Sunday Links with Social Media ReInvention: October 14th Edition

Are marketers safe from robots?

Will robots take our marketing jobs with frickin’ laser beams manufactured by The Stark Corporation?

Will Skynet Terminators be able to write articles as well as their human marketer counterparts (or maybe even better than them)?

These Sunday Links to online articles and my accompanying Deep Thoughts tangle with this question — How Can A Human Marketer Co-Exist With Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

• Deep Thought 1 — Writing and Productivity: Marketers Who Write Like Ann Handley (or Jerry Seinfeld) Don’t Need No Stinking Robots
• Deep Thought 2 — Email Marketing: Watch Ann Handley Save Marketers From Villanous, Job Stealing Terminators
• Deep Thought 3 — Marketing Analytics: What Should Netflix Marketers Do? Option 1: Trust The Algorithm or Option 2: Piss Off Jane Fonda

Please join me to read the full post. You will enjoy yourself (and maybe laugh in the process). I promise!

Unless you are a robot scraping my content.

Okay, time to get to work.

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1. Marketers Who Write Like Ann Handley (or Jerry Seinfeld) Don’t Need No Stinking Robots.

Total Annarchy Newsletter #44: How to Write a Book, AI + Writing, the Hottest Social Platforms of 2020 by Ann Handley

Subscribe to Total Annarchy. Your life (and writing) will thank you. 20,000+ loyal fans (and growing) can’t be wrong. I count myself as one of them. You’ll laugh, learn, and improve as a person, writer, and marketer (in exactly that order).

Click here for your subscription.

Two Sundays a month, I lap up EVERY word and sentence of Ann’s newsletter. While reading, I do a combination of these things:

• Laugh my ass off
• Groove to her writing’s cadence
• Marvel at the imagery

There’s no way in hell a robot or algorithm creates vivid text like this! It’s the introduction from the August 11th newsletter:

Good morning, beloved.

This past week I was in Las Vegas. It was 110 degrees at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

For some insane reason, I decided to walk the half-mile from my hotel to a Whole Foods. I wanted a salad—not a choice you’d think anyone would ever regret, would you…?

Except halfway there, I did regret it. The heat. The aggressive flame-broil of the sun.🔥

It was like walking inside a Weber Grill turned to High. And I was the rotisserie chicken—blistering on a spit, questioning my life choices. Like: Couldn’t I have made do with the prepackaged salad from the lobby refrigerated case?

Who else (or what else) writes with such delicious substance, style, and wit? Thank God, my morning coffee made it down the hatch. Because if one drop swirled in my mouth, my laptop gets drenched like this guy:

Her generous newsletter packs and links to enriching content. Here are some recent treasures:

• James Clear‘s phenomenal book, Atomic Habits
• 13 Reasons Why Anyone Can Benefit From A Daily Writing Habit
• How To Write A Press Release: The Definitive Guide
• Writing One Sentence A Day Is How You Write A Book

Note bullet point number three. In the September 22nd newsletter, Ann describes her conversation with a colleague about “not doing a lot of writing” in her latest book project.

It may be hard to believe, but Wall Street Journal bestselling authors also struggle with The Resistance. How does she fight back and get on track?

She uses The Two-Minute Rule: Write one sentence a day. Sounds impossible? James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, says a small step is how to build and sustain a good habit (especially when you’re learning or starting something new). Chapter 13 and the two-minute rule are how humans can beat procrastination (and the robot apocalypse):

“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

You master showing up by practicing and ritualizing gateway habits. Taking two minutes to write one sentence triggers “the gateway habit” towards the desired outcome. For Ann, it is finishing her book.

The Two-Minute Rule achieves two critical things:

• It makes your new habit as easy as possible to start
• You master the habit of showing up.

Ann said she forgot about this powerful, little kernel. Thankfully for us, she’s back on task and chipping away at the book by clanging on a manual typewriter.

Show up for two minutes every day. You might become the next Ann Handley (or Jerry Seinfeld). You win tiny chunks of momentum “by not breaking the chain.”

Jerry Seinfeld attributes his career success to building lifelong, sustainable habits. His joke writing system is the trade secret he shares with up-and-coming comics. Or, maybe this is an Internet urban legend. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

If the Two-Minute Rule and the Habit of Showing Up are good enough for Ann Handley and Jerry Seinfeld (supposedly), it’s good enough for me. Here’s a 2012 New York Times interview with Seinfeld talking about a comedy bit he worked on for two years. The best part is timestamp 1:41 to 2:12 when Seinfeld reveals his comedy writing rituals.

Bonus: From Ann’s referral, I started reading Atomic Habits from and am also using the Atomic Habits Habit Tracker Template to track my reading, writing, and exercise rituals/routines. You can get your own after purchasing the book and sending a copy of your book receipt to 1book@atomichabits.com.

But, you read this far. Request the template in the blog comments below. Include your email address in the comments form. I’ll send you the PDF version from The Atomic Habits website.

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2. Watch Ann Handley Save Marketers From Villanous, Job Stealing Terminators

Emma Email Marketing Blog: The robots are coming. Should creatives freak out? by Ann Handley

For now, marketers are safe. Ann interviewed Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. He advocates how artificial intelligence (AI) can supercharge our daily decision making.

Marketers who adapt to and embrace AI will gain competitive advantages relative to their peers:

Every piece of marketing software you use today—ad buying, analytics, automation, content strategy, conversation, email, search, social—can be made better using AI.

This means the software uses data to make recommendations and predictions that continually improve, rather than marketers having to figure everything out on their own.

We already use AI-powered software to make better email marketing decisions. AI examples in email marketing include:

• Writing top-performing subject lines
• Sending and personalizing email newsletters
• Optimizing email send times
• Segmenting customer lists by profitability

Speaking only for myself, crafting Excel charts, pivot tables, and spreadsheet formulas are like drinking Grey Goose martinis with blue cheese olives while polishing off a thick, juicy steak.

I am a data-driven slicer and dicer. The analysis fulfills and jolts my creativity.

But, machines can process tons of data to predict email performance better than I can. That is the promise of AI-powered marketing. To win back valuable time so I can:

• Frame a memorable argument
• Write a visual and entertaining story
• Figure out how to flow and structure it
• Snap my fingers on the keyboard
• Pour thoughts in my head this post induced you into a coma

But, here’s what freaks me out a little. The future of AI writing like humans is here. Mr. Roetzer points out how major media companies started using natural language generation (NLG) technology to write their articles.

These are big-time:

• The Washington Post
• The Associated Press
• The BBC
• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal

Is that bad? I’m not sure. Here’s what Ann thinks:

Creatives like you and me will not end up jobless, poor, and living in squalor in a fourth-floor walk-up tenement, eating ramen and dented canned goods, stealing our Netflix Wi-Fi from the bodega downstairs.
Instead, machines take over the optimizing, the analyzing, the reporting, the boring, the drudge, and the data. And it means robots become our partners, helping us be sharper, smarter, and better decision-makers.
That means we can all get back to the reason we went into marketing in the first place: To do great and creative things.

Wisdom. Hopeful. Uplifting.

But, I secretly want this IMAX Surround Sound version. Imagine Ann as a Sarah Connor-like badass. She unapologetically hails rapid-fire barrages of Everybody Writes bullets into the villainous, job-stealing Terminator. Then, blows it to kingdom come with a Content Rules rocket launcher.

The timestamp from 1:00 to 1:14 in the Official Teaser Trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate is what I’m thinking!

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3. What Should Netflix Marketers Do? Option 1: Trust The Algorithm or Option 2: Piss Off Jane Fonda

The Wall Street Journal: At Netflix, Who Wins When It’s Hollywood vs. the Algorithm? (Paywall) by Shalini Ramachandran and Joe Flint

Deadline: Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Weighs In On Streaming Wars, Agency Production, Big Tech Breakups, M&A Outlook – Update by Dade Hayes

How Netflix marketers combine human intuition, talent management, and big data. This November 2018 Wall Street Journal article described a situation that could have detonated like a nuclear bomb. The battleground centered around how to market the second season of the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin comedy, “Grace and Frankie.”

So, what’s the big deal? The tech group A/B tested a promotional image with U.S. subscribers that only included Fonda’s co-star, Lily Tomlin. And, the testing data showed more subscribers clicked on the show when the promotional image DID NOT include Jane Fonda.

Netflix executive teams drew internal battle lines. They fought internally by function and geography:

• The Los Gatos Tech Group: This team lobbied how the company should not dismiss conclusions from the data.
• The Los Angeles Content Marketing Group: This group raised the risks of alienating Fonda.

This is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. I got hives while reading this workplace drama. In the corporate world, I managed and/or worked with mega ego talent in large management consultancies. When handled poorly, these situations blow up. Badly. Always.

So, what did Netflix marketers decide? They included images of Ms. Fonda in the promotional campaign. Apparently, “high-pitched internal debate” (terms used in the article) between The Tech Team and The Marketer Guys occur often.

These quotes are from former Netflix executives: Bob Heldt (Engineering), an anonymous content executive, and Josh Evans (Technology) describing “heated discussions” (terms also used in the article) between the tribes:

There’s a “natural tension” between the two sides. People in L.A don’t believe numbers as much as people in Silicon Valley. (from Mr. Heldt)

The tech side is never going to get the reasons for wanting to do anything that is beyond pure metrics. (from the anonymous content executive)

While the tech team is more “data-driven and analytical” and the Hollywood-side more “relationship-oriented,” the two sides manage to reach common ground. (from Mr. Evans)

Marketing analytics and artificial intelligence should inform our marketing decisions (not replace them). A television and movie executive named Ton Nunan made this instructive observation:

It’s all very encouraging to hear that there is a debate. It reassures the Hollywood community that there is a beating heart in the chest of this great power. There is a limit to what an algorithm can do in terms of predicting the future.

Speaking of reassurance, here’s some actionable wisdom from Ted Sarandos (Chief Content Officer, Netflix) on maximizing the marketer and A.I partnership. We can learn a lot from this interview with Ted Sarandos at SeriesFest, an emerging festival for television and the industry’s content creators.

Watch and listen to his opinion in timestamp 0:40 to 2:10. Sarandos commands Netflix’s $14 billion content budget. Note his specific views on what the Hollywood content development process is and what it is not:

• Working with creative people is a “very human function”
• The limits of data
• His decisions are 70-80% art and 20-30% science (and they are not always perfect)

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