Like it or not, artificial intelligence can't be avoided. It's in the news each and every day, and on the tongues of students, professors, influencers, and office workers. When I visit LinkedIn, I am flooded with full-throated enthusiasm for AI. Even the Super Bowl has been taken over by AI. Did you know that 23% of Super Bowl commercials—15 out of the 66 ads—featured AI? Trishla Ostwald, writing for Adweek, …
Apple Can Help You “Be Ostentatiously Mediocre And Succeed”
Navigating the demands of office work in The Age of AI presents new challenges for today's thought workers. If you are not careful to constantly upgrade skills, colleagues who have, may lap you in the perpetual race to impress the boss and keep your job. Vinsom Cunningham, author of a new novel and staff writer at The New Yorker, recently wrote a piece of advertising criticism that reminded me how Apple …
Continue Reading about Apple Can Help You “Be Ostentatiously Mediocre And Succeed” →
Make America the Land of White Male Conformity Again
In order to impress the new administration in Washington, soldiers from the Culture War have entered the sliding glass doors of America's most prominent retailers—a fact that increasingly threatens their ability to make their own business decisions and operate stores profitably. Three days into his job, Florida's new Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a class-action lawsuit that alleges Target Corp. did not …
Continue Reading about Make America the Land of White Male Conformity Again →
Democracy Did Not Die In Darkness, But A Formerly Important Newspaper Did
Associated Press reporters have been barred from the White House and Air Force One because the venerable media business refuses to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. On the other side of the Constitutional issue is The Washington Post, which is doing whatever it can to please the nation's Supreme Ruler. (Are you surprised? The newspaper is owned by billionaire tech bro, Jeff Bezos. And if we've …
Continue Reading about Democracy Did Not Die In Darkness, But A Formerly Important Newspaper Did →
Holding Companies Seek Even Greater Profits In New M&A Deal
Mergers and acquisitions—it's one way to grow a company beholden to its shareholders. Ad industry holding companies know all about it, given that they regularly acquire and then "hold" what were once independent and innovate agencies. Earlier this month in what could become the merger of all mergers, Omnicom announced its intentions to acquire Interpublic Group in a deal worth $31 billion. In their official press …
Continue Reading about Holding Companies Seek Even Greater Profits In New M&A Deal →
How About We Strengthen the FTC’s Negative Option Rule?
How many recurring subscriptions do you have? And how many of these companies with your credit card info contact you before they automatically renew? Only a small percentage of my subscription-based relationships do me the favor (after I change my auto-renew preferences), and I imagine the same is true for you. The FTC uses the phrase “negative option marketing” broadly to refer to a category of commercial …
Continue Reading about How About We Strengthen the FTC’s Negative Option Rule? →
Musk Rebranded Trump? That’s Not What Happened
Kyle Chayka is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He wrote a piece after the election about Elon Musk's impact on the Trump brand. Here's a small excerpt to chew on. It’s hard to overstate the success that a Trump-Musk axis has already had in rebranding Trump’s image.... In the company of Musk—redolent of angular Cybertrucks, reusable rockets, and humanity living on Mars—Trump appears not as an elderly, increasingly …
Continue Reading about Musk Rebranded Trump? That’s Not What Happened →
A Major Unjust Threat
"The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted." - Statement on AI Training Musicians, actors, and writers worldwide are signing their names to a statement opposing artificial intelligence companies and developers using their work without a license. According to Billboard, the statement …
