Social media is a discovery > demand creation channel. In a fragmented QVC / infomercial kind of way.
It’s about educating people on your product / service, sharing what other people say about it, and building your community.
To turn social discovery into sales, marketers should focus on authentic, useful content—think creator reviews, demos, and clear product info. Pair that with well-timed discounts and engaging video formats to nudge shoppers from interest to action.
Post the content that builds the reputation you want to have.
via EMARKETER
Good marketing happens when the narrative a brand tells about itself aligns with the narrative customer is telling themselves.
Typically this occurs in the realm of identity, but local / locally rooted businesses cultivate a sense of ownership and pride amongst the locals. Meaning local conditions impact narrative overlap.
This is a perfect illustration.
Rodney Brooks predicts a potential future for genAI
LLMs that can explain which data led to what outputs will be key to non annoying/dangerous/stupid deployments. They will be surrounded by lots of mechanism to keep them boxed in, and those mechanisms, not yet invented for most applications, will be where the arms races occur.
This seems the sensible requirement for truly broad adoption and use across industries and situations.
The current ecosystem is more accelerator than substitute.
It’s not always our expectation of success that’s proven wrong, it’s our expectation of timeframe that’s usually the problem.
Deployment at scale takes so much longer than anyone ever imagines. If you see someone with a new technology that is a barely working lab demo with six PhD students baby-sitting it behind the scenes, and the they say it is going to change the world in two years, just laugh.
Promising results on a miraculous timeframe is setting yourself up for uncomfy convos later.
via Rodney Brooks
About that pull forward induced analysis trap…
From The Fed:
Import growth was strong relative to its fourth-quarter pace, consistent with reports that some U.S. importers were stocking up ahead of prospective tariff increases.