If you’re reading this, I am honestly shocked. Newsletters suck and I hate them just as much as the next person. Less than 20% of email newsletters are actually opened. And I think I know why.

Businesses don’t really care about you.

Most marketing newsletters exist to sell you the newest promotion, get more likes on socials and blow their own trumpet. They don’t really care about you. They care about their bottom line.

I want to do things differently. Hear me out.

I love helping people. Its been something that has stuck with me my entire life. I founded ThinkStory with one primary goal in mind. To help other businesses thrive. Specifically through strategic thinking and creative storytelling. It gives me so much joy to be able to work towards this goal on a daily basis.

This newsletter will just be an extension of this. To help you. I’ll be sharing my opinions, commentary, thoughts and insights breaking down the world of digital marketing and mass media into bite-sized chunks. I'll be emailing this out to our mailing list every couple weeks as well. Sign up here.

Get AI ready.

When I was in high school, I’d spend the school holidays working in my dad‘s construction company. During my grade 11 year, I was tasked with the rebranding of his company, everything from the logo through to the company profile. It was a fairly major project for a 16 year old. But I took it on and learnt so much over that period. As I think back on that time, I realise that my father was looking to me, as the next generation, to help his company step into a new, more modern world.

And at the same time, his secretary was typing his emails for him. Since he was so hands on with the company, this was an area that he had fallen behind on and had begun to struggle with.

We typically look to the younger generations to lead the way in terms of the implementation of technological advancements, and we hope that we will be able to keep up. But we rarely do.

I’m here to tell you that AI right now is what email was to my dad back in 2006.

It might seem dramatic, but AI has already become so integral to our company workflow that I couldn’t imagine operating without it. We’d be much slower, less efficient and more narrow minded in almost every written area. Think of what email means to you. Or WhatsApp. Or the internet. I believe that is what AI will become to most people, 10-20 years from now. Up-skilling your workforce is a daunting task and if you’re not sure about where to start, just reply to this email.

Gen Z built TikTok.

This week we shared a short video across our socials which drummed up a bit of controversy. Such is the nature of short form video content. I claimed that over a few short years, Gen Z built the multi million dollar behemoth that TikTok is today. How dare I exclude the development, marketing, etc etc etc teams?! At the end of the day, without its users, TikTok would be just another failed tech startup.

Just take a look at these figures. The minimum age of TikTok is 13 years old. The only user data we could find was from 18 and up.

The power of this generation can’t be understated. They’ve clearly proven themselves. Businesses that have built their strategies to consider the platform have boomed more than anyone could have imagined. Building an audience on TikTok could be exactly what your business needs right now. The topics are endless. Business, consulting, accounting, finance, design, art, engineering, marketing and a million more niches that are just waiting for you to fill. Consider it. That’s all I’m saying.

Barbie.

The marketing of the Barbie live-action has been a masterclass in simplicity. The marketing team had literally one goal in mind. Make. Everything. Pink. And that’s exactly what they did. I honestly don’t believe the actual idea was “genius”, because it's really quite a simple and almost obvious concept. The key to their success was execution.

ecause of the simplicity of the concept, we’ve seen thousands of unofficial collaborations pop up, trying to get a taste of the hype. The virality of the idea caught on and the world followed.

Fast forward a few short weeks, and it’s just surpassed $1 Billion at the box office. Billion with B. It obviously doesn’t hurt to have a massive marketing budget, but I’d argue that most marketing plans fail because of a lack of commitment or poor execution, and not because of budget.

The lesson? Build an extremely simple marketing strategy and stick to it.

The State of Creation Podcast

We’ve just launched our new podcast called “The State of Creation”. I’ll be interviewing different business leaders, communicators, marketers, artists, creatives and generally interesting people. We’ll be covering a lot of the topics I plan to discuss in this newsletter with a very casual, informal style. A bit of a far cry from most business related podcasts I listen to.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast or if you’re interested in anything else we’re doing click here.

If you’ve made it this far, then I promise you this newsletter is for you. If you enjoyed it, please considering sending this to someone who you think would also enjoy it.

Cheers for now.

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