A ByteDance ban might be getting closer to reality:

The House once again passed a bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests it — but this time, it’s in a way that will be harder for the Senate to stall.

The bill passed 360-58 as part of a larger bill related to sanctions on foreign adversaries like Russia. It’s part of a package of foreign aid bills that seek to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

via The Verge

Market your brand the way your brand’s personality would.

What people get stuck on with brand marketing is, “oh, I gotta do billboards or podcast ads or commercials.” & you don’t actually have to do all those things. You have to say what is a different, clever idea that I can afford to do that’s gonna get everybody’s attention.

There is no one size fits all.
& having fun works.
& is way more fun.

via Marketing Against the Grain 📼_

Cookieless ad targeting requires marketers to understand how consumers use their websites

“We’re never going to get back to what [digital advertising] used to be. And the sooner we all embrace that, the easier it will become,”

Times they are a-changin

via eMarketer

Future Forecast on AirChat, the Twitter + Clubhouse lovechild:

people are actually moving away from the big [social media platforms] and looking for more fragmented

Mass culture is dead.
Community rises again.

As TV has progressed from ephemeral programming delivered via wires to on-demand catalogs in the ether, the bottleneck has moved from demand to supply. Distribution wars turned into content wars.

This opens the door for brands to become studios (another word for media company).

Imagine Sour Patch Kids is now the new Nickelodeon.

The beauty and benefit of that is, every asset you create can be exploited across everywhere and anywhere but you’re starting with the creation of the product first.

Think Amazon and Apple vs. Max and Paramount+. (& think about the differences in the first-party data these two groups can collect and use.)

The studio becomes a function of marketing, bankrolled by the core product business. Instead of being the primary revenue stream on its own.

Return of the 80s?

The gatekeepers are no longer suits and ties in boardrooms but time and recommendation algorithms. Your brand may not be the next 20th Century Fox but it can become a trusted curator and connector. Or a patron in the Medici mold.

via Future Forecast

Finished reading: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth 📚

“con-trar-i-an n. an investor who makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom, as in buying securities that are unpopular at the time.”

Contrarian as investor?

Oh, I like this idea.

I don’t want to oppose the status quo just to oppose it — I was to invest in what I think is undervalued at the moment.

Almost makes me wish I named this the Contrarian Marketers Club.

But you have to be curious before you can be contrarian (& to stumble on the definition of “contrarian”).

What is your contrarian marketing belief?

via Austin Kleon

This is from Seth Godin‘s daily calendar.

Logos are not brands.
They’re bat signals for the other stans.
A form of visual shorthand.

It’s not about what the logo looks like, it’s about what you make it mean.

On Tuesday, the United Nations financial agency published its latest annual World Economic Outlook, projecting among other things that the US economy this year will grow twice as fast as any of its peers that comprise the G7.

Instead of my excerpting practically the entire piece here, just head over to The Daily Upside and give it a read.

Consumer spending is remaining high, combining with strong jobs reports.

Inflation is still the thing to watch this year and could ruin the party.

Consumers are turning to loyalty programs for discounts to help offset persistently higher prices.

But interest in free products is declining. They want control.

It’s not about more, it’s about getting what they want for less.

via eMarketer

Choose your customers, choose your future.

-Seth Godin

This is where I’m trying to spend more of my time

Finished reading: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill 📚

Shorter copy drives more action. It’s science!

3 ways to shrink your copy:

• Fewer words
• Fewer ideas (be really clear on your goal)
• Fewer requests: more requests = less action on any of them

Be clear
Be concise

via the Nudge podcast

Anybody can get traffic, but it’s hard to build an audience.

-Casey Newton

via Sounds Profitable

Is attention the new attribution?

The New York Times is partnering with Adelaide, a company that uses signals like eye-tracking data to gauge whether readers are paying attention to ads.

The Times started using its own proprietary attention metric last year

The goal is to eventually tie attention metrics to advertisers’ campaign performance

Attribution is getting increasingly difficult. So is garnering attention.

As the value of attention increases it could function as a proxy metric for ROI and related metrics of attribution.

What is the return on attention?

via Marketing Brew

It begins?

Ferret-UI offers the possibility of advanced control over a device like an iPhone. By understanding user interface elements, it offers the possibility of Siri performing actions for users in apps, by selecting graphical elements within the app on its own.

There are also useful applications for the visually impaired. Such an LLM could be more capable of explaining what is on screen in detail, and potentially carry out actions for the user without them needing to do anything else but ask for it to happen.

via Apple Insider

🔥 insight from Tom Webster:

years ago, in the late 20th century, where I am from, there was a thing called videotape, and there were two different standards of videotape and they fought constantly. There was Betamax, which was a platform put out by Sony that was not an open platform. It was a closed platform. Then there was VHS. VHS was developed, I’m pretty sure, by JVC, but they brought in lots of other partners, brands that we all know and love, like Quasar, right? Does anybody remember who won that battle?

VHS? No. Nobody won that battle because we don’t watch tape anymore. We watch movies.

Why do I like this story?

It highlights a few things I think are important to remember:

• you’re not just competing with your industry competitors (especially with inflation and housing where it’s at right now)
• consumers are shopping for solutions and categories, not your specific offering (until they become fans, then they’re shopping for you)
• & you can go further with friends