#95: Everything online is fake, data is the new oil, 9/11 vs the Violence Against Women Act, and new marketing research on “we”
This week between Christmas and New Years, after being sick for 2 weeks and preceding a vacation is like:
Whatever, I'm looking back with both disdain and fondness at 2018, and gearing up for 2019 a bit more resilient and focused. Buckle up.
It's been quite a year - together we've shared 40 issues and 57,000 words between us. Well, from me to you. You're welcome. (Browse all previous issues here.)
An extra holiday gift to you: 4 words that have left our collective conversational vocabulary, but really should come back.
Snollygoster - someone with intelligence but no principles
Grumbletonians - people who are angry or unhappy about the government
Ultracrepidarian - someone who gives opinions on subjects they know nothing about.
Trumpery - things that look good but are basically worthless
Grumble grumble.
In this final 2018 edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. If data is the new oil, what is competition?
2. BW's 2018 Jealously List is live and it's juicy AF
3. The psychology of the fundraiser
4. The internet is fake
5. TIME Person of the Year 2018 - the Guardians
6. "We we we" all the way home.
7. Quote of the week - Violence Against Women Act
1. If data is the new oil, what is competition?
In this Economist piece, we're warned about the changing nature of dominance from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
It's all about the data, baby, what the authors call "the oil of the digital era."
When these titans control so much (Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in the US, Google/Facebook accounted for almost all of the revenue growth in digital ads in US last year), competition (and antitrust efforts) look different. Selected quotes from the piece:
Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in the early 20th century.
Old ways of thinking about competition, devised in the era of oil, look outdated in what has come to be called the “data economy." A new approach is needed.
The case for being sanguine about competition in the tech industry rests on the potential for incumbents to be blindsided by a startup in a garage or an unexpected technological shift. But both are less likely in the data age.
Breaking up Google "into five Googlets" (adorable) doesn't fix things. Instead, it's suggested that antitrust authorities take into account the extent of firms' data assets when assessing the impact of deals (not just size/revenue).
Transparency from firms would also help, but I think that's going to be the next meaningless buzzword used to quell public outcry without meaningful actions. Call me a skeptic. That would be on-brand.
Read the full piece.
2. BW's 2018 Jealously List is live and it's juicy AF
H/T to Allison Snow for sharing this - Bloomberg Businessweek's annual list of journalism so good, they wish they wrote the stories themselves.
Edelmen's annual trust study showed that trust in journalism is on the rebound, and well-researched, groundbreaking stories like these prove why. Some highlights:
Billion-Dollar Blessings - exploring the wildly lucrative online empire of the religious right via Liberty University in the NYT
The Dwarf, the Prince, and the Diamond in the Mountain - the story of the Birkenstock from New York magazine
Post No Evil - on Facebook, and how company’s early policies were inadequate to the task of dealing with deliberate misinformation via Radiolab
3. The psychology of the fundraiser
Remember when a church would be raising money for a new roof and you'd see those cute signs showing the progress? We're $80k there! Donate now!
There's a psychology trick at play here, it's called the goal proximity effect. The closer you are to your fundraising goal, the more likely people are to give. People want to be part of a winning team.
I think many for-profit brands can steal from this playbook. What mission are you on? How are you doing against your goal?
Read more in 6 fundraising psychology hacks.
4. The internet is fake
Via NYMag --
The internet has always played host in its dark corners to schools of catfish and embassies of Nigerian princes, but that darkness now pervades its every aspect: Everything that once seemed definitively and unquestionably real now seems slightly fake; everything that once seemed slightly fake now has the power and presence of the real.
The article quotes studies that suggest less than 60 percent of web traffic is human.. instances of Chinese click farms (watch this video it's incredible)... examples of real people whose identities were usurped by Russian trolls to post as Trump-supporting Americans... middlemen on Amazon using dropshipping and faux storefronts in SFO to take advantage of the third-party seller platform via price-gouging and copyright-stealing...
Content is fake, politics are fake, we are fake.
Years of metrics-driven growth, lucrative manipulative systems, and unregulated platform marketplaces, have created an environment where it makes more sense to be fake online — to be disingenuous and cynical, to lie and cheat, to misrepresent and distort — than it does to be real.
As the author says, "the only real thing is the ads."
:)
Read the full piece.
5. TIME Person of the Year 2018 - the Guardians
Given the rise of the faux internet reality, if you haven't read this piece, it's important to do so. TIME
In the cascade of news feeds and alerts, posts and shares and links—the centrality of the question Khashoggi was killed over: Whom do you trust to tell the story?
It continues:
Modern misinformation, says David Patrikarakos, author of the book War in 140 Characters, titled after the original maximum length of a Twitter post, “does not function like traditional propaganda. It tries to muddy the waters. It tries to sow as much confusion and as much misinformation as possible, so that when people see the truth, they find it harder to recognize.”
Looking back at the importance of this moment in 2018:
"In 2018, journalists took note of what people said, and of what people did. When those two things differed, they took note of that too. The year brought no great change in what they do or how they do it. What changed was how much it matters."
Please read the full piece - and share it.
6. "We we we" all the way home.
The ineffable Tim Riesterer has a great new article out in the Journal of Sales Transformation in which he demonstrates the power of "you" versus "we" phrasing in messaging.
What I appreciate about Tim's work is that it backs up common-sense good advice (like this) with real simulation-based studies. He found that you-phrasing was considerably more effective than we-phrasing in questions linked to interest and intent.
"This is critical because you want your audience to take ownership of the issue and be willing to champion the opportunity.... Getting your prospect to see the situation as “important to their future success and growth” helps raise the issue to the top of their strategic agenda, which is critical to creating a qualified opportunity."
7. Quote of the week
"2,996 people died in the World Trade Center attack. We waged a multi-year war and re-engineered our national security and privacy rights in response. 2,142 women were murdered last year by a current/former partner. This week, congress allowed the Violence Against Women Act to expire."
- Twitter
Happy New Year, and thanks as always for reading.
Best,
Katie
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I'm headed abroad February 6 2019 to speak with the Stockholm Marketing Association at their CMO of the Year event. Their theme is "the unfiltered truth..." enough said ;)
Look out, Kansas. We're comin for ya. March 1st, 2019 will see the new Enterprise Marketer Conference. Get your tickets!
Join me for the MeritDirect Marketing Experience, March 6-7, 2019 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin, TX.
PLAY 2019 from Brightcove is May 14th-16th, 2019. Let's talk video and how it moves buyers from apathy to action. Join us in Boston
Learn how to book me to speak.