Knock, knock. Targeting here!
It’s 1975. I’m nine years old. There’s a knock at the door. A traveling salesman is visiting our little town. In fact, he’s an encyclopedia salesman. A brown suit and keen smile sold the Encyclopaedia Britannica – dozens of leather-bound volumes – to my parents. He must have knocked unsuccessfully on a hundred doors that day. All he had was a sales pitch, a good brand to sell, and a payment plan to offer. And in those simpler times, that was targeted marketing. Fortunately, my parents’ investment wasn’t wasted because I spent countless hours poring over those crisp pages.
That knock on the door back in the seventies is now a buzz on a phone or an ad in a scroll. The door-to-door salesperson is now inside the house, inside our pockets, and inside our minds.
Who wouldn't want to see ads that are perfectly targeted? If I'm running out of coffee... “Hey, look - there's an ad for a local coffee roaster in my Instagram feed!” And which marketers wouldn't want to perfectly target a potential customer? “Luke, we need to get these coffee beans out of the storeroom... Hey, whaddaya know, John is about to run out of coffee!”
That scenario is, of course, a cute fantasy. The reality is remorseless, relentless data-fueled personalized targeting. And artificial intelligence will make the targeting even more personal, with each ad instantly crafted just for me, based on my viewing habits, website visits, reading choices, and who knows what else. (With LLMs, even the marketers won’t know what’s “under the hood”.)
But products and services can be over-targeted. In a word, it’s creepy. Once you become aware of targeting it feels like every window in your house is filled with prying faces peering inside, watching what you’re doing, and like every closet or cabinet in your house has a microphone inside, listening to what you’re saying.
Even as someone who works in marketing, I’m not immune to this feeling. I’m also hyper-sensitive to targeting fails, such as being served ads on every device for an expensive product I bought yesterday or seeing ads for women’s fast fashion (presumably because my daughter uses my laptop).
Fortunately, European regulations and Apple default blocking are weakening the effectiveness of third-party cookies. Google’s phase-out of cookies on Chrome browsers is scheduled to happen this year, portending the so-called “cookiepocalypse”. But the new battleground for the hearts and minds of consumers will be the uncanny valley of AI-generated ads that speak words attuned to your fine-grained personality while showing images crafted for your specific esthetic tastes.
An even more insidious type of targeting is already a huge industry. As reported in the DISScomfort section below, marketing to young people is extremely profitable for popular social media platforms. A study concluded that 2022 annual advertising revenue from youth users ages 0–17 years was nearly US$11 billion, while approximately 30–40% of the advertising revenue generated from three social media platforms is attributable to young people. Hyper-targeted AI-driven ad campaigns could make the mental health minefield on every smartphone even more dangerous than it is already.
We’re living on a different planet to the sleepy town of my childhood. Encyclopaedia Britannica stopped being printed in 2010 and is now only available online. But I guess some things never change: even though it’s free, I use Wikipedia so frequently to satisfy my curiosity that I support it financially.
And it doesn’t carry ads.
Mickey Mouse, free at last!
January 1, 2024, was a momentous occasion for American and global culture. The first images of Mickey Mouse finally entered the public domain, meaning that they no longer enjoy copyright protection. Without getting into the legal weeds, this particular milestone was also widely celebrated by indie creators because the Walt Disney Company has been lobbyist-in-chief for extending US copyright protection for decades in a desperate fight to protect their IP (intellectual property) in addition to the revenues generated from retaining the sole rights to financially exploit that IP.
The work in question is 1928’s short animation film Steamboat Willie, and you’ll see from the screenshot above that this initial version of Mickey Mouse is distinctly different from the more rounded and cute character we all know and love/hate today. This distinction is important because the public domain version of Mickey is (for now) the one featured in Steamboat Willie.
Although you might expect a flood of AI-created MM content, my research – and this appears to be true across the board – demonstrates that it’s almost impossible for diffusion models such as Dall-E or Midjourney to avoid displaying Mickey Mouse in the modern copyrighted form. Of course, this hasn’t stopped a filmmaker producing a horror movie called Mickey’s Mouse Trap.
One caveat if you or your kids are planning to run wild with the 1928 version of Mickey – copyright and trademark law aren’t the same (and they’re different in different territories) so nobody can use the name Mickey Mouse while implying that their creative product was made or sponsored by Disney.
Interested in learning more about the legal web that surrounds the little mouse? Check out this article by Duke University copyright expert Jennifer Jenkins. By entering the public domain, Mickey Mouse has now followed in the footsteps of Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and Sherlock Holmes. Please stand by while I write a story about a mouse detective who loves honey and travels to a world where nothing makes sense…
Down the Rabbit hole
When I heard about the Rabbit R1 pocket companion, I said to myself, “Yawn. Yet another Black Mirror-style device that will never beat Google, the iPhone or Alexa.” I knew that the R1 was being launched at CES this week and was skeptical that I’d be wowed. But not only was I impressed, I actually laughed out loud during the keynote video when the very first question the company’s founder and CEO Jesse Lyu asks the device is, “What’s the nature of reality?” That’s what I call thinking big! I watched the rest of the 26-minute demo so you don’t have to, and let me tell you, I admire what Rabbit is trying to do.
Designed and manufactured by uber-cool Swedish audio and synthesizer consumer electronics company teenage engineering, the Rabbit works like a walkie-talkie with ChatGPT on the other end. It also has a screen, a camera, and a virtual keyboard. But its most impressive capability is the rethought OS that underlies everything: what the company calls a Large Action Model (LAM), in contrast to an LLM. The actions this refers to are real-life tasks that regular folk want to accomplish with their smartphones or laptops but can only do so using a bunch of different apps. So the R1 acts like an overarching personal assistant that gets things done simply by asking it.
It won’t replace a smartphone (for now) but it looks to me like a genuinely useful and affordable addition to your slews of gadgets, costing only US$199 with no subscription required apart from a data plan that you purchase separately. The Rabbit doesn’t track or store your data, works seamlessly with the apps you typically use (eg. Spotify, Uber, Google), and has automatic language detection. The design is like nothing else out there, the UX looks intuitive, and at that price it’s worth a try once it starts shipping at Easter.
Arts degrees suddenly valuable
Matt Candy, IBM Consulting’s head of AI, has emphasized the growing need for liberal arts graduates in the tech field to help companies navigate the challenges of interfacing AI products and platforms with the human beings who actually use them. In this interview with Fortune Magazine two weeks ago, Candy encouraged young people yet to enter the workforce to focus on degrees that require language skills and creative thinking if they want a tech job on graduation.
Parents who used to roll their eyes when their son or daughter applied for a philosophy, literature, or anthropology degree might soon see the benefit of understanding how people think, behave, and communicate. Want an example of where these fields might help avoid corporate disaster? In December there was Coca-Cola’s accidentally terrifying Christmas card image generator as well as the sales snafu at a California Chevy dealership when a couple of cunning consumers convinced a chatbot to sell them vehicles at reduced prices while confirming that the offer was legally binding. Turns out that artificial intelligence can be fooled just as easily as it can fool us.
Keith Jennings, community impact leader
As we start the New Year, some of us may be reflecting on how we can do more to help others, whether through donations or by volunteering. The first 1Qi of 2024 features a truly interesting perspective on generosity from a man who has thought deeply about charity. Corporations with CSR initiatives proudly announce that they’re “giving back” to the community, but today’s 1Qi guest analyzes what it really means to give back.
Q. After studying the psychological and physiological impacts of helping others, you’ve developed a personal insight into why “giving back” might not be as effective as people and corporations sometimes believe. Could you share your perspective on how we can all have a better impact on those who are less fortunate?
A. Let’s start with what the phrase “giving back” signals. To give back assumes we must first acquire, earn, or win something before we offer something to others. A sibling to giving back is “paying it forward.” In both cases, the getting comes before the giving.
This thinking leads to a second problem. If we think we must wait until we’re able or successful to give back, then the act of giving becomes something we’ll do one day (which often becomes never).
Many of the most giving people I’ve ever encountered in my life had far less than I have. Yet they were far more generous than me. That’s what helped me realize that generosity is a much bigger, more inclusive idea than giving back. Generosity is something you and I can do right now, today. No excuses.
When I teach this concept, I like to use whiskey and bourbon as a metaphor. All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. There are other types of whiskey beyond bourbon: Irish, Canadian, Japanese, Scotch, etc.
Giving back is like bourbon. It’s one type of generosity, and it’s typically only available to a limited number of organizations and people. Generosity is like whiskey. It encompasses a multitude of ways to love and serve others. It includes acts of kindness, the giving of time and money, advocacy, and self-sacrifice. It’s available to everyone always.
I want to encourage and equip business leaders to make generosity a strategic priority in their organizations. The data is clear that responsible, consistently practiced generosity positively impacts our personal wellbeing, organizational culture, and business stakeholders. The key is understanding what “responsible” and “consistently practiced” really mean.
Responsible generosity puts others first. Unfortunately, well-meaning generosity efforts can cause harm to those being served because the real needs of others aren’t understood and respected by the givers. Being responsible also means coming to an understanding that there is no “us” and “them.” It’s just us—humans living together in community.
Scientific studies reveal that one-time and random acts of generosity have little positive impact on either the giver or receiver. True impact comes from making generosity a regular practice. That’s what we mean by “consistent.”
For anyone reading this, I want to encourage you to pick one day and one way you will practice generosity. By one day, I mean pick any day Monday through Sunday. Then pick an ongoing rhythm such as the first Friday of every month, or the third Thursday of every quarter. The day and cycle should be whatever works with your lifestyle and schedule.
After you’ve defined your day, choose a way you will be generous. Will you perform three acts of kindness? Will you donate a specific amount of money or time to a local nonprofit? Will you visit and help an elderly neighbor? Will you spend time with and safely mentor a young person?
The science is clear that once you begin making generosity a regular, intentional practice, you will experience a boost in happiness, health, and sense of purpose. And once you experience this at a personal level, you can begin to put this into practice at an organizational level.
Imagine the result if just a few of us committed to doing this, starting today.
Keith Jennings serves as vice president of community impact at Jackson Healthcare, a family of staffing, search, and technology companies. In this role, he is responsible for the organization’s multi-faceted charitable outreach – from deepening external partnerships to maximizing associate engagement in community service. Keith is the producer and host of the podcast Generosity at Work, which teaches business leaders the science and practice of generosity in and through the workplace.
Save the Children (from social media marketing)
I have a teenage daughter. I’m no dummy – I know she’s influenced by social media content, social media advertising, and social media advertising that looks like social media content. And she’s certainly not the only one. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital have carried out an extensive study into the enormous revenues made by Meta, Alphabet, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat through marketing aimed at children on their platforms. The study employed a simulated revenue model to estimate the advertising revenue made by these corporations in the United States in 2022.
It’s no surprise that kids are addicted to phones, but this new data indicates that around 30–40% of the advertising revenue generated by three of these social media platforms comes from people under 18 years of age. Okay, from a business perspective, great job, corporations. But there’s a darker side to this equation. As the study’s authors state, “Our findings highlight the need for greater transparency from social media platforms as well as regulation of potentially harmful advertising practices that may exploit vulnerable child and adolescent social media users.” We have laws that prohibit advertising to minors in Quebec, where I live. Maybe I should create a TikTok video to let the company know and see what impact it has...
The problem with optimizing our lives
It’s hard to go wrong when you listen to Adam Grant. The organizational psychologist is not only a leading expert on workplace dynamics and management, he’s a fantastic communicator. (He’s also an over-achiever, having been an all-star high school diver and then a professional magician when he was young.)
In keeping with the New Year/New Leaf theme, those of us who are privileged enough to be able to think about such things might be tempted to optimize our lives. But there’s a problem with this mentality, and in this episode of his WorkLife podcast, Grant interviews psychologist Barry Schwartz and applied mathematician Coco Krumme to discuss the dark side of maximizing everything. Is it possible to pursue success without sacrificing happiness? Listen for some smart answers and top tips.
New Year’s resolution failing? Start a streak!
Whether it’s going to the gym or reading your favorite newsletter, recent research shows that a great way to ensure you stick to a long-term goal is to start a streak. Read more here and let me know what you do to stay motivated.
Send me your comments on Discomfort Zone at john@johnbdutton.com and please connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already.
One day after I published this came news that the world's largest ad agency holding company has used AI to create personalized New Year wishes in various languages for each of its 100,000 employees. It's impressive and fun. But it won't always be...
https://spotlight.designrush.com/news/publicis-made-100000-videos-using-ai-to-thank-its-employees