Edition #515 On how chat shifted from BTC to AI at thanksgiving, all the AI developments and a POV on next year for brands. A week of OpenAI calling code red, us seeing maybe ads coming to their android app but oh no they’re being delayed to combat Gemini. But really last week was the AI Thanksgiving, because the amount of traffic from AI to retailers websites went up 805%. And, next year we’ll see another leap up. It’s like… Continue reading
Edition #514 To GEO or not to GEO, Adobe wades in, John Lewis & programmatic kill switches. For those that missed, last week I opened up a NotebookLM of the newsletter. If you had a play, what did you do? Was it useful? Maybe some ideas of prompts to copy/paste/modify: Based off topics discussed this year, what should I prepare for next year? Can you give me three talking points for the holiday party I’m doing strategic planning, and… Continue reading
Edition #513 Nativo is acquired by Life360, no ads for Apple TV (as yet) and new AI agents. We’re three, maybe four more editions left in the year! That is creeping around quickly. And as it’s that time of year, please do pass along any holiday campaigns you’ve liked/enjoyed. I liked the Apple TV riff on being ‘hand made’ with their new intro logo. It just feels on point, for the whole vibe at Apple TV. They’ve just continued to… Continue reading
Edition #513 Coca Cola hits repeat on its AI generated holiday ads, Obey your thirst Puck <> Air Mail merge. Coca Cola dropped their latest Christmas ad this week. Again AI generated. The same day of the launch, their head of Generative AI Pratik Thaker spoke at Brandweek. I’ll try find a link of the full chat, but it was super good. He spoke on how they produced the ad, from sketches/concepts, that were then brought to life… Continue reading
Edition #512 BYO but it’s not a restaurant, Google cracks $100b and we enter Run City by Bandit. BYO, bring your own wine, beer. What a delight. There’s an Indian restaurant in the East Village which does this, I don’t go often but it is nice and everyone brings their own bottle. Fun. What about BYOLLM though? That’s what Oreo decided to do, they invested $40m in their own image generation model. WHAT. “Mondelez expects that… Continue reading
Edition #511 Was TV the ultimate destination for social anyway? Agentic developments and a post-naive internet. BrandWeek is coming up in Atlanta, the week after next, are any readers going or in Atlanta? Love to connect in person. If you want to go – they offered me a discount, ping me back and I can share. It looks like an excellent line up. Netflix CMO, American Eagle CMO, Hasbro, AG1, Twitch, Vacation, Hawks, Reebok, Build-a-bear, IHG. On events, did… Continue reading
Edition #510 City playground, live from NY and loads of new stuff across the board. The city becomes a playground when so many are in town. And NY had that vibe last week! I’ve tried to catch up with as many as possible, but with a busy week anyway, that makes it challenging. Thanks to all who came to the breakfast, good group of people. And thanks to Ben Dietz who offered some tickets to the John Candy… Continue reading
Edition #509 Why marketers should care about self driving Waymo’s, NY has a new CFO from Ramp & Threads is pulling ahead. I was excited to see my first Waymo in NY this week. A glimpse or promise of a driverless future around town. Getting to self driving is a mean feat. It’s achieved progress by starting with sandboxes, defined areas, then adding a lot of training data, real world practice and then expanding it. Behind the scenes there’s a… Continue reading
Edition #508 Riff on unoriginal takes on ads (ha!), what if all media is marketing? And there’s a new search engine in town. Grok is launching with ecommerce ads. Copilot is launching with carousels for image ads. So is Gemini. This has to be the least original idea for this new environment. Ecommerce ads. Now we get why, it’s the hey we gave product recommendations, let’s show an ad for that. It also, reflects consumer behaviour which seems to be… Continue reading
Edition #507 Even the AI innovators don’t see it slowing down, increased advertising investment & acquisitions. I was at two Axios events this week, in DC & NY. Axios + AI was in DC. Very where AI intersects with government focused. The Anthropic POV was quite profound, self described technology optimists who think it’s moving faster than anticipated. Basically their view was kind of, hey we’re at the cutting edge, and we don’t see it slowing down anytime soon. Continue reading
