Max Out Your Workflow, Twitter Algo Mayhem, ChatGPT Paid Subscription, Why the SSM Needs LinkedIn, and Gen Z's Values from The SUM
It's easy to get lost in life. It's easy to get lost in tasks, redundancies, efficiencies, and other external factors—many of which—will be out of your control. But there's always something you can do to counteract the forces pushing against your time, mental health, workflow, ethics, and relationships.
Making the decision to take control of your destiny sounds like the prompt of a coming-of-age epic fantasy script—but it's your life. You do have control of the climate you exist in. Don't forget that.
A formidable weapon against unwanted and unwelcome forces is education. That's the power of self-awareness, self-education, and practicing habits. Reflections and insights shared among peers?generate an atmosphere and community focused on learning together—and it makes us better as creators and innovators. This is the basic principle the SUM exists on.
Stay educated and make change happen.
*If this newsletter helps one person point their marketing, advertising, or business careers in a positive direction, this entire experiment was a success.
Leave a comment at the bottom if you learned something, hated
something, or just want to say what's up.
A Summation of this Newsletter ??
Maximizing and Understanding Your Workflow: Marketing Tools and Tips
My daily workflow is Staging > Creation > Distribution. To make this process efficient, here are the "Top 3" tools and suites I cannot live without. ??
What’s your content creation process? ??
But hold up because an honorable mention is in order. To fill the gaps—the literal mortar of a solid content strategy—can be found in:
As other tools emerge, like?Figma ?or even ChatGPT—I pull them into my workflow to see if they improve my productivity and the quality of my work.
Other software is necessary to communicate with coworkers, partners, and consultants—like?Microsoft 365 ,?Asana , or?Slack —but you don’t have to love them. You just have to be adaptable.
There's a Disturbance in the Algorthim: Twitter Updates Wreak Havoc on Organic Reach and Engagement
A few weeks back, it was easy to suspect a correlation between the paid subscription launched of Twitter Blue and the dwindling organic views on my tweets.
However, last week,?Twitter ?admitted they're having a real problem with reach and engagement on the platform. Turns out, their engineers are having a hard time correcting the issue, too. Maybe the smart ones were fired...?
According to Dave Rubin via "The Rubin Report " on his Twitter handle:
“As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance [Musk] likened to a Jenga tower. One wrong move the whole thing collapses. They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight.”
This a pretty damning and sketchy scenario and it doesn't instill much faith in the dwindling relevance of Twitter. No matter how many headlines are populating on a daily basis about Musk or the like, the ad spend is down, engagement is down, and everybody is feeling pretty bearish on the whole platform. ??
ChatGPT Paid Subscription: Surprise, Surprise
The ChatGPT freemium model gets a new $20 per month paid subscription—providing those power users better access to the tool. It sucks always being locked out of the latest hype-train.
Some of the benefits OpenAI disclosed in the announcement:
If you're ChatGPTing on-the-free, you'll continue to experience those very annoying wait times and outages of the platform right after you've crafted the best, most intricate query the AI has ever computed.
To be clear, those of you looking to cut marketing positions and throw an intern on ChatGPT... you still need an experienced content writer or copywriter to filter out the issues the artificial intelligence is still working out.
Know Thy Customer: Capgemini 2023 Report on Consumer Behavior
Great consumer information in this 2023 Capgemini report. ??
? 70% of consumers expect companies to provide a wider range of discounts to help them purchase essential items and to provide bigger discounts to loyal?customers.
? 78% of consumers say they will be more loyal to companies that help them through this difficult time.
? 60% of consumers say that they will not purchase a luxury product if it is not available.
There's also an awesome infographic. Go dig in!
Controversy Over M&M's Spokescandies Causes Historic Branding Change ??
Out with the spokescandies and in with Maya Rudolph, but it doesn’t hit the same. (No offense, Maya.)
Ring-wing criticism was the final straw contributing to the ultimate change, it’s being blasted in the headlines, but this isn’t the first time those personified M&M’s have faced heavy criticism and not from the right. Their entire history has faced backlash, but here’s a very easy counterargument.
In 1997, the green spokescandy debuted, and over the next decade, the over-sexualization of the character was debated by left-wing pundits excessively. It’s no different from Tucker Carlson ’s condemnation of the androgynous evolution of the spokescandies reaching its fever pitch here in 2023. This conversation draws a striking comparison to the criticism drawn by Pixar ’s “Inside Out” in 2015 as personified emotions were said to promote gender politics.
Why do we take offense to the personification of human traits?
Self-reflection is hard and looking in the mirror can be incredibly tough when you’re observing something you do not want to see—or something that doesn’t align with your values. It’s easy to ignore and push back instead of accepting or adopting changes, but the flip side is true, too. It’s easy, sometimes lazy, to criticize everything, poke holes in every historic trope, and “cancel” rather than put it into context. Whether it’s wrong or right isn’t the point, the point is having a conversation, educating, and learning together.
领英推荐
Humans are tribal. We seek groups who share the same worldview and pursue the same passions because there’s always been strength in numbers. The power of a group elicits the same meaning now as it did then, from hunting mammoths in the Pleistocene epoch and herding them toward a cliff to fighting for political change in the Anthropocene.
As societal norms change, there will always be pushback from either side, but creatives will always find themselves personifying the world around them. A character perspective can allow you to step back from your sense of self and try to see through a new lens. While the iconic spokescandies of M&M'S USA are retiring from the spotlight, another character will crop up years from now attempting to subtlety explain the human condition.
*Update on this article. The spokecandies are not being completely phased out, but this does not change the intent and takeaway of the section—so it stayed.
Meme-ification
Belief in innovation and pushing boundaries is a driver of success.
2022 LinkedIn Stats You Can Leverage as a Social Media Manager
When it comes to proving the importance of your?LinkedIn ?social strategy, here's a great infographic to leverage and validate your B2B social strategy.
The key takeaways are:
It's important to be where your people are. If you're in the B2B space, keep chugging away on this platform.
Nice words and logical strategy without statistics, metrics, and/or KPIs backing you up are simply nice words in a PowerPoint overview of 2022. The proof is in the data.
Use these stats alongside your own metrics to tell the whole story.
Positive Reinforcement for Remote Workforces
If you’re a remote worker, your commute time savings per day is about 72 minutes—compared to in-office professionals. Equate that to fuel costs and you’ll be even happier.
Other things to note ?
This recent study from the?National Bureau of Economic Research ?sheds light on the practicality of the work-from-home model.
Gen Z is the Future of the Workforce: Here's a Rundown of What They Value Most in 2023
Gen Z will be 30% of the workforce by 2030. The clock’s ticking. What do current and future employers need to know now?
This is what Gen Zers want:
Not so hard, right??Adobe ’s “Future Workforce Study” provides some interesting stats to back up this sentiment—in no particular order. ??
Post-study, Generation Z feels very optimistic but selective. Can you blame them as the bear market cycle continues, reverberating across TikTok, and cryptocurrency is a dumpster fire?
Gen Z is looking at macroeconomic factors and larger companies that are insulated from recessionary factors.
That’s smart. ??
Color Theory: What Does It All Mean?
The psychology behind color is often overlooked in branded content. Take a peek at this very detailed infographic. ??
Two months back in the first edition of the SUM, the subjectivity of color is discussed, Color is Subjective, Not Objective: Understanding Perception . It's something to bear in mind as you're considering the psychology of your brand.
McDonald's Drunk Ad Campaign is Genius
Marketing 101 is knowing and understanding your audience, especially if you're putting precious budget dollars behind a new ad campaign.
McDonald's ?knows their audience—or at least a portion of their biggest fans.
This direct appeal to an intoxicating segment of loyal, late-night customers looking for the Dollar Menu is pure advertising brilliance. ??
The SUM is derived from industry news and insights related to marketing, copywriting, advertising, branding, web best practices, and more. If you enjoyed The SUM, subscribe for biweekly updates or follow?Zach Burger ?for content that doesn't miss a beat.