What Did We Talk About in 2020?

This is an email I sent last week to members of the APAC Marketers Roundtable. It's a (mostly non-Covid) summary of what our community talked about in 2020.

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Hey APAC Marketers!

Here’s a roundup of some of the best content shared from our virtual meetups, roundtables and from our private Slack team. Putting this together was a lot of fun since it gives a really high level snapshot of what marketers in our community were discussing in 2020, other than covid.

I’ve organized them into themes. Here we go:

Theme #1 = TikTok

TikTok had a wild year. It went so mainstream that it got sucked into the US/China trade war. And it finally became too much for marketers to ignore. With US-based social media and big tech platforms facing regulation (more on that below), I'm betting TikTok is set for an even bigger year in 2021.

Here's some highlights:

• The “TikTok War” (Stratechery)
• How TikTok’s algorithm works (a16z podcast).
• Seeing Like an Algorithm (Eugene Wei) a much more detailed version of the podcast above
• A history of TikTok and its growth (Turner Novak)

Theme #2 = The Effectiveness of Advertising

As 2019 ended, more and more marketers were already questioning the permanent “FB ads” and “Google SEM” line items on their budget. When Covid hit, it appeared to have made everyone take stock of just how effective their PPC ads were.

• Does advertising actually work? (Freakonomics)
• Let’s ask a better question about advertising (WARC) a counterpoint to the Freakonomics podcast
• The new dotcom bubble: Online advertising (The Correspondent)
• Under the hood of a Criteo ad campaign (Branded)

Theme #3 = Deepfakes, AI, and our Weird Future

It seems like only yesterday that Deepfakes and Generative AI were just academic tech demos at conferences and whitepapers. In 2020, we got a glimpse of just how much they’ve developed, with many attempts at commercializtion.

• Which of these faces are fake? (NYT)
• Tech’s growing deepfake problem (Axios)
• Stealing your feelings (Mozilla) awesome tech demo
• Product - create an AI video by typing text (Synthesia)
• Product - AI generated copywriting (Copysmith) 
• A tech demo of someone using deepfakes + translation to “auto-dub” an English video into Spanish

Theme #4 = Learning from China

With TikTok breaking through, and the world seeing the speed and ruthless efficiency of China’s response to Covid, it felt like a lot of people around the world collectively woke up to just how advanced China’s tech ecosystem had become, and how much there is to learn from them.

• The Future of Video (a16z) <— lots of China case studies
• Chinese tech companies supporting virtual beauty try-ons (Kr Asia)
• Virtual KOLs in China (ParkLu)
• China’s Virtual influencers (Vogue Business)

Theme #5 = Tighter leashes on Social networks

2020 was a weird year for Big Tech. On one hand, we're all kinda glad they exist, because we couldn't leave our houses and our lives shifted online. On the other hand, with more people spending time online, I think many of us became more sensitive to the effects of extended periods of consuming content from algo-driven newsfeeds. The pandemic also appears to have accelerated regulators and social commentators to realize just how big, pervasive and imbalancing these platforms are. Regulation now feels like a question of when, not if.

• The regulatory fights facing every major tech company (The Verge)
• Australia compels FB and Google to pay media outlets (The Verge)
• Why the right wing has a massive advantage on Facebook (Politico)

Theme #6 = Mental health

There’s been so much shared on this topic already, so just one link here. Here’s a great, actionable article on emotional management techniques.

• 6 Small Steps for Handling the Emotional Ups and Downs at Work (First Round)   

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Finally, we also shared APAC-specific knowledge with each other

This is far from an exhaustive list of what we shared in our community last year!

In addition to these big themes, we also had so many nitty gritty marketing convos on things like hiring marketers in Asia, comparing PR agencies in Asia, expanding across different markets in APAC, email nurturing for B2B, how we're measuring brand advertising in our companies, etc etc etc.

It’s hard to capture those in a recap email. But thank you for sharing your knowledge so we can all learn together.

Whether you’re new here, or you’ve been here for a few years now … I appreciate you, thank you for being a part of our little community!

I hope we get the chance to catch up soon.

- David

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