Category Archives: The New Marketplace

Will There Be a Big-Tech Reckoning?

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook must be thanking their lucky stars that Elon Musk is who he is. Musk is taking the brunt of any Anti-Trump backlash and seems to be relishing in it. Heaven only knows what is motivating Musk, but he is casting a smoke screen so wide and dense it’s obliterating the ass-kissing being done by the rest of the high-tech oligarchs.  In addition to Bezos, Zuckerberg and Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai and many other high-tech leaders have been making goo-goo eyes at Donald Trump.

Let’s start with Jeff Bezos. One assumes he is pandering to the president because his companies have government contracts worth billions. That pandering has included a pilgrimage to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, a one million donation to his inauguration fund (which was streamed live on Amazon Prime), and green-lighting a documentary on Melania Trump. The Bezos-owned Washington Post declined from endorsing Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate, prompting some of its editorial staff to resign. At Amazon, the company has backed off some of its climate pledge commitments and started stripping Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs from their HR handbook.

Mark Zuckerberg joined Trump supporting podcaster Joe Rogan for almost three hours to explain how they were realigning Facebook to be more Trump-friendly. This included canning their fact checkers and stopping policing of misinformation. During the interview, Zuckerberg took opportunities to slam media and the outgoing Biden administration for daring to question Facebook about misleading posts about Covid-19 vaccines. Zuckerberg, like Bezos, also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and has rolled back DEI initiatives at Meta.

Tim Cook’s political back-bend had been a little more complicated. On the face of it, Apple’s announcement that it would be investing more than $500 billion in the U.S. and creating thousands of new jobs certainly sounds like a massive kiss to the Trumpian posterior but if you dig through the details, it’s really just putting a new spin on commitments Apple already made to support their development of Apple’s AI. And in many cases, the capital investment isn’t even coming from Apple. For instance, that new A.I. server manufacturing plant in Houston that was part of the announcement? That plant is actually being built by Apple partner Foxconn, not Apple.

As far as the rest of the Big Tech cabal, including Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, their new alignment with Trump is not surprising. Trump is promising to make the U.S. the undisputed leader in A.I. One would also imagine he would be more inclined than the Democrats to look the other way when it comes to things like anti-trust investigations and enforcement. So Big-Tech’s deferment to Trump is both entirely predictable and completely self-serving. I’m also guessing that all of them think they’re smarter than Trump and his administration, providing them a strategic opportunity to play Trump like a fiddle while pursuing their long-term corporate goals free from any governmental oversight or resistance. All evidence to date shows that they’re probably not mistaken in that assumption.

But all this comes at what cost? This could play out one of two ways. First, what happens if these High-Tech Frat Rat’s bets are wrong? There is an anti-Trump, anti-MAGA revolt building. Who knows what will happen, but in politically unprecedented times like this one has to consider every scenario, no matter how outrageous they may seem. One scenario is a significant percentage of Republicans decide their political future (and, hopefully, the future of the US as a democracy also factors into their thinking) is better off without a Donald Trump in it and start the wheels turning to remove him from power. If this is the case, things are going to get really, really nasty. There is going to be recrimination and finger pointing everywhere. And some of those fingers are going to be pointed at the big tech leaders who scrapped the ground bowing to Trump’s bluster and bullying.

Will that translate into a backlash against high-tech? I really am not sure. To date, these companies have been remarkably adept at sluffing off blame. IF MAGA ends up going down in flames, will Big Tech even get singed as they warm their hands at Donald Trump’s own bonfire of his vanities? Will we care about Big Tech’s obsequiousness when it comes time to order something from Amazon or get a new iPhone?

Probably not.  

But the other scenario is even more frightening: Trump stays in power and Big Tech is free to do whatever they hell they want. Based on what you know about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and the rest, are you willing to let them be the sole architects of your future? Their about-face on Trump has shown that they will always, always, always place profitability above their personal ethics.

The World vs Big Tech

Around the world, governments have their legislative cross hairs trained on Big Tech. It’s happening in the US, the EU and here in my country,  Canada. The majority of these are anti-trust suits. But Australia has just introduced a different type of legislation, a social media ban for those under 16. And that could change the game – and the conversation -completely for Big Tech.

There are more anti-trust actions in the queue in the US than at any time in the previous five decades. The fast and loose interpretation of antitrust enforcement in the US is that monopolies are only attacked when they may cause significant harm to customers through lack of competition. The US approach to anti-trust since the 1970s has typically followed the Chicago School of neoclassical economy theory, which places all trust in the efficiency of markets and tells government to keep their damned hands off the economy. Given this and given the pro-business slant of all US administrations, both Republican and Democratic, since Reagan, it’s not surprising that we’ve seen relatively few anti-trust suits in the past 50 years.

But the rapid rise of monolithic Big Tech platforms has raised more discussion about anti-trust in the past decade than in the previous 5 decades. These platforms suck along the industries they spawn in their wake and leave little room for upstart competitors to survive long enough to gain significant market share.

Case in point: Google. 

The recent Canadian lawsuit has the Competition Bureau (our anti-trust watchdog) suing Google for anti-competitive practices selling its online advertising services north of the 49th parallel. They’re asking Google to sell off two of its ad-tech tools, pay penalties worth up to 3% of the platform’s global gross revenues and prohibit the company from engaging in anti-competitive practices in the future.

According to a 3-year inquiry into Google’s Canadian business practices by the Bureau, Google controls 90% of all ad servers and 70% of advertising networks operating in the country. Mind you, Google started the online advertising industry in the relatively green fields of Canada back when I was still railing about the ignorance of Canadian advertisers when it came to digital marketing. No one else really had a chance. But Google made sure they never got one by wrapping its gigantic arms around the industry in an anti-competitive bear hug.

The recent Australian legislation is of a different category, however. Anti-trust suits are – by nature – not personal. They are all about business. But the Australian ban puts Big Tech in the same category as Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Pharma – alleging that they are selling an addictive product that causes physical or emotional harm to individuals. And the rest of the world is closely watching what Australia does. Canada is no exception.

The most pertinent question is how will Australia enforce the band? Restricting social media access to those under 16 is not something to be considered lightly.  It’s a huge technical, legal and logistical hurdle to get over. But if Australia can figure it out, it’s certain that other jurisdictions around the world will follow in their footsteps.

This legislation opens the door to more vigorous public discourse about the impact of social media on our society. Politicians don’t introduce legislation unless they feel that – by doing so – they will continue to get elected. And the key to being elected is one of two things; give the electorate what they want or protect them against what they fear. In Australia, recent polling indicates the ban is supported by 77% of the population. Even those opposing the ban aren’t doing so in defense of social media. They’re worried that the devil might be in the details and that the legislation is being pushed through too quickly.

These types of things tend to follow a similar narrative arc: fads and trends drive widespread adoption – evidence mounts about the negative impacts – industries either ignore or actively sabotage the sources of the evidence – and, with enough critical mass, government finally gets into the act by introducing protective legislation.

With tobacco in the US, that arc took a couple of decades, from the explosion of smoking after World War II to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report linking smoking and cancer. The first warning labels on cigarette packages appeared two years later, in 1966.

We may be on the cusp of a similar movement with social media. And, once again, it’s taken 20 years. Facebook was founded in 2004.

Time will tell. In the meantime, keep an eye on what’s happening Down Under.

The Relationship Between Young(er) People and Capitalism: It’s Complicated

If you, like me, spend any time hanging out with Millennials or Gen Z’s, you’ll know that capitalism is not their favorite thing. That’s fair enough. I have my own qualms with capitalism.

But with capitalism, like most things, it’s not really what you say about it that counts. It’s what you do about it. And for all of us, Millennials and Gen Z included, we can talk all we want, but until we stop buying, nothing is going to change. And – based on a 2019 study from Epsilon – Gen Z and Millennials are outspending Baby Boomers in just about every consumer category.

Say all the nasty stuff you want about capitalism and our consumption obsessed society, but the truth is – buying shit is a hard habit to break

It’s not that hard to trace how attitudes towards capitalism have shifted over the generations that have been born since World War II, at least in North America. For four decades after the war, capitalism was generally thought to be a good thing, if only because it was juxtaposed against the bogeyman of socialism. Success was defined by working hard to get ahead, which led to all good things: buying a house and paying off the mortgage, having two vehicles in the garage and having a kitchen full of gleaming appliances. The capitalist era peaked in the 1980s: during the reign of Ronald Reagan in the US and the UK’s Margaret Thatcher.

But then the cracks of capitalism began to show. We began to realize the Earth wasn’t immune to being relentlessly plundered. We started to see the fabric of society showing wear and tear from being constantly pulled by conspicuous consumerism. With the end of the Cold War, the rhetoric against socialism began to be dialed down. Generations who grew up during this period had – understandably – a more nuanced view towards capitalism.

Our values and ethics are essentially formed during the first two decades of our lives. They come in part from our parents and in part from others in our generational cohort. But a critical factor in forming those values is also the environment we grow up in. And for those growing up since World War II, media has been a big part of that environment. We are – in part – formed by what we see on our various screens and feeds. Prior to 1980, you could generally count on bad guys in media being Communists or Nazis. But somewhere mid-decade, CEOs of large corporations and other Ultra-Capitalists started popping up as the villains.

I remember what the journalist James Fallows once said when I met him at a conference in communist China. I was asking how China managed to maintain the precarious balance between a regime based on Communist ideals and a society that embraced rampant entrepreneurialism. He said that as long as each generation believed that their position tomorrow would be better than it was yesterday, they would keep embracing the systems of today.

I think the same is true for generational attitudes towards capitalism. If we believed it was a road to a better future, we embraced it. But as soon as it looked like it might lead to diminishing returns, attitudes shifted. A recent article in The Washington Post detailed the many, many reasons why Americans under 40 are so disillusioned about capitalism. Most of it relates back to the same reason Fallows gave – they don’t trust that capitalism is the best road to a more promising tomorrow.

And this is where it gets messy with Millennials and Gen Z. If they grew up in the developed world, they grew up in a largely capitalistic society. Pretty much everything they understand about their environment and world has been formed, rightly or wrongly, by capitalism. And that makes it difficult to try to cherry-pick your way through an increasingly problematic relationship with something that is all you’ve ever known.

Let’s take their relationship with consumer brands, for example. Somehow, Millennials and Gen Z have managed the nifty trick of separating branding and capitalism. This is, of course, a convenient illusion. Brands are inextricably tied to capitalism. And Millennials and Gen Z are just as strongly tied to their favorite brands.

 According to a 2018 study from Ipsos, 57% of Millennials in the US always try to buy branded products. In fact, Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomers to say they rely on the brands they trust. This also extends to new brand offerings. A whopping 84% of Millennials are more likely to trust a new product from a brand they already know.

But – you may counter – it all depends on what the brand stands for. If it is a “green” brand that aligns with the values of Gen X and Millennials, then a brand may actually be anti-capitalistic.  

It’s a nice thought, but the Ipsos survey doesn’t support it. Only 12% of Millennials said they would choose a product or service because of a company’s responsible behavior and only 16% would boycott a product based on irresponsible corporate behavior. These numbers are about the same through every generational cohort, including Gen X and Baby Boomers.

I won’t even delve into the thorny subject of “greenwashing” and the massive gap between what a brand says they do in their marketing and what they actually do in the real world. No one has defined what we mean by a “ethical corporation” and until someone does and puts some quantifiable targets around it, companies are free to say whatever they want when it comes to sustainability and ethical behavior.

This same general disconnect between capitalism and marketing extends to advertising. The Ipsos study shows that – across all types of media – Millennials pay more attention to advertising than Baby Boomers and Gen X. And Millennials are also more likely to share their consumer opinions online than Boomers and Gen X. They may not like capitalism and consumerism, but they are still buying lots of stuff and talking about it.

The only power we have to fight the toxic effects of capitalism is with our wallets. Once something becomes unprofitable, it will disappear. But – as every generation is finding out – ethical consumerism is a lot easier said than done.

No News is Not Good News

Kelowna, the city I live in – with a population of about 250,000 – just ran its last locally produced TV news show. That marks the end of a 67-year streak. Our local station, CHBC – first signed on the air on September 21, 1957.

That streak was not without some hiccups. There have been a number of ownership changes. The trend in those transitions was away from local ownership towards huge nation spanning media conglomerates. In 2009, when the station became part of the Global network, the intention was to shut down the local station and run everything out of CHAN, the Vancouver Global operation. We kicked up a Kelowna fuss and convinced Global to at least keep a local news presence in the community. But – as it turned out – that was just buying us some time. 15 years later, the plug was finally pulled.

In that time, my city has also essentially lost its daily newspaper, which is a mere ghost of its former self; an anemic online version and a printed paper which is little more than a wrapper for a bunch of grocery flyers.  The tri weekly paper has suffered a similar fate. Radio stations have gutted their local news teams. The biggest news team in the region works for a local news portal. They are young and eager, but few of them are trained journalists.

CHBC started as an extension of local radio. At the time it was launched, only 500 households in the city had a TV set. Broadcasting was “over the air” and I live in a very mountainous location, so it was impossible to watch TV prior to the station signing on. 

Given that the first TV stations only signed on in Canada in 1952 (CBFT in Montreal and CBLT in Toronto), it’s rather amazing to think that my little town (population 10,000 at the time) had its own station just 5 years later. Part of the rapid roll out of TV in Canada was to prevent cultural colonization from the rapidly expanding American TV industry. Our federal government pushed hard to have Canadian programming available from coast to coast.

For the decades that followed, it was local news that defined communities. Local was granular and immediately relevant in a way networks news couldn’t be. It gave you what you needed to know to knowingly participate in local democracy.

For that alone, CHBC News will be missed here in Kelowna.

This story probably resonates with all of you. The death of local journalism is not unique to my city. I have just learned that I probably will be living in a news desert soon.  The  importance of local news is enshrined in the very definition of a news desert:

“a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”

The death of local news was recently discussed at the Canadian Association of Journalists Annual conference in Toronto. There, April Lindgren, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism and the principal investigator of the Local News Research Project, said this:

“I think one of the things .. people don’t think about in terms of the mechanics of the role of local news in a community is the role that it plays in equipping people to participate in decision-making.”

We need local news. A recent study by Resonate said that Americans trust Local News more than any other source. And not just by a little margin. By a lot. The next closest answer was a full 15 percentage points behind.

But there are two existential problems that are pushing local news to the brink of an extinction event. First of all, most local news outlets were swallowed up into corporate mass media conglomerates over the past 3 or 4 decades. And secondly, the business model for local news has disappeared. Local advertising dollars have migrated to other platforms. So the fate of local news had become a P&L decision.

That’s what it was for CHBC. It’s owned by Corus entertainment. Corus owns the Global Network (15 stations), 39 radio stations, 33 specialty TV channels and a bunch of other media miscellanea.  

Oh, did I mention that Corus is also bleeding cash at a fatal rate? On the heels of an announced $770 Million loss (CDN) it cut 25% of its workforce. That was the death knell for CHBC. It didn’t have a hope in hell.

Local news doesn’t have to die. It just has to find another way to live. Like so much of our media environment, basing survival on advertising revenue is a sure recipe for disaster. That’s why the Local News Research Project is floating ideas like supporting local news with philanthropy. I’m not sure that’s a viable or scalable answer.

I think a better idea might be to move local news to protected species status. If we recognize its importance to democracy, especially at local levels, then perhaps tax dollars should go to ensuring it’s survival.

The scenario of government supported local journalism brings up a philosophical debate that I have ignited in the past, when I talked about public broadcasting. It split my readers along national lines, with those from the US giving a thumbs down to the idea, and those from Australia, New Zealand and Canada receiving it more favorably.

Let’s see what happens this time.

The Adoption of A.I.

Recently, I was talking to a reporter about AI. She was working on a piece about what Apple’s integration of AI into the latest iOS (cleverly named Apple Intelligence) would mean for its adoption by users. Right at the beginning, she asked me this question, “What previous examples of human adoption of tech products or innovations might be able to tell us about how we will fit (or not fit) AI into our daily lives?”

That’s a big question. An existential question, even. Luckily, she gave me some advance warning, so I had a chance to think about it.  Even with the heads up, my answer was still well short of anything resembling helpfulness. It was, “I don’t think we’ve ever dealt with something quite like this. So, we’ll see.”

Incisive? Brilliant? Erudite? No, no and no.

But honest? I believe so.

When we think in terms of technology adoption, it usually falls into two categories: continuous and discontinuous. Continuous innovation simply builds on something we already understand. It’s adoption that follows a straight line, with little risk involved and little effort required. It’s driving a car with a little more horsepower, or getting a smartphone with more storage.

Discontinuous innovation is a different beast. It’s an innovation that displaces what went before it. In terms of user experience, it’s a blank slate, so it requires effort and a tolerance for risk to adopt it. This is the type of innovation that is adopted on a bell curve, first identified by American sociologist Everett Rogers in 1962. The acceptance of these new technologies spreads along a timeline defined by the personalities of the marketplace. Some are the type to try every new gadget, and some hang on to the tried and true for as long as they possibly can. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

As an example, think about going from driving a tradition car to an electric vehicle. The change from one to the other requires some effort. There’s a learning curve involved. There’s also risk. We have no baseline of experience to measure against. Some will be ahead of the curve and adopt early. Some will drive their gas clunker until it falls apart.

Falling into this second category of discontinuous innovation, but different by virtue of both the nature of the new technology and the impact it wields, are a handful of innovations that usher in a completely different paradigm. Think of the introduction of electrical power distribution in the late 19th century, the introduction of computers in the second half of the 20th century, or the spread of the internet in the 21st Century.

Each of these was foundational, in that they sparked an explosion of innovation that wouldn’t have been possible if it were not for the initial innovation. These innovations not only change all the rules, they change the very game itself. And because of that, they impact society at a fundamental level. When these types of innovations come along, your life will change whether you choose to adopt the technology or not. And it’s these types of technological paradigm shifts that are rife with unintended consequences.

If I was trying to find a parallel for what AI means for us, I would look for it amongst these examples. And that presents a problem when we pull out our crystal ball and try to peer ahead at what might be. We can’t know. There’s just too much in flux – too many variables to compute with any accuracy. Perhaps we can project forward a few months or a year at the most, based on what we know today. But trying to peer any further forward is a fool’s game. Could you have anticipated what we would be doing on the Internet in 2024 when the first BBS (Bulletin Board System) was introduced in Chicago in 1978?

A.I. is like these previous examples, but it’s also different in one fundamental way. All these other innovations had humans at the switch. Someone needed to turn on the electrical light, boot up the computer or log on to the internet. At this point, we are still “using” A.I., whether it’s as an add-on in software we’re familiar with, like Adobe Photoshop, or a stand-alone app like ChatGPT, but generative A.I.’s real potential can only be discovered when it slips from the grasp of human control and starts working on its own, hidden under some algorithmic hood, safe from our meddling human hands.

We’ve never dealt with anything like this before. So, like I said, we’ll see.

You Know What Government Agencies Need? Some AI

A few items on my recent to-do list  have necessitated dealing with multiple levels of governmental bureaucracy: regional, provincial (this being in Canada) and federal. All three experiences were, without exception, a complete pain in the ass. So, having spent a good part of my life advising companies on how to improve their customer experience, the question that kept bubbling up in my brain was, “Why the hell is dealing with government such a horrendous experience?”

Anecdotally, I know everyone I know feels the same way. But what about everyone I don’t know? Do they also feel that the experience of dealing with a government agency is on par with having a root canal or colonoscopy?

According to a survey conducted last year by the research firm Qualtrics XM, the answer appears to be yes. This report paints a pretty grim picture. Satisfaction with government services ranked dead last when compared to private sector industries.

The next question, being that AI is all I seem to have been writing about lately, is this: “Could AI make dealing with the government a little less awful?”

And before you say it, yes, I realize I recently took a swipe at the AI-empowered customer service used by my local telco. But when the bar is set as low as it is for government customer service, I have to believe that even with the limitations of artificially intelligent customer service as it currently exists, it would still be a step forward. At least the word “intelligent” is in there somewhere.

But before I dive into ways to potentially solve the problem, we should spend a little time exploring the root causes of crappy customer service in government.

First of all, government has no competitors. That means there are no market forces driving improvement. If I have to get a building permit or renew my driver’s license, I have one option available. I can’t go down the street and deal with “Government Agency B.”

Secondly, in private enterprise, the maxim is that the customer is always right. This is, of course, bullshit.  The real truth is that profit is always right, but with customers and profitability so inextricably linked, things generally work out pretty well for the customer.

The same is not true when dealing with the government. Their job is to make sure things are (supposedly) fair and equitable for all constituents. And the determination of fairness needs to follow a universally understood protocol. The result of this is that government agencies are relentlessly regulation bound and fixated on policies and process, even if those are hopelessly archaic. Part of this is to make sure that the rules are followed, but let’s face it, the bigger motivator here is to make sure all bureaucratic asses are covered.

Finally, there is a weird hierarchy that exists in government agencies.  Frontline people tend to stay in place even if governments change. But the same is often not true for their senior management. Those tend to shift as governments come and go. According to the Qualtrics study cited earlier, less than half (48%) of government employees feel their leadership is responsive to feedback from employees. About the same number (47%) feel that senior leadership values diverse perspectives.

This creates a workplace where most of the people dealing with clients feel unheard, disempowered and frustrated. This frustration can’t help but seep across the counter separating them from the people they’re trying to help.

I think all these things are givens and are unlikely to change in my lifetime. Still, perhaps AI could be used to help us navigate the serpentine landscape of government rules and regulations.

Let me give you one example from my own experience. I have to move a retaining wall that happens to front on a lake. In Canada, almost all lake foreshores are Crown land, which means you need to deal with the government to access them.

I have now been bouncing back and forth between three provincial ministries for almost two years to try to get a permit to do the work. In that time, I have lost count of how many people I’ve had to deal with. Just last week, someone sent me a couple of user guides that “I should refer to” in order to help push the process forward. One of them is 29 pages long. The other is 42 pages. They are both about as compelling and easy to understand as you would imagine a government document would be. After a quick glance, I figured out that only two of the 71 combined pages are relevant to me.

As I worked my way through them, I thought, “surely some kind of ChatGPT interface would make this easier, digging through the reams of regulation to surface the answers I was looking for. Perhaps it could even guide you through the application process.”

Let me tell you, it takes a lot to make me long for an AI-powered interface. But apparently, dealing with any level of government is enough to push me over the edge.

Dove’s Takedown Of AI: Brilliant But Troubling Brand Marketing

The Dove brand has just placed a substantial stake in the battleground over the use of AI in media. In a campaign called “Keep Beauty Real”, the brand released a 2-minute video showing how AI can create an unattainable and highly biased (read “white”) view of what beauty is.

If we’re talking branding strategy, this campaign in a master class. It’s totally on-brand with Dove, who introduced its “Campaign for Real Beauty” 18 years ago. Since then, the company has consistently fought digital manipulation of advertising images, promoted positive body image and reminded us that beauty can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. The video itself is brilliant. You really should take a couple minutes to see it if you haven’t already.

But what I found just as interesting is that Dove chose to use AI as a brand differentiator. The video starts with by telling us, “By 2025, artificial intelligence is predicted to generate 90% of online content” It wraps up with a promise: “Dove will never use AI to create or distort women’s images.”

This makes complete sense for Dove. It aligns perfectly with its brand. But it can only work because AI now has what psychologists call emotional valency. And that has a number of interesting implications for our future relationship with AI.

“Hot Button” Branding

Emotional valency is just a fancy way of saying that a thing means something to someone. The valence can be positive or negative. The term valence comes from the German word valenz, which means to bind. So, if something has valency, it’s carrying emotional baggage, either good or bad.

This is important because emotions allow us to — in the words of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman — “think fast.” We make decisions without really thinking about them at all. It is the opposite of rational and objective thinking, or what Kahneman calls “thinking slow.”

Brands are all about emotional valency. The whole point of branding is to create a positive valence attached to a brand. Marketers don’t want consumers to think. They just want them to feel something positive when they hear or see the brand.

So for Dove to pick AI as an emotional hot button to attach to its brand, it must believe that the negative valence of AI will add to the positive valence of the Dove brand. That’s how branding mathematics sometimes work: a negative added to a positive may not equal zero, but may equal 2 — or more. Dove is gambling that with its target audience, the math will work as intended.

I have nothing against Dove, as I think the points it raises about AI are valid — but here’s the issue I have with using AI as a brand reference point: It reduces a very complex issue to a knee-jerk reaction. We need to be thinking more about AI, not less. The consumer marketplace is not the right place to have a debate on AI. It will become an emotional pissing match, not an intellectually informed analysis. And to explain why I feel this way, I’ll use another example: GMOs.

How Do You Feel About GMOs?

If you walk down the produce or meat aisle of any grocery store, I guarantee you’re going to see a “GMO-Free” label. You’ll probably see several. This is another example of squeezing a complex issue into an emotional hot button in order to sell more stuff.

As soon as I mentioned GMO, you had a reaction to it, and it was probably negative. But how much do you really know about GMO foods? Did you know that GMO stands for “genetically modified organisms”? I didn’t, until I just looked it up now. Did you know that you almost certainly eat foods that contain GMOs, even if you try to avoid them? If you eat anything with sugar harvested from sugar beets, you’re eating GMOs. And over 90% of all canola, corn and soybeans items are GMOs.

Further, did you know that genetic modifications make plants more resistance to disease, more stable for storage and more likely to grow in marginal agricultural areas? If it wasn’t for GMOs, a significant portion of the world’s population would have starved by now. A 2022 study suggests that GMO foods could even slow climate change by reducing greenhouse gases.

If you do your research on GMOs — if you “think slow’ about them — you’ll realize that there is a lot to think about, both good and bad. For all the positives I mentioned before, there are at least an equal number of troubling things about GMOs. There is no easy answer to the question, “Are GMOs good or bad?”

But by bringing GMOs into the consumer world, marketers have shut that down that debate. They are telling you, “GMOs are bad. And even though you consume GMOs by the shovelful without even realizing it, we’re going to slap some GMO-free labels on things so you will buy them and feel good about saving yourself and the planet.”

AI appears to be headed down the same path. And if GMOs are complex, AI is exponentially more so. Yes, there are things about AI we should be concerned about. But there are also things we should be excited about. AI will be instrumental in tackling the many issues we currently face.

I can’t help worrying when complex issues like AI and GMOs are broad-stroked by the same brush, especially when that brush is in the hands of a marketer.

Feature image: Body Scan 002 by Ignotus the Mage, used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 / Unmodified

A Column About Nothing

What do I have to say in my last post for 2023? Nothing.

Last week, I talked about the cost of building a brand. Then, this week, I (perhaps being the last person on earth to do so) heard about Nothing.  No – not small “n” nothing as in the absence of anything – Big “N” Nothing as in the London based tech start-up headed by Chinese born entrepreneur Carl Pei.

Nothing, according to their website, crafts “intuitive, flawlessly connected products that improve our lives without getting in the way. No confusing tech-speak. No silly product names. Just artistry, passion and trust. And products we’re proud to share with our friends and family. Simple.”

Now, just like the football talents of David Beckham I explored in my last post, the tech Nothing produces is good – very good – but not uniquely good. The Nothing phone (1) and the just released Nothing Phone (2) are capable mid-range smart phones. Again, from the Nothing website, you are asked to “imagine a world where all your devices are seamlessly connected.”

It may just be me, but isn’t that what Apple has been promising (and occasionally delivering) for the better part of the last quarter century? Doesn’t Google make the same basic promise? Personally, I see nothing earth shaking in Nothing’s mission. It all feels very “been there, done that.” Or, if you’ll allow me – it all seems like much ado about Nothing (sorry). Yet people have paid thousands over the asking price when the 100 units of the first Nothing phone were put up for auction prior to its public launch.

Why?  Because of the value of the Nothing brand. And that value comes from one place. No, not the tech. The community. Pei may be a pretty good building of phones, but he’s an even better building of community. He has expertly built a fan base who love to rave about Nothing. On the “Community” section of the Nothing Website, you’re invited to “abandon the glorification of I and open up to the potential of We.”  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it all sounds very cool and idealistic, if a little vague.

Another genius move by Pei was to open up to the potential of Nothing. In what is probably a latent (or perhaps not so latent) backlash against over advertising and in-your-face branding, we were eager to jump on the Nothing bandwagon. It seems like anti-branding, but it’s not. It’s actually expertly crafted, by-the-book branding. Just like Seinfeld, a show about nothing that became one of the most popular tv shows in history, it has been shown that there is some serious branding swagger to the concept of nothing. I can’t believe no one thought to stake a claim to this branding goldmine before now.

The Branding Case Study of David Beckham

I have to admit, I’m not a sports fan. And of the few sports I know a little about, European football is certainly not one of them. So my choice to watch the recent Beckham documentary on Netflix is certainly not typical. That said, I did find it a fascinating case study in something I was not expecting: the making and valuation of a personal brand.

First, a controversial question must be posed: was Beckham a good player? According to those that know much more about the sport than I do, the answer is definitely “Yes” – but he wasn’t the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) – he wasn’t even a GOHT (Greatest of His Time). The closest Beckham ever came to winning the Ballon d’Or, given to the best player  of the year,  was to place second behind Rivaldo Ferreira in 1999. During his time at Real Madrid CF, he wasn’t even the best player on the team. Granted, it was a stacked team and Beckham was one of the “galácticos” (superstars), along with Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo. But, unlike Beckham, all those other players have at least one Ballon d’Or in their trophy case (Note, fellow Mediapost Jon Last recently took an interesting look at this topic in his column – The Death of Meritocracy in Sports Pay).

But despite this, Beckham was certainly the highest paid player in the world when Timothy Leiweke lured him to LA Galaxy, where his contract also gave him a piece of the profits. So, if he wasn’t the greatest player, but he was the most valuable one, what created that value? Why was David Beckham worth hundreds of millions of dollars?

As the documentary showed, there was a dimension to Beckham’s signing to a team that went far beyond his ability to put a round ball in the net. He was a global brand – the most famous football player in the world. And that’s what Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez and Timothy Leiweke respectively bought when they signed Beckham.

As I said, the documentary revealed some interesting truths about branding. What creates brand value? Who owns that value? What is the price paid for the value of a personal brand?

What the Beckham documentary showed, more than anything, is that brand value is determined in a public market. Beckham certainly brought brand assets to the table: his own athletic ability, being exceedingly good looking, a kaleidoscope of hair styles, and a marriage to one of the most popular pop stars in the world, Victoria Adams – Posh Spice from the Spice Girls. Those were the table stakes for establishing his brand value, the price of entry.

But beyond that, the value of his brand was really whatever the public determined it to be. For example, after he was red-carded in a critical match against Argentina the 1998 World Cup, all of Britain decided that Beckham had cost them the championship. Whether that was true or not (there are a lorry-full of “ifs” in that opinion) it caused his brand value to plummet. There was really nothing Beckham could do. His brand was out of his control. It was owned by the media and public.

The documentary really highlights the viral and frenzied nature of the market that determines the value of a personal brand. And remember, this all took place in the days before social media and the very real impact of being publicly cancelled! Since Beckham’s prime in the 1990s and early 2000’s, the market effect of branding has since been amplified and compressed. The market of public opinion is now wired, meaning network effects happen on incredibly short timelines and without even the illusion of control.

Certainly the monetary benefits of brand usually accrue to the supposed owner of the brand. David and Victoria Beckham are reportedly worth a half billion dollars, making him one of the richest athletes in the world. But the documentary makes it clear that there was a price paid that was not monetary. Much of what we would all call “our lives” had to be traded by the Beckhams for a brand that was controlled by the public and the press. There were no boundaries, no privacy, no refuge from fame.

When we pull back from the story of David and Victoria Beckham, there are takeaways there for anyone attempting to build a brand, whether it be personal or corporate. You may be able to plant the seeds, but after that, everything else is going to be largely out of your control.

X Marks the Spot

Elon Musk has made his mark. Twitter and its cute little birdy logo are dead. Like Monty Python’s famous parrot, this bird has shuffled off its mortal coil.

So Twitter is dead, Long live X?

I know — that seems weird to me, too.

Musk clearly has a thing for the letter X. He founded a company called X.com that merged with PayPal in 2000. In his portfolio of companies, you’ll find SpaceX, xAI, X Corp. Its seldom you see so much devotion to 1/26th of the Latin alphabet.

It’s not unprecedented to pick a letter and turn it into a brand. Steve Jobs managed to make the letter “i” the symbol for everything Apple. Mind you, he also tacked on helpful product descriptors to keep us from getting confused. If he had changed the name of Apple to “I” and just left it at that, it might not have worked so well.

At their best, brands should immediately bridge the gap between the DNA of a company and a long-term niche in the brains of those of us in the marketplace. Twitter did that. When you saw the iconic bird logo or hear the word Twitter, you know exactly what it referred to.

This is easier when the company is known for a handful of products. But when companies stretch into multiple areas, it’s tough to make one brand synonymous with hundreds or thousands of products. 

This brand diffusion is common with the hyper-accelerated world of tech. You launch a product and it’s so successful, it becomes a mega-corporation. At some point you’re stuck with an awkward transition: You leave the original brand associated with that product and create an umbrella brand that is vague enough to shelter a diverse and expanding portfolio of businesses. That’s why Google created the generic Alpha brand, and why Facebook became Meta.

But Musk didn’t create an umbrella to shelter Twitter and its brand. He used it to beat the brand to death. Maybe he just doesn’t like blue birds.

When a brand does its job well, we feel a personal relationship with it. Twitter’s brand did this. It was unique in tech branding, primarily because it was cute and organic. It was an accessible brand, a breath of fresh air in a world of cryptic acronyms and made-up terms with weird spellings. It made sense to us. And we are sorry to see it go.

In fact, some of us are flat-out refusing to admit the bird is dead. One programmer has already whipped together a Chrome extension that strips out the X branding and brings our favorite little Tweeter back from the beyond. Much as I admire this denial, I suspect this is only delaying the inevitable. It’s time to say bye-bye birdy. 

This current backlash against Musk’s rebranding could be a natural outcome of his effort to move from being one tied to a product to one that creates a bigger tent for multiple products. He has been pretty vocal about X becoming an “everything” app, a la China’s WeChat.

I suspect the road to making X a viable brand is going to be a rocky one. First of all, if you were going to pick the most generic symbol imaginable, X would be your choice. It literally has been a stand in for pretty much everything you could think of for centuries now. Even my great, great grandfather signed his name with an “X.”

We Hotchkisses have always been ahead of our time.

But the ubiquity of “X” brings up another problem, this time on the legal front. According to a lengthy analysis of Twitter’s rebranding by Emma Roth, you can trademark a single letter, but trying to make X your brand will come with some potentially litigious baggage. Microsoft has a trademark on X. So does Meta.

As long at Musk’s X sticks to its knitting, that might not be a problem. Microsoft registered X for its Xbox gaming console. Meta’s trademark also has to do with gaming. Apparently, as long as you don’t cross industries and confuse customers, having the same trademark shouldn’t be an issue.

But the chances of Elon Musk playing nice and following the rules of trademark law while pursuing his plan for world domination are somewhat less than zero. In this case, I think it’s fair to speculate that the formula for the future will be: X = a shitload of lawyer fees. 

Also, even if you succeed in making X a recognized and unique brand, protecting that brand will be a nightmare. How do you build a legal fence around X when the choice of it as a brand was literally to tear down fences?

But maybe Musk has already foreseen all this. Maybe he has some kind of superpower to see things we can’t.

Kind of like Superman’s X-Ray vision.