Telemundo Kicks World Cup Marketing Into High Gear: Sweeping Coverage, New Campaign
Telemundo reveals 700 hours of coverage, 104 matches, and a new campaign to reach viewers.Read More
Paramount Scores a Top Sports Ads Exec From Amazon Ahead of Upfront
Amazon Ads confirmed Danielle Carney has left the company.Read More
Popular (and good)
Popular is easy to measure. Good, not so much.
Setting out to make something popular requires only a focus on the crowd and on the moment. Most pop music is popular simply because that’s what it was built to do.
Good work can be good without being popular. And so the two goals aren’t easily aligned.
It helps to begin by becoming comfortable with what good feels like to you. Because conflating it with popular is a trap.
Merrell Bets a More Democratic Outdoors Can Set It Apart From the Competition
Merrell, the footwear brand known for its hiking boots, wants to democratize the outdoors with the first global brand platform in its 45-year history.Read More
From Adthena to Profound: These 6 Hot GEO Startups Are Shaping the Future of AI Shopping
Firms are battling to help brands understand how people find and buy products.Read More
EXCLUSIVE: Meta Is Building Tools to Chase More Retail Media Budget
Meta is testing tools designed to improve retail media campaigns that run on Facebook and Instagram.Read More
3 Big Challenges Holding Back AI Commerce
Three big problems retailers, AI firms, and industry trade orgs need to work out to pave the way for AI-powered commerce.Read More
Plurio Raises $3.5 Million to Bring Agentic AI to Performance Marketing
The startup predicts outcomes from early signals and executes budget and creative changes across channels.Read More
Stagwell and Emberos Launch Agentic Tool to Help Brands Navigate AI Search
The tool is already being used in client pitches and won Stagwell agency Assembly new business.Read More
A nearly perfect score
After playing 498 days in a row, my score today in Bongo was the second-highest in the world:
There’s a difference between casual online games that have a right answer, and those that are open-ended.
In crossword puzzles and most of the games from the Times (like Wordle and Connections) you’re trying to guess what the puzzle constructor had in mind. This can lead to frustration, because the idiosyncratic nature of inventing clues and answers means that you might not be in sync with the person at the other end. They’re inherently closed systems.
Bongo, on the other hand, is generative and combinatorial. There are bazillions of possible right answers, and your goal is to find a right answer that’s worth more points than anyone else’s. It doesn’t matter that I invented the game, I have no advantage over everyone else, because we all begin with the same tiles.
For me, open-ended games are time well spent. Have fun.