New Experiment: Marketing BS Links Aug 4, 2020
Top links for "Third Way CMOs"
As discussed in the preamble to the weekly Marketing BS essay, I am testing a new idea this week. The Marketing BS readership is very wide, but my focus has always been on helping “Third Way CMOs” think about being better at their mission. When you are a practicing CMO, your time is very constrained. As much as you might love to, you don’t have time to read the WSJ, Economist, NYTs, WaPo, The Information, Stratechery, MarketingWeek, AdAge, Marketing Brew, Inside Marketing, Financial Times, Benedict Evans, MarginalRevolution, and the latest paid newsletter on Substack — let alone try and figure out what the news REALLY means, given the amount of BS out there. So this is the new experiment.
Since I am no longer a CMO, I DO spend time reading all those publications (and more). I am going to start including a second email on Tuesday mornings. This email will include links to the stuff I think a Third Way CMO should know about from the previous week, as well a very small amount of commentary on why it really matters. I would love your feedback on whether this reading list is useful.
Links for Aug 4, 2020:
NEWS:
TikTok and Microsoft: Big news this weekend was the almost simultaneous announcements that Trump was proposing a TikTok ban and Microsoft was negotiating an acquisition. Everyone is covering this, so you don’t need a link from me, but Ben Thompson’s take on Stratechery is very good ($).
Facebook: NorthFace (as well as Puma, Vans, Heineken and others) are ending their Facebook boycott. Facebook’s revenue looked pretty unaffected by the whole thing (WSJ$).
Adobe: Political ads are often more trouble than they are worth for ad platforms. Adobe is also cutting out political ads leading up to the election (WSJ$).
Advertising and Marketing:
Nike: My favorite ad in years is this masterpiece by Nike. You don’t even need to turn on the sound
Brand Extension: Coke is moving into alcohol (for the second time — they divested a wine business in the 1980s). It is a brand extension on their Topo Chico sparkling water. I have argued for years there is an opportunity for a sports drink with alcohol (rehydrate as you dehydrate), and Coke owns Powerade….
SEO: Rand Fishkin (founder/former CEO MOZ/Founder & CEO SparkTuro) dove into historical Google emails that were made public last week and summarized the SEO findings. Tl;dr — You can’t trust what Google says about what impacts search rankings (don’t trust them for paid search either!)
Tabs: Speaking of Google lying - Searchpilot A/B tested taking content out of tabs, and it turns out it helps your SEP (Google says it doesn't make a difference). This has real implications for site design.
Amazon: Amazon is becoming more and more significant in digital advertising (FT$).
Tech and Marketplaces:
narrowSCALE: narrowSCALE is a website I have been helping out recently. They have a directory of over 3000 newsletters. The site is new, but they have some cool things in the works. Right now it is a searchable directory with the ability to write reviews. I helped them create some AI-generated reviews. Take a look. And I would definitely appreciate a review of Marketing BS! You can do that here. (I will promote this in a more prominent spot in the future, but let’s see how many reviews I get from this buried link.)
New York Times: Great analysis on how the NYTs is becoming a monopoly, and how other media outlets have a shot at being able to compete. There are some new ideas here (at least for me). I love the idea of a hub-and-spoke model with WaPo as the center.
Research: People are pretty divided on how they feel about using AI-driven voice technology at retail.
Politics and Regulation
Amazon: Part of the inspiration for today’s newsletter came from this piece by Matt Levine at Bloomberg. My favorite quote from the piece: “I just like to imagine that Amazon’s story is completely true, and the Alexa Fund people work diligently and independently to find the best startups, acquire stakes in them, and help them grow, and then every time Amazon crushes the startups and the fund loses money, and the Alexa Fund people have terrible performance and are like “man I can’t believe our bad luck.” It is hard, when you are a venture capitalist investing in small companies in the voice-technology space, to compete with Amazon; there is a constant risk that Amazon will come in and kill the companies in your portfolio. It’s awkward when you work at Amazon too!” (Bloomberg)
Anti-Trust Files: Benedict Evans, former partner at a16z, went through all the files from the congressional antitrust hearing to create a digest of some of the more interesting ones (along with highlights). Read about the emails leading up to the YouTube acquisition, text messages scheduling meals while Mark was wooing the founders of Instagram, and more. Super interesting behind-the-scenes stuff you generally don't get to hear.
Lobbying: As regulation comes at the tech sector, the tech sector is fighting back. Lobbying by the by FAGA is up more than 5x in the last ten years
Political Advertising: Trump TV advertising has been paused while the campaign looks for a new message (WSJ$)
Ongoing Interests:
Good Enough: Collaborative Fund on “Good things taken too far” (including antibiotics, contrarianism, open-mindedness and optimism).
Good Enough 2 — Life Satisfaction: Cool study: If you are low on “life satisfaction” you earn less than someone who is “moderately satisfied”, but if you become “too satisfied” your earning dip again. There is something here connected to the studies that show meditation actually reduces employee productivity. Don’t get complacent.
COVID: What businesses are going to re-bound coming out of COVID and which are "new low normal”. We are still in early days and it is mostly speculation, but two datapoints: (1) American Airlines CEO says 1/3rd to 1/2 of business travel "won't come back" (WSJ$), (2) Luxury fashion sales are not seeing any sort of rebound even as stores re-open
GPT-3:
Marketing Consultant: I published a few more examples of using AI Dungeon to create marketing consultant simulations. If you enjoy AI-marketing humor as much as I do, check out “Water Bottles for Runners” and “Golf Balls for Children”.
Writer’s Block: Shortly is an app to write short fiction. It added a "writer's block” button that will continue the story with GPT-3
Humans vs AI: VWO is launching an A/B tested copywriting competition between humans and GPT-3.
Website Builder: Take a URL and a description and Figma will make you a website.
Styles: This tool will re-write content in a different style (“Shakespearian”, “Technical Manual”, “Legalese”, “Edgar Allen Poe”).
Meme Creator: Maybe the perfect use case.
Calorie Counter: A calorie counter app linked to Siri - just say what you ate and it will calculate and record the calories. I continue to believe that GPT-3 is going to be a game-changer over the next decade. In ten years we may remember 2020 more as the year text prediction was commercialized than as the year of the pandemic….
Famous people: Paaras Chopra asks famous people questions about their expertise and GPT-3 impersonates them with answers
More!: Julie (a reader) sent a few more write ups. Tempering Expectations and Typology of Hype
Fun:
Jeff Bezos: All four CEOs gave statements before the antitrust committee began. If you have not read Jeff Bezos’ statement yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. His performance at the hearing may not have been the best (Zuckerberg likely wins on that count), but this statement is incredibly powerful.
Thing to watch: My second favorite sports video of the week: A 7-minute compilation of incredible (“smartest”) sports plays
Thing to watch 2: I launched a Youtube channel for my 5-year old where she reviews children’s books as she reads them (she recently learned to read, and this is to help her remember what she reads. Adults should do something like this too. If you don’t have a system yet, I recommend Roam)
Career Opportunities:
One of the larger online technology education providers (PE-backed) is looking for a Chief Sales Officer. The company is primarily focused on enterprise sales and the CSO will own both sales and marketing. Geography is flexible.
Keep it simple, and reply to this email to let me know what you think of this new format,
Edward