📓Creativ Brief: Costumer Focus
Growth's downsides. Activision Blizzard gets greenlight from FTC. Chrome AI agent. NY Times warms to AI.
Humans are naturally self-centered.
We absorb the world around us from the confines of our own mind, adjusting our behaviors according to the sensory input we receive.
Harder is the metacognitive exercise of putting yourself in another person’s frame of mind in order to internalize how they may feel - also known as empathy.
As Creativ Company has grown, I’ve noted how our various customers think about us.
Some see us as their PR marketing support, others as their digital marketing solution, yet others as their consumer insights resource.
On the one hand, it’s gratifying to see us become a unified marketing solution for such a wide variety of clients. On the other, I see drawbacks in clients having such a disparate mental vision of what Creativ Company stands for.
Recent conversations with customers have revealed that as we’ve grown past our humble B2B PR roots into digital and machine intelligence products, our unique value proposition has also become muddier, less clear.
We still do great work and continue to grow, but our clear value proposition has become a victim of our own success. The diverse set of customer feedback of ‘who we are’ has revealed this.
GE under Jack Welch is a cautionary tale. The company started its life making top of the line electrical equipment products. Then energy products. Then jet engines. Then chemicals and plastics. Then medical systems, metallurgical, and finally financial products. Its market value reached a staggering $450 billion in 2001.
12 years later, the company’s market cap has crashed 55% to $200 billion. Why? No one knew what GE did or made anymore. It became self-obsessed and no longer served customers.
When searching for a unifying company story, refocus on the value you provide the customer. We’re in that exercise right now.
3 Stories Shaping the Media and Tech Industries
This decision follows a series of legal setbacks for the FTC, including a failed appeal to halt the transaction and a court ruling favoring Microsoft, leading to the deal's completion in October 2023. Microsoft addressed competition concerns by signing 10-year agreements to keep major franchises like Call of Duty available on rival platforms, including Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's consoles.
Why it matters: The FTC's withdrawal not only cements Microsoft's position as a dominant player in the gaming industry but also signals a potential shift in U.S. antitrust enforcement priorities, particularly under the current administration's focus on other regulatory areas.
Google has unveiled a suite of AI-powered tools for marketers, including a Chrome-integrated agent called Marketing Advisor, which can autonomously optimize ad campaigns and website performance based on user-defined objectives. This agentic AI can suggest and implement changes like improved tagging, keyword targeting, and content adjustments across platforms such as Ads, Analytics, and CMS systems, all with user consent.
Why it matters: This development signifies a pivotal shift in digital marketing, moving from reactive analytics to proactive automation, potentially redefining the roles of marketers and raising new considerations around data privacy and regulatory oversight.
The New York Times has entered its first generative AI licensing agreement with Amazon, granting access to its editorial content—including articles from The Times, NYT Cooking, and The Athletic—for use in Amazon's AI products like Alexa. This multi-year deal permits Amazon to display summaries and excerpts of NYT content and utilize it to train its proprietary AI models, although financial terms were not disclosed.
Why it matters: This collaboration reflects a broader industry trend where media companies are increasingly partnering with tech firms to license content for AI development, balancing the need for revenue with concerns over unauthorized use of their material.
Creativ Spotlight - Sara Yazdani Promoted to Vice President of PR & Marketing Partnerships
Sara joined the machine intelligence marketing firm in 2023 to establish a formal PR department, standardize operating procedures, and build a team of PR talent. Yazdani has worked closely with the company’s CEO Wes Morton to triple the size of the PR department in the past two years. With her vast network and unique approach to PR, Sara has become invaluable to Creativ Company as the dot connector across industries.
Please congratulate her on LinkedIn or at Cannes this year!
Stat of the Week - Advertisers Consider Nielsen Alternatives to Be As or More Effective
A new survey shows that 85% of U.S. brand and agency decision-makers who used Nielsen alternatives in the past year found them to be as effective or more effective than Nielsen.
There’s a growing shift in confidence away from Nielsen’s long-standing dominance as the industry “currency,” opening the door for more competition, innovation, and diversification in how media effectiveness is measured and monetized. Rapid change in media and AI will accelerate this trend as legacy players struggle to keep up.
One Fun Thing - Celebrate in Person
We took Sara and the rest of the team out to dinner Wednesday evening to celebrate her promotion. Nothing beats in person connection, especially when paired with delicious ramen.