Elon just seems to invite controversy.

And as a result, cash flow and hope for profitability are flying out the window. 

Fifty brands reportedly spent nearly $2 billion in advertising on the platform since 2020 and more than $750 million in 2022 as of Nov. 21. Seven other brands have significantly slowed advertising to almost nothing, representing another $255 million of ad spend since 2020. 

Charging a subscription for a blue checkmark isn’t going to fix all that.

General Motors, Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck & Co., and Novartis AG, among others, all halted Twitter ads or were confirmed as doing so. The others stopped advertising on the platform for a "significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers."

The issue seems to be a lack of controls, arguments over free speech, and a reported rise in hate speech since controversial accounts were reinstated. Ad placement against disparaging or controversial content is also an issue. 

Content moderation and other control that give advertisers confidence have been fundamentally eliminated. No surprise there, given the layoff of 3700 of its 7500 employees and another reported 1200 resignations. Entire departments have been wiped out. 

Let’s welcome Chris Riedy, a 10-year vet at Twitter, who has ascended to head of ad sales. The guy’s gotta have the hardest job on the planet.

Best of luck.

This Bud’s not for you.

Budweiser spends about $75 million every four years to be the official beer sponsor of the World Cup. In a stunning, last-second reversal ahead of Sunday’s kickoff, host country Qatar—the first nation in the Arab world to host the event—has banned alcohol sales within stadiums, something it had initially agreed to. The ban ignores a previous agreement allowing the sale of beer to fans in specific areas and at specific times in a country where alcohol is heavily controlled and off-limits to most of the population.

Bummer.

And there is a bigger advertising issue at play.

It’s estimated the Qatar World Cup will attract 5 billion viewers, almost two-thirds of the world’s population. With reach like that, how can you walk away from that kind of scale in a marketing opportunity because of a few human rights violations…? (sarcasm here).

Bloomberg News reported they contacted 76 companies sponsoring the tournament or teams, including the likes of Adidas AG, Coca-Cola Co., Volkswagen AG, and Microsoft Inc.’s XBox, all from countries where human rights criticism is widespread. None of the seven key FIFA sponsors said they would make any changes to their global advertising plans to reflect concerns for human rights.

Money talks, okay, eyeballs. 

While the Qatar World Cup is the most scrutinized World Cup in history, few are walking away from the staggering marketing reach available. There are so few events left with that kind of live audience, actually none with that kind of reach.

Further reported in Bloomberg News, “Of the 69 sponsors of national teams, 20 responded to express their commitment to human rights, though declined to disclose if or how their marketing might change. Thirteen companies did say they would make adjustments, though few have significant business ties to Qatar.”

There is a dark cloud over this event.

Tech companies sucked up talent during the pandemic with the fury of the latest Dyson.

Everyone thought the pandemic’s bull run would last forever. Not so. Talent is hitting the street in unprecedented numbers. Meta dropped 11,000 employees. Getir laid off 4,480 people accounting for 14% of their staff. Booking knocked off 25% of its workforce or 4,375 people. And Elon just axed 50% of Twitter’s staff, or around 3,700. Uber, Better.com, Groupon, Peloton, Carvana, Zillow, Stripe, Lyft, Salesforce, and the list goes on. 23,000 tech workers in November alone. Financial firms are set to follow suit.

Sited are all the macroeconomic factors. Inflation, rising interest rates, and the risk of recession pile together to produce smaller corporate profits and agitated investors. But in truth, firms went crazy hoarding talent during the pandemic and over-hiring. Something Mark Zuckerberg apologized for after laying 13% of its workforce. “I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. “Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”

The truth is, much of the damage was self-inflicted. Soaring profits and the belief that the pandemic’s revenue effect would last forever spelled doom and sparked a drive to find, hire, and hoard the best and most talented. Google and Meta scaled employees at a breathtaking rate. Meta doubled its staff during the pandemic. Along with that came all the incentives, perks, and free meals, all incented with stock options, many of which never even had time to vest.  

And now, we return to reality and the need to manage the P&L. And a significant opportunity for smaller firms to grab tech talent. 

Keep an eye out, Amazon layoffs are next.

Y’all remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal back in 2018, yeah?

Y’all remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal back in 2018, yeah? The political data analytics firm was implicated in a massive data breach, improperly harvesting personal data from over 87 million Facebook users. 

Recently uncovered by NBC, apparently, Cambridge Analytics was harvesting data as far back as 2015, and Meta knew what was going on. And Facebook was slapped with a $5B fine by the FTC. In March 2018, Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie revealed the extent of CA's activities in interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times.

According to Wylie, Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information on where users lived and what pages they liked, which helped CA build psychological profiles that analyzed characteristics and personality traits. This data was then deployed in political campaigns to shape opinion and choice. Wylie said: "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.”

And the Russia connection? That remains of great speculation but a lot points to that distinct possibility. But that’s a story for another day.

This March, two longtime Meta engineers were questioned about how Facebook keeps track of user data. The engineers were questioned during a court hearing as part of a consumer privacy lawsuit centered around the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The transcript of the hearing was only recently unsealed.

One of the engineers, Eugene Zarashaw was asked where the data was, and replied with the quote above, basically “No one knows.” Scary. And as reported in Business Insider, a spokesperson for Meta told Insider it was unsurprising that individual engineers couldn't identify where all the data for a single user was stored across the company's systems. 

What? 

So, where is your data?

For some, it's still a widely contested issue.

Some (like Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, no surprise there) believe linear TV is in a long and protracted death spiral that’s expected to go on for another 5-10 years. As the recent Nielsen data suggests, the tipping point has already happened. While Netflix has lost subscribers as of late, they are still the dominant player owning 8% of that 34.8%. YouTube is close behind with 7.3%. The rest is spread across hulu, Disney, and all others.

VOD is going to be king, but that does not mean that linear TV is dead. It is still the highest quality medium that just works when you turn it on. And while the classic linear TV channels may be losing to VOD, the brands are here to stay with their own VOD offerings. Brands like FX and NAT Geo have successfully transitioned to the new reality, partnering with hulu and Disney Plus, respectively. 

And for sure, COVID distorted viewability statistics, making it even more difficult to answer if TV is dead. Between the years 2019 and 2020, according to a report by a reported by UK regulatory and competition authority Ofcom, there was a 32% increase in the time people spent daily watching content 2019-2020. Most of that was through the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. Interestingly, linear TV also increased’ likely attributed to people defaulting to linear TV for news and updates on the pandemic.

Traditionally TV continues to thrive with live events and sports, and while expensive, advertising on linear TV is still very relevant.

A significant driver for change has been the art phone. Content consumption is no longer centered on the TV. Phones and tablets drive the younger, more desirable demographics, and content providers are adjusting accordingly. 

So in the near term, everything will co-exist. And yes, linear TV may be past its glory days, but it’s not going anywhere for a while.

The Rise of the Surveillance Complex

There used to be surveillance states, and now, as Hurst suggests, there are surveillance complexes. There are aerial surveillance technologies, apps, and smart home solutions sucking up your personal data. And, of course, the video doorbell. That ubiquitous little device that brings the civilian infrastructure to the world of state surveillance.  

With this integration of data, video and audio capture, and cloud storage in perpetuity, we are engaged in a frightening aggregation of civilian, corporate, and state surveillance into one alarming complex. And one of the biggest drivers? That little Amazon Ring. Here are some numbers. Amazon sold more than 1.7 million video doorbells in 2021. Throw in Google's Nest, Vivint, and ADT, and that number balloons to 3.5 million. The video doorbell market grew 63% in 2021 alone. Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen.

It gets scarier. Since Amazon brought Ring in 2018, it has established relationships with over 1800 law enforcement agencies that can request video content without a warrant. Ring cameras are owned by civilians giving law enforcement access to private video recordings of people in residential and public spaces that would otherwise be protected under the fourth amendment, allowing law enforcement to get around these constitutional and statutory protections. The line between police work and civilian surveillance is no longer clear. And the folks next door? They are your potential informant. And they are always watching. And scarier still, Amazon’s moratorium on integrating facial recognition into Ring expired in June.

And your data? Well, when you sign up, you agree to give Ring permission to control the “content” you share—both audio and video. Sure, they say you own the video as intellectual property, but Amazon’s terms of service say you give it an “unlimited, irrevocable, fee-free and royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide right” to store, use, copy, or modify your content. To boot, Rings’ terms of service say that the company may “access, use, preserve and/or disclose” videos and audio to “law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties” if it is legally required to do so or needs to in order to enforce its terms of service or address security issues.

Being off the grid has a nice ring to it…

Where are brands in all this?

What responsibility do brands have in supporting environmentally sustainable recycling efforts? We live in a disposable society trashing technology that is not actually disposable. What did you do with your old iPhone? Many brands have recycling programs, but few, if any, push them.

In some cases, you have to dig to even find mention of them. Is this another case of brands greenwashing with a recycling message without really making an appreciable effort? Is this just another cheap way of satisfying ESG needs driven by shareholders and vacuously trying to satisfy consumer perceptions?  

Maybe so. What we do know for sure is that millions of tons of e-waste are sent to India every year, where men, women, and children risk their health to rip apart old phones, keyboards, TVs, and computers for a screen or a scrap of precious metals. Many more tons go to Hong Kong, Ghana, and West Africa. It is a dangerous calling for people to scavenge for recyclable e-waste, but there is money in it. Recycling 1 million cellphones can recover 20,000 lbs. of copper, 550 lbs. of silver, 50 lbs. of gold, and 20 lbs. of palladium, reducing the damage and pollution done by mining these metals

E-waste must be recycled professionally and carefully discarded in a proper environment with proper safety protocols. Unqualified laborers poison themselves, develop cancer, and damage their nervous systems by digging through mounds of e-waste just to find a screen or a scrap of precious metal. On a global scale, the human and environmental toll of the work is impossible to calculate, but make no mistake, it is significant. And given the unrelenting advancement of technology, not likely to lessen any time soon.

It would seem that a cooperative approach between all electronic manufacturers in a unified and committed recycling effort would make the world a better place. Brands have to take more tangible roles in addressing this crisis, like building on Basel Action Network’s responsible recycling e-waste pledge 

It’s being called the Crypto Winter, and it’s cold out, freezing even.

This does, however, imply there’ll be a Crypto Spring. For many, though, this will never happen; companies will just disappear, and others will be eaten. Consider that Bitcoin is only 13 years old, Ether only 7. They may be bottoming out, but they are young. They will be back. Many won’t. As of July 2022, there were 20,268 cryptocurrencies. Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive of FTX, believes that only about 50-100 tokens have value. “The remaining thousands...do not have value.”

Tech expansion has been explosive for the last decade, and given the early stage of the category, there hasn’t been a ton of deals. That’s changing. As with most tech sectors, rapid expansion and fragmentation invariably lead to contraction and consolidation. Given the bloodbath the crypto market has seen – from the collapse of stablecoins, declining currency values, radical drop in venture funding, the collapse of some crypto coins, and bankruptcies of some service players, it’s time for the strong to eat the weak.  

Consolidation is the inevitable outcome. With funding hard to come by and debt expensive, mergers look to be the trend for 2022. Much more could be on the way for the industry on pace to have a record M&A year. According to Crunchbase, “Total acquisitions of companies in the crypto sector through the first two quarters of the year stood at 39—a pace that would easily beat last year’s 66.” Half those deals this year involved venture-backed companies, compared to 22 deals for VC-backed startups for all of last year. So it’s happening. 

A cycle like this, quite typical in tech cycles, often pulls out the weeds and leaves a sector leaner and stronger for future growth. Much of this will happen in anticipation of an effective regulatory system, which is not far off for the crypto-world. So hold on to your hat.

So is a Crypto Spring coming? My crypto wallet hopes so.

Not a bad return on investment, given the song has not been recorded since 1962

But what’s interesting about this, and not just the iconic longevity of the Dylan brand, is the groundbreaking new ‘Ionic Original’ recording format developed but award-winning record producer and musician T Bone Burnett. The format combines some of the materials used in both vinyl and CDs to create durable, one-of-a-kind analog discs.

As described by WHAT HIFI?, “Unlike traditional vinyl LPs made of PVC, and CDs, which contain plastic with a layer of metal, Ionic Originals will consist of lacquer painted onto an aluminum disc, with a spiral etched into it by music...which can be heard by putting a stylus into the spiral and spinning it.” I think I need a turntable.

Burnett describes the sonically-excellent analog audio output as “the perfect sound.” Burnett’s new company, NeoFidelity, Inc., will handle production and distribution of the new format and hopes to reset the value of recorded music.

If the Christie auction hammer price of Blowin’ In The Wind is any indication, T Bone may be on to something.

Chatbots coming to life.

Blake Lemoine was put on leave when he told the Washington Post that Google’s chatbot had “come to life.” The engineer in Google’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Organization was referencing its Language Model for Dialogue Applications and believed the chatbot had become sentient or able to feel and express emotion like a human.

If you ever watched the movie Her, you can understand how humans crave sentience from inanimate objects. But as Sandra Wachter, a professor at the University of Oxford who focuses on the ethics of AI, told Business Insider. "We are far away from creating a machine that is akin to humans and the capacity for thought.”

With AI and machine learning, language processors can learn by scanning billions of conversions across the web and sequence language to appear to give emotional responses. And we want to believe. Assigning human properties to inanimate objects, or anthropomorphism is a well-documented phenomenon. But bots trying to fool people are all simply about sequencing language to sound sentient, and they are easily found out.

Note to brands: Trying to pretend to be a real human can result in a very negative brand experience. Ever hear a bot in a call center use an audio track of the sound of typing? Do we really think someone is typing? This is just a bad idea.

Give me a human over a bot, any day.

Some people just want to be able to hold it.

At a time when the world is hyper-focused on NFTs, collectibles you can’t touch, here comes the reboot of the passion for physical stuff. It’s a return to what people love about collectibles, the ability to have the actual physical object supported by a secure backend. The merging of the physical and digital.

Welcome to the eBay Vault and its digital trading marketplace. The Vault has all the authentication ability and the security of managed transaction history and ownership path, similar to NFTs. But you have an actual thing. The trading platform allows for transactions more akin to NFT trading marketplaces, where investors can track real-time valuation movement and flip a card in what is fundamentally an instant sale. No re-authentication or shipping is required. It’s all in the Vault. eBay provides authenticity guarantees at no cost. Suddenly, trading cards fall into a managed investment category.

From Weiss Schwarts to Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, and of course, every conceivable sport, trading cards are hot. In 2021, Trading Cards merchandise volume (GMV) more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels. In Q1 2022, an average of 2 trading cards were purchased every second on eBay. To date, over 10 million cards purchased on and off eBay were added to customer collections. 

The Vault is a natural. And the beauty? Cards remain secure in the eBay vault, never seeing the light of day. Unless, of course, you want to bring one home. Buying and selling can happen in a digital marketplace that previously was not available for these kinds of collectibles. Anticipating Brady playing another season and his rookie card going up in value? Get one now before he retires.

eBay plans to expand the offering to other collectibles and luxury goods by 2023 and anticipates it will hold $3 billion in assets by 2025 

The digital authentication, ownership, and secure transaction capability alone have massive potential across a huge range of collectibles. 

Hey, got a Zion rookie card? I’d store it here. It’s gonna be worth something.

If a collectible is worth what someone will pay, then what are NFTs worth?

If a collectible is worth what someone will pay, then what are NFTs worth? Now? In the future? The space is sending many conflicting messages. Are NFTs thriving or crashing? There are strong arguments both ways.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was purchased for $2.9M by Sina Estavi. When Estate attempted to resell it at auction, no one offered more than $280K. NFT sales fell to 19,000 this week, according to NonFungible, the world’s largest NFT data resource. In September, that number was 225,000. 

NFT wallet activity is also sinking fast. There were 119,000 active wallets in November, whereas there were about 14,000 last week, adding up to an 88% decline. ApeCoin, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, dropped in March from a high of $39.40 to a low of $7.75 on March 17. The Wall Street Journal points out that search activity for NFTs has also dramatically dropped from its high point in late 2021, showing a drop of roughly 80% since that time. Ethereum sidechain Flow has also seen its biggest NFT product, NBA Top Shot, fall from grace in recent months, with secondary market sales volume dropping over 80% since February 2021.

On the other side of the coin, as reported in Cyptobriefing, Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs conducted the largest NFT sale in history. The drop, consisting of over 55,000 land plots for its upcoming Metaverse game Otherside, brought in over $310M in initial sales. Less than a week since launch, the collection has exceeded $700M in trading volume across more than 27,000 sales.

Throughout the first four months of 2022, several new collections such as Azuki, Okay Bears, Moonbirds, and VeeFriends Series 2 have sold out after hugely anticipated launches. Trading on secondary marketplaces like OpenSea has boomed (it saw $3.4 billion worth of trading volume last month), returning handsome profits for keen flippers.

Since January 2022, CryptoPunks are rockin’. Total transactions have grown substantially, leading to a $2B sales volume. It also saw a surge in unique monthly users, reaching 501 transactions in January. Meanwhile, the total transactions increased 187% in March, reaching around 1,400. It left CryptoPunks with a sales volume of $98.5M compared to January’s $6.1M. Moreover, in August 2021, the project reached a new milestone of $679M, with over 2,500 transactions. 

So are NFT on the rise or on the decline? Idk. Are NFT’s a good investment or a fad? Idk that either. Maybe it’s a question of hold period… get in early and get out fast before interest wanes? 

NFT’s long-term viability and stability as an investment? Your guess is as good as anybody's. But keep an eye on DeGods…

Unicorns are so 2020.

Today we are talking about decacorns, $10B+ and even hectocorns, at $100B+, the largest of which is Beijing-based Bytedance valued at $140B. Innovation is a global thing and growing, and the numbers are off the charts. Beyond the US and China, which make up 90% of unicorn valuations worldwide, unicorns or bigger can be found in Sweden, Australia, the UK, the Bahamas, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Hong Kong, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Netherlands, France, and Israel to name a few.

While births of new unicorns fell by 15% QoQ to 113, in Q1 of 2022, three were 1070 unicorns, a 62% increase YoY. M&A exits increased for the 7th straight quarter, though IPOs and SPACs we down.

Interestingly, 734 of those unicorns have reached that status in 2021 alone. In the first nine months of 2021, there were 23 early-stage transactions conducted at unicorn valuations, beating 2020's total of 13 deals and 2019's total of 12 financings, according to PitchBook data. 

2021 was a record year with startups raising more capital than any time in history. This year, valuations are expected to come back to earth and based on that, risk allocations will not change. For the venture community, life is good. We’ll see how 2022 fares.

Welcome to cleantech 2.0 and the exhilarating rush of new capital.

Welcome to cleantech 2.0 and the exhilarating rush of new capital. Crunchbase identified 27 climate-focused software firms that collectively raised $1.3B in the last year, half of that in 2022 alone. Valuations for software companies focused on decarbonization are climbing exponentially. Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of Arcadia, a developer of cleantech software, states, “The cash flow profile at scale can look like your best-in-class enterprise software companies in an asset class that hasn’t seen that.”

Cleantech is here, and everyone wants in. But getting to this point hasn’t been easy. Developing scalable, mass-market solutions with the potential to reduce global emissions is notoriously challenging and can take years. With a lack of VC focus on the space resulting in few financing options, many failed to scale. Many went bankrupt. Many VCs lost about half of the $25bn they invested in the cleantech sector between 2006 and 2011, according to PwC.“It was really boom and bust driven by the overallocation of venture capital,” says Rob Day, a partner at Boston-based Spring Lane Capital. 

Many believe the tipping point has come. The urgency is there, finally. AI and smart software, along with our pandemic-learned need to adapt are all contributing. Government policy is also a factor. Today, 132 countries have pledged to  reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The Biden administration is looking to invest $2T in clean energy to reach its decarbonization goals. All of this will dramatically accelerate the space and allow new tech and software to reach profitable scale more quickly. The global cleantech space is projected to be over $2.5T by the end of 2022, all helping to accelerate mainstream adoption. 

Better late than never.

Crypto hacks are not going away.

The numbers are rising exponentially, given the total for the last ten years is approximately $27.47B in losses, 2021 was a big year. And this year is starting out as a doozie. On March 29, the Ronin Network announced the theft of 173,000 ether tokens and 25.5M USD Coin tokens totaling losses of $600M at the time of the announcement. 

The August 2021 heist of the Poly Network to the tune of $610m still holds the dubious top spot. The list of heists worldwide is growing, increasing in frequency, and now averaging $150M, and increasing. What’s clear is that absolute security is simply unattainable.

While some people do get their funds back, many do not. In the 2021 Poly Networks breach totaling $600M, most of the funds were returned, except for a measly $33M. Hackers stated they just wanted to expose security flaws in the network. $200M of the funds were trapped behind a password that “Mr. White Hat” refused to share. Poly Network pleaded with the hacker and promised to grant the unidentified person a $500,000 bounty for helping it identify a flaw in its systems and even offered them a job as “chief security advisor.”

Before the Ronin heist, the Poly heist was the biggest ever, surpassing the $534M stolen from Japanese digital currency exchange Coincheck in 2018 and the estimated $450M worth of bitcoin that went missing from Tokyo-based Mt. Gox in 2014.

You would think the perpetrators are a bunch of tech nerds, but It's not known who is behind many hacks. It’s not necessarily cyber-criminals. State-sponsored hackers were identified as responsible for some crypto heists. According to cryptocurrency researchers at Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole almost $400m worth of digital assets in at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms last in 2021.

So, better check your wallet.

The metaverse is still all the rage.

Take Fluf World, for example. A collection of 10,000 3D, programmatically-generated rabbit avatars, each with unique features and life stories. These avatars are not like the skinned characters that you rent in Fortnight. Instead, they are yours in perpetuity, sellable, they can own property called Burrows, and are managed on a blockchain where the community shares control.  

A lot of doubts swirl around brands and the metaverse. The technology is notoriously inaccessible, and creating a brand presence in a metaverse community can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And is the audience actually there? Not so sure. Getting involved in these initiatives, as Ellie Bamford noted in Ad Age, “It’s not as free as you think.”

These Web3 destinations built on decentralized blockchain solutions are touted as the next big place to build long-term brand engagement. How they actually evolve is still feels like an experiment. Doubts aside, these NFT communities and startups are raising massive amounts of venture capital, and eventually, when access is democratized, things might take off. 

For now, it feels a long way off from being a viable channel for building brand. However, if brands want to be prepared for when the space matures, the experimentation must begin now. Solutions and fads will come and go until the metaverse and web3 finds their level. Mass adoption allowing brands to have the mass reach they want is, well, for now, a lot of fluff.

Sure, Brady’s football legacy is secured.

He is the undeniable GOAT. But his economic impact is significantly more significant than that. Less spoken about is his power to deliver positive economic impact. He is the spokesperson for Aston Martin, UGG, Under Armor, Tag Heuer, Sam Adams, Glaceau Smartwater, and many more. And of course, his brands, TB12, and his performance clothing line, BRADY, all of which contribute.

Brady coming to Tampa Bay and winning a Super Bowl has significant economic impact lifting the Bay area to new heights. Pinellas County Economic Development )PCED) recently reported that, while it is hard to precisely pinpoint the economic impact the Bucs provide to the Tampa Bay area, “it is likely above a hundred million” a year.

According to the PCED report, the Bucs have a team value of $2.94 billion, and Raymond James Stadium boasts net revenues of $364 million. After winning the Super Bowl in February 2021, the Buccaneers team value increased by 29% – even after losing $119 million in stadium revenues for the 2020-21 season due to Covid.

For the ad community, it’s been a boon. The Tampa Bay Times reported Brady’s Tostitos spot had an estimated economic impact of around $200,000, according to the film commission, due to 35 local hires and 60 hotel room nights. And EA Sports spent around $100,000 on a Brady commercial here through 45 local hires and 30 hotel room nights. 

The $19.3M figure does not even include every time he films in his house or the stadium. Nor his documentary Man in the Arena: Tom Brady. 

The guy is a moneymaker, for sure.

For McDonald’s, the pressure is on.

It’s on in a market that accounts for 9% of revenue. Like McDonald’s, brands of all sizes are wondering what to do given the tragic world events. What to say? How should they take a position? Should they even take a position? While many brands have left, McDonald’s has been conspicuously silent, and the pressure is mounting. Saying the right thing, the wrong thing, or nothing at all, brand risk is such a huge issue these days. First, there was Me Too, then BLM, and then a global pandemic. Knowing what to say during these times has been a PR, and often an ethical, nightmare.

And now, with the war in Ukraine, the question looms: Can/should brands speak? If so, what should they say, and how should they say it? Again, opinions are all over the place.

These questions are not just for multinationals but local businesses as well. One misstep can be dangerous; consumers are paying close attention. And how consumers feel can have tangible impact. Will brands taking a wait-and-see approach will regret it? Will they eventually be asked, “Why were you silent?”

It appears there is no one answer for everyone. But most experts agree: Don’t do nothing. Don’t stay silent. Coalesce with your community and support your employees. Be agile, responsive to the constantly changing dynamic and don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk. 

Alberto Alemanno, a Professor, University of Tokyo School of Public Policy, Fellow at The Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation, Rutgers University, says, “Investors, customers, and citizens deserve to know on which side of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict their companies and brands stand for.” 

 Yes, it’s true. Pleasing all constituents in an increasingly divided world seems impossible. It has become a time to choose a stance, put a stake in the ground and take a position.

What is the best approach?

But here’s the problem – past access to cheap capital.

After more than a decade of keeping interest rates near zero, the Federal Reserve is pretty much guaranteed to raise rates this year to try to hold back inflation and crush liquidity. Add to that continued supply chain issues, a decimated workforce, and the move to do everything online. And now add the crisis in Ukraine and we have a recipe for, let’s just say, a significant challenge. 

For a decade now, companies have used cheap money, ignoring the fundamentals of cash flow and profitability on the promise of future profits. Given the economic climate today, it’s not hard to imagine that companies using cheap capital to grow rapidly without making a profit will be not be looked upon favorably. These assets no longer look so sexy.

All this could usher in the start of a roaring bear market where investors will feel the pain of cheap-capital economics and deciding not to throw good money after bad. Many businesses may well go out of business. Years of cheap capital fueled dubious ideas with grandiose visions of future performance, think WeWork. Even Robinhood is feeling the pain of avoiding the fundamentals whose value skyrocketed on temporary motivation fueled by get-rich-quick thinking during the pandemic. 

As rates go up, debt gets more expensive, and suddenly, the question of “Can we actually make money?” becomes painfully urgent. You could say it will be a return to the fundamentals. So the days of meme stocks, SPACS with lax oversight, and accepting years of losses, well, those days may well be over. And all these unicorns? Well, they got to get their act together or face extinction.

Clearly, the tech has come a long way since Max Headroom.

Augmented by machine learning, today’s AI-generated faces are imbued with physical characteristics that engender trust. These synthetic faces are so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from real humans.  

Generated Photos has a bank of many millions of photos of AI-created people leveraging AI and machine learning to train a GAN – or generative adversarial network – on data sets of people allowing it to make unlimited fake people. Need a new unidentifiable, untraceable profile pic? All set.  

Nightingale’s and Hany’s research found that the average rating for synthetic faces was 7.7% more trustworthy than the average rating for real faces, a statically significant finding.

Which raises more questions. Of course, synthetic influencers like Lil Miquela have been around for a while, generating millions of followers and millions of dollars for the companies who created them. 

But recent technical advancements suggest dark implications and present a significant (and not new) ethical dilemma. Think of the consequences of even more sophisticated deep fakes populating people’s feeds. We’re creating a world where the authenticity of any image or video can be called into question, further blurring the line between truth and fake content—a world where any image or video can be faked.

The global political implications are beyond scary, especially in parts of the world where checking content’s veracity is simply not possible.  

This should scare you.