How To Win & The Future Of "Media"

0924 Drop

Good morning from a rainy and Autumnal London. The 0924 drop is focused on how to think about the future with several important themes bubbling under the surface. I went deeper into the future of media and how social media is not social and not supporting media.

Themes Featuring In This Drop ↓

  • How To Make Culture Fit Tangible 👏

  • Why AI Is Going To Be Challenging For Many 🤖

  • DNA Up For Sale 🧬

  • Ads Are Everywhere & It Just Won’t Stop 🛑

  • The Increased Need For Cash 💸

  • Spotlight On The Future Of Media 💬

Let’s dive into the Must Reads:

→1 9 Ways To Improve Work Email 
Here are my 9 rapid and simple ways to improve work email including having a limit on email in reply chains, moving to work docs and selecting a modern day email client.

→2  Why Ads Are Everywhere & Its Gonna Get Worse 
Search Ads, Feed Ads, Pause Ads, Swipe Ads, Download Screen Ads, ads are everywhere and wherever there are eyeballs or ears there will be many more ads to come, think in group chats, Canva downloads, on a download screen and swipe on a match an ad will appear.

→3 What TikTok Search Ads Means For Businesses - TikTok spent over $4b to get into the position it is today dominating many markets in short-form entertainment from strangers, now they want to capitalise as Google, Amazon and other giants do with keyword-based searches. TikTok might just take market and wallet share but their issue is the content ads and sponsored listings will appear next to and dent the company or product’s reputation. Search for a brand you use and you will see a negative video almost instantly.

→4 How To Nail 2025 - SEO, Social Media, Management - I connected with my trusted partners and Must Reads friends with a quick-fire series of how to be successful in 2025. Happily share to your Marketing colleagues.

→5 Not So Epic - Epic have taken Apple, Google and now Samsung to court, anything that has a distribution system and can be seen as a monopoly is where Epic sues. Epic have won a number of cases but isn’t helping their cases with big tech.
I am not a huge fan of monopolies and restricting competition, however, Tim Sweeney (CEO) is now acting like legal is the only way to win since their growth slowed. Being a nuisance is a strategy (so many patent trolls now) for most companies but soon this will be used against you with smart spin doctors from these large firms undoing what Epic are trying to achieve.
Preception is key and Epic is not being their namesake with more legal moves.

→6 Why We Use The Word Like Too Much — Most people use like as a filler word, especially in the US, what is interesting with research is we are using it for far more than “The reality with ‘like’ is it has come into our language because it serves some really important purposes for us,”. “No one starts using a word because it’s pointless.”

Must Watch & Listen Media

If you are into podcasts and loved Serial, the next big true-crime podcast was recently released. The first 3 have been great. Listen here - There are a number of trigger warnings for this show.

A refreshing conversation about the different impacts of depression and how it shows up with celebrity rappers ↓

📁 File Under Didn’t Know We Needed: How About Crocs For Your Dog (yes and they’ll be $49.99

→7 DNA For Sale? 23&Me is struggling, to the point of about to be de-listed and all of the board left in one day, this often means the company will have to be sold. The issue then is what happens to your data and your DNA data, one worrying side to this is your data could then be sold for instance to an insurance firm, a foreign business or a military firm looking to understand customers and their history.

→8 AI & The Dead Celebrity - In an unsurprising move and something we have discussed previously, dead celebrities and their estates are moving to earn money on using their voice, likenesses and brand-new AI-generated clips. This is not a surprise but the celebrities who will be used and how they will be used might be. I predict some really questionable celebrities and historical figures will be used and some will cause more political unrest.

→9 The Underserved 40+ Market - Many businesses have turned their attention to chasing younger generations, even trying to acquire Gen Alpha, but who is going after the generation with more disposable cash and who is the most loyal generation (according to Shopify COO suggested recently “85% of shoppers aged 35-44 have strong, established preferences for the products and brands”) it will be interesting to see how many brands adapt their messaging into 2025 as many consumer groups aren’t feeling the love.

→10 Culture Fit was always something companies hid behind and try to today but what does it mean? Not much right? Here are 4 levels of cultural fit and how to make it work for your staff and potential incoming staff.

Spotlight The Future Of Social Media

  • Jack Dorsey On The End Of Social Media 
    One of the main reasons social media became toxic media is down to Twitter (& let’s call it out Facebook too) and its inability to make decisions that did not benefit its users. Twitter was the “news” + engagement around news stories for a long time but in the background, it had so many executive changes and infighting it ultimately lost its identity and the result: today’s version X under Elon. I don’t disagree with Jack’s point, however, social media now is short-form entertainment for most users (without the users understanding the shift or they role in how the platforms plan to make more money from training of their user data and behaviours) and rarely a social experience.

  • Future Social Or Future Fades? Social in the future might end up like ‘noplace’ (vodcast below) which is a throwback to Myspace might just be a fad but shows how old is new and how Product Recyclement is commonplace even with social sites launching back in 2003. I’m old enough to remember the original fondly therefore i’m too old to sign up for noplace

  • Social Media To Chat Social — We have all shifted over to group chat, whether that’s friends, colleagues or local communities, everything is a group chat. What X has seen is the move away from X and small communities popping up on Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage and tools like Discord and Slack. Communities will have to go niche to win and be valuable enough in a commercial setting, expect sponsors to flood your group chats soon and pay a high premium to do so.

  • Infamous Journalist Taylor Lorenz Enterting Wave 2 Of Independent Journalism - Taylor Lorenz has made a name for herself, often offering inside scoops, reporting on what others do not and not being afraid to be outspoken on the latest trends. Taylor has created user mag to tell the stories mainstream media won’t. Taylor is definitely the new journalist model many try to fulfil creating podcasts, creating videos on YouTube and then going live on Substack with Q&A. Despite some wild accusations Taylor has quite the resume including The Hill, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, The New York Post & The Washington Post.
    We have had a wave in 2020/21 with journalists leaving and setting up on Substack and now we are going to see wave 2 with many going onto Substack (or Beehiiv or Ghost) to build out the reporting they want through a subscription model. But this is sustainable for the average reporter and not one that’s amassed thousands of followers because of the beat they have?

  • The Future Of Media? Chat Apps? Media publishers think so but as I suggested previously, media can’t fall for another bait and switch from Meta and big tech. Channels could be great but most of the media companies simply won’t invest other than treating like RSS.

→11 The Power Of A Short Domain? This is a compelling longer read over milk.com. If you ever have a chance to buy a domain that is easy to remember (ideally a .com or .net) I highly recommend it. Domains might seem less important in the current evolution of the internet but they will continue to be incredibly powerful for years to come.

→12 Emergency Cash — The Importance Of Cash - Unfortunately the recent Hurricanes have highlighted many major issues, one is the the lack of cash (held by us) when infrastructures break becomes a big issue. With so many shops going all in on digital payments, it soon breaks when phone lines go down or when their wi-fi drops. In this case, should it remind us how important cash is and will be for the foreseeable future?

→13 🤶Early October means relaunches and Christmas ads season (for supermarkets and large brands), here are a couple that have made many people say WTAF

Don’t worry American Must Readers, Lidl is coming back to the US and announced it this week.

Check out this ad with S Club with Waitrose launching their no.1 range & here’s how the remix came about with Jax Jones

Lastly, Thank You to those who took the free power hours, it was great to connect with you further and help be a sanity check. Across Must Reads, Leaders Letters (my leadership newsletter) I have hosted a number of these sessions and it was great to connect with you.
I am going to be offering one slot per month moving forward so please reply to this email (or email [email protected]) and let me know how I can support you.

Thanks for reading today and have a great weekend ahead, if you want to discuss anything in Must Reads just hit reply and say what you think

Danny D