Volume 89: Legitimizing, not just monetizing.

1. Legitimizing, not just monetizing.

tl;dr: Big brands don’t just monetize hate; they legitimize it.

At one point, it was a joke to say the greatest minds of a generation were wasted getting people to click on ads. Now we find the implications of billions of dollars pumped into adtech are way worse than just clicking on ads (which hardly anyone does, btw). No. We’re now finding that adtech, in addition to consumer surveillance, usurious value extraction, and feeding a global organized crime movement, is also directly responsible for the monetization of extremism.

What’s worse is that while the adtech industry can rightly be criticized for monetizing hate, the brands appearing on these hate sites are complicit in legitimizing it.

Let me explain.

One of the big problems with adtech is that while it claims to be smart, it’s also incredibly dumb. The great innovation behind surveillance advertising was to disconnect advertising from both content and context. In the past, media was purchased contextually. In other words, media was purchased based on where we thought our audience was likely to be and what they were likely to be engaging with based on their interests and content consumption habits, which meant we had to take a direct interest in both the content and its publisher. However, with the advent of adtech, this context became subsumed by an ability to track individual consumers and serve them ads no matter what content they might be engaging with, and no matter who might be publishing it, meaning marketers no longer had to take an interest in content, context, or publisher quality. Instead, they outsourced that responsibility to a complex and opaque array of easily gamed adtech policies and black-box “brand safety” systems that work so terribly they’re vastly more likely to de-monetize legitimate news stories about, say, LGBTQ+ issues than they are to steer brands clear of blatant racism.

Add this all up, and you’re left with ads for brands like Volvo, Land Rover, and Harvard running on sites like Steve Bannon’s “War Room” (I refuse to link to that shit). Yes, the same Steve Bannon banned from YouTube for advocating the beheading of government officials.

And, while it’s deeply concerning that major advertisers are, even unwittingly, monetizing the worst content on the internet, it’s equally concerning that their presence on these sites legitimizes that content. In branding, as in life, it’s an old adage that you’re judged by the company you keep. Simply put, this means the brands your brand associates with significantly impact how you’re perceived. It’s a big reason we’ll never see something like Louis Vuitton associating with Dollar General, for example.

So, while these blue-chip brands don’t want to associate with hate sites because it will have a negative impact on them, it has an outsized positive impact on the hate-spewers when bluer than blue-chip brands like Land Rover, Volvo, or Harvard appear next to hateful content because some of the equity rubs off, in effect saying “Hey, this stuff is fine. Big brands like us wouldn’t be here if this stuff were truly toxic,” even though that’s exactly what it is.

The problem with all of this, of course, is one of incentives. There are no incentives for adtech purveyors (of which Google is the world’s largest) to reign this in because they profit from it. And there’s no real incentive for brands to do anything about it because they can legitimately shrug their shoulders and say it’s too complex or claim to have outsourced the responsibility to an adtech brand-safety system that they know probably doesn’t work very well.

The bad news is that it really is a complex problem because the only way to fix this and make sure your ads don’t appear next to objectionable content is probably going to require routing around as much of the adtech ecosystem as you can, instead going as close to direct as you can get to quality sites that publish quality content and have a quality audience, which means buying media contextually again. Something a vanishingly small number of brands are set up for in a world increasingly dominated by programmatic buying. The good news is that there’s increasing evidence showing that this doesn’t just insulate your brand from hate but is also the best way to make sure your ads get in front of actual human beings instead of bots and ensure the maximum amount of your media spend is turned into actual ads rather than being lost to extraction fees from the adtech intermediaries.

But, yeah. It’s really sobering to think that just by working in marketing with big brands, we’re complicit in monetizing and legitimizing the kind of content that’s breaking our society and that we’d never want to be associated with in a million years.

2. EV fueled nostalgia? Oh yes, please.

tl;dr: Old cars are way more inspiring than a pseudo-Jetson’s future.

When I was a kid, I loved cars, avidly consuming every motoring magazine I could get my hands on from the front to the back. I distinctly remember aspiring to an Aston Martin or a Porsche or maybe even a Lamborghini (Countach, naturally). But, of course, as I got older, other priorities reared their heads like children and dogs, so nowadays, I drive a battered old Ford Explorer and am perfectly happy doing so, having no real interest in badge snobbery. (As an aside, I’ve never seen anywhere like Cambridge, MA, for car damage. Having lived there previously for three years, there’s now a novel written in braille for giants across my driver’s side door).

Anyway, when EVs first became a thing, the most discombobulating aspect was the way car companies figured the way to telegraph an electric vehicle being an electric vehicle was to make it look like a parody of a pseudo-Jetsons vision of the future. A future where aesthetics and design sensibility and embarrassment clearly no longer counted one whit. In reversing this trend, one has to give credit to Tesla for basing the design of the Model S on an Aston Martin or a Jaguar rather than a “World’s Fair” vision of the future, circa 1939, which meant other car manufacturers have largely fallen in line when it comes to the design of their EV models (Although, seriously BMW, making the wheels on the EV version of the Mini look like wall sockets is pathetic. Mind you, the electric BMW is so ugly it hurts).

Anyway, I’m absolutely in love with the spate of new EV concepts being released (either by the car company themselves or by independent designers) that aren’t mimicking a nostalgic concept of the future but are straight-up drawing on nostalgia itself.

So far, we’ve seen such retro-macho concepts from BMW, Dodge, and Hyundai (twice) along with Ford, which recently demonstrated its aftermarket electric crate motor in a 1970s F100 series truck.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I look at the results of what happens when smart people rifle through the back catalog majesty of the car industry, I can’t help but smile with more than a little of that “want one” green-eyed envy I last had as a teenager.

So, yes car industry. No more Jetsons. Please bring your nostalgia-fueled retro-macho EV concepts to market. I can’t think of a car I’d rather own than any of the above.

3. IV wellness and DAOs.

tl;dr: A few random thoughts before the weekend.

Last week was Thanksgiving here in the States, which is undoubtedly my favorite adopted holiday. There’s no equivalent in the UK, so the idea of getting together with family and friends to pause and give thanks, eat turkey, drink wine, and then fall asleep on the couch watching sports without having to worry about gifts or religion is really rather refreshing.

We usually spend Thanksgiving with extended family, but this year, due to a rather nasty bacterial infection, I had the joy of spending mine in the hospital on an IV (all good now). Aside from a deep feeling of gratitude toward our medical professionals for working on a holiday, especially during the throes of an ongoing pandemic, I became more than a little obsessed with that joyous bag of fluids. How, I wondered, could something so seemingly innocuous as a hanging bag of salty water make such a difference to how I felt? I’ve never had a headache disappear as quickly. Apparently, though, I’m not alone because IV treatments are the hot new thing in wellness. (If we conveniently ignore that IV hangover treatments have been a thing in Vegas for some time now).

I have to say, I’m not too fond of needles, so being sick and stuck with an IV by a nurse in a hospital is one thing, but I can’t imagine going to a spa and choosing from an array of concoctions to be injected into my arm. But, hey, some people go and have a belt sander applied to their face, so I guess anything is fair game in the quest to look and feel better.

In entirely different news, I’ve been diving deeper down the rabbit hole of Web3, which is about as confusing as anything can be. My curiosity piqued by a spate of talking heads wanging on about what the “metaverse” (a thing that doesn’t exist yet, other than a name ripped off from one of my favorite novels) means for brands. I’m like, please. Stop already. You’ll be referring to yourself as the “Metaverse Prophet” next. (And PS. Coming from a brand guy, the metaverse might be better off without brands ruining it for a while).

Anyway, amidst all the genuine innovation, weirdness, hyperbole, general nonsense, and man-child libertarianism, it’s hard to fathom Web3 and the true impact of crypto, blockchain, NFTs, DAOs, and DeFi. But, what really caught my attention was the DAO formed to try and buy an original copy of the constitution. While a hedge fund mogul ultimately doomed that effort, the principle of establishing a completely decentralized and autonomous organization is striking. And while buying a copy of the constitution was a bust, I think we’re going to see a lot more of this in 2022. For what it’s worth, my prediction is that groups of fans will form DAOs in an attempt to buy sports franchises. And quite possibly a much bigger one than anyone anticipates.

Let’s look at some back of a cigarette packet numbers to see why that’s possible. The Pittsburgh Penguins were recently sold to Fenway Sports Group for around $900m. Their stadium holds 20,000 people. That’s the equivalent of everyone who goes to the stadium paying $45,000 for a stake in the team. And while $45k is a lot of money, it’s not astronomically out of reach. Add more fans to the DAO, and that number drops, add some debt, and it drops further still. I think you see where I’m headed here. Access enough people and get to a place where the choice comes down to spending $100 on a replica jersey or $100 to own a part of your favorite team and have a say in how it’s run, then I’m pretty sure I know what most fans will choose. So, yeah. DAOs will get real big, and they’ll get real weird, and it’s going to happen real soon.