brands (and businesses), it can be difficult to untangle personal identity/ value from self-expression/ projection. The ongoing pressure to post has “turned us into content machines” and posting itself can feel like “taking the bins out” once a week (H/T @adliterate). The biggest power users of LinkedIn are apparently turning to ghostwriters with mixed (and often hilarious) results. As someone who regularly takes the bins out without a ghostwriter, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t struggle with this. What has helped me is to write about things that I am learning and want to better understand. Sharing my writing fits into my own professional flywheel and provides me with a bit more rhythm and focus for my work.

In-Car Digital Experiences

Ever since I was a guest on the That New Car Sense podcast, I’ve been paying more attention to what’s happening in the in-vehicle digital experience space. A new report projects that the in-vehicle infotainment market will grow 10.8% annually, driven (pun intended) in part by 5G and AI. Elizabeth Warren recently rang the bell on the risk that Apple, Amazon, or Google might takeover cars like they took over smartphones. Here’s more background on the ‘Android-Ification of Cars’. As someone who works with companies to explore the business and marketing opportunities associated with new technologies and digital channels, vehicles do seem like a new frontier. How might we add more utility for the driver / front row while providing more entertainment for passengers / back row? Here’s some good thinking on transportation & mobility trends from Publicis Sapient.
 

Smart Reads

  • Chief Digital Officers & Leapfrogging the C-Suite: New research that explores the blurry role of the CDO, and how some are moving “from sideshow to centre stage”. Highlight: 38% of marketing responsibilities and capabilities do not sit under the office of the CMO (they’re with a ‘digital leader’).

  • Is your brand stuck on the performance plateau: Another smart read from Tom Roach on the balancing act between brand-building and performance marketing. I appreciate how the B2B context is discussed here as it’s often overlooked (i.e., only 5% of your B2B buyers are in market right now).

  • Ways to think about a metaverse: My favourite tech writer Benedict Evans zooms out to provide us with a clear perspective on how to respond to a boss that wants a “metaverse strategy”. He de-buzzifies the term and puts it into a historical context. Very helpful.

 

Fresh Research

  • Pew Research: A growing number of people in the U.S. are getting their news from TikTok – all other social media platforms are flat or trending down in this area.

  • Visual Capitalist: What are the most valuable brands in 2022? Hint: they’re the same brands that are trying to take over your in-vehicle software. H/T Jed Schneiderman.

  • We Are Social: If you want to keep up with what’s happening within social / internet culture without losing hours going down a TikTok rabbit hole, this is a very well-done round up of monthly trends.

 

Cool Beans

  • ClipDrop: New AI-based tool to take a picture of a product on your phone and paste it into Photoshop.

  • Artist Str4ngeThing has created images of Nike apparel as digital art in the renaissance period.

  • Namelix: Addictive new AI tool that provides you with dozens of new brand names and logos instantly (see below for Kickframe alternatives ;-)

Digital Trends: 10.27.22

I hope you’re well and enjoying the spooky season. I’m typing this jacked up on Halloween candy (which I now need to secretly replenish), so please forgive any sugar-fueled spelling mistakes.
 
I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on the excellent Marketing News Canada podcast. Darian Kovacs is the host, and he is so good at making anxious guests (i.e., me) feel at ease. We covered a lot of ground in our discussion – from digital training & trends, to advice for young marketers, to my marketing ‘origin story’. Listen here.
 

MARKETING & SUBCULTURES

Is there simply too much Internet? Ed Zitron has an interesting post on how subcultures are thriving online, and that even the most voracious scrollers can’t keep up with popular niche creators and communities. He counters the prevailing narrative and sees this as a good thing: “I do, however, find this entropy to be delightful. I don’t want to know everything. I don’t want to be aware of every subculture, but I do like to know that they exist and flourish entirely out of my sight.” Blue Hour Studios has released a report that explores the media habits of Gen Z and this subculture theme is further reinforced. Should marketers targeting Gen Z move away from mass marketing in favour of more subculture-focused plans? The Gen Z Field Guide is worth a skim to noodle this question, and the tangled relationship between communities, creators, culture, and identity.

META-ENTERTAINMENT

Wunderman Thompson coined a new term (for me) – Augmented Entertainment. They point to forms of interactive entertainment on the horizon from existing (Disney) and emerging (Bored Apes) players. Seems like leveraging popular characters / IP is the on-ramp for these new experiences. Here’s a cool demo of a mixed reality experience using the Meta Quest Pro to make the whole thing more tangible.
Connection to real-life was also a highlight from this journalist’s 24 hours in Meta’s Horizon virtual platform – her favourite moment was attending an exclusive real-world live comedy show virtually. Not sure it’s a promising sign that the best thing about a metaverse experience is watching a live offline event through your goggles.

DATA TRANSPARENCY & DISRUPTION

Information is power. Uber was reminded of this recently when a former employee created an app to help gig economy workers understand how much they really make. Shocker – it’s not much, and less than advertised. Amazon is also using data (price) transparency to move into the UK home insurance market by providing a price comparison portal. It’s interesting to think about what else might be quantified and shared that could make a big impact? Speaking of disruption, restaurants are now experimenting with subscription-based models and NFT reservation tokens to increase revenue and serve those willing to pay for exclusive, guaranteed access. A useful way to think about NFTs might be to just explore what areas of status or exclusivity are under-monetized today.
 

FRESH REPORTS

  • Key Digital Themes for 2023: Simon Kemp has published his latest and greatest (235 slides) report on Global Digital Trends. A great resource for current, big picture stats.

  • 20 Years of Trending Google Searches: A fun trip down memory lane / your search history (same thing?)

  • For the Game: A very useful report from dentsu on gaming – an area that is overlooked by the majority of agencies and brands today. Smart perspective on the impact of gaming on culture. Worth the download.

  • 2023 Global Culture Report: A comprehensive study from O.C. Tanner on workplace culture, including recommendations for leaders navigating hybrid / back to work decisions. Figuring this out is top of mind for many of my clients given our experiences over the last 2 years with non-linear workdays.

 
Finally, love this simple post and template for better error message. These principles can be applied more broadly to writing for the web / digital experience design.

Digital Trends: 10.12.22

I hope my Canadian subscribers have recovered from a fantastic Thanksgiving feast (and a devastating Blue Jays loss). This newsletter is a tad late, as I just returned from a mini-vacation in NYC. One of the highlights was a trip to MOMA, specifically the Systems Exhibit. It featured artwork including the original Google Maps Pin. It was interesting to stop and think about the artwork that goes into the everyday web, and the impact of the everyday web on art.

 Returning to Toronto, we didn’t need to use the much maligned $54M ArriveCan app. Canadian tech companies are criticizing (alright, mocking) the government for its price tag, demonstrating how the app could have been built for a fraction of the cost. I thought this thread by Alistair Croll was an excellent counterbalance, highlighting the complexities of building a new government service during a global pandemic.
 

Social Commerce

The convergence of e-commerce and social media (‘social commerce’ for your digital buzzword bingo card) seems to be cooling. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have all slowed their rolls into this hyped space. Instagram has started to remove the Shop tab from its home feed for some users. Further, more brands are moving their livestream shopping (i.e., video) initiatives from social platforms to their own brand websites. Seems like social platforms are embracing their more natural role as places to discover products vs. places to also complete a transaction.
 

Metaverse WFT

Tim Cook made headlines last week for saying what many of us have been thinking – maybe we should stop talking about the metaverse if we all don’t know what it is. He called the term “ambiguous and hypothetical”, but was bullish on AR and VR for “set periods” – an important distinction. Looking ahead, Bloomberg feels that Apple is well positioned to launch a new AR or VR product given its success of launching niche hardware products (see AirPods). If your company is still dead set on thriving in the metaverse – Tim Cook be damned – you can always hire a Chief Metaverse Office for a cool $1M.  
 

Longing & Shorting

Move over Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” model, marketers now can’t stop talking about Binet & Field’s the Long and the Short of It. Tom Roach has the latest take that explores the relationship between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation – it’s worth a read. Here’s a useful summary of key points from the original work, which might be helpful for those of you doing your annual brand planning.
 
If your annual plans include e-commerce or retail media, check out this report on revenue metrics which includes a useful glossary of terms. And if you’re like many of my clients and are planning on more testing & learning this year – make sure that you have a standardized way of articulating your hypotheses, defining your tests, and to capturing your learnings. Below are a few templates that you can use as starting points – more can be found here.


Digital Ad Tips

  • TikTok: OK COOL has put together a fun and useful guide to modern advertising on TikTok with plenty of tips, hot-takes, and examples. Important to work with experts in this space.

  • Meta: The 2022 Creative Forecast from Meta outlines 5 creative trends for brands to consider, including case studies that demonstrate new Meta ad products.

  • Google: New research from Google on the evolving role that search plays in retail (including perspective from Seth Godin), and a great overview of changes to the core search product for brands. 

Worth a Skim

  • More Google innovations, including updates to Maps to help users get a Vibe Check before visiting neighbourhoods. Google also has a proof of concept that turns text into 3D models. You can now literally speak something into existence.

  • Zoe Scaman has shared her slides from a recent IPA presentation on the negative impact of cynicism on the creative industry. Love her reframing of optimism as not an attitude, but a strategy for creative progress.

  • Has LinkedIn become Facebook? Smart article on how the content on LinkedIn has become more personal, as our definition of what is ‘professional’ has broadened and blurred. Love this initiative by the agency Walrus – sharing their dead ideas on LinkedIn instead of just repackaging them for another client. Sorry, that was cynical. Working on it.

Digital Trends: 09.21.22

Back to school always feels like the real start to my year. With 3 kids entering new schools this year, we're still trying to figure out our routines and rhythms. Getting there. I hope your start to fall is going smoothly, and you’ve managed to find your groove.
  

TikTok & Art

Speaking of grooves, is music on TikTok a different kind of art? An interesting post connects a philosopher’s concept of “Arts of Action” to the participatory nature of music and dance on TikTok. Smart artists (and brands) get this, and remember the ‘social’ in social media. But there’s a specific kind of ‘social’ that is native to each platform, and it’s difficult for other platforms to replicate it – as Instagram discovered with its TikTok copycat Reels. Casey Newton summed up this challenge really well (“the switch from personal posts to elaborate dance challenges, stunts, comedy, and recipes feels too jarring. Snapchat stories were a natural fit for the Instagram feed, but Reels still feels like an alien interloper.”)

I find it helpful to think about platforms like places – each with its own distinct culture, norms, and set of expectations for those visiting. TikTok also features large in this smart round-up of the 10 key moments shaping digital culture by We Are Social.

Quick Skims

  • The Follower (@DRIESDEPOORTER): Speaking of new forms of art, this Belgian artist is making ‘surveillance art’ using AI and open cameras – sharing videos of influencers taking pictures of themselves. Is vanity shaming our next trend?

  • Most Searched Consumer Brands (Visual Capitalist): If you’re looking for evidence of the hegemony of big, global brands – check out the most ‘searched for’ brands by country.

  • Stable Diffusion + Photoshop: Love this video / proof of concept of how a designer might use a tool that generates images from text in Photoshop. Super-interesting to see this type of technology used in context.

  • Emoji Trends (Adobe): Did you know that 73% of U.S. emoji users think people who use emojis are friendlier, funnier, and cooler than those who don’t? Just avoid poop and eggplants – useful advice in general, really. 

Smart Reads

  • Reconsidering Retail (Troy Young): Interesting reframing of how modern retail works – physical building and manufacturing is easy, building attention (largely via digital) is hard. Starbucks also recently made news for reconsidering its own retail model – focusing more on efficiency, and less on “third space” ambiance. Can I both love and hate a trend?

  • Is Anything Cool Anymore (GQ): Some smart language and theory around the ambiguous concept of coolness. With e-commerce, “everyone can have everything. And so therefore, it feels like nothing’s cool.” Social media also plays a role here in equal parts introducing and killing fashion trends – leading to the death of cool, personal style?

  • Reconsidering Dating Apps: Singles are tired of dating apps and are looking for love using Twitter, TikTok, and even – gasp – email newsletters (?) Be thankful I’m married, who knows what I might be including in these things.

 

Shaping Thinking

I’m not proud of how much time I spend monkeying around in PowerPoint. I’ve wasted full days shunning SmartArt for bespoke versions of simple process diagrams. Why? As a visual learner and compulsive whiteboard doodler, I’ve always been drawn to (pun intended) the relationship between what we see and how we think. Frameworks and visual cues play a huge role in how we interpret information. Visual models become mental models. As a consultant and trainer, I've found that incorporating the right visuals into a presentation can help me to explain things more clearly, structure sessions more effectively, direct the attention of participants, and ultimately influence outputs.

I’ve put together a quasi-periodic table of visual elements that can be used to help bring more clarity to presentations. Each includes what I want to communicate (the client’s question that I want to answer) and a visual element to help me do so. And yes, I created this in PowerPoint.

09.06.22

Social Waves

Marketing today can feel a bit like surfing – scanning the ocean to choose the right wave to catch. Trends, like waves, are changing constantly and social media exacerbates the challenge for marketers to figure out what is worth jumping on.As I wrote years ago, brands need to ask themselves the right questions to understand if they should take a stand. Wendy’s and Dove presumably did this whendeciding to wade into the recent Lisa Laflammecontroversy. A few other brands surfing trend wavesinclude DuoLingo who is incorporating High Valyrian(the fictional language used in Game of Thrones) into its advertising andChipotle is one of the first brandsto test the new social platform BeReal.

If you’re looking for the next trend, social media analytics can help identify promising signals.Magasinhas put together avery cool live documentthat crowdsources shopping insights from Instagram stories. GQ has also published its annualHype List. To catch-up on social trends from the past week, check out theBornSocial Trendwatersreport for a rundown of what’s trending.
 

A.I. & Art

I hesitate to post much about A.I. because I don’t fully understand it. That’s why it was refreshing to read Kevin Roose’s latest NYT piece that calls on big tech firms to do abetter job of explaining what they are working on, without the P.R. spin. Are we on the verge of sentience, or are we still just messing around with gimmicks likehearing dead people talk? The NYT does a smart job ofshining a lighton how it uses A.I. to optimize its paywall. Would love to see more pieces like this that explore the practical applications of machine learning, even if they are haven't arrived yet.
The one area that does feel tangible - judging by my Twitter feed - is A.I. is test-to-image visual art. Apparently an A.I. image generator (operated by a human, I hope) recently produced something thatwon an art context last week. TikTok is alsointroducing a basic iteration of this technologywith its AI Greenscreen feature.Daniel Eckler(who has a fantastic tech newsletter btw) recently shared a tweet with25 other inspiring examples.

Fresh Reports

  • Retail Media (Accenture): A must download for anyone trying to figure out why and how retailers are evolving into media businesses. It includes helpful visualizations of the relationships between brands, customers, and retailers in this new flywheel.

  • Value Creation in the Metaverse (McKinsey): Another helpful visualization – this one illustrates the different ‘layers’ that make up the metaverse today. Smart way to frame such an ambiguous concept.

  • Overview of Nike’s web3 Strategy (Kahris.eth): In the 90’s we did SWOT Analyses, today we do web3 strategy overviews. Attention agency strategists: your clients will be asking for one of these soon.

 

Smart Reads

  • The Smartphone is the New Sun (Benedict Evans): My fav tech writer outlines why and how other tech hardware ‘orbits’ the smartphone, along with new data on how people miss their phones more than anything else.

  • De-Bossification (Rishad Tobaccowala): Smart POV on how we need less bosses and boss-like behaviours in companies today. What qualities, training, and incentives do the next generation of managers need?

  • Rewirement (Wunderman Thompson): Why retire when you can rewire? Love this concept. As someone who is incessantly thinking about what’s next (and approaching 50), this hits 100%.

Digital Trends: 08.23.22

It’s been 8 years since I went out on my own and started Kickframe. As I shared at my 5-year mark, I didn’t have some great epiphany about a business idea or dreams of building a large company with my name on it. I wanted to work on my own terms – that’s it. Over the last 2+years, many have had a similar opportunity with more flexible WFH arrangements. Taking away that ‘benefit’ is at the core of the struggle companies are now facing in bringing people back to the office according to the authors of ‘Out of Office’. While the authors encourage employers to get back to first principles and dramatically rethink how work gets done, I think this issue is so challenging because it is just so personal to those that have been fortunate enough to enjoy this choice/freedom. It’s more about life than work. Maybe that explains why people went batshit on poor Malcolm Gladwell for being a fan of the office. Scott Galloway also recently shared his perspective, which was also personal.  
 

Pandemic Bumps

As many businesses are trying to bring people back to the office and ‘return’ to pre-COVID times, there is evidence that other aspects of our lives and the economy are moving back to natural trend lines (much fewer ‘The New Normal’ proclamations on LinkedIn these days btw).

  • Gaming: consumer spending is down 11% prior to a COVID bump

  • Ecommerce: online shopping has returned to its pre-pandemic adoption curve

  • Movies: consumers are (mostly) returning to theatres for blockbusters

  • Travel: New (Canadian!) data on our return to planes, trains, and automobiles

  • Oh, and Peloton

As a father of 3, I’m most interested in the impact of the pandemic on kids who are unfamiliar with these trend lines. They don’t have the same benefit (or baggage) of history regarding what to return to.

Tiktokification & Creative 

3 years ago, many people were laughing off TikTok like it was a QR code (scan here to find out who is having the last laugh now!) Not so much anymore. New Pew research shows that that platform is tops for teens, and Facebook is falling sharply. From a marketing perspective, Foxwell has new research that shows strong advertising performance on the platform. So, what does the future hold? Mark Ritson criticizes TikTok clones for aping their features. Ben Thompson has a smart essay (as always) on how TikTok aligns with larger trends in digital media and UI. He also uses my new favourite analogy “would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?”

Whatever your view of TikTok, brands need to master short, video, made-for-social creative formats. Here is a great resource with over 100 examples: Good TikTok Creative.

Strategy & Branching

Spotify is testing a feature to sell concert tickets through its platform. While it’s being spun as a way for the platform to support artists who feel they are being short-changed from streaming revenue, I thought it was an interesting example of branching from a position of strength in music. I’ve used mind map models with clients to explore they too can also branch out from a core area / offering. Below is an example focused on the topic of travel, and here is a template you can use to do something similar. [Insert go out on a limb pun here].


Good Stuff

Digital Trends: 08.01.22

AR, VR & Holograms

Augmented reality has always seemed like a technology looking for a reason to exist. Now, it seems that a dash of pragmatism has been added to this technofantasy stew and we are finally seeing some practical use cases. Last month,Google teased its AR glasses with Live Translate, and the company announced that it is now testing“helpful AR experiences”in the real world. Navigation is apparently one of the aspects that will be tested – here is acool (non-Google) demo from a retail example. Here’s another one built by Shopify for designing a room (fun thread on how it was built, here). And while not technically an AR activation, my personal technofantasy recently came to life featuring ahologram concert featuring ABBA.
   

TikTokification of Media

Less text, more video. Less desktop, more mobile. Less searching, more scrolling. Less follows, more recommendations. All of these general media trends have led us to where we are now – the TikTokification of media. Meta fast-follows (corporate-speak for “copies”) these popular trends and features, andfaced a backlashlast week for prioritizing recommended video content in a recent Instagram update. While Meta rolled back the update, the concept of the TikTok For You Page is here to stay. It’s actually been here for awhile, it has just been supercharged by AI and video.Video is apparently richer media than textto train algorithms, and these algorithms are so effective that people are asking“I don’t know if I like what I like or what an algorithm wants me to like.” Algorithm Anxiety is real people! Here’s a useful visualization of thedata-driven evolution of media and asmart framing of different ‘eras’.
So, what can marketer’s do? Don’t fight the current. Hire peoplethat know the platforms best, becomefluent in the creative languageof TikTok, and create native content with themindset of a publisher.
 

The Future of Advertising

“Remember, demand and supply always apply.”This was the mantra repeated by my economics professor years ago. It comes to mind whenever I read any “The Future Of…” reports - like this piece from Rory Sutherland. While technology, media, and the marketplace are constantly changing - there are fundamentals that always apply.
 
So, what is fundamental in advertising? The importance of a strong brief.Will Novosedlikhas agreat article in Strategythat highlights that 25% of marketing spending is wasted on poorly written and understood briefs. To help address this, the IPA has a useful resource to download“The Best Way for a Client to Brief an Agency”. If you’re interested in this area, check out myHow To Write a Marketing Briefonline course (free for the next week using the promo code FUNDAMENTALS).
  
So, what is changing in advertising? Experimentation with different technologies and media. Meta is the latest organizationoffering AI-powered image generation. Rethink recently released a video (ad?)using DALL·E 2 for Ketchup. Unilever released an update on itsinitial forays into the metaverse– what I find most interesting in here is their mention of an internal group“Web3 Collective, a cross-functional group of subject-matter experts representing areas such as marketing, finance, legal, media, procurement, licensing and more.”On the surface, it seems like a smart approach that acknowledges the multi-faceted opportunities and risks associated with Web3. It reminds me of how companies first tried to figure out how to organize around social media.
 

Fresh Reports

 

Stories, Scripts & Customer Scenarios

Over the years I’ve taken several writing courses. One that I particularly enjoyed was a screenwriting class, where I learned the basics of developing characters, creating dramatic scenes, and structuring story arcs. While my Hollywood career has yet to take off, the lessons I learned in that class have served me surprisingly well in my digital marketing / strategy career – particularly when creating customer scenarios.
 
Scenarios are often used to describe how a new product, service, or feature will work through a fictional story about the person experiencing it. The scenario typically takes place in the future, and brings to life the benefits of a new concept in a compelling and concrete way. They are often in pitches to sell-in new ideas.
 
I have had a hand in creating many customer scenario 'scripts' – some good, some bad, and some ugly. When good, scenarios humanize the benefits from complicated technology solutions. When bad, the audience is confused, distracted, or bored (ugly is a combination of all 3). While scenarios can be produced through any combination of sketches, storyboards, mock-ups, and video, the best are all:

  • Believable: Feature people acting in a natural way within a relatable and real-world context

  • Focused: Include the most important features and benefits in the most concise way

  • Feasible: Incorporate features that have been vetted for business value and technical complexity

  • Magical: Dramatize a future state vision that is surprising and appealing for the audience

Below is a framework that I have used to help map out customer scenarios. It helps me to align product vision, supporting features, customer insight, and business value into a single narrative. I hope you find it useful in your own work. After all, there is no phrase more powerful than ‘let me tell you a story’ :-)


For more marketing planning templates, as well as tips for choosing and using, check out theKickframe Toolbox.

Digital Trends: 07.01.22

How should brands think about the connected car? Interesting question from an interesting guy – my friend Trevor from Sheeva.AI. He posed this question to me in an email, inviting me on as a guest for his new podcast on the future of mobility. I took the bait, and you can listen to our fun discussion here.
 

VOICE, SEARCH & DEAD RELATIVES

One of the topics Trevor and I discussed was the natural role of voice / audio as the primary input and output mediums for the connected car. New research shows that 92% of consumers use voice to search the web – 40% on a regular basis. And new advances in voice search are coming, including the ability for to recognize songs from humming and the ability for Alexa (gulp) to mimic the voice of a deceased relative. I miss my dad, but I don’t need to hear him tell me when an Amazon package has arrived. But if it was the AI-powered voice of Val “Iceman” Kilmer? Maybe.
If you’re interested in exploring the fit of voice within the context of your marketing or customer experience plans, check out my post on “What Problems Can Voice Help Solve’”.

 

GENERATION Z, ANONYMITY & WORK

The marketing community has a new obsession: Gen Z (those born between 1997-2010). Poor Millennials have been pushed aside (I’ll save you a seat at the neglected Gen X table!) PR agency Edelman has recently hired a Gen Z cohort and appointed a gender fluid fashion designer as its ZEO. The agency founder has also hired his daughter as the Gen Z COO, proving nepotism crosses generational lines.
For marketers without a ZEO, there is always – you know – customer research. New findings show that Gen Z is seeking more anonymity online, turned off by the complications of managing a personal brand. This is consistent with the 0.5 selfie trend – and taking social media / self-projection less seriously. Research also shows that Gen Z is the group that is driving the push back into the office, seeking more face-to-face interaction. Love the framing of this article on the topic – “Gen Z employees are not ‘going back’ to the office. They are discovering it.” Many haven't been - and need / seek mentorship and modeling of IRL office communication and behaviour. Maybe us slacker Gen X’ers might be able to help out after all.
 

CANNES, ADVERTISING & RETAIL MEDIA

If you have anyone in your social network that was at Cannes a few weeks ago, you’ll know that Cannes happened a few weeks ago. Here is a list of all of the 2022 Grand Prix Winners, as well as a new LION State of Creativity report that summarizes perspectives from marketing and creative leaders. Worth a skim.
If you’re interested in what’s happening in retail media (retailers selling advertising on their owned channels), this McKinsey report is a must read. It highlights common myths / misconceptions and paints a convincing picture of how this area will continue to grow. An adjacent opportunity is what Simons is testing – allowing customers to search for any product from any retailer within their mall properties – through one interface (which can, presumably, be monetized as retail media).
 

GOOD, LONG READS

  • Spotify, Netflix, and Aggregation: New Ben Thompson piece on Aggregation business models, contrasting Netflix and Spotify. He dissects Spotify’s latest investor day presentation to highlight how it’s business model is evolving (and thankfully for my Spotify stocks) improving.

  • The Webpage: What does a modern, successful media company look like today? Are the days of the ungated SEO-optimized webpages numbered? Another smart read by Troy Young.

  • NYT Investor Presentation: Since I read the NYT’s Innovation Report in 2014 that went viral with digital strategy nerds like me, I’ve been keenly following their transformation journey. Their latest Investor Presentation is available – check out the section on Growth (page 132) to see how they think about (and present their strategy around) audience monetization.

 

FRESH RESEARCH & RESOURCES

  • Shopify Editions 2022: A great way to learn about the updated product ecosystem of Shopify, and trends in the D2C retail space in general.

  • The Behavioural Science Annual: A worthy download from Ogilvy with a collection of case studies on marketing programs focused on behaviour change.

  • ABCs of NFTs: A fun, clear read from Reddit on what NFTs are and how to launch them – using Reddit communities to do so. Best doc on the topic that I’ve seen.

  • State of eCommerce Advertising: A useful resource for media teams looking for benchmarks around ROAS and the use of Meta, Instagram, and PPC.

Digital Trends: 06.20.22

AR, AUDIO & DIGITAL BLINDERS

My first ‘real’ job after I finished my MBA degree many years ago was working for the Yellow Pages. I was responsible for exploring how the company might flourish in the dawn of the Internet era (narrator: not well). Looking back, the prevailing view (especially from digital-know-it-alls like me) was that everything that could be digitizedwouldbe digitized, and made better once put on a screen. I remember rolling my eyes whenRed Herring magazinepublished that ‘the future of online purchases is here – it’s called the credit card.” Digital blinders.
 
I was thinking about that article today, after reading that bothMetaandAppleare delaying their AR headsets. Is augmentation necessarily better if it is on a screen? Maybe the future of augmentation is here, and it’s called audio. No need to convince people to wear headsets in public, just keep those Air Pods in. No need to push buttons, just use your voice or be alerted geospatially. No need to disrupt your current flow or social context by switching focus, just listen.
 
But what are we listening to? From a content perspective, this is where I think some interesting changes are happening. Podcast pioneerBill Simmons recently gave an interviewwhere he shared that audio content is becoming increasingly reactive to news and culture (not just evergreen). Further, new shows are being launched withcompanion podcastswhere critics and/or creators discuss the episode immediately after it airs. Spotify alsorecently released researchon the audio habits of Gen Z (with Canadian data, eh!) that reinforces how young listeners are spending more time going deeper into their niche interests through audio. So, whilesocial audio is fading, Spotify is becoming like reddit or Google in audio form. I expect to find content and answers relating to anything that I am interested in right now. The audio longtail.
 

FUTURE OF WORK VS. REALITY

The conversation I seem to be having most often with my clients these days is around returning to the office. What does hybrid mean? How do I measure productivity? Can I build culture remotely? Microsoft released anexcellent report on the New Future of Workthat applies data and perspective to these questions. I found this table really useful – mapping different meeting objectives to different meeting modes. A smart exercise to do together with teams to establish a shared understanding of working together.


 The meeting objective that jumped out for me was #15: ‘Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals’ - it requires a face-to-face meeting (not Zoom). How does this play out in the Future of Work, as building relationships are a critical part of building a career and reputation?Scott Gallowayshares thoughts on the matter. I suspect that it’s what most bosses are thinking, but are careful not to say (except Elon Musk). This return-to-work bias is also being seen in some VCs, whoprefer to fund start-ups that work IRL.


ADVERTISING & CULTURE

If you’re a marketer confused about the death of third-party cookies, you’re not alone. According to Digiday, 71% of agency and brand execs “are worried and don’t know what’s next”.One thing that might come next is not using data at all – as Meta is apparently developing‘Basic Ads’that would not be highly targeted or expensive. A counter-intuitive offering from a platform known for hyper-targeting.
 
From a creative standpoint, I thought this quote from an ad exec was interesting –“TikTok is one of the places where culture is created”. We often get so focused on audience targeting and production in digital advertising, we forget about the distinct cultures within different social networks. It’s not about specs (does it fit), it’s about context (does it belong). You can’t blame the platforms who continue to put out useful resources to help advertisers:
How to Market on Twitch
How to Market on TikTok
The Long & Short of YouTube
 

MONEY & THE METAVERSE

It seems like one of the main way companies are making money in the metaverse is by consulting clients on how to make money in the metaverse. Snark (partially) aside, McKinsey recently published some useful background material oncommercially navigating the metaverseand Standard Chartereddid the same.
 
Publicis Groupe also recentlyintroduced a lion avatar named Leon as its new Chief Metaverse Officerto help educate clients since “the metaverse isn’t a destination, it’s a real-time learning moment for all”. The company released aYouTube videoof this announcement staring the animated lion. Shout out to the Publicis PR / Social team for the decision to not allow people to post comments.
 

SMART READS

  • Product Thinking: A smart piece by Julie Zhuo on Product Thinking. The P-word is used in many contexts and job titles these days – this is good grounding.

  • Economist & Education: Interesting perspective on how the Economist launched courses, leveraging its expertise, staff, and brand into a new revenue stream. An untapped opportunity for many.

  • Visualizing Media: Love this perspective from Troy Young on visualizing (or revisualizing) media, exploring how mental models are changing for different mediums (HT/ to Brian Clarey for the Substack reco).

  • Behavioural Economics Guide: Behavioural economics and nudge theory is all the rage in ad land, this is a good resource and here is a smart video from Rory Sutherland on the subject.

Digital Trends: 06.01.22

Media Platforms & Jobs to be Done

I have used this slide in my digital marketing training courses for years. I use it to discuss how marketing can feel more complex with each new change in the technology and media landscape. I use the curves to illustrate that there is no straight line, and that new innovations do not mean that channels that came before are now irrelevant. Instead, existing channels are often changed in some way.

 
This image has been swimming in my head as I’ve been reading more about changes in the media landscape – accelerated byrecent dramatic drops in stock prices for media / streaming companies. Many of these companies are now accelerating their own changes to find more users/subscribers, to attract more advertisers/creators, and to remain ahead of the curve in media consumption/engagement trends.
 
These changes lead to platforms often trying to reframe what they are and how they should be used. This then sets-up the challenge of trying to acquire new users and change the behaviour of existing ones – without alienating or frustrating them. It also sets up the competitive challenge of migrating users and behaviours from other platforms to yours, and reframing who you are now competing with. Hence, the impact on other existing channels (curves of change).
 
There are countless examples, here are just a few from the last 2 weeks:

The concept of competition was recently explored byScott Gallowaywho sees TikTok as a competitor to Netflix andBenedict Evanssees TikTok as a competitor to YouTube. These are interesting strategy thought experiments, but do users think this way? Does it matter? If you abstract out form and focus on content and engagement, you can argue that all of these platforms are competing with each other.
 
I find theJobs To Be Done frameworkto be the most useful tool to think this stuff through. If we start by understanding what a user ‘hires’ a media platform to do, we may have a better idea of how to evolve the platform without alienating existing users. And by focusing on Jobs To Be Done, we can explore the broader competitive context defined by these Jobs – not by existing product features. All of this to say, more curves and complexity ahead for marketers.

 

Google Trends & AR Translation

Google made news this month with its Google I/O conference announcements (see 12-minute summary here). The company isintroducing image search to Chrome, and a text-to-image AI productcalled Imagenthat turns text descriptions into images. It is also working on anew immersive mapto let you “explore and understand the vibe of a place before you go.” All cool stuff, but my favourite innovation by far is the Google Translation Glasses.Check out this concept videoto understand how it works, and how it can benefit different people and contexts. It’s a super-smart use case where AR glasses are the right tool to solve this problem, not a tool looking for a problem to solve (like 99% of other AR concepts I’ve seen).



Fresh Reports & Research

  • State of Martech 2022 Report: New report from Scott Brinker. As someone who spends way too much time moving boxes, circles, and arrows around in PowerPoint, these visualizations of marketing tech stacks are like catnip for me.

  • Podcast Report 2022: A fantastic overview of the growing podcasting market from the listener, creator, advertiser, and general business perspective (bonus points for a slick interactive format, too).

  • 2022 Reputation Rankings: The annual Axios Harris Poll on the reputations of the most visible brands in the U.S. Spoiler Alert: #1 is Trader Joes’, #100 (out of 100) is The Trump Organization.

  • Advertising Strategy in a Recession: A helpful (and hopefully not timely) study on how marketers need to adapt their advertising strategy in face of a recession by Eric Benjamin Seufert.

  • Multicultural Marketing Report: A fantastic resource from Google on one of the most important, overlooked, and misunderstood opportunities for marketers in Canada today.

Digital Trends: 05.11.22

Airbnb & Remote Collaboration

"If the office didn't exist, I like to ask, would we invent it? And if we invented it, what would it be invented for?"F*%#king excellent questionfrom Airbnb CEO Brian Chesney. He has been in the news recently because Airbnb announced surprisinglypositive business results, as well as a newlive and work from anywhere policy.I wish more organizations would try to answer this question, instead of“does hybrid mean 2 or 3 days in the office?”
 
One benefit of facetime (not FaceTime) is more creativity. Research now backs up what anyone who has spent even a minute on a Zoom-based brainstorm can tell you – videoconferencingdoesn’t work for generating ideas(but isn’t bad for selecting them).Another study backed this up, and researchers recommend turning your cameras off if virtual is the only option.
 

Snap & Augmented Reality

It’s odd how Snap gets overshadowed by the other social platforms, as it has anamazing historyof product innovations andusage continues to grow. The company recently announced a new (and natural)collaborationwith Cameo, a new program that lets users placeAR overlaysover physical objects / locations, anacquisition for a companythat lets you control virtual objects with your thoughts, and – for shits and giggles –a flying camera.I have a hard time sending a newsletter twice per month!

A big part of the Snap vision is leadership in consumer applications of augmented reality, especially in retail. The company recentlylaunched a new featurefor fashion brands (including Puma) to let users virtually try on merch. Here is a thorough report from the Foresight Factory onAR & the future of shoppingthat is worth a skim.Amazonis investing in this area, as is Meta – which recently authored a Sponsored Post / Propaganda on Vice from the perspective of someone wearing its AR glasses to Coachella for an entire weekend. I suspect they spent much of their time alone.


Navigating the Metaverse

If over half of all content about a topic is trying todefine the topic, there’s a problem. And that’s where we are with the metaverse today. From a marketing perspective, it is interesting to seeSpotifyestablishing a presence in Roblox (12.2 million users in NA, including my daughter). If you’re a retailer interested in how to get started in this space, my friend AJhas a new postthat’s worth a read.
 
A part of the metaverse milieu that has been in the news lately is NFTs (see ‘NFT Sales are Flatlining’from the WSJ). Peter Yang makes the case thatNFTs are the future of subscriptionsfor creators. Brands are starting to experiment with NFTs as a membership mechanism,including Starbuckswho sees NFTs as a way to “create an expanded, shared-ownership model for loyalty, the offering of unique experiences, community building, storytelling, and customer engagement.” If that means free coffee, I’m in.
 

Good Reads