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Apple released software updates on Thursday to address two zero-day vulnerabilities that researchers said were used to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to at least one victim.
Tom Asacker on Brand
An excellent synopsis of what branding can be.
branding as a continuous, progressive process.
One that answers some very simple questions.
Who.
Who informs everything you’ll do.
Your perspective and intention.
Your look, feel, thoughts and behaviors.
Your vision of the future.
Who is your karma.
Because who you choose to focus on, will ultimately define who you become.
What.
What is your laser focus.
Your passion.
Your unique point of view and expertise.
It’s your daring, meaningful and believable value proposition.
The one that attracts your who.
What is your why.
It gets you up in the morning.
How.
How communicates your what, your passionate point of view.
How is the motivating language, stories and experiences you create and share.
How is your art and your voice.
It sets you apart from others who say they do what you do.
Successful branding is simple.
Who, what and how.
Yes, it requires nuance, subtlety and focus.
But it’s simple nonetheless.
What’s hard is the discipline and unwavering belief necessary to pull it off.
Pinterest’s new computer vision-powered body type technology to make search more inclusive
Search and AI (at least for consumer apps) are features now, no longer platforms to build moats around.
It won’t be “one tool to rule them all” but specialized tools for different use cases.
The post-cookie Chrome is just about ready, which means the officially death of third-party cookies is imminent.
Of course, many of Google’s planned replacements are still a bit controversial, so this should be fun for marketers.
A great listen for illustrating marketing via celebrities.
There are concepts for everything, and I think it is important in any industry to go beyond those fixed concepts. The major companies often don’t want to go there, so I think that’s our role at Kitan Club.
-Daiki Furuya
The Procurement Spectrum
This episode of The Knowledge Project podcast with Ray Flemings starts off with a hell of a story that transitions into an excellent overview of the procurement difficulty spectrum.
The easiest way to think about what we do is this five-step spectrum, where to the left, things are simple, and to the right, they’re difficult to impossible, so one, two, three, four, five. On the left, anything that you can purchase on a web browser. You want to rent a home to stay in when you go to LA. Well, there’s Airbnb for that. You want to buy a ticket to Coachella, go to Coachella dot com; you’ve got a VIP pass. Number two is hard. These are things where maybe they’re available online, but they’re still difficult for you to get your hands on. So these would be things like booking a private jet. You can book a private jet online, but it’s so confusing and so much brain damage from a booking. Most people use a broker or a travel person to do it. Number three, we call “off market.” So these are things that sellers want to sell, but they never list or make [them] available on a website—artist credentials to go see your favorite band and all sorts of other things that are never on public sale. Category four would be stuff that’s hard—walking on the red carpet at the Met Gala or being on stage with your favorite artist, et cetera, et cetera. Then the fifth category [has] the impossible requests, like the ventilator chase or all of these other sorts of wild and interesting things that we get called on to do.
It's useful to think about where your product, service, or experience falls on this spectrum.
Along with where your customers (and aspirational customers and those your customers aspire to be like) fall along this spectrum.
You may be an ecommerce store with a low-friction checkout, but your customers may be operating at level 4. How do you create a brand story and experience that lends a level 4 (or 5) sheen to your level 1 procurability?
It doesn't matter what your really are, it matters what they think you are.
Marketing Against The Grain on Sales vs. Marketing
Wrapping up the sales vs. marketing roadshow with one final podcast (maybe (for now)). This time it's Marketing Against The Grain. The spicy take from the show is above, but let's look at what else they got into.
Here are the quick hits:
- AI is a platform shift
- Software gets easier to create and therefore commoditized
- Marketing matters (see: Liquid Death)
- Marketers are creators, creators disrupt brand
- All creators are marketing first
- Marketing will take over more of the customer journey / experience (powered by AI)
- The marketers are the automators
Let's pull a few quotes (or paraphrases) to dive deeper on some of those bullet points.
About AI:
AI will lead to the ecommercization of most businesses.
The distinction between B2B and B2C will blur and disappear. It's about B2P now: Business to Purchaser.
About commodotization:
As commoditization increases (accelerated by AI), marketing becomes more important.
You differentiate on brand, message, and value messaging instead of core product.
Marketing will take over more of the customer experience.
On the creators bit:
The creator playbook is the future of marketing (they don’t have the same concerns as a public business and can have a schtick).
And, oh yeah, sales and marketing are the same thing:
The marketer doesn’t need to stop at ‘oh, I hand over the lead to sales.’ They can automate the sales outreach. Marketer goes all the way up now to transaction. But they don’t need to stop there. A lot of the support function* can be automated.
But how does this impact the org chart?
Marketing is owning all the one-to-many work. The other teams own specialized, human-work processes.
One functional group leads the one-to-many experiences. One group leads the one-to-one.
It's not sales or marketing. It's sales and marketing.
Consumers don't get to a point in their journey and have to make a choose-your-own-adventure decision between the two. Their journey should be seamless. Structure your processes accordingly.
* Everything is customer service. Starting with this core belief creates the best marketing.
The B2B B2C divide is dead.
It is now B2P: Business to Purchaser.
Another day, another holiday shopping survey
- 38% of Americans plan to start their shopping before Halloween
- 44% before Thanksgiving
- 81% will use reward apps and coupons
- 73% have noticed price increases on target items
What can marketers learn from the Burning Man floods?
Public perception doesn’t matter (to an extent).
Dedicated consumers will keep coming back if you service them, not the masses.
Consumer perception does.
Focus on your consumer’s perception and you’ll actually move the line.
Don't Say Content on Sales vs. Marketing
I thought I was going to be done talking about sales vs. marketing last week, but podcasts keep dropping about the same topic. Better yet, they're agreeing with me! (They don't know this, of course, but let's pretend I'm a #influencer.)
First up, Don't Say Content. (YouTube link)
They talk about past experiences with the sales vs. marketing divide and where they think the issues lie. Of more interest, they share some great nuggets to get the two teams working together. Remember: same goal, different path.
Let's start with an ask for marketing people everywhere:
Marketing, give salespeople carrots that they can use in their sales process (and I guarantee you it’s not a white paper)
Next, a grail goal for marketing teams:
The meat for me is in the second half, paraphrased bits below.
Marketing is harder than sales. In sales, you get to talk to one person and understand their situation and tailor the pitch to them. Marketing is doing that at scale, trying to resonate with more than one person with a message that doesn’t get diluted to nothingness.
Marketing’s job is to abstract a little bit,
The sales team’s job is to identify which problems apply to that company and in what ways.
Sales gets super specific, where marketing is more like a diagnosis.
How sales and marketing teams can work together to win:
Kyle Mensing
According to Google, the Cyber 5 shopping period is now Cyber 12.
Google Discovery Campaigns are becoming Demand Gen (Discovery + YouTube Shorts) starting in October:
Starting October through November 2023, your Discovery campaigns will be automatically upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns. Your Discovery campaign settings, budget, and historical performance statistics will automatically transfer to Demand Gen with identical or comparable functionality. You’ll receive a notification in your Google Ads account when your campaigns have been upgraded.
What you should also do if you’re a brand doing influencers, is run Google Ads. Because people will look at an influencers post, they won’t buy, and they will Google you. And you better be the top search result there so they click the Google ad and purchase.
I would say this applies to all forms of paid social efforts. Advertising is an ecosystem, not a silo.
A good question to ask on a regular basis:
Are you here for your customers, to give them what they seek, or are you trying to do something to your customers, to squeeze out extra income?
Everything is customer service.
The era of the Western is here (again).
Expectations are the genre will “make a roaring return in entertainment and potentially usurp the superhero as this decade’s defining storytelling genre.”
If all brands and marketing are stories, how can you craft yours as a Western? Or at least compatible with a Western?
How can this story amplify “‘the idea you can live a more authentic, exciting, and rugged life.’”
Insight from Jack White
When you put something out into the world, the bigger it gets, the less control you have of it.
Your intentions and interpretations become less important over time. And the resonance and reverence amongst fans and the public becomes more important.
The meaning of your brand becomes a conversation, not a monologue.
According to behavior science, to boost believability, trustworthiness, and memorability, use:
- rhymes
- alliteration
- simpler words (also makes people think you’re more intelligent)
- humor
To sum up: aim to be clever, not smart (?)