Anyone trying to garner attention these days is essentially a media entity. This means owned media channels are important (and I think will only become more important over the next few years).

One way to grow this capability is to Acquire media assets to grow your brand.

The marketing function of a company today demands the same or more of a media company.

Editorial blogs, professional-grade podcasts, YouTube channels, curated newsletters, pop culture social media.

Marketing today demands brand.

Build your brand on assets you control, distribute it via channels you don’t.

The AI search engine Perplexity is going to start testing ads

Related questions, which include links to sources, account for 40% of Perplexity’s queries. So Perplexity plans to add relevant, related brand-sponsored questions along with organic questions.

Since ads in AI engines hasn’t been cracked yet, it’ll be interesting to see how these fare. 🔮?

Plus it gives me an excuse to share this quote from the founder:

Ads are not evil. When ads are done right it’s amazing, and generative AI is going to help us build even better targeting.

Make better ads.

via Search Engine Land

A new brand is an empty vessel.

The meaning doesn’t come from the name or the logo, but from what you fill it up with.

Your drive. Your reason for existing. Your core belief. Your brand experience.

“Just Do It” means more than the strict definition those words when Nike is attached. Red Bull doesn’t literally give you wings. Buying an Apple doesn’t magically make you Think Different.

When we bring a brand to the world, it’s rare indeed that people are okay with it having nothing inside. The wrapper matters, but so does the experience within.

-Seth Godin

Your brand may be hollow when it lives only as a final design file, but it better not be when you launch. Just make sure to leave room for what your fans want to fill it with too.

The premise is that creators make content for a brand, but instead of living solely on social media channels, that content lives in 15- and 30-second spots on ad-supported streaming platforms.

Interesting concept. Creators scale up their reach, brands scale down their production.

Creators and AI (and their ethos) will increasingly become studios.

Ad meets word of mouth meets social proof meets celebrity endorsement.

And social media eats the world.

via Digiday

Social media is a major gatekeeper at this point—the other one is search—so if you’re building a strategy that would be reliant on social media, I would just ask that publisher “why?” given the fact that the rules of engagement can change on you immediately.

Don’t confuse channels of amplification and distribution for your foundation and infrastructure.

via The Daily podcast from eMarketer

Finished reading: The Wager by David Grann 📚

via the Future Forecast podcast:

Nowstalgia: hyperfast way of looking at nostalgia of things that didn’t happen decades ago but years or even months.

The nostalgia cycle is spinning so fast that the look back period is shortening to hypermodern history.

Or; the half life of attention (but not attention spans) is so short that the idea generation period has to compress to a point where sequels and building off the previous effort is the only viable option. It is impossible to both stay relevant and create from a blank slate each time.

Are our attention spans really getting shorter?

I hear this said a lot.

But I also know people who listen to multi-hour podcasts, read books, binge series, run/bike really long distances, write books, build apps…

Yes, some of those aren’t really the things people are talking about when they say we’re basically goldfish with thumbs. But they’re not irrelevant.

Maybe the explosion of content and choices coupled with the rapid increase in quality and professionalization of many content creators mean our bar for “bad content” is really low.

Maybe instead of having shorter attention spans we have stricter quality filters.

Ad Market Expands 10.4% In February

The U.S. ad market expanded at its greatest rate in nearly two years in February – increasing 10.4% over February 2023
…
February also was the 11th consecutive month to post growth, providing a further indication that the U.S. ad economy is well out of recession.

This should mean good news for the economy as a whole too.

It also explains those CPM and CPC increases I’ve been noticing.

YouTube Warns Channels Against Deleting Videos

YouTubers: Don't delete videos unless you have a very, very good reason. When you delete a video, you delete your channel's connection to the audience that watched that video. If you want to maximize your growth, keep your videos public or unlist then if you must.

— Todd B. (@hitsman) March 23, 2024

Well that’s an interesting tidbit. & is this a “normal” algorithm thing? Or; does it map across platforms?

How consumers find new brands and products on social media, marketplaces, and brick-and-mortar retail in 5 charts

Instead of putting all 5 charts here, just click the link.

Exploding Topics: Anti-Detect Browser

Anti-detect browsers are web browsers designed to minimize the digital footprint of their users.

These browsers use a combination of techniques (changing user agent strings, modifying the browser’s fingerprint, using a VPN, etc.) to hide or modify a user’s device and browser characteristics.

They may also block or modify JavaScript, cookies, and browser plugins that can be used to track a user’s online behavior.
…
9 out of 10 Americans consider online privacy an important issue.

searches for “data privacy tools” have grown by 67% over the past two years.

The cookiepocalypse was just the start.

Spotify adds video learning courses in latest experiment

“One of the most interesting things and trends that we started noticing was more and more people were starting to come to Spotify with some intent of learning,” Jitani says. “And we thought, how can we take this core insight and build something on top of it?”

it can more directly target potential customers based on their existing listening habits. “It becomes much, much easier for us to find the right people for this course and just provide a much more efficient kind of distribution,” Jitani says.

With the experiment, Spotify is offering courses via a freemium model, similar to the one it used when it first launched audiobooks.

Many lessons wrapped up in this:

• Spotify is serious, which means now is the time to start experimenting with its ad platform (if you haven’t already)
• Distribution matters
• Context is the new targeting paradigm
• Everything is a video platform now
• Entertainment isn’t the only content angle out there, people want to learn (otherwise, why else are you reading this right now?)

LinkedIn introduces Dynamic UTMs to optimize your web traffic through LinkedIn ads

Marketers – only one time per campaign – will add a dynamic UTM parameter to their campaign and then we’ll automatically pull in the account, campaign and/or creative name into the destination URL so it can be picked up by analytics tools, allowing marketers to more easily analyze results.

And there was much rejoicing!

Eddie Bauer changed its logo because Gen Z doesn’t read cursive

After nearly 60 years of its distinctive cursive script, the outdoor retailer is ditching the script for blocky text and a goose.

I’m torn on this one because I saw the old EB logo a lot growing up, but the new one should work way better for a lot of materials and uses. But it’s also just another chunky sans serif wordmark now.

As we start to lose more and more of the old brand aesthetics, we may also lose a lot of character (which also means there is a growing void you can launch yourself into if you’re willing to zig when others zag).

Canva acquires Affinity to fill the Adobe-sized holes in its design suite

Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite, positioning itself as a challenger to Adobe’s grip over the digital design industry. Canva announced the deal on Tuesday, which gives the company ownership over Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher — three popular creative applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad that provide similar features to Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software, respectively.

Between this and the Figma deal getting blocked, Adobe better get its game face on.

Creative is the biggest lever you have left for targeting. Canva makes it easy. This deal may make it more legit with the design crowd.

Welcome to Agency Adventure!

Agency Adventure is a custom, desktop video game created by Snapchat to help educate our Agency partners on the value Snapchat provides and how they can level up results for their clients and reach their audience.

Guiding question: what if you made it fun?

Convincing failure

The idea is that there are two types of failure: abject failure and convincing failure.
…
if you execute to a high standard, one where it’d be “unlikely that another team, even with more time and effort, could succeed”, that’s a convincing failure. Under this scenario, perfect execution of the plan lets you know that you got your strategy wrong, and you can learn something meaningful for the next iteration, project, or venture.

Failing is fine, as long as it’s done convincingly.

The process is good or bad at its inception not by its result.

— Richard White (@RamblinWreck34) March 23, 2024

Consumer Brands and Essential Inputs

Collaborative Fund’s Consumer Stack Investment categories (as I interpret them):

These essential inputs become the backbone for many consumer plays.

• Deconstrucring the food supply chain to increase sustainability and improve health outcomes (e.g. “cultivating fat as an ingredient”)
• Breakthrough tech that decarbonizes products and processes (e.g. turning CO2 into textiles)
• Breakthrough tech that makes supply chains more flexible (e.g. perishable goods not requiring a full truck load to ship)

Back the inputs, pave the way for the future.

The one AI-related existential risk I’m worried about

TL;DR: humans

Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions, F.T.C. Finds

A report found that large firms pressured suppliers to favor them over competitors. It also concluded that some retailers “seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices.”

So about those greedflation concerns…

Building a brand is

• Expensive in the short run
• Cheap in the long run

YouTube is a sleeping giant—it’s not just a TikTok competitor or a Netflix competitor or a search competitor or a Spotify competitor.

SEO as we know it is about the change dramatically. How do you keyword stuff for an LLM? How do you get discovered via chat but not give away all your content? How many search channels do you optimize for in a post-10 blue links world?

Just remember, don’t go out and try ramping up the top 4 or 6 or 10 right away. Find the channels that match your abilities, align with your brand approach, and are actually a place you want to invest your time.

Being everywhere rarely helps.
Being engaged where your audience is always helps.

see this post on LinkedIn

IN AN ERA OF COLLABORATION SATURATION, HOW DO BRANDS STAND OUT?

71% of people agree that the story you tell around a collaboration is just as important as the final product.

Every market is saturated now.

How’s your story?

When influencer overexcitement backfires

Overexcited language (e.g. “LOVE THIS!”) increases engagement for micro-influencers by 38% but reduces it for macro-influencers by 31%.
…
Generally, we’re suspicious if it looks like someone’s trying to persuade us. When content is informative, rather than promotional, it builds trust and makes us less suspicious that it’s an attempt to persuade us.

People are advertising savvy these days, respect that.

Consumers spend more with digital wallets

Consumers who use digital wallets spend 31% more than non-users across a range of categories

The disparity in wallet use across income brackets suggests that—at least in part—larger digital wallet sales are the product of digital wallet users having more disposable income than non-users.

The more abstracted the transfer of money becomes, the easier it is to spend.

Facebook is reviving one of its earliest features after hiding it for years

Facebook is bringing back the Poke, and, apparently, Gen Z is loving it.

Maybe the biggest trend really is nostalgia for a slightly earlier time.