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Advice from the guy behind the Gorillaz videos, Pete Candeland:
You always try to build entertainment almost like a ladder — or steps — going up to a climax. Like a little story. You want to keep people involved by giving them just enough to want to know what’s going to happen next.
In a short video, it’s about what comes in the next 20 seconds, and then the next 20 seconds, and then the next. It’s an escalating ramp-up of interest, and sometimes a ramp-up of activity and richness of imagery.
Research has shown that rhymes are more memorable. But I much prefer this way of saying it from the Weird Studies podcast
Sound—rhyme and meter, or musical measure—whether we’re talking about poetry or whether we’re talking about music is absolutely the handmaid of memory. Of how things get into the heart.
The function of your message is important. The content must be worth the attention.
But the form determines its reach. This is the vehicle of transmission.
From MediaDailyNews: Search Ads Slide As A Way To Reach Consumers
Not a new trend—and likely even more pronounced since this was published—but search is no longer a discovery mechanism.
Search is truly an intent channel—harvesting discoveries happening elsewhere.
One of the 9 F’s of Attention is Future Me.
Purchasing is an act of aspiration. Buying a future state.
As Seth Godin says, very few of our purchases are for what the thing says on the tin.
Our focus, energy and money are often spent on transactions that are disguised as something else. What we’re really doing is buying affiliation, status or the freedom from fear.
Amazon is running a beta called shop brand sites directly, which surfaces results for brands not sold on the platform, directing shoppers to the brand’s site to purchase.
Likely 1 of 2 plays here (maybe both):
- It gets monetized as an ad product
- Recruit more sellers via website referral tracking
The Walmart index is…unclear
The mega-retailer forecasts lower growth this year, saying:
“We have to acknowledge that we are in an uncertain time and we don’t want to get out over our skis here.”
More high earners are shopping for rollbacks, as value remains shoppers' top priority.
Walmart did not factor looming US tariffs on foreign goods into its forecast, because it’s unclear if or when they’ll kick in.
inventory levels increased 3% last quarter, suggesting it may be calling in orders to get ahead of future levies.
via The Daily Upside
Retro is an evergreen trend, thanks to the One Song podcast I now have a benchmark for what that means:
Retro is almost always running on a 20 year clock
So if you want to try riding the front of the retro wave, look back 19-20 years and pick your trend to revive.
Microsoft’s Clarity is an under discussed part of the analytics toolkit (who doesn’t like free heatmaps and session recordings?), the new conversion maps feature will only make it more useful.
Conversion maps provide specific data of key business metrics of your E-Commerce sites. Through Conversion maps, you can understand your website interactions that affect your purchase rate.
Conversion maps show the conversion rate, representing the percentage of all sessions that resulted in a purchase when a user clicks in a selected area.
There’s no use in being a lesser version of Lego.
This is not just about Lego.
Beware “not”
Soon after being exposed to a message, people forget whether or not there was a “not” in it.
Meaning your anti-positioning backfires.
Over time, “not like those other companies” becomes “like those other companies.”
Think in terms of “not,” but don’t say it.
EMARKETER with more good research, as usual.
the most intrusive ads and the least likely to be noticed ads were the ones where the display covers the entire screen.
The best kind, the most likely to be noticed and the least intrusive ads were pre-roll video and targeted ads using your search history were a close second.
the level of interruption of the ad rather than its invasiveness informed how ads were ranked, mid-roll ads, display ads and that fully covered the screen and ads that follow users around the screen were ranked as much more intrusive than any targeting method.
From the Don’t Say Content ladies:
There’s nothing to fell when it’s mass produced
Remember when you’d go to a how to article and part of what you loved about it was the personality of the brand who wrote it?
And what is gen AI if not the newest tool of mass production?
(This is not an anti-AI post. I’ve been playing with AI text generation since before ChatGPT.)
You can’t mass produce personality. But you can mass produce the stuff that doesn’t meaningfully contribute to personality so the humans can double (and triple) down on it.
The 9 F's of Attention
The digitally-mediated world today is a competition for attention. Attention being the currency culture-making platforms trade in.
So how do we gain it?
Why We Buy has a great primer on the 9 F’s of attention:
- Food
You know, survival.
- Fears
Monkey brain survival.
- Faces
We’re communal animals.
- F#cks
Sex sells!
- Fables
We’re storytelling animals.
- Foreign
Embrace the weird.
- Familiar
Trust shortcuts mental processing.
- Fascinates
Open the curiosity gap. Then deliver.
- Future Me
Purchasing is an act of aspiration. Buying a future state.
The next time you’re searching for a hook, try reaching for one (or more!) of these.
Brand value. Brand equity. Brand strength.
All fancy words for how much customers care.
Or, as Seth says:
The accurate measure of brand value is the premium that consumers will spend over the generic.
What time, money or risk will they take for a valuable brand compared to the very same offering from an unknown?
Familiarity is not always a proxy for high value.
In short, brand value is a narrative, not a formula.
The second Good Life 2030 report highlights that what’s missing in our age of comfort and convenience is connection.
People are yearning to be more connected to themselves
People are dreaming of being more connected to others, too. They want to strengthen and protect family relationships, build more nurturing support systems, and share routines and rituals with others.
people are dreaming of being more deeply connected to nature.
The people want community.
Some interesting findings from a study comparing Google Search to chatbot traffic (caveat: chatbot volume is much smaller)
AI chatbot referrals stay more than a minute longer than Google traffic.
And visit more pages
The data indicates that homepages are more important in the “AI future” and that AI chatbots qualify users better before sending them out.
and
AI seems to go counter to the age-old study of “every second a page loads faster, it converts more people.”
Instead, it pre-qualifies users before they visit a site, which leads to those users being happy to spend more time.
Drew Hanlen is an NBA trainer for some of the world’s most elite players, his approach to writing his new book is a template for (long form) content of any kind.
- Simple
Very short sections so that you can pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down
- Direct
Trimming the fat and making it shorter and shorter out of respect to the reader’s time
- Actionable
Prompts that you’re doing and filling out as you go. Identify the changes you want to make and build out the blueprint to make those things a reality
Nested in 3 is to make it relatable.
Content bricks that build a story.
Boring is the default—fight it
What ideas are not boring and worth trying?
Ones that scare you to do. You should be worried about creating and releasing it, either because you think it’ll bomb or you’re worried about people’s reactions.
Stand out.
Be weird.
via the DemandCurve newsletter
Building on this post, I like the point made at the end of the episode.
The experiences are different because Sam’s Club zagged to Costco’s zig.
It makes sense to not replicate what your chief competitor is doing but offer something different and distinct because you’ll appeal to a different segment of consumers.
Find value for your consumers that’s not just being the cheapest product available, because you’re never going to win that race
Give consumers are compelling reason to shop at your store and trust your brand