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- EOW Thought: Addiction
Greetings, Let Me Think subscribers!
A little end of week thought to bring you into the weekend.
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Onto the thought…
EOW Thought
Have you gone on marketing trade websites recently and left thinking.…
…what happened to all the great work?
This was the front page of Marketing Dive yesterday.
Some news about Meta. And Amazon. And data.
A few headlines about AR Snap lenses and an “AI film festival.”
Hardly anything to write home about.
Here is Ad Age from today.
A mediocre car campaign.
A headline about a Super Bowl brand ditching the Super Bowl.
Some other bullshit.
Maybe we’re in a weird sweet spot between summer and the holidays.
Maybe we just happen to be in a week chock full of tech earnings.
But I go on these websites constantly - the ones that are supposed to hero and highlight the great work happening in our industry.
And the last few months, I’ve been left with “meh.”
Why?
My theory is all the great campaigns this year, got killed.
Budget cuts.
Pushed to 2024.
Not willing to take that swing.
Other than Barbie, which really was more of a masterclass in having money and beloved IP than anything else, this year feels like a wash.
But the biggest reason why is because of everyone’s addiction.
An addiction to the artist formerly known as Facebook.
Meta.
Everyone running small social campaigns because they:
Have to cover their own asses with “stuff that works”
Can’t quit a platform that has lost its effectiveness
See two different newsletters below from The Information this week.
From Monday:
“It’s getting ugly out there for consumer brands, as today’s bankruptcy filing by Hello Bello, the baby care brand founded by celebrity couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, demonstrates. On the surface, Hello Bello had all the ingredients for success: famous co-founders who could promote the brand to their combined 20 million Instagram followers, as well as widespread distribution in big stores like Walmart. But that wasn’t enough. The bankruptcy, which my colleague Maria and I first reported, is the final act in a two-year saga that began with Apple’s privacy updates in 2021.
Hello Bello and other upstart consumer brands—including Winc (maker of Summer Water rosé), sneaker brand Allbirds, underwear startup Parade and activewear company Outdoor Voices—had once banked on digital ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram as a cheap, reliable way to get in front of potential shoppers. But the changes, which limited the ability of social media firms like Meta Platforms to target users, made the ads much less effective. All of a sudden, brands were struggling to grow as rapidly as they had before, despite continuing to spend heavily on ads. In fact, Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, was named as one of Hello Bello’s top creditors in its bankruptcy filing this morning.”
From Thursday:
“Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has 34.1 billion reasons to be satisfied with the social network’s third-quarter result, released Wednesday afternoon. That’s how many dollars Meta reported as revenue, near the top end of the company’s guidance, and representing 23% growth over the year-earlier revenue line. That’s a return to the kind of growth rate we saw routinely from Meta before 2022, when a combination of Apple’s restrictions on ad targeting, competition from TikTok and a broader chill in the ad market derailed the company’s growth rate—and sank the stock. This year, Meta’s stock has recovered much of what it lost.”
So, let me get this straight.
On Monday, we highlight how companies went bankrupt relying on Facebook.
On Thursday, we applaud Facebook for bankrupting these companies.
On Monday, we demolish the companies that relied on Facebook’s ads to grow.
On Thursday, we cheer on Facebook for hooking a new era of suckers.
On Monday, we imply “they should have seen it coming.”
On Thursday, we imply “to the victors go the spoils.”
You see, we live in an era of “cover your ass” marketing plans.
The platforms that produce ROI metrics - Facebook, Google, Amazon - get all the money.
Do they work? They did. At least, Meta did before 2021.
But they don’t work as well now.
If they worked as well as before, why would Meta’s CPM’s continue to go down?
Because Meta needs to serve more impressions to get their algorithms to figure out who likes what, and serve ads accordingly.
And because Meta knows there is a lot of turnover in the companies that buy their ads, so they need to keep the prices low to get the new ones in the door.
But when bad performance hits, do companies ditch these platforms?
No. Of course not.
They’re seen as safe and secure, based on past performance, and they provide that shiny ROI metric.
And they keep running and running there - even if it means the company goes bankrupt.
Because Meta is like a drug.
And companies are addicted.
Addicted to real-time results and real-time feedback.
Addicted to rented customers, high churn and loose brand relationships.
Addicted to a high they used to get from running on it.
Addicted to the feeling of showing internal folks a shoddy ROI metric.
Addicted to covering their own ass at the expense of great work.
They can’t quit it, even when the performance tails off.
And when they try to, Meta just makes the drug cheaper - lowering CPM’s - or adding more variants - Reels, AI options, etc. - so you keep on using, and scratching that itch.
So instead of great work this year, Meta gets a $34 billion quarter.
It’s funny - I’ve never heard of a story of a brand going bankrupt doing too much brand advertising.
But now I’ve heard of them going bankrupt looking for more Meta conversions in the back alleys of the news feed.
So as you read your weekend news, keep an eye out.
Do you see great work being produced by your fellow marketers?
Or do you just see news of Meta’s great quarter?
If the latter, then talk to your advertising friends.
Maybe they need a little rehab.
Stay thinkin,
Danny