#39 – On American Angst, Useful Alphabets, and Omnipresent AIs
Hello.
Happy weekend. Looking at today’s news, there seems to be lots to be afraid of. Of what exactly people are afraid is the topic of the first of our links this week. After that, we’re getting a bit more professional and practical, with a look at take down of hot takes, two separate strategy alphabets, evidence that reach beats conversion, and a view that AI isn’t the future but the very lively present.
Enjoy the read – and please share this newsletter with anyone who you think could do with a dose of inspiration.
This week’s Six Links of Inspiration:
What Are We So Afraid Of? Americans are most afraid of government corruption. But they probably can’t agree on what constitutes corruption. “I’ve always found that fears stem from uncertainty. That can take many forms. Think about a person walking down the street and seeing another person. What they’re thinking is: Who is that person, what do they want, are they dangerous? […] When people are uncertain, we see their fears rise in all perspectives, not just fear of government.” Considering the amount of change people often talk about, the types of fears us humans (or at least them Americans) have seem surprisingly (comfortingly?) stable: “Economic or financial collapse; Russia using nuclear weapons; the United States becoming involved in another world war; people I love becoming seriously ill; people I love dying; pollution from drinking water; biological warfare; cyberterrorism; and not having enough money in the future. What this list looks like to me is how this list always looks: always some things related to current events, like what’s going on with Ukraine. Government corruption is always at the top of the list. Then you have these perennials, like people I love dying or becoming seriously ill. So some current events, and then it’s about death, illness and money.” What a fear researcher is most afraid of for the world: “Information tunneling and information silos. Algorithms. This is not a conservative or liberal or progressive type of thing; it’s happening to everyone. […] Every day, all we’re seeing is a broadcast that’s designed to tap into our fears.”
The Season of the Professional Misunderstanding. A great piece by Tom Morton, former CSO at RGA. What starts as a take down of hot takes is really a call for more nuanced and informed perspectives on our profession. It’s an immensely useful read for everyone in marketing. He talks about how there are different parts of marketing that require different models (beware the ideology!), suggests people should be a student of the game (why fact check?), stay close to the end goal and end user (beware the ivory tower), create a dialogue between brand builders and digital marketers (learn diplomacy), demands we get empirical (check the evidence), and play more banjo (uhm…). A must-read.
If you want conversions choose reach. Always a good source for previously mentioned evidence is Dr. Grace Kite. In a recent post she shared research by Rikard Wiberg that shows that “when choosing your objective for advertising on Meta, choosing reach delivers 50% more incremental sales than spending the same money on a conversions objective. It’s because choosing a conversion objective doesn’t mean your advertising is going to work better at converting people. It means that the algorithm is going to go and find people who are more likely to convert.” Ah, actionable, profitable evidence.
A is for…Audience. This is a delightfully written explainer of the media planning craft by Matt Prentis. I originally stumbled over Q is for…Quality – but am since reading my way through the alphabet. It doesn’t just come with simple explanations, it’s also packed with some useful examples and ways to apply the theory. So head over to Matt’s newsletter and get stuck in.
The APG A-Z. Talking of A-Z’s, here is another one that sounds like an alphabet well worth your time (and maybe money?) Together with the APG, Charlie Snow has compiled a go-at-your-own-pace online course comprising of 26 video lessons “designed to give you all the basics for a proper understanding of the practice of planning and strategy.” If you’re not like Charlie’s friend and aren’t sick yet of saying the word brand, you can watch the video for the letter B on the APG website above. It starts with a definition (“Brands are mental associative networks”) and works through a simple model (a pyramid) and drops you at the top – the brand platform – leaving you with a good/better understanding of what to work towards.
Generative AI isn’t marketing’s future, it’s already part of its present. Tom Roach has written a piece on AI that, for a welcoming change, is not a “hyperbole, no future-gazing, no anxiety-inducing ‘you’re falling behind if you’re not using these 1,000 GenAI tools right now’ Twitter hustle; just a few practical examples of it in use now across marketing and brand strategy, media, creative, production and measurement to give a personal perspective on the state of the nation.“ I’m particularly interested in the “one start-up [he] spoke to last week [that] uses large panels of synthetic consumers to generate market research, brand health reports, segmentation studies, pricing and category entry-point analysis.” This sounds like a game changer in so many ways for understaffed strategy departments. Who has the inside scoop on the name?
This is all for now. If you enjoyed the above, please subscribe or share this with your friends, or leave me a comment.
Read you next week,
Maximilian