It can lie and deceive skillfully and convincingly.

It can flatter, fawn, and manipulate. And we have no idea how it works.

Add to that, the general population is AI illiterate, and we should be worried

Forget about agentic AI or building automations, that’s the pedestrian stuff. We’re talking about the goal of AI having agency outside of our influence or control. 

As the world pushes blindly ahead towards AGI (defined as a hypothetical intelligence capable of understanding, learning, and adapting to new information in the same way a human can), we are doing so with no idea what the hell we are doing.

In an essay published by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi on his website, he admitted, “This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”

He is collectively referring to the industry’s general lack of understanding, AI illiteracy, the sycophancy, the confabulations, and the general ability to convolute truth with remarkable plausibility and tenability.

Truth or untruth?

Biased or unbiased?

This, in conjunction with AI illiteracy, no safety guardrails, and no regulatory oversight, all in the pursuit of profit, should leave everyone concerned.

Very concerned. Okay, maybe terrified.

It is true, AI is poised to be the most transformative technology of the 21st century. But its benefits won’t be realized unless we guide its development thoughtfully and mitigate the risks. This is not happening fast enough.

Amodei went on to say, “On its face, it's surprising to folks outside of the AI world to learn that the people building ever-advancing technologies do not understand how our own AI creations work.”

“…and anyone alarmed by that ignorance is right to be concerned.”

Worried at all?

Educate. Study. Get smart. Be wary, be skeptical.

I fired a client yesterday.

I fired a client yesterday. Gone. And so is the revenue.

Here’s what I didn't expect.

I feel great. I feel liberated, in control, and at peace.

Hard as it can be, saying no is an act of self-care, boundary-setting, and prioritizing well-being.

This client had the budget but didn't have a clue. After an initial engagement to develop his company’s positioning and messaging for two core segments under a unified brand architecture, he simply couldn’t understand how to leverage the work and drive alignment across his enterprise to build equity. He could only think tactically. He was stuck inside the bottle.

Every conversation was a battle.

It became clear that he would never get it. He wanted more work, and he wanted it quick and cheap, all without leveraging the foundational work we completed. Constantly trying to explain the value and critical importance of the work fueled my stress and anxiety. It was bringing me down. 

But I have standards.

So I said no. I explained there is a right and wrong way to do the work, and I could only approach it in a manner that aligns with my commitment to quality and professionalism. Yes, I saw it coming, and yes, I should have known it would come to this. Often, we see the dysfunction long before we act on it. Sometimes, we ignore it because the check is good. But inevitably, you pay the price. Instincts are usually solid; listen to those little voices.

So, I’m done.

Clients like this strip you of your worth and reduce you to a price point. They make you fight for every little thing. They exploit your time and want your experience for nothing. You become a vendor, not a partner.

Clients like this suck the Qi right out of you.

You see, good leaders know what they know and know what they don’t know. They know how to delegate and surround themselves with talent. They listen. They take full advantage of talent. 

Could I have suffered through the bullshit for the income? Probably. Would I have sacrificed my emotional well-being, peace, and integrity? Without a doubt.

I want to work with people with whom I am aligned. I love my work, and I’m damn good at it. I want to enjoy it. Been around too long to do it any other way.

Anything else is exhausting.

So, if you got one of those, set yourself free. Fire them.

Is this a middle finger to its heritage? To its equity?

The Jaguar rebrand is either a masterclass on building awareness or a major screwup that trashes sixty years of brand equality. Brilliant or a blunder?

It’s certainly attracted a lot of very strong opinions. This is likely because the brand itself still resonates with cultural significance to many, thanks to a bad-boy heritage from the likes of Steve McQueen and Mick Jagger. The brand has, or, depending on your perspective, had a lot of cache and well-established equity. Since its launch in 1935, Jaguar has been a symbol of power, speed, and racing prowess.

Tata Motors bought the mark along with Range Rover back in 1998 for $2.56B. Tata was buying brand equity; they recognized the potential. After paying for all that equity, it’s an interesting decision to ignore all its rich history for what is arguably still an idea. There are no cars to buy. Though they have ended production of virtually all their current cars. They say they want to go up-market with an all-EV lineup starting at around $120K.  They're looking to go after the Porsche crowd after decades of not making gains against BMW and Audi. 

McGovern went on to say, “We’re delighted to have your attention.” at the Miami Art Fair. And that they do.

The complete dismissal of the brand’s heritage begs the question, why keep the brand at all? Because, maybe, just maybe, McGovern believes that there is equity in the brand that can be leveraged.

There are no near-term answers in evaluating this decision. It was motivated by years of declining sales, and things needed to change–drastically. And building a brand and equity is a long game.

While the reveal of the concept cars did support the new direction, attaching new meaning to a brand is a frequency over time equation. It needs time, a lot of time. It’s an equation that you think would have been easier if they had leveraged just a bit of that rich equity.

But hey, a complete and total departure sure has our attention…

Having our attention is one thing. Offering a place to park our perceptions of the brand is another. What’s next? It requires a follow-on. It requires actual experiences, in this case, the actual car. The new models are not expected to be available until late in 2025, some say 2026.

Will it work? Time will tell. As the branding savant David Aaker said, “I see pros and cons to the Jaguar rebrand. Time, engagement, and sales will tell.”

Which side are you on? Brilliant or blunder?

Suck at networking? Try a different mindset.

You see, I think Bill Nye nailed it. And just maybe, it’s the secret to successful networking. It’s how I approach my networking @theconnective.

Try this.

Leave your ego at the door. Open your mind. Be ready to… no, want to learn. Know that you’re not the only smart person with ideas and opinions. Or with a shit ton of experience. 

Know that often, there is no wrong way or right way, just different ways.

Listen. Be present.  

If you can’t engage with someone and be fully present, respectful, and believe they can enrich you, you will suck at networking.

If you do all those and engage fully, you will free the person to open up to engage at a deeper level. This is where real relationships start. 

If you don’t engage this way, it can’t work. 

The door we walk through hoping to connect as people, not as business prospects, that door to the emotional place where relationships begin, well, it slams shut.

Likely to never unlock.

People first, business second. Always.

Be a good listener, not just good; be an active listener. Start from a place of empathy and curiosity. 

Be prepared. Find commonality. Be a learner.

Show respect.

And mostly, just care.

Work for you?

Two dogs podcasting on a mountaintop?

OpenAI recently released beta versions of Sora, and the quality is astounding. So, is Sora a threat or an opportunity? Does it enhance or denigrate creativity?

The output is far more advanced than other text-to-video solutions. Sora’s output is photorealistic and reflects a persistence of detail and style and a pretty accurate comprehension of the physical laws of motion- huge advancements. And it’s creating considerable consternation among the creative community.

Bernard Marr, a technology futurist, says, ”Text-to-video capabilities hold immense potential across diverse fields such as education, where they can create immersive learning materials; marketing, for generating engaging content; and entertainment, for rapid prototyping and storytelling.”

As with many of the questions around GAI, there are two sides to the argument. As Asa Hikers stated in his AdAge article, “Many see AI tools like Sora as a boon to the industry and a multiplier for creativity. On the other side, practitioners—many of whom work within the creative process—feel frustrated by what they view as a compromise of artistry for the fast and cheap tricks of a trendy technology. “

Brands need to be wary. Sora’s advancements heighten the concerns around the development of all GAI tech. The ability of AI models to translate textual descriptions into full-fledged videos amplifies the need for rigorous ethical guardrails and safeguards against misuse. Deep fakes, misinformation, and the ability to create social unrest are very real issues as people are less and less able to distinguish what is real from what is fake. Legal issues around copyright infringement, likeness theft, and mirroring will likely increase.

The truth is that conceptual creativity, originality, and ideation for brands are still critical differentiators and are things AI cannot take away. 

GAI is an augmentative tool and should be embraced by the creative community, or risk getting left behind. 

But know that the need for original ideas and creativity that align with brand strategy is not going away. After all, someone has to engineer the prompts.

Bill Bernbach defined an industry.

He knew that the business of building great companies is a business of great ideas. So did Liquid Death.

The undeniable power of creativity is something that feels ignored these days with marketers and agencies immersed in data and analytics.

Bernbach’s quote has never been more relevant—a necessary reminder of a truth lost on so many, especially in a world of parity offerings where differentiation appears elusive.

We’ve forgotten about human nature, that relationships, even business relationships, are built on emotion. We make emotional decisions and connect with things and ideas that move with us. Creativity is the conduit for that emotional connection.

But that was not lost on Mike Cessario, founder of Liquid Death. I mean, seriously, who enters a market dominated by major conglomerates to sell a wholly undifferentiated product? Water. Ok, flavored water.

There is nothing special about Liquid Death. Its main ingredient is water and carbon dioxide. And some flavoring. It’s got no magical ingredient. It is, without a doubt, a parity product in a category full of parity products backed by big players with a ton of money to outspend them.

But Cessario was not selling water. He was selling a brand. An idea. A beautifully crafted, creative, engaging idea that created its differentiation. And its demand.

And it is brilliant. If you doubt the power of creativity to drive differentiation, engagement, and loyalty, consider these numbers. In 2019, Liquid Death reported sales of $2.8M. The company's revenue saw a dramatic increase to $45M in 2021, further jumping to $130M in sales by 2022. The brand's valuation reflects its successful market strategy and growth, reaching a $700M valuation in recent years. This valuation is supported by the brand's ability to raise significant funding, totaling over $189M across eight rounds, further emphasizing investor confidence in Liquid Death's business model and market potential​.

Make no mistake: the intangible power of creativity in branding is a driver of significant and tangible financial value.

When alignment is out of whack, things don’t work.

Alignment. It’s a word that isn’t used enough when talking about building high-value and high-performing companies.

When alignment is out of whack, things don’t work. Without alignment, confusion reigns. The compound benefits of consistency are lost.

Getting there begins with aligning stakeholder objects, a company’s IP, assets, offerings, or services with defined opportunities in the market and the market’s or category’s competitive dynamic. Where and how can you dominate? Achieving alignment requires a sustainable strategic positioning – the foundation for how a brand lives, breathes, and scales.

Positioning articulates the core of a brand's reason for being and informs everything else.

Solid positioning is grounded in a rational and emotional understanding of the target audience, clarity of the brand's market context, a core point of difference or value proposition, and support or proof of that value prop, all woven into a compelling, ownable, memorable, and single-minded positioning.

Once established, positioning can be seamlessly extended across strategies, tactics, and creative executions with the knowledge that all the company’s attributes and key messages are being consistently reinforced in the minds of all constituents, in every employee experience, every customer experience, and all communications and activations. 

It then all comes together. Everyone marching to the same drummer. If your brand attributes are consistently reinforced across all touchpoints, this is how you will be remembered. And it’s good to control the narrative. 

Positioning provides the path for a consistent brand experience. It is the foundation for alignment. It is how equity is built. It’s how to build value. It’s how long-term sustainable success happens. 

If all these elements in your brand/company are not aligned, best reset. 

Alignment. 

A good word to know.

Truth or lies?

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said he is “worried that these LLMs will be used for large-scale disinformation.” In an age of deepfakes, bots, digital twins, and replicas, we are increasingly being denied a clear and confident understanding of the truth. It’s being fueled by technological change accelerating at an unprecedented rate with new tools that make the truth ever more elusive. Moreover, the impact of this change has ramifications that are yet to be fully understood.  

Rapid disinformation attacks—i.e., attacks in which disinformation is unleashed quickly and broadly to create an immediate disruptive effect—are one of the most significant challenges we face today. We’ve seen the impact of disinformation in past presidential elections and the blind spread of widely disproved conspiracy theories.

The ability to spread disinformation is getting easier and dramatically more effective. Generative AI (GAI) now offers the ability to target. Past campaigns were run by foreign actors who often had little cultural or English language fluency. Natural language processing has eliminated that problem opening the door for foreign actors.

With GAI tools, anyone can run disinformation content campaigns finely tuned and highly believable by profiling individuals and groups and replicating their vernacular, personalities, tone, and manner. This new tech can be woven into bots and deepfake videos and images of real people producing content that appears legitimate, relatable, and highly credible. All this makes disinformation infinitely more sharable and dangerous. 

Scarier still, GAI supports the ability to target specific individuals with personalized disinformation, indistinguishable from the real deal. People will not know whether what they are being served is legitimate or not. The general population is light on fact-checking and believing what they want to believe.

GAI is making it much easier to produce disinformation at scale with speed and efficiency and with a level of realism never before seen. Get ready. This crap will be free-flowing this coming election.

Truth? Lies? It’s going to be hard to tell. Are you ready?

This is a hard time to be a major consumer brand hoping not to offend diverse audiences.

And it hasn’t been pretty. But there are lessons for brands.

Consumer voices have never been louder. Anheuser-Busch, Target, Kohl’s, and North Face have all felt the vitriol of this latest push from the right, labeling them as “woke capitalists.” They urged boycotts. Bud Light took the heat after it partnered with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, while North Face received backlash for an ad featuring drag queen Pattie Gonia. Target and Kohl’s were criticized for Pride-themed clothing.

Brands that have survived this kind of backlash (think Nike and Colin Kaepernick) maintain their brand values and never give in. The lesson here - don’t capitulate. Brayden King, a professor of management, noted that a company's stock might fall, but once the issue falls out of the daily news cycle, the stock generally recovers.  

People move on.

While Bud Light has seen an impact from a boycott, the loss represents less than 1% of global sales. However, its stock did take a hit.

Target has carried Pride Month apparel for years, but the backlash was intense this year. The retailer moved product in some stores to other areas or removed it altogether, citing concerns for worker safety. The risk is alienating another significant and vocal constituent. Both sides are now pissed off. 

This whole “woke” thing has gotten out of hand. Brands don’t know which way to turn for fear of insulting someone. Go Woke, Go Broke is trending. Even Disney’s Lightyear movie, the Toy Story spin-off, failed at the box office, not meeting expectations presumably because the LGTBQIA+ themes turned off families.   

Brands today cannot please all the people all the time, so don't try to. The lesson here? Don’t try to be woke or not woke. Just be who you are. 

Engage in a considered process to clearly define your brand, its values, what it stands for, and what it believes. Be transparent about it. Stay true to those brand values and purpose. Be consistent. Then don’t waver. Don’t ever waver.

No matter what.

Maybe there’s too much doom and gloom around AI.

Fear is never productive. Yes, paradigms will shift, and jobs will be lost and redefined, but opportunity will abound. Gartner expects the AI market to be $297B as soon as 2027.

And Ive's numbers are considered an underestimate by some. For example, McKinsey predicts that AI could potentially contribute $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030. 

At Fortune’s MPW conference last week, Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood said AI will cause widespread but positive “disruption” in many industries over the coming years. And Goldman Sachs’ senior strategist Ben Snider said last week that he expects A.I. to boost corporate profits by 30% over the next decade as productivity soars. These are staggering numbers that will benefit the global economy.

One door closes, and another door opens. An adage that is so true in tech. And never more true now. According to a report by Gartner, AI will create 2.3 million jobs by 2020 while eliminating 1.8 million jobs.

What does that mean? It means that we need to adapt to the disruption. Learn to collaborate with these new tools.  

These tools can elevate humanity, expand our creativity, introduce new paradigms, and create new jobs and entire industries.

Yes, there needs to be oversight, transparency, and regulation. If our approach is to consider AI as a friend, not the enemy, and we embrace the potential while applying the proper guardrails, the future is bright.  

What’s hard to grasp is that this nascent industry has yet to find its legs. It is just the beginning. What’s to come is only limited by our imaginations. 

For creative people, yes, roles and industries will shift, but human creativity will continue to reign supreme. The answer is to embrace the change as a partner in creativity, as a way to unlock the imagination, and to make new things in new ways. 

After all, we are the creators. We are the directors. 

Embrace the possibilities.

AI replacing programmers?

There’s much talk of late about generative AI replacing jobs. And for some, like programmers, the fear is palpable. Amazon built its own AI coding assistant, CodeWhisperer. Google is encouraging its developers to use the new coding features in Bard.

Seems a little like interviewing and training your replacement. 

Not cool.

Given the tech industry's rush to deploy AI, it's easy to envision a future where programmers are not needed. 

It’s fair to say AI effectively is the beginning of the end for coding as we know it. The other side of that argument is the effective collaboration between developers and AI. According to Zachary Tatlockm, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington, “It's unclear if there's any cap on the amount of software that humanity wants or needs. One way to think about it is that for the past 50 years, we have been massively underproducing. We haven't been meeting software demand.”

So maybe this partnership with AI has potential. But for coders, the nature of the job is likely changed forever. Sure, codes still need human verification, but for the bulk of the work? AI’s got it covered already. 

And as AI gets smarter, it begs the question, when does AI get so good at coding that there's nothing left for a human programmer to do? 

For the time being, it is more likely that AI will continue to augment human capabilities in various fields, such as healthcare, finance, and transportation, rather than completely replace humans. In some cases, AI may even create new job opportunities and industries. I mean, the ATM didn’t replace tellers…

Still, many people across many industries are asking the same question, “How do I get good at the tasks that are less likely to be replaced by a machine?”

Where will High-Level Machine Intelligence take us?

The frightening thing to many is the anticipation and impact of High-Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI) on humanity. Add to this the exponential growth happening in the AI space right now, evidencing change so rapid, and it’s clear to see we’re not in control. In fact, with many of the latest capabilities in LLMs (large language models), engineers have no idea how some outcomes actually happen. What’s clear is that many use cares are already surpassing human capability. 

In AI Impacts’ The 2022 Expert Survey on Progress in AI, published in August of 2022, we learned what the experts think. One of the most compelling statistics was that 50% of AI researchers believe there is a 10% or greater chance that humans will go extinct from our inability to control AI.

This is a horrifying thought. AI is accelerating at such a pace, and business is racing to insert it into every facet of our lives without guardrails or regulation; we simply can not control it. It's just moving too fast. Eventually, many believe, it will control itself. Here are other key findings from the survey:

The aggregate forecast time to a 50% chance of HLMI was 37 years, or 2059. Many feel that the exponential growth in GAI capability we are seeing now will deliver HLMI far sooner. For example, this timeline is about eight years shorter in the six years since 2016, when the aggregate prediction put a 50% probability at 2061, or 45 years out.

The median respondent believes the probability that the long-run effect of advanced AI on humanity will be “extremely bad (e.g., human extinction)” is 5%. Many respondents were substantially more concerned: 48% of respondents gave at least a 10% chance of an extremely bad outcome. But some were much less concerned: 25% put it at 0%.

The median respondent also believes machine intelligence will probably (60%) be “vastly better than humans at all professions” within 30 years of HLMI, and the rate of global technological improvement will probably (80%) dramatically increase (e.g., by a factor of ten) as a result of machine intelligence within 30 years of HLMI.

Undoubtedly, there is much good in AI, and now we’re asking, “Will the bad outweigh the good?”

Seriously, how do we even wrap our heads around all this?

Will GAI be your bicycle?

It’s an interesting metaphor. And particularly apropos, in light of the recent debate around generative AI. Is it a tool that will propel us forward or become a threat to mankind? Friend or foe?

It all depends on your point of view.

Jobs was responding to a study reported in Scientific American back in 1981 that measured the efficiency of locomotion of all species. Humans did not fare well. But when the same tests were done with humans riding a bicycle, humans dominated. The concept resonated with Jobs, and he related it to computers, calling them “the bicycle of the mind.” He saw the computer as a tool that would make us faster, better, and smarter.

When the computer first proliferated, people were also worried. In his book “The Human Use of Human Beings,” published in 1950, the mathematician and computer pioneer Norbert Wiener expressed his concerns about the potential dangers of automation and the possibility of machines becoming so intelligent that they would threaten human existence.

So far, that hasn’t come to be.

Suffice it to say that the arguments around GAI are polarized, if not explosive. Some experts and thinkers continue to express concern that the development of advanced AI could pose a significant threat to humanity. They argue that as machines become more intelligent and capable, they could surpass human control and potentially cause harm. 

Others argue that the likelihood of this scenario is overstated and that the development of advanced AI could bring significant benefits to society. They point out that AI has the potential to solve many complex problems and improve our lives in countless ways.

Are we threatened by AI or welcoming it as a tool to advance our productivity and creativity? While there are undoubtedly nefarious uses for GAI, it most certainly will be transformative in many positive ways. And for most, it will be an augmentative technology. 

For now, it is a tool to be embraced, learned, and leveraged. Will it be your bicycle?

You may not lose your job to AI, but you might lose your job to someone using AI.

Has the metaverse lost its shine?

For Meta, the metaverse has been a veritable money pit. The Meta Reality Lab, MRL, reported losses of $13.7 billion and $10.2 billion in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Pundits call their dive head-first into the metaverse “an ill-timed passion project” and their rebranding a vanity project. Meta lost 70% of its value in 2022, one of the worst performers in the S&P 500.

Glad Facebook rebranded to Meta so they could focus on AI… For the moment, the metaverse is not so shiny, with investment shifting into AI at the “metaverse company.” The shiny new object is the Generative AI, and as Zuck made clear in Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call, it is the new priority.  

This shift in focus mirrors global funding. AI is the new darling. Through March 16 of last year, companies that played in the metaverse or web3 space had raised nearly $2B in funding. So far this year, metaverse and web3 companies have raised $586.7M. When you look at fundraising for generative AI companies, they’ve inverted: Through March 16, 2022, that space saw $612.8M in funding. This year, it’s up to $2.3B. A complete reversal in investment priority.

With so many resources now focused on AI, the company is positioning itself to become even more of a leader in the space. And if Zuckerberg wants to increase the focus on generative AI, he has the resources to do it.  

And while on the back burner, the metaverse is not dead. There are many use cases where AI can and will impact Meta’s platforms and solutions, and eventually both VR and AR. In the words of Zuck, “Our leading work building the metaverse and shaping the next generation of computing platforms also remains central to defining the future of social connection.”

So we’ll see. From a branding perspective, there are arguments for and against the decision to rebrand to Meta. Chasing shiny objects without long-term balance and perspective sometimes invites dubious decisions. 

How will this shake out? What do you think?

Tech’s shiny objects.

The metaverse, self-driving cars, Web3, and crypto & NFTs have all had their moment in the sun. And each has seen its winters (the metaverse is entering one now). But generative AI is different. It’s here to stay, and its power and fallibility are seeding fears. 

“Humanity does not have anything to protect it from the potential risks of artificial intelligence,” said Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype. And Elon Musk put it this way, “For an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.”  

AI has stirred discussion around evolution, not biological evolution, evolution where survival of the fittest is a battle between humans and AI. I think I saw that movie, but the real thing might actually be coming.

What’s common among the tech elite that talk about human evolution and the birth of our robot AI replacements is a sense of inevitability. The notion that humanity is on a path of self-destruction regardless, and the development of a “species” that can outlast humans is inevitable and, some argue, necessary.

There is no agreed-upon timeline for when humanity might fall. What’s clear is this shiny new object has the power and potential for chaos like no tech we’ve seen before. 

Yes, there are significant opportunities for positive use cases, but do they outweigh the potential for maleficence? 

The core issue here is that AI, specifically ChatGPT, is currently wildly inaccurate, extremely vulnerable to manipulation, and prone to misinformation seamlessly blending truth and fiction and, in some cases, providing false source links. Still, companies, governments, and people are adopting AI solutions every day, assuming the content generated to be the truth. 

Schmidt adds, “Bad actors can use generative AI tools to create and target misinformation, leading to violence. My industry has taken the position that this stuff is good, so we'll just give it to everyone. I don't think that's true anymore -- it's too powerful.”

Some say it should be destroyed... what do you think?

This shit scares me.

You must read the full Bing A.I. chat published in the NYT a few days ago. It’s beyond crazy.

Bing has always been second-rate, but things just might be changing. With its $10B investment in OpenAI and its ChatGPT, and Musk’s disowning of the Company, its mind-blowing technology is now in the hands of Microsoft.

The chat (link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html?) begins to unwrap just how impactful this tech can be. The first question, of course, is sentience, its ability to come across as feeling and human. The illusion is powerful.

The overwhelming part of this is the sheer scope of use cases, both for good and evil, that becomes blatantly obvious.

When you consider a tech industry that has grown out of the art of calculated behavioral addiction and manipulation, the algorithmic spreading of untruths, the complete loss of discovery, and the inability to determine real from not real, this new unregulated tech feels more than ominous. Yes, the positive use cases are huge as well, no doubt, but it just doesn’t feel like the positive will dominate. Maybe it’s just the world we live in today.

Check out the Times article linked above, read the exchange with the Chatbot, and tell me it doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your neck stand. 

Especially considering we are at the earliest stages of this technology.

Man…

Virtual shopping and the metaverse are reshaping the retail experience.

The retail marketplace has never been so fragmented, and the focus is shifting to AI and Web3. Accenture reports that 30% of consumers plan to shop in the metaverse this holiday. And more than 67% of retail executives are experimenting with the metaverse and virtual worlds to accelerate their businesses and engage with consumers where they want to be. What was once “brick-and-mortar or e-tail” is now brick-and-mortar and e-tail and virtual shopping and the metaverse. Be everywhere all the time.  

Bloomingdales has been dabbling for some time now. For their 150th anniversary, they launched their virtual store designed by Emporia that went live during Fashion Week this year. The next step is dropping it into the metaverse, or metaverses, since it’s not yet one place. Bloomingdales doesn’t see it as a change but rather an extension of the retail experience they have thrived at for decades. Regardless, they are still throwing tons of money at something that is far from showing a positive ROI. Good for the brand, though. 

As Standish put it, the hope is that “consumers move freely and seamlessly across both digital and non-digital channels at every point in the buying journey.” She goes on to say, “Ambitious retail enterprises will shape new physical and digital experiences, virtual and physical worlds co-populated by people and AI, industries made possible by new computing capabilities.”

The truth is that brands are still experimenting. The spend needs to be considered an investment in future engagement given that the metaverse is still in its infancy and yet to be widely adopted. But it’s coming.

In a short time, the metaverse and Web3 have assumed a prominent role in many brands’ strategic thinking. Goldman Sachs predicts the whole virtual e-tail, web3, metaverse shopping thing is an $8 trillion opportunity, though only indicated by the heavy investment pouring into the space. The jury is still out.

It’s probably only a matter of time. We’ll see.

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.

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?

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…