Finished reading: How to Say No by Diogenes 📚

Why “Curious Marketers Club”?

In the words of James Clear:

There are many recipes for success. There is no single way to win. But nearly all recipes include two ingredients: curiosity and drive.

Yup

JPMorgan’s pivot to advertising means all companies are adtechs now

The crumbling of cookies has shifted value from third-party cookies to first-party cookies.

Which means anyone who has customer data can now create an ad platform.

&, as we’ve seen repeatedly lately, ads are where large scale revenue growth happens these days.

via Financial Times

YouTube is big enough that it’s its own category when it comes to how people watch videos

via eMarketer

The power of influencers continues to grow, but their status as a marketing channel has been recognized and accepted:

“authenticity” as a valued trait in influencers may be on the way out. Only 35% of Gen Z consumers said they cared most about authenticity from influencers, while 47% said they cared about follower count.

Traditional cool may be back in vogue for 2024, and what’s more traditionally cool than popularity?

via Marketing Dive

About that TikTok ban

The Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would restrict the video app TikTok, a historic development in government regulation of social media that’s on track to quickly become law.
…
It received overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress: The Senate passed the package 79-18 and the House approved the TikTok portion of the bill 360-58. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law Wednesday.

Far from the end of this saga, but this is as real as a ban has seemed so far.

via USA Today

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.