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Everyone’s coming for Meta 😎

Solos challenges Meta’s Ray-Bans with $299 ChatGPT smart glasses

That allows the AirGo Vision to do things like translate text into different languages, provide directions to nearby locations or landmarks, and give the wearer more information about what they’re looking at.

A swappable frame system means that you can wear the glasses with or without the camera

To paraphrase Ian Fleming: Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a trend.

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4 tactics from CMOs on maintaining a healthy marketing funnel in tough times

  • Bottom funnel traffic started as top-of-funnel, don’t cut your discovery efforts.

Those upper-funnel ads are necessary for lower-funnel ads in places like search to work.

  • Make sure any low-cost and no-cost avenues are fully optimized

  • Measure on the right time frame

  • Be proactive talking with leadership

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As the name of this blog might suggest, I’m big on curiosity.

“It’s lo-fi chill electronic music” is the aisle where you find things at Home Depot. “It makes you nostalgic for something that didn’t happen” makes you curious.

invoking something people wish they had, wish they had back, or wish they knew. It exposes a gulf that an audience would agree exists between what they know or feel now, and what they would like to know or feel. It is specific, not general. It is a gap they have to fill
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Advertising accounted for 9% of Amazon’s revenue in Q3 (up 19% from Q2). That’s compared to 40% of revenue from their online store.

It accounts for 12% of Walmart’s profits.

Everything is an ad platform now.

Because…

Retail profit margins tend to be slim – in the 3% to 4% range. The margin on ad sales is usually 70% to 90%

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Your creative is more important than your targeting. 

Don’t leave the ad content as an afterthought. 

Your ad creative is more important than your ad targeting. 

You’ve got to grab attention. Spend at least as much time on your creative strategy as your targeting strategy. 

Creative is the new targeting.

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From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent

Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.

Per CNBC, gains are due to:

the effects of a significant labor strike and violent storms in the Southeast receded

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The simplest law of pricing

The price paid will always be less than the value it creates for the purchaser. And the price is never more than the amount the purchaser can exchange.
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A good economic rebuttal to some of the requested punishments in the Google anti-trust case.

Defaults matter, but switching also isn’t hard.

Also, it’s a bit late, isn’t it?

the antitrust case is happening when Google is losing advertising share and is under pressure from a new search technology, Artificial Intelligence. AI search from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Llama, and xAI is very well funded and making rapid progress.

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“But, our server is FIVE times slower. There is no silver bullet that is going to fix that. We’re going to have to use a lot of ‘lead bullets.’”

they had to build a better product. No silver bullets, only lead bullets.

Silver bullets are flashy and exciting and fun. And probably just distractions.

Lipstick on a pig, as it were.

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‘Immediately recognizable’ is the key. What do you have that is?

As for rockstars, so for brands (because they’re basically the same).

Bonus points if what’s immediately recognizable about your brand is not specific to your industry or product.