News
Trust, SORA, and the Questionable Future of our Feeds
Most people in the Marketing world have seen and been blown-away with the work OpenAI has done with a new project called [SORA](https://openai.com/sora). It’s a tool that makes video clips for you based on feeding it a few sentences. We don’t know how to feel. Is it incredible? Is it frightening? Is it unbelievable? Is it all of those things at the same time? And maybe one of the biggest questions Marketers have is…is it coming for my video department?
I don’t think the answer to those questions has anything to do with SORA’s technical abilities. I think the answer has to do with something that’s at the core of any great Brand: *Trust.* The question isn’t ‘*is this technology incredible?*’, it’s ‘*can I trust what I’m looking at?*’ Take it one layer deeper as it pertains to your Brand: ‘*can I trust what your Brand is telling me is true…?*’ Is that the question you want your audience to ask?
No, Solo Stove’s CEO Didn’t Get Fired for a Marketing ‘Miss’
When your friends, neighbors, and family are all talking about Snoop Dog ‘going smokeless’, as if that’s earth-shattering news, and they come to find out it’s a Marketing campaign for Solo Stove, and then proceed to laugh about it and say ‘hey, that was pretty clever’, and move on with their lives, the Marketing team did their job amazingly well. No question about it, they didn’t hit a home run with this campaign, they hit a grand slam. And now…the CEO is being S-canned…due to its lack of conversions from Brand Awareness to DTC Sales…?
Deserve What You Want
This year, the world lost Charlie Munger, a great business leader and terrific role model for anyone who’s interested in building a lasting business and legacy. Charlie Munger was known for many great quotes, one of which is one of my all-time favorites:
“The safest way to get what you want…is to deserve what you want.”
B2B is Not B2C...But At the Same Time...It Sort of Is
B2B (Business-to-business) sales and marketing have some key differences from B2C (Business-to-Consumer) sales and marketing. Just to name a few…
Feedback loops are longer (often times much, much longer)
Buying decisions are often made by a committee, or at least consult a committee of stakeholders
Decisions are often restricted by a budget ceiling that’s often veiled or not yet decided
That’ being said, there is still a C behind the B. Let’s unpack that a bit.
Yet More Email Privacy Changes for Marketers and Brands
Another year, another iOS release…which means another round of privacy improvements for 57% of the US population, which then seems to create a domino-effect for the policies seen on Android users over time. In time, it’s safe to say this approach will likely be a shared experience for all Mobile users. What’s the change? It’s call Link Tracking Protection, otherwise known as LTP.
Content Triumphs over Ads, YouTube Just Keeps Growing
It’s that time again, the moment where we share our favorite Content Marketing reads. Two up this month: It’s time to Stop Making Ads and Start Making Content + The Importance of Leveraging YouTube. Both are terrific reads. Feel free to read the articles in their entirety or just the important nuggets coupled with our opinion.
The Pitfalls of Setting Unrealistic Marketing Goals
Why do so many organizations not set Marketing goals? And if they do set goals…why do they often times fall into the trap of setting completely unrealistic goals that may not be achievable? Last question…what can organizations do to avoid this all-too-common path?
Email (Still) Rules, Assisting with Pivots, Oh…and Twitter…
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, Email is a sleeper hit. Almost everyone forgets about it or is hesitant to engage with the platform mostly because they are hesitant to ‘bother’ their audience. Take it from the experts who wrote the article above: email works. TD;DR edition as usual.
KPIs and…Branding? Encouraging a Different Approach
I recently saw a post on Linkedin…that I actually enjoyed. What was that post about? Key Performance Indicators. Yeah, the super boring topic that is KPIs. Except…it wasn’t about CTRs, ROAS, or Bounce Rates. It was speaking the language of Branding. The thought exercise that was posed was to think about the measurement component of a KPI and completely replace it. Blasphemy, you might think? Well, it depends on what you replace it with. Here were their suggestions, along with some additions…
Social Media Fragmentation, Content Marketing Best Practices, and More on AI Marketing
Here are the best Content Reads of the Month, TL:DR Edition. Without wasting a moment of your time, we’re going to summarize what we found to be this month’s best content marketing reads…as quickly as possible (thus, the TL:DR Edition).
Instagram “Overfocused” on Video, Facebook’s Impending Demise, and ChatGPT…
Every once in a while, we try and share our thoughts on subjects we find timely and relevant to our field of Integrated Content Marketing. There are a lot of changes happening with both Social Media and written content, and in the past few months there have been some stories summarizing those changes. Let’s dive in.
Own Your Platform
I wrote in our original article what I meant by owning your own Platform:
Lastly, own your platform. Platforms belong to your brand. They don’t belong to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok. Those are platforms. By building your own platform, you’ve created something the algorithms on those platforms can never take away from you. Those platforms can help your platform, but they can’t take it away. This one might be my favorite one of all three.
Post Your Own Jobs (And Have Them Be Seen…)
Without stating the obvious, the last 2.5 years have been somewhat of a wild ride. A pandemic impacted businesses, non-profits, and government in a variety of ways - and still continues to impact them, actually - especially in the field of workforce. Labor shortages based on category, wage inflation, ‘regular’ inflation, interest rate hikes. Basically, there’s no shortage of issues that are affecting the labor market. As marketers, it’s not really our job to explain them as an economist would - it’s our job to navigate them for our clients.
Writing Your Own News Shouldn’t Be A Challenge
Believe it or not, your brand more than likely has something to say. The main assumption with this statement is that your brand is great at what it does, is full of great people who are great at what they do, and is a thought leader in the area in which it serves. I realize that’s a big assumption, but I am comfortable saying if those things are true, there’s absolutely zero reason you shouldn’t be writing your own news. Why?
Write Your Own News, Post Your Own Jobs, Own Your Platform
I’m going to share three big-picture thoughts this month and break them down into smaller segments in the next few months a multi-part newsletter. These are based entirely on trends we’re seeing in marketing today. We’re not talking about pictures, videos, writing, Social Media, or anything else that comes to most peoples’ minds when it comes to ‘marketing’. We’re going to dive into that crazy little thing called ‘strategy’, AKA ‘where the ball is being kicked’.
This Month’s Best Content Marketing Reads
As many know, I’m a big fan of reading everything and anything that helps us improve our strategies and processes for our clients. So, without dragging it out, I’ll throw out some of the best of the best articles in the last month that we found interesting, as well give you our take on the piece. Maybe you will find these articles and opinions equally as interesting!
Just Some Good Content Marketing Reads…
For those who truly know us, you know that we have a hard time sitting still. When we do eventually sit still, we are typically reading…and usually we are reading about…marketing. So instead of hogging all of our good reads, we like to pull up our favorite articles, quotes, and nerd-out a bit on them. So without delay, here we go!
The Fundamentals Haven’t Changed: Strong Photos tell a Strong Story
As many folks know, our roots at TDC are visual - specifically, photography and videography. We’d like to think that because we are fluent in the language of visual content, we have a distinct advantage when it comes to knowing what moves the needle, or more pragmatically, what moves the client’s audience’s needle. We all talk about visuals as being ‘king’, but more to the point, the real king is the story - whether it’s told in photo or video format, ‘story is king’.
All Eyes on Recruitment
Most people think Marketing = Advertising. On top of that, the goal is to advertise in order to gain more sales. That’s the perceived goal: market to make more sales. End of story...?
In the last few months, I’m certain everyone has witnessed the labor market turn virtually upside down. Without beginning to go into depth about why that’s happening, I would instead like to explore how most clients we work with changed their goal from ‘help bring us more work’ to ‘help bring us more talented employees, so we can service our clients and customers’.
Year in Review // Auto-Play-On-Mute
Summarizing an entire year of changes and trends in integrated marketing isn't easy. Nor is it really possible. So instead of doing that, I thought I'd focus on one very, very specific evolution in video that's not a trend, but instead a movement. It can be summed-up in one super-hyphenated word: Auto-Play-On-Mute.