Do something expensive to increase the perceived value of your thing.

via Nudge

This highlights the difference between “creative” as a noun and “creative” as an adjective.

A creative piece of creative stands out in a sea of uncreative pieces of creative.

via Edward Cotton

It’s no so much the tariffs themselves (though they’re certainly not helping, especially for anyone relying on goods from China), but the uncertainty about what, when, and how much that is wreaking havoc on planning right now.

Some large companies are refusing to even give guidance in earnings reports because it’s a fool’s errand.

The supply chain signals are clear though:

the CEOs of Target, Walmart, and Home Depot convened with the president to warn that supply chain disruptions caused by tariffs will lead to notable product shortages in their stores within just a couple of weeks

Freight company HLS Group told clients earlier this month that it has already recorded 80 cancelled vessels out of China as tariffs crunch demand

Have a podcast and not seeing much growth?

Try these tips from Grow the Show:

Completion rate < 65-75%?

Keep tinkering with your intros and your content and the promise that each episode makes

Downloads stalled?

Keep tinkering with your promotion efforts

Experiment with post formats and styles

YouTube views < 💯?

You need to change your titles and thumbnails

The point isn’t going viral. Unless your business is monetizing the hamster wheel.

As Gabe the Bass Player says:

But the point isn’t to just attract a crowd.

We want to attract a crowd doing our specific thing.

We want a crowd that is attracted to what we do.

We want what we do to serve the expectations wrapped up in that attraction.

Attention is a means, not an end.

Indexing on attention leads to clickbait, which is the act of breaking the promise of expectation.

Never a good move for a business.

Social media is a discovery > demand creation channel. In a fragmented QVC / infomercial kind of way.

It’s about educating people on your product / service, sharing what other people say about it, and building your community.

To turn social discovery into sales, marketers should focus on authentic, useful content—think creator reviews, demos, and clear product info. Pair that with well-timed discounts and engaging video formats to nudge shoppers from interest to action.

Post the content that builds the reputation you want to have.

via EMARKETER

Good marketing happens when the narrative a brand tells about itself aligns with the narrative customer is telling themselves.

Typically this occurs in the realm of identity, but local / locally rooted businesses cultivate a sense of ownership and pride amongst the locals. Meaning local conditions impact narrative overlap.

This is a perfect illustration.

Rodney Brooks predicts a potential future for genAI

LLMs that can explain which data led to what outputs will be key to non annoying/dangerous/stupid deployments. They will be surrounded by lots of mechanism to keep them boxed in, and those mechanisms, not yet invented for most applications, will be where the arms races occur.

This seems the sensible requirement for truly broad adoption and use across industries and situations.

The current ecosystem is more accelerator than substitute.

It’s not always our expectation of success that’s proven wrong, it’s our expectation of timeframe that’s usually the problem.

Deployment at scale takes so much longer than anyone ever imagines. If you see someone with a new technology that is a barely working lab demo with six PhD students baby-sitting it behind the scenes, and the they say it is going to change the world in two years, just laugh.

Promising results on a miraculous timeframe is setting yourself up for uncomfy convos later.

via Rodney Brooks

About that pull forward induced analysis trap…

From The Fed:

Import growth was strong relative to its fourth-quarter pace, consistent with reports that some U.S. importers were stocking up ahead of prospective tariff increases.

Some good news buried in all the tariff whiplash

The CPI dropped 0.1% in March (gas dropped 6.3%)

All items less food and energy is the lowest it’s been since 2021

The Fed’s not celebrating though

From the recent meeting:

participants remarked that uncertainty about the net effect of an array of government policies on the economic outlook was high, making it appropriate to take a cautious approach. Emphasizing that uncertainty, a majority of participants noted the potential for inflationary effects arising from various factors to be more persistent than they projected.

My own personal Siri?

Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers’ devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform

The goal is to check how well the synthetic training data did while preserving privacy.

But this could be the foundation for AI models that become personalized to each user based on use, patterns, and on-device profiles.

Like ChatGPT remembering your chats, but based on your Apple device usage.

Edge AI—like XR glasses—is nothing but exciting potential right now.

via Bloomberg

The tea leaves are still swirling, but early reads aren’t great, Bob

A February survey of ad executives by trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau found a full 60% of respondents are projecting as much as a 10% reduction in ad budgets this year.

a recession could cause $45 billion in lost advertising, with promoters shifting from traditional television spots toward direct response channels.

The math is simple. Tariffs = higher prices = less budget for non-purchasing activities (like marketing or discretionary spending)

Related to yesterday’s post

via The Daily Upside

There’s a potential analysis trap brewing as businesses see decent sales / revenue performance to start the year.

Highly likely this is pull-forward spending as consumers try to beat tariffs.

Embrace the boring stuff.

Internally, people usually want to do the flashy, exciting stuff. But boring keeps the lights on (and typically has a longer shelf life).

Externally, what’s boring to you is interesting to others. Because they aren’t in it every day like you are. Your boring is the hook.