Week of Oct. 12 Evening News Ratings: NBC Nightly News Up in Both Measurements
It was a big week for NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas, but World News Tonight is still tops in viewers.Read More
The relentless math of bandwagoning
It often seems that everyone is talking about what everyone is talking about.
No one cares about a song or a movie or a political issue–and then they do. Then it’s everywhere.
But of course, that’s precisely why. Most people feel safe when they’re engaging within the expected social norms. It’s easier to fit in and to avoid an error. Or, if that’s your thing, it’s easier to stand out in contrast to everyone else who is trying to fit in. Either way, we’re always on the lookout for a bandwagon to hop on.
The media, in their relentless search for newsstand sales, clicks and likes, seek precisely the same thing. PT Barnum figured out that putting a marching band on a wagon at the front of the parade drew a crowd, and then Dan Rice, an actual clown, realized that politicians would be eager to ride on a wagon that had a crowd, which drew others to the crowd and the cycle continued.
The math is simple: you can’t bandwagon by yourself. The nature of bandwagoning means that it will always be overrepresented in any sampling of the media.
Just because someone organized a parade doesn’t mean you have to be in it.
Ads of the Week: 10 Campaigns That Caught Our Eye, From Away to Walmart
Away, J.Crew, Walmart, Liquid I.V., and more are behind the week’s most notable ads.Read More
The hotlist
I just built a page containing many of my books. Click on any one of them and it’ll take you to a directory of where you can get a copy. And the page then re-indexes based on which ones get the most clicks.
Thanks for reading.
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The Secrets of Human Behavior Applied to Social Ads
Struggling to create Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok ads that people remember long enough to buy from you? Wondering how consumer psychology can tell you why your winning ads work and how to repeat that success? In this article, you’ll discover how to use behavioral science and consumer psychology to create social ads by deciding how […]
The post The Secrets of Human Behavior Applied to Social Ads appeared first on Social Media Examiner.
Task Automation Tips, AI-Build Landing Pages, and Industry News
Friday is almost here! Before you unplug, here’s one last round of insights and updates. Whether you read them now or save them for later, you won’t want to miss these. In today’s edition: AI automation tips Building landing pages with AI 🗞️ Industry news from ChatGPT and Gemini Triggers and Actions: How Automation Tools […]
The post Task Automation Tips, AI-Build Landing Pages, and Industry News appeared first on Social Media Examiner.
The age of initiative
We’re unprepared.
In high school, the quarterback isn’t allowed to call the plays, the actor isn’t allowed to write the lines and the math whiz isn’t allowed to choose what to prove.
We all grew up in the age of compliance (and indoctrination).
The long tail of the internet and the astonishing leverage of AI has made this training much less valuable.
No matter what you do for a living, there’s a machine standing by, waiting for instructions. Instructions from you, if you choose, or from your overlords if you don’t.
And following the playbook isn’t much help, because the world is changing so fast, a playbook is obsolete by the time someone hands it to you.
One reason AI got such a fast start is that it gave people seeking compliance a chance to wait for the AI to tell them what to do next. Quick, cheap answers.
AI gives bosses a cheaper (and often more compliant) alternative to hiring humans to do some tasks.
For those indoctrinated to comply, this is stressful. The stress is due to a desire to get things back to normal, to give them a chance to comply again, but right here, right now, is as normal as things are ever going to get. “Good jobs” are no longer sinecures where success comes from following instructions.
It’s an abrupt change, and winging it is insufficient. Handling this sudden transition alone is too difficult. But we have a chance to find the others, to connect and be part of a cohort that challenges, educates and encourages each other on the path to find a way forward.
We accepted that it was required to spend years being trained to handle a life of compliance. Now we have the chance to lean into the hard work we’ll need to do to thrive in an age of initiative.
Tilly Norwood Tells All
This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here. […]Read More