Super Bowl Ad Winners...plus Shania, Lizzo and Abe Lincoln

Winning Super Bowl Ads

The Athletic ranked the best and worst super bowl ads. For the most part, I disagree.

My favorites:

Bud Light Hold Music

Nothing flashy...just real. Worth the watch.

Dunkin' Donuts with Ben Affleck

Unexpected and funny. More J-Lo please.

But my favorite Super Bowl ad wasn't even a Super Bowl Ad.

Ryan Reynolds steals the show with his last minute 2GinuteWarning.

Ryan Reynolds continues to make ads for all his properties without them feeling like ads at all. Plus, no expensive Super Bowl ad needed (being Ryan Reynolds helps with this).

A few years back I wrote an article on what you could buy in place of a Super Bowl Ad (estimated this year at $7 million for a 30-second spot).

You could get 70 issues of your own magazine, 32-pages each, sent to 25,000 people via the post office.

Or 65 different books, including ghost writing and all the production.

Or 23 In-person events for your best customers.

Just something to consider...

Oh, and the Chiefs beat the Eagles 38-35.

On Moving Forward

Sometimes you have to temporarily go left or right to ultimately move forward.

While on holiday I was running a five-miler along the beach. About a mile into my run, there was a blockade. On the right, a pile of seaweed too large to leap over (not that I actually leap over anything). On the left the sand had recessed, creating a small lagoon. In order to pass, I had to run a good bit to the left to keep moving forward.

I was immediately reminded of this quote from the movie "Lincoln" where the President says:

"A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... what's the use of knowing true north?"

When I left corporate America to start a business, all I wanted to do was focus on the new business.

But to fund the business, we needed cash, so I took a few consulting gigs.

And to spread the idea of the business, I took a few speaking gigs.

Ultimately it took four+ years to hit our goal...to reach our true North. Without the consulting and the speaking (what I considered at the time to be distractions) we never would have made it.

Just a reminder for those of you working to build your business. Maybe the distraction you are working on is helping you reach your goal?

Lizzo On Editing

As a content creator I want to publish everything I create.

Want, yes. But should I? No.

Whatever content you create, we need to understand that not everything should be published.

Most content creators do. Or feel like they should.

For Lizzo's last album, she created 170 songs...but only published 12. That's 93 percent NOT published.

It's called editing. We all need to be doing more of it.

Be like Lizzo.

Oh...by the way, I have about 20,000 words of my last novel that we cut. It still hurts my soul, but it was the correct decision.

On Shania Twain

I’ve had some fits of writer’s block recently. When this happens, I go for a run.

Most of the time, I listen to audiobooks. On this particular run I asked Siri to play some new music. For the first song up, I didn’t recognize the song, but definitely knew the artist…Shania Twain.

I love Shania. My wife and I have seen her in concert. We also used one of her songs as our first dance as a married couple.

You may know about Shania’s success. She’s sold over 100 million records, making her the #1 bestselling female country artist of all time.

But you may not know this. After releasing her Greatest Hits album in 2004, she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. It wrecked her voice. At times she could barely sing on key. She was scared to sing in public (think about that...scared after thousands of in-person performances).

Well, you know the rest of the story. She battled through it and started to write her own music again by 2011 (also dealing with a rather horrible break up during that time).

The point? Even one of the greatest musicians and performers ever has to overcome piles and piles of crap to make it.

It’s part of all our journey. We just have to see it, know it’s there, and then take the next step.

I highly recommend Shania’s documentary on Netflix to give you the full picture. Very inspiring story.

ChatGPT News

I feel obligated to tell you that Microsoft is launching an “AI-Powered Answer Service” while Google launched Bard, a ChatGPT rival. For the first time in history Google feels like it’s behind (or it looks that way).

Maybe this is the 2023 version of the cola wars.

But the most important news of the week? Beyonce won her 32nd Grammy Award and now holds more Grammys than any other artist.

Finally...Consider Joining My Book Launch Team!

Epic Content Marketing, second edition, launches on March 7th. Brian Piper (my co-author) and I are looking for amazing individuals to be a part of our launch team. Please sign up here!

A note: other than a special book project with my private NFT community, this will be my final content or marketing book for a while. Next up? Another fiction novel. Stay tuned.

Besides our ever-lasting gratitude, if you decide to join us, here's what you'll get:

-- A free digital copy of the book!

-- Access to a Facebook/Discord private group for networking and sharing ideas.

-- Audio recordings of some of the interviews from the book.

-- Video of a conversation between Joe and Brian that goes far beyond just content marketing.

-- A POAP NFT and 5 $PIPER coin.

...and did I mention ever-lasting gratitude?

And all we're asking is for you to write some reviews of the book on a few different sites, make a few social posts on your favorite channel, and engage with our scheduled posts that we'll be putting out over the next few weeks.

Join here. Thank you!

Get This Email Four Days Earlier (with more stuff)

Thanks for reading The Random by Joe Pulizzi, sent every two weeks on Monday. If you'd like to receive this four days earlier (on Thursday), with more content and special offers, sign up via email here.