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.

Some good news buried in all the tariff whiplash

The CPI dropped 0.1% in March (gas dropped 6.3%)

All items less food and energy is the lowest it’s been since 2021

The Fed’s not celebrating though

From the recent meeting:

participants remarked that uncertainty about the net effect of an array of government policies on the economic outlook was high, making it appropriate to take a cautious approach. Emphasizing that uncertainty, a majority of participants noted the potential for inflationary effects arising from various factors to be more persistent than they projected.

My own personal Siri?

Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers’ devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform

The goal is to check how well the synthetic training data did while preserving privacy.

But this could be the foundation for AI models that become personalized to each user based on use, patterns, and on-device profiles.

Like ChatGPT remembering your chats, but based on your Apple device usage.

Edge AI—like XR glasses—is nothing but exciting potential right now.

via Bloomberg

The tea leaves are still swirling, but early reads aren’t great, Bob

A February survey of ad executives by trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau found a full 60% of respondents are projecting as much as a 10% reduction in ad budgets this year.

a recession could cause $45 billion in lost advertising, with promoters shifting from traditional television spots toward direct response channels.

The math is simple. Tariffs = higher prices = less budget for non-purchasing activities (like marketing or discretionary spending)

Related to yesterday’s post

via The Daily Upside

There’s a potential analysis trap brewing as businesses see decent sales / revenue performance to start the year.

Highly likely this is pull-forward spending as consumers try to beat tariffs.

Embrace the boring stuff.

Internally, people usually want to do the flashy, exciting stuff. But boring keeps the lights on (and typically has a longer shelf life).

Externally, what’s boring to you is interesting to others. Because they aren’t in it every day like you are. Your boring is the hook.

Maslowvian marketing

“Human beings,” writes [Drew Eric] Whitman, “are biologically programmed with the following eight desires…”

1. Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
2. Enjoyment of food and beverages.
3. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
4. Physical companionship.
5. Comfortable living conditions.
6. To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
7. Care and protection of loved ones.
8. Social approval.

By creating ads that appeal to these things, you are tapping into Mother Nature, harnessing the power of our inborn motivators to compel and sell.

via Very Good Copy

Trust boosts purchase potential. And transparency boosts trust.

I love this example from the Nudge newsletter:

This is especially true in food, but sectors have opportunities.

Peel back an element of your sector people assume the worst about, are suspicious of, or want made clearer.

Buyers are willing to pay more for things sellers are willing to charge less for.

Why?

Because the seller enjoys making it.

From the abstract for the paper Production enjoyment asymmetrically impacts buyers’ willingness to pay and sellers’ willingness to charge:

Buyers are willing to pay a higher price, are more likely to click on ads, and are more likely to choose a product or service when the seller signals that they enjoy producing it.

In contrast, sellers are willing to accept lower prices, and actually charge less, for products and services they enjoy producing.

Both buyers and sellers make the inference that production enjoyment leads to higher quality products/services, but only buyers rely on this inference when forming their pricing judgments relative to sellers.

Pricing is hard. The fulcrum is value.

Consumer sentiment isn’t great, Bob.

According to the Behind the Numbers podcast the animal spirits at play include:

• Expected unemployment growth
• Tariff/economic uncertainty
• Expected inflation (see above)

in particular, people are really concerned about the constant changes and the constant movement of economic policies and consumers are finding it very difficult to deal with this uncertainty. It makes it really difficult to plan.

Humans really don’t like uncertainty.

BeReal
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That’s right, the drop everything and take a pic app snagged themselves a TikTok exec and

announced the launch of its native advertising platform in the United States

The goal is to pull a Snapchat and “focus on positivity”

ad formats are meant to mirror the user experience, according to the brand. Targeted in-feed ads are integrated into the flow of the platform’s content for low-friction engagement, while takeovers offer brands exclusive ad placement for one full day.

Of note in the Marketing Dive post, 40 million monthly active users, heavily Gen Z

So…what is the tariff rate on China now?

I shared 125%, but I’ve also seen 110% and 145%.

Seems like the messaging on this could have been better.