Bonus end-of-year special! What else did I write in 2023? What might 2024 bring? What is my dystopian novella about?
The 12 Slides of Christmas
The world is full of marketing gurus, tech ninjas, agency rockstars, professional coaches, and experts on everything. Well... I’m just me, John. So here are my insights and predictions as we say goodbye to another crazy year for agencies, tech companies, and workers in those industries.
Click the image or header to read why I think that:
Apple's Vision Pro headset will iterate to include artificial intelligence features.
SEO will be utterly transformed, possibly decimated.
Surrealism will become a prevalent esthetic choice in marketing.
Youth means noise. Maturity means impact.
AI gets very good at best practices. Also at generic slogans.
Whitelisting will become a key marketing strategy.
Agencies will morph as capital gets more expensive, production gets cheaper.
AI enables true 1:1 marketing. This might sound like an oxymoron, but you are a market of one.
Pinterest will attract significantly more ad dollars as TikTok’s ROAS gets fuzzier.
Amazon stole Google’s lunch but Google will grab it back and start munching away at it.
Coordinator or middle manager? Become an AI expert or it will take your job.
Simplicity in all things will be at a premium.
Think that I’m totally wrong? Or completely crazy? I’d love to get your input!
Want to know what else I’ve written about?
Discomfort Zone is my bi-weekly hub for all things branding, culture and tech, but I also write about marketing and more general subjects elsewhere, mainly on the Medium platform. Although most of my work is behind a paywall, I’ve made these links free for a limited time so you can check out my other work.
From Lovemarks To Brand Buddies: How Brands Can Appeal To Gen Z
Back in February, I wrote a piece for Forbes Agency Council that talks about how to engage effectively with my kids’ generation. Being a buddy that a young person feels comfortable with and is happy to show off to their peers will help a brand become a key feature of their social identity.
7 Foods That Changed Their Names So You Would Eat Them
Can bad branding kill your appetite? I wrote a fun listicle about terrible names for food items, such as slimehead and lady’s fingers.
I unreservedly deplore the recent unprovoked Dunning-Kruger attack
On a more serious subject, there’s a terrible conflict going on in the Middle East. What seems to be making things worse on a wider scale is social media outrage from people who don’t have any expertise in the situation. This darkly satirical opinion piece is a fake editorial about the cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.
Has AI Created A New Literary Genre?
In a year when LLMs such as ChatGPT have become crutches for unskilled or lazy writers, and when the Writer’s Guild of America has been on strike, partly over AI’s potential to come up with story ideas and scripts, I decided to conduct my own literary experiment. The result was monstrous. But also surprisingly non-tragic, no matter how hard I tried.
150-word Shortform Nuggets
I’ve been published many times this year in The Shortform, which has a 150-word limit on articles. Believe me, it’s much easier to write 800 words! For some snackable content on a bunch of different subjects, click on these titles…
Failed Acorns and Inspiration from Nature
You Can’t Be a True Professional Without These 3 Attributes
Ties That Bind or Chains That Drag?
The AI Freakout Already Happened 75 Years Ago
5 Reasons You’re More Creative Than You Think
My special guest is… me!
Writing a Q&A about myself and my life for the E3 Medium publication this fall proved to be more revealing than I’d intended. Click here if you want to know which singing superstar I pledged (and failed) to marry, which one I should have asked on a date, which Queen music video I make a brief appearance in, and whether I’ve ever played Sean Connery on TV.
There are many questions here, but the 1Qi format will return with more cool interviewees in January.
The Information Monster
Did you know that I also write stories and books? If you’re curious, why not check out my fiction website right here? I’ll also be publishing a new novel early next year, so keep a lookout for that!
This fall I published one of my titles, a dystopian sci-fi novella called The Information Monster, in five chapters on Medium. If you prefer to read ebooks, you can buy the Kindle version on Amazon.
The universe’s dark energy is increasing and only a former MIT astrophysicist knows what it means. As his worst nightmare becomes a reality, he flees Santiago with his young daughter to the peaceful safety of the decommissioned ALMA radio-telescope. But what if they were followed…
Thanks for reading Discomfort Zone in 2023!
Send your comments to john@johnbdutton.com and please connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already.