It matters what they think.

Once you put something out there—a brand, a campaign, a product—you no longer control it (hear that, JK Rowling?). It now belongs to the audience. An act of co-creation has begun.

And if you have to clarify what you meant in an attempt to reframe what people think, than your launch was a dud.

A great (and fictional) example is from the sci-fi podcast Ad Lucem. I'm going to try to do this without any spoilers. Here goes.

On the eve of a new product launch, a stakeholder in the company gets caught in a bad situation. Once that reflects poorly on the company and its product.

The founder/inventor wants to push ahead with the launch and she's arguing with a trusted employee of the company. He advocates for pushing back the launch because the messaging will play right into the controversy. She starts saying what the product is "meant" to do and he interrupts with:

It doesn't matter. It's what people think.

To which she responds:

I won't let them.

That's a futile argument.

You only control your side of the interaction. And you only get one chance to start it.

Everything after that is a dance.

This all makes a hell of a lot more sense in context, so if you don't mind spoilers jump ahead to about 18:35.

Now for something completely different.

Why Marketers Should Engage with Sci-Fi

I believe marketers do a better job if they are aware of the context their work is operating within.

We don't push campaigns out into a vacuum.

We tell stories to very human people that have a whole host of concerns beyond whether or not our newest product looks cool enough to 'gram.

We also have to think longer term than just the end of this next promo (or at least we should). Enter, sci-fi:

Sci-fi may not successfully predict the future (arguably, it is always about the present), but it can sure instigate thought experiments in advance of the future’s eventual — and in the case of Drake Prime, mundane if worrisome — arrival.

-Mark Weidenbaum

In general, fiction (and poetry) can be a great window into humanity and society. Along with a nice little brain break from all your marketing content consumption.

On-demand audio (paid streaming, podcasts, owned music, etc.) officially has more share of ear than linear (radio over the air, radio streams, Pandora’s free radio service, satellite radio, etc.).

Just another sign that mass culture is dead.

Further cementing the primacy of sports and other live events as the only remaining cultural moments where a critical mass of people are tuned into the same thing at the same time.

This is not a situation where on-demand will grow forever and someday linear will go to zero. Some people prefer linear listening, and even those who mostly prefer on-demand consume at least some linear content. But it is about as safe a bet as one can make that the trendlines in the graph above will continue well out into the future.

The retail reckoning could be coming.

With student loan payments returning this fall, retailers have told investors that sales are likely to face headwinds in the coming months as Americans put more money into chipping away at their combined $1.75 trillion of educational debt.

On the flip side:

Bloomberg columnist Leticia Miranda posited that consumers aren’t necessarily pinched, they’re just bored with material goods.

Either way, you know retailers are wishing these weren’t resuming until after the holiday shopping and return season.

Older Adults Make Up Just 4% Of People Featured In Ads

That age group [60+] represents 16% of the U.S. population alone.

The 60-plus demographic has a higher disposable income than younger generations, and represents 25% of global spending power, yet only 3% of digital media budgets are allocated to ads featuring this audience

Our culture is youth obsessed, but that doesn’t mean your marketing should be.

Speak to your customer—whether their situation or their aspiration—in the language (including visuals) they use.

Part of why I think podcast ads are highly underutilized currently.

Nearly 90% of comedy podcast listeners have a parasocial relationship with their hosts

The team over at Conversion Rate Experts published a list of 11 effective strategies for selling commodities. Here are the ones I like the most:

• Create a unique offer so it can’t be compared with competitors.
• Market your product for a particular audience niche.
• Give reasons why customers shouldn’t shop just on price. (Or, as I might say, tell your story!)
• Reframe your commodity as a solution. (story!)
• Be top of mind when it matters.

Yesterday was about making sure you had a hateable brand, but it's not truly that extreme. You just need to be clear about who you're for.

Or, who you aren't for.

From Corey at Swipe Files:

Illustrating who it's not for creates scarcity, exclusivity, and FOMO.

Or, as Hamilton says:

If you stand for nothing, what’ll you fall for?

Talk to a specific audience. Make it blatant.

Bonus points if you can make it fun.

...

Guess I need to schedule something with a doctor...

The 90s / early 00s are the trend du jour, which is fine. But I take issue with this:

the current craze around everything ’90s and early aughts, a trend that reflects how Gen Z has matured into young adults now pining for their childhoods.

The most specific birthdate range I’ve found for Gen Z is 1997–2012. That means at least 1/2 of Gen Z wasn’t even alive for the period fueling this craze!

I get that nostalgia is fueled by the period prior to the one that shaped you (like the 80s & millennials), but this is some mix of “Gen Z” becoming the new synonym for “youths” and clickbait.

College dorms are big business.

college students are expected to spend $20B more than last year, reaching around $94B

Back-to-college spending has near doubled since 2019 & consumers are projected to spend an avg of $1,366.95 / person

This extends beyond dorm decorating:

you just want to either match or beat what you’ve seen in the past. It just ups the expectation these students have of their spaces. … This concept of aspirational lifestyle and making it actually attainable is something that Dormify embodies and helps them create.

That’s human behavior & branding 101

3 things all brands should keep in mind:

• Don’t mistake interest for trust.

• If you promise to deliver a certain product, deliver it.

• It’s about making people feel heard and supported.

The importance of building consumer trust

And my inflation-fighting interest rate concerns might be materializing:

more worrying is defaults spiking to levels similar to 2008, given the US economy is doing pretty well in other areas, e.g. with unemployment sitting at historic lows.

Cars And Big Houses Are Becoming Unbuyable

Just a reminder that placements through things like audience networks are usually garbage.

GroupM is removing MFAs* from its inclusion lists

*made-for-advertising sites

If you use them, be aware of your optimization. Incentives matter.

Let's start with an aside, the Sounds Profitable podcast is a great listen for concepts communicated clearly in a short period of time.

Making a Podcast People Hate – Sounds Profitable

Tom Webster shows off data from the upcoming study The Podcast Landscape in America and discusses the power of focusing a podcast to a specific audience over generic broad-reaching topics.

Know the Author

A survey of listeners and non-listeners found that The Joe Rogan Experience is the #1 podcast, which isn't surprising—16% of respondents had it in their Top 3.

But what does that % mean? Here's a fun nugget:

They are not small numbers – they reflect a percentage of all the people who have ever listened to a podcast, and even at 1% they would exceed the audience of most non-football TV shows.

 Are you running podcast ads yet?

More important to being hateable, the #2 podcast clocked in at 3%. That's a big gap.

So how does Joe do it? He's hateable. Or...

because Rogan is crystal clear about attracting a very specific audience, even at the exclusion of others.

He "super-serves a core audience."

He knows his core. He caters to it. He doesn't care about you if you're not in it.

Or, as Ian Schrager (another controversial dude) puts it:

“one plus one equals three.” You build something most people will hate, but a few people love – and love enough to tell their friends about.

Or how about Kurt Vonnegut:

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

After all, brands are stories.

Take a stand. Plant a flag. Draw a line.

Be willing to turn people off from the beginning (it will save you money in the long run).

Name brands—the ones you probably think of when you dream of what your brand could be—are aspiration engines. A rallying cry for fans and a lightning rod for haters. They have loyal fans because they're willing to have the haters.

Don't build a brand for everyone. Build a brand for only those that care as much about your thing as you. Make yourself hateable to those that don't.

🔥 Some will walk through fire for you. Some will light your product on fire. 🔥

Here's an extreme example:

TikTok continues its everything app approach to expansion by testing the music-streaming waters.

It’s a natural extension for a platform already seen as an entertainment hub (and core to launching hits these days).

The end of the free money train is going to make watching the growth strategies of Silicon Valley vs. Chinese companies vs. privacy-first upstarts vs. fediverse players even more interesting.

The labor illusion makes us value more highly something that takes more effort.

Why do you have to crack an egg to make cake from a box? Marketing.

Nudge podcast: Does subliminal advertising work?

Turns out the last 12 months wasn’t too bad for agencies, with at least half of those surveyed reported revenue gains and many increasing staffing.

Confidence remains for the coming 12 as well, though staffing optimism is low.

This should be a good sign for economic health moving forward.

A good reminder that LLMs are snapshots of human knowledge and expression as filtered through the internet over the span of just a few years. They aren’t oracles or infallible libraries of all knowledge.

More (Amazon) ads in more places.

Amazon Sponsored Product ads will now appear on Pinterest, Buzzfeed, and more

The more looks like some publishers.

Retail media is crushing right now (just ask eBay) & Amazon is top of the heap. Good way for struggling ad platforms to bring in some more revenue.