Top Marketing Issues of 2025

In the Sixties, when Duluth’s native son Bob Dylan famously sang “For the times they are a-changin’” he was spot on. As he declared on Another Side of Bob Dylan, "Everything passes, everything changes..." Fifteen years later, he sang, “Gonna change my way of thinking.” Twenty years ago he reiterated this sentiment in his Oscar-winning song, written for The Wonder Boys, “Things have changed.” In short, change seems to be the one constant in our world and in our lives.

So here we are in 2025 and what has changed in the realm of marketing? To answer this I thought I’d ask Google what the top marketing issues of 1985 were. To my surprise, though things were different, much actually appears to be the same. It’s as if we’re facing many of the same issues, dressed in different clothes, that marketers and ad agencies did forty years ago

1985 was the year of the "New Coke" Disaster, when Coca-Cola tried to replace its classic 99-year-old soda recipe with a new version called "New Coke." Fans of the original Coke went ballistic. Coca-Cola was forced to bring back the old recipe as "Coca-Cola Classic" just a few months later. Fast-forward to 2025 and we continue to see brands make missteps and offend fans. One difference is the megaphone of social media, which can create instant, deafening responses.

In 1985 people’s lives were getting busier and they had more product choices than ever before. Shopping habits began to change, though it’s nothing like today. Check out the toothpaste or deodorant options at Wal-Mart. For a variety of goods many people hardly go shopping at all, having everything delivered to their homes via FedEx, UPS, USPS or DHL, and—potentially soon—via drones. Now, as then, marketers had to figure out how to keep up with what customers want and stay relevant in this fast-paced world.

The rise of cable TV and viewer-side ad blocking, which began in the late 70’s, meant people could watch more channels and skip ads more easily. Marketers were forced to rethink how to reach audiences, as traditional TV commercials weren’t working as well anymore. That was before the web changed those rules entirely.

Back then new government regulations made advertising trickier, with stricter rules about what companies could say or do. Consumer advocates like Ralph Nader were getting louder, demanding better products and more honesty, which added pressure on marketers to play fair.

Adapting to evolving data privacy regs is another headache. Stricter privacy laws (e.g., GDPR, CCPA*) and the phasing out of third-party cookies limit access to customer data, complicating personalized marketing and ad targeting.

In our Internet age, people who build online businesses can be wiped out overnight by government rulings or platform decision makers. When online poker was made illegal in 2006, dozens of online businesses making millions vanished. Other businesses have been sent reeling by algorithm or policy changes at Facebook, Google, Amazon Marketplace or the Apple App Store.

As I see it, if you don’t own the platform, you don’t own the business. Or as the adage goes, “Don’t build your business on rented land.” The solution: your long-term strategy should involve building independent customer relationships (email lists, direct websites, diversified sales channels) so you’re not at the mercy of sudden changes beyond your control.

Two other issues that I’ve seen over the past 40 years are (1) the lack of alignment between sales and marketing teams, and (2) the issue of attracting and retaining talent.

In many companies, sales and marketing operate as separate departments with distinct leadership, budgets, and priorities. These silos discourage shared accountability and make it harder to coordinate strategies, leading to conflicting efforts or duplicated work.

Marketing and sales can become almost adversarial because they have different goals and timelines. The marketing mindset focuses on the big picture; sales teams live in the now.

Marketing teams typically focus on generating leads, increasing brand awareness, or driving website traffic, measured by metrics like impressions or click-through rates. Sales people prioritize closing deals and meeting revenue quotas. These differing objectives can create a disconnect, when marketing delivers leads that sales deems unqualified, or sales fails to follow up on marketing’s efforts effectively.

As for attracting and retaining talent, Stacy Johnston, founder of Audacity HR Solutions said, “I think an area of opportunity from a marketing lens is internal and external alignment with branding, mission, and core values.” She also stressed the importance of having a clear “why” message. That is, here’s why you should work for us.

“Many organizations spend lots of time and money on marketing. Harness that message not only to connect with customers, but also to connect with potential employees and current employees,” Johnston said. Having an authentic brand that resonates with candidates and employees will bolster recruiting and retention efforts, she explained.

Of course, the big “new thing” that has been rattling cages in 2025 is the integration of A.I. into all aspects of marketing today. In the digital marketing space A.I. is challenging traditional SEO strategies. If you have a question for Google, the search engine no longer begins with sponsored links and page links based on traditional SEO. Instead, Google’s A.I.-powered Gemini 2.0 will offer instant answers to your questions. Whereas Google was formerly a friend to help you promote your website, it seems that now Google is becoming your competition. On top of this

we’re being threatened by a flood of A.I.-generated low-quality content, making it even harder for brands to stand out.

 

On this topic, there’s more to say. With A.I., the times really are changing.

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*GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation; CCPA: California Consumer Privacy Act

Illustration: A drawing of mine modified with Gemini 2.5 Flash

This article originally appeared in my Marketing Matters column, Business North, October 2025

Five Ways Journalists Use Twitter

I believe it was an article in Politico that turned me on to the value of Twitter as a resource for journalists. I joined in July 2007 and have found it to be one of the best tools out there for staying current what is happening as well as capturing the pulse of the nation. 

Currently there are more than 280 million active users on Twitter and I personally find the platform invaluable.

I decided to ask Google's Bard (AI rival to ChatGPT) how other journalists use Twitter.  

BARD: Here are five ways that journalists use Twitter:

1. To break news. Twitter is a great platform for journalists to break news. They can use it to tweet about developing stories, share exclusive information, and get feedback from their followers. For example, in 2016, the New York Times broke the news that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election on Twitter.
2. To share their stories. Twitter is a great way for journalists to share their stories with the world. They can use it to tweet about their reporting, share their thoughts on current events, and connect with their readers. For example, the BBC's Lyse Doucet often tweets about her experiences as a journalist, sharing her insights into the latest news stories from around the world.
3. To source stories. Twitter can be a great tool for journalists to source stories. They can use it to find sources, get tips, and get feedback from their followers. For example, the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold used Twitter to source his Pulitzer Prize-winning story about Donald Trump's charitable foundation.
4. To build an audience. Twitter can be a great way for journalists to build an audience. They can use it to connect with their readers, share their work, and promote their brand. For example, the Guardian's Owen Jones has built a large following on Twitter, where he shares his thoughts on politics and current affairs.
5. To engage with the public. Twitter can be a great way for journalists to engage with the public. They can use it to answer questions, share information, and get feedback from their followers. For example, the BBC's Nick Robinson often tweets about his reporting, sharing his thoughts on current events, and answering questions from his followers.

These are just a few of the ways that journalists use Twitter. It is a powerful tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, from breaking news to building an audience to engaging with the public.

For me, one of the chief ways I use Twitter is to read the feedback to controversial Tweets. I've often gained insights as regards how divergent points of view can be. 

There are plenty of other ways to gain these insights, and many other places for more in-depth discussions. For example, the comments at The Unherd are consistently of a high caliber. 

That's all for today. 

Could an AI Ever Fall in Love?

DreamAI generated illustration
based on my B&W "Dreamtiger"

Google has thrown its hat in the ring regarding an AI machine that is learning. Those who have been dabbling with the diverse range of AI applications in this mesmerizing tech space are paying close attention to rapid evolution. For some it is terrifying, for many it is remarkable. 

My grandmother often said that she grew up in the most amazing time in history as she witnessed the development of the automobile, radio, television, computers, manned flight, and ultimately the exploration of outer space. It seems that from a technology point of view our Boomer generation has witnessed some equally remarkable advances. The emergence of the Internet, genetic research, brain mapping and AI are a few of the many things that have caused our heads to spin.

Where they lead is anyone's guess.

It's amazing how much press ChatGPT has gotten the past six months and how many people have dabbled with it. Now, Google has thrown its hat in the right with its own intelligent machine. 

The other day I decided to ask the two AI cousins a question about love. Not human love, but whether an Artificial Intelligence could ever fall in love. Here were their replies.

Do you you believe an AI could ever fall in love?

Google Bard replies:

I don't know if an AI could ever fall in love. Love is a complex emotion that involves many different factors, including chemistry, attraction, and attachment. It's not clear if an AI could experience all of these things.

However, I do think that an AI could develop strong emotional attachments to humans. For example, an AI that is programmed to care for a child could come to love that child in a way that is similar to how a human parent loves their child.

It's also possible that an AI could fall in love with another AI. If two AIs are programmed to interact with each other in a way that simulates human relationships, they could develop feelings for each other that are similar to love.

Ultimately, I think it's impossible to say for sure whether an AI could ever fall in love. It's something that we may not know until we develop AIs that are even more sophisticated than the ones we have today.

Do you you believe an AI could ever fall in love?

The response from ChatGPT:

As an AI language model, I do not have personal beliefs or emotions, so I cannot fall in love or have opinions on whether an AI could fall in love.

However, it is important to note that the concept of "love" is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that encompasses many different aspects, including emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and cultural factors. While AI systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable of performing tasks that were once thought to be exclusively within the realm of human intelligence, they still lack the ability to experience emotions and subjective states of consciousness in the way that humans do.

Therefore, while it is possible to program an AI system to simulate certain aspects of love, such as empathy, compassion, and attachment, it is unlikely that AI will ever truly experience the depth and complexity of human love.

* * * * 

So what do you think? Both made the observation that love is a complex emotion. I found it interesting that Bard explored the idea of the possibility of two intelligent bots potentially falling in love. Could this be an initial longing for love that springs from a certain existential isolation? "Only the lonely know the heartaches I've been through," Roy Orbison once sang. Will an AI experience loneliness one day and have that longing for connection? Last year I started a short story around this theme. The seed for that idea sprang from a short story by Isaac Asimov nearly 70 years ago. 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.  

Have You Ever Seen Ball Lightning? Pretty Amazing, Eh? Here's What Google's Bard Has To Say About It.

Snapshot from a video showing a ball lightning burst.
It turned out to be created by CGI but is similar to 
what I witnessed here in Duluth's rural  outskirts.

One evening a heavy fog rolled in followed by a thunderstorm. Because of the fog you couldn't see the lightning strikes but the diffused light would flicker through the clouds in the sky. While standing at the front door looking out the window, I saw several bursts of light in the acre of yard to the north of my garage. It was something akin to giant fireflies or flash bulbs popping. Suddenly, directly in front of me, not more than 25 or 30 feet from the house (if you need more accuracy, it was between me and the crabapple tree) there was a spherical burst of lightning, probably 10 to 15 feet in diameter. I'd heard of ball lightning, but had never seen it before... or since. It was quite startliing.

Here are some things I learned about it by asking Bard, Google's new AI bot. What I found most interesting is the statement that there is no definitive answer as to what causes it. Based on my experience, it seemed like the atmosphere had an unusual density that night. 

Ball lightning is a rare and unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Thought [to be] usually associated with thunderstorms, the observed phenomenon is reported to last considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt, and is a phenomenon distinct from St. Elmo's fire.

Though the exact nature of ball lightning is still unknown, there are a number of theories about its cause. Some scientists believe that it may be caused by the interaction of lightning with the Earth's atmosphere, while others believe that it may be caused by a chemical reaction. There is also some evidence that ball lightning may be caused by the release of energy from the Earth's core.

Whatever the cause, ball lightning is a fascinating phenomenon that has captured the imagination of people for centuries. It is a reminder of the power of nature and the mysteries that still remain to be solved.

Here are some of the theories about the cause of ball lightning:

• Lightning strike theory: This theory suggests that ball lightning is caused by a lightning strike that hits the ground and then travels up into the atmosphere. The lightning strike would create a plasma ball that would then float around in the air.
• Chemical reaction theory: This theory suggests that ball lightning is caused by a chemical reaction between two or more elements. The chemical reaction would create a plasma ball that would then float around in the air.
• Earth's core theory: This theory suggests that ball lightning is caused by the release of energy from the Earth's core. The energy from the Earth's core would create a plasma ball that would then float around in the air.

There is still no definitive answer to the question of what causes ball lightning. However, the theories that have been proposed are all plausible and provide a good starting point for further research.

I can't say for sure what caused it, but it was certainly fascinating. Here are some other theories about ball lightning at Wikipedia.

Sources - Learn more

1. encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/ball-lightning
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

Throwback Thursday: Google Flops and Failures

This week I discovered another amazing application: Google Lens. Using your iPhone (they also have an Android version) you use the camera feature to capture words and have them transformed into text. It is literally amazing. I may write about it later, or may not. In the meantime, Google it. This is the OCR (optical character recognition) tool I was looking for 30 years ago but never found.

Here's another surprising Google tidbit: The median salary of a Google employee is over $350K a year. 

I published the following in April 2017. It was fascinating to me how many Google products have not lived up to their hype. And yet, no one can deny their power. 

Google Flops and Failures

In 1995-96 I wrote a monthly magazine column about the Internet. It's one of the ways I learn about how things work, by writing about them. My columns were very basic. What's a search engines? What is a browser? How does email work? What is the World Wide Web?

One column was called the Top 25 Search Engines. I essentially wrote a paragraph about all the search engines I could find, explaining their pros and cons, listing their URLs and making suggestions regarding why this or that was a favorite of mine. (Remember Inktomi?) What's remarkable is that even though the search engine market niche was a crowded one, Google didn't even exist yet.

What Google did was essentially very simple. They identified a weakness in the competition and exploited it. So many of those engines were getting bogged down with advertising, or were simply a bit slow loading. Google offered a clean, uncluttered appearance and an extremely fast delivery time. Before long they were the name of the game. You knew this because the name Google very quickly became a verb. "I think you should just Google that." Or, "I Googled 'chimpanzee' and got 19 million results in 0.75 seconds. Wow!"

Their success was such that they not only became the dominant player in search engines, they also built on this success with a whole batch of successful follow up products and services. Here are just a few: Chrome, Gmail, Blogger, Google Drive, Android, Google Maps, YouTube and Google Alerts. I myself prefer the Chrome browser, use Gmail, have been blogging nearly ten years on Blogger, am planning my next trip on Google Maps and am listening to Alison Krauss on YouTube as I write this. And I love those Alerts as an easy way to follow what interests me.

It comes as a surprise to many, however, that Google management doesn't always get it right. Their home runs have been massive and made the company a boat load of cabbage. But as the saying goes, even the best hitters in baseball strike out now and then, and some strike out a lot.

Google Flops 

I'm not highlighting Google's flops and fizzles to embarrass them. I assume they are beyond that. I'm just a gnat that has enjoyed my various and vicarious associations with Google by means of the tools they've provided me over the years. The reason for bringing these things up is to remind people: just because Google is doing something, we should all do it, too. In some ways they're just another company. They just happen to have a lot more money to buy things and try things.

Maybe that's one of the downsides to being the big gorilla. In baseball, the best hitters know how to wait for their pitch, especially in a big game. But companies can grow to a point where millions of dollars feels like chump change and they get careless. That is, they care less about swinging at bad pitches because it doesn't feel like there's anything at stake.

Remember when Duluth was competing to become a winner of the Google Fiber project. Well, looks like we got lucky. We didn't win. Here's the rest of the story.

And how many folks do you see in the Twin Ports wearing Google Glass? Here are a few other things Google was hoping would become important to us:

1. Google Answers. Not the right answer.

2. Google Wave. Didn't make the waves it was supposed to.

3. Google Audio Ads. Didn't add up.

4. Google Video Player. Sometimes it is easier to buy what you want than to create it.

5. Google Page Creator. It came. It went.

6. Google Buzz. Lasted about a year.

7. Google Notebook. Introduced in 2006. Was taken to the curb with some other junk during Google's "Second Spring Cleanup" five years later.

8. Google Glass. There are no doubt applications for it. Style wasn't one.

9. Google+  It's this one that triggered this blog post. I was listening to an audio book by one of the Google execs and he says in passing, in a throwaway aside, that Google+ was a flop. Interesting. What's interesting to me is that from the first time I was invited to do Google+ it was apparent that this was supposed to become Google's version of Facebook. I could see right off that this was never going to happen.

Oh well. You can't win 'em all. I'm grateful for those things they've done right. And I wish them the best going forward, in part simply for my selfish desire to keep Ennyman's Territory going a while longer.

Thank you, Google. Keep on keepin' on. And if you ever need a second opinion on something important, you know where to find me. :-)

Incentives Matter, Whether In Marketing, Economics or Politics

My April column in Business North was about the role incentives play in generating outcomes that businesses desire. Here's the beginning of the story, followed by a number of quotes about the importance of understanding incentives.

* * * 

Photo credit: Gary Firstenberg

Even though economics has been famously nicknamed “the dismal science,” there have been some surprisingly interesting books written about this topic over the years. One of these was the 2005  bestseller Freakonomics, by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, which went on to sell more than 4 million copies. When I read the book in 2009, one of the takeaways for me was the importance of incentives.

As a result, I did a Google search on the topic at the time and came across a blog titled Incentives Matter that dealt with economics. To my surprise, the blogger was a UMD economics professor originally from Brazil, Pedro Albuquerque. We met for lunch at Pizza Luce and I soon learned that a Nobel Prize was given in 2007 to a University of Minnesota professor, Leonid Hurwicz, for his recognition of the role of incentives in the field of economics and game theory.

Continue reading Here.

* * * 

Quotes About Incentives

"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
~ Charley Munger

"The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows."
~ Emily Oster

"People from both political parties have long recognized that welfare without work creates negative incentives that lead to permanent poverty. It robs people of self-esteem."
~ Mitt Romney

EdNote: If this is so, why do we persist in doing it?

"The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country."
~ Thomas Sowell

"People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don't make any economic sense."
~ Thomas Sowell

"If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else."
~ John Stossel

And so it goes.

Who owns the Information Highway? Here's what they were debating in 1994.

While cleaning out old files and folders from my garage I came across a fat folder of articles I'd photocopied during the early days of the Internet.  In about 30 seconds I surmised that there were some good seeds for stimulating those little grey cells we use to process ideas. The very first of these was an article by Kevin Cooke and Dan Lehrer of The Nation that appeared in the January/February 1994 edition of the Utne Reader. The piece was titled Who will own the information highway? 

The authors begin by sharing a story about Croatia, with a callout that reads, "Direct access to information is 'inherently politically subversive,'' says one longtime Nethead." The Croatian, who maintains a bulletin titled Zagren Diary, said his only link to the outside world is via email. (The article calls it electronic mail.) Kat explains that the Croatian government owns all the media there and they are prosecuting a group of journalists for treason.

The authors then note how the Russian Internet became a source of information about what was taking place during the 1991 coup. Likewise, students in China used the Internet to get the word out about what was happening there during Tiananmen Square. Reporters in China were gagged, but online newsgroups had the stories.

* * * 

The article segues into the power of the Internet, "the most powerful computer network on the planet because it is the biggest." How big? (And this is hilarious.) "It encompasses 1.3 million computers with Internet addresses used by up to 30 million people in more than 40 countries."

Can you imagine what they would have said if told that a single company in less than 30 years would have 2.8 million active monthly users by 2021? The authors correctly predicted that technology would be developed to make it easier for people who weren't nerds to get online. 

They also correctly put a spotlight on an issue that is still unresolved today. Who should control the Internet? Some argued that the Internet should belong to private businesses. The authors had issues with this. "By giving the private sector unregulated and monopolistic control over the Net's electronic connections, the government would in effect allow megacorporations like AT&T and Time Warner, who own the cable lines and manage what flows through them, to call the shots in the future."

Mega-big... like Apple (controlling what can be downloaded from iTunes) and Amazon (free to ban books that are not PC) and Google (free to harvest more data about you than you knew even existed) and Facebook (ditto).

In 1994 there were many voices raised expressing concern over censorship, and others expressing concerns about users being monitored. It doesn't seem like things have really changed.

The article ends with a confident declaration that issues related to access, pricing, censorship and redress of grievances would be resolved within five years. 27 years later and I'm personally a little less than optimistic.

* * * 

Hard to believe that Amazon was just a twinkle in its founder's eye back then, that Google would not appear til five years later, and that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was only a 10 year old kid at that time. Like, who would have thunk it?

C'est la vie.

A Word to the Wise Regarding the Pneumovax Vaccine

At my annual checkup in January I was asked by my doctor if I'd like a flu shot or pneumonia vaccine. I had a really horrendous bout with the flu in 2006 but have generally shrugged them off. To aid my decisions, if I was considering one or the other, he noted that 8 times as many people die from pneumonia as flu. 

(EdNote: This year, because of social distancing, I am not sure whether people are passing the flu around at all. If you have stats, please post in the comments.)

I proceeded to say yes to getting a pneumonia poke.

What happened next surprised me. The first night my upper arm got stiff and was quite sore. I have had enough shots to expect a little of that. The second night I could hardly sleep from the "tenderness" and stiffness. Third night was more of the same and while lying awake on the fourth night I decided to ask Google if this were normal or should I go to the walk in clinic the next day.

The query directed me to a page at WebMD. You've probably been there yourself at one time or another. Here is what I read:

Pneumovax 23 injection Reviews and User Ratings:
Effectiveness, Ease of Use, and Satisfaction

The purpose of the vaccine is to address Condition: Prevention of Streptococcus Pneumoniae Infection

Next, there were user reviews. What follows are the first five of many.
Fortunately I did not have all these symptoms. 

1. Received Thursday. 9am, by 2pm couldn't lift arm without quite a bit of pain. Thursday night barely slept body pain throughout. Sleep 60 min, up 90 min thru entire night. Extreme nausea and fever started by 4am. Fully medicated with both acetaminophen and ibuprofen piggyback I still ran a 102.6 fever majority of Friday. Thought of going to ER, heart palpitations too. Increase in pain in arm. Up and down thru Friday night. Vomiting. Sat only low grade to no fever. Arm is now beyond painful. Even my shirt touching is torture, it is hot, red, swollen. Pain radiating all the way to fingertips. Had to draw a line on arm of redness outer boundary to see if it'd increase in size. Still nauseous almost all day had some dinner and living on freezer pops to keep food down. Headache and migraines for two days now. Took a benedryl before bed in case it's any allergic reaction. Praying since they placed the shot so high it's not into bursa sack. I have rheumatoid arthritis and had shoulder bursitis in past. If they know giving too high is a problem then why on Earth do they? Woke up Sunday morning after another fitful pained night. Fever seems to be gone, stomach feeling a bit better, arm same if not worse. No spread of red swollen area, extreme pain and radiating down into elbow and fingers. The list of side effects is missing a lot of information especially as far as the extreme of all of it and a fever that nearly put me in hospital.

2. Sore arm, shoulder & back. Upset stomach, malaise & headache. Now on the 4th day after the shot & still having these symptoms.   >>>> EdNote: I had been taking Rolaids and Tums for my stomach that week but never thought to connect it with the shot! <<<

3. This is the sickest I've been in 15 years, following this shot. Woke up at 2am with a hugely swollen arm and fever of 102. Couldn't sleep all night, chills, nausea, dizziness. My arm was still red and swollen from shoulder to elbow 48 hours after shot, and 4 days later it's still painful. 

>>>EdNote: My arm felt swollen but was not red. I don't feel like I have had a fever<<<<

4. Very painful arm after injection..barely could sleep...pain if touched bed..flu shot other arm was mildly sore.  

5. Received shot in left arm thursday at 2 pm at CVS. My choice. By 10 pm i could not move my arm. It came on sudden. The pain was so severe in both arm and shoulder, i didnt sleep. Couldnt touch arm or shoulder without severe pain. Couldnt move without crying in pain. Fever of 100.1 stayed in bed all day Friday. It is Saturday now and still limited mobility but less painful. I will NEVER again get this vaccine. Thank goodness for this message board and reading others had the same experience, it kept me from going to the ER at 2am. This reaction is not on the paperwork, only soreness and stiffness. This was WAY beyond soreness. WAY beyond stiffness.

>>>EdNote: At 4 a.m. on fourth day I lay awake wondering if this was normal. After reading these reviews, I realized it is. <<<

THE NEXT DAY I finally began to feel better.

Here is the URL for your consideration. 

https://www.webmd.com/drugs/drugreview-5546-Pneumovax

Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple and Other Finance-Related Anecdotes

I recently received an email that said Amazon sold 20 million items in 1999 and generated an annual revenue of just over $1.6 billion. Two decades later, in 2019 Amazon, sold over 175 million products in a single day (Amazon Prime Day) and the revenue for the year was a whopping $280.5 billion. Said differently, in 2019 Amazon was generating more revenue every two days than it was making in a full year back in 1999.

When Amazon became a publicly traded company in May 1997, you could have bought shares for $1.50. For $150 you could have owned 100 shares of Amazon stock. Currently, the price of Amazon stock (AMZN) is $3,292 per share, but that does not mean your initial 100 shares  ($150) would be worth $329,200. The company had several stock splits while it was in early growth mode and you would actually now have 12 times that amount or nearly four million dollars. 

You don't have $150 to invest in the next Amazon? You probably spent more than that on Amazon Prime in a couple years or your cable bill in a few months or eating out (before Covid).

* * * 

There really aren't that many Amazons, are there? Ummm...  Actually, there are more than you think.

For more on this topic, read my story in the Data Driven Investor on Medium.  It includes an important reminder about risk.

Here is the Friend Link. 

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Super Bowl Advertisers Get What They Paid For: A Game People Watched to the End

A nod to pollinators.

From before the opening kickoff, the advertising was a kick. Kudos to Secret for their Let's Kick Inequality ad before the kickoff. The timing of the ad was good for them because they didn't have to pay the full in-game price for the ad, yet you can be pretty sure everyone was watching as they put the ball through the goal posts. Watch The Secret Kicker.

When you think about the $5.2 million dollar price tag for the parking space alone (plus cost of production) this event is not for the little kids on the playground. But when you look at the size of some of these players (a few of these companies are Trillion dollar babies) you get the impression they could sneeze five million and not even notice.

This is an illustration of one trillion dollars. The little man in the lower left corner
is life sized. Next to him are two layers of skids of packets of hundred dollar bills.
Get the picture? It's a lot of money.

And so it is that we see tech gorillas Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft coming to play. Squarespace and Verizon round out the tech ads. Budweiser is a perennial player at the big game. Or rather, Anheuser-Busch since they were pushing Michelob Ultra and this Bud Light Seltzer which seems, well... different.

I thought the cross-promotions of brands in the Proctor & Gamble stable was cool. The guy with a stain on his shirt was clever. And what did you think of that Wal-Mart play with movie tie-ins. Watch Famous Visitors. They also had two other spots, flexing their muscles a little.

Speaking of movie tie-ins... "Ned! Is that you?" Yes, we re-lived the best parts of Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It was hilarious and if you have a minute, I've embedded it below. 

This is just a graphic element.

Pepsi's Half-Time Show did the usual pyrotechnic thing with lascivious performers seeing how much they could get away with without being flagged as indecent. Pepsi spent $11 million to sponsor that halftime extravaganza. They also had ads for their other various brands from SodaStream, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew to Doritos and Sabra. There with something new in a black can, but that was two days ago and I forget.

Coca-Cola introduced its new Coke Energy line and Kellogg trotted out its Pringles and Pop-Tarts. (A first.)

The carmakers are ever present. Thank goodness we didn't see that stupid Chevy spot with the "real" people being "amazed" at their awards. Unforgettable because it was so nauseating. (Sorry guys. Go back to Heartbeat of America. Or is that just a slogan now because you ain't the heartbeat any more.)

So we saw Toyota, Hyundai, Jeep (my fave) Audi and even Porsche, fewer car spots than in years past.

Last but not least, Little Caesars made a first-time Super Bowl appearance. Congrats. I saw their ad in Friday's USA Today which promised a free pizza for everyone in the world if they texted that the Little Caesars ad was best. (Or something like that.) I meant to, but forgot.

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Google is one of those companies that made a name for itself without advertising, so it's interesting to see them just show up. Not everything they do succeeds (See: Google Flops & Fizzles) but if your company has a net worth of one trillion dollars (See graphic: What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like) you must be doing something right. What's amazing in this story is that in 1986 there were dozens of search engines and Google didn't even exist. It was a crowded market in a very specific niche, yet they muscled their way in with a better concept that made it easier and faster for users to find what they were looking for. Two decades later they are being compared to monopolistic robber barons.

They have plenty of cash to play with--over $100 billion--so why not be part of the world's biggest party?

Here's an interesting article about how we might be watching the Super Bowl in the future... with hologram technology and other gizmos.

And finally, for Mac users, that epic ad that showed the real possibilities of building a brand with a single "shot heard round the world" --Watch 1984.



And so it goes.

What would your Super Bowl commercial look like if your were hired to be the executive creator for one of these brands? 

Alphabet Now A Trillion Dollar Company

Photo by Dmitry Demidko on Unsplash

It's the strangest thing to me how much a lot of people hate Capitalism when it's been Capitalism that lifted the world out of poverty. The other day I read that for the first time in history more than half the world is middle class or richer. This is a far cry from the days of feudal lords living in castles while the underlings cleared the land of rocks and served as the equivalent of indentured servants. The growth of a massive middle class in the past century is a story seldom celebrated.

The big complaint by employees in many American businesses today is not that they make too little, but that they make too much money so they can't afford to quit the job situations that they dislike. It's the story of golden handcuffs.

Alphabet is now a trillion dollar company, but not the first. Apple became the first in 2018. Followed by Microsoft and Amazon, the company everybody loves to hate.

I'll say this about Amazon. They did not start by selling books. They started by making is EASY to Buy books. To this day, the business is all about making it Easy and also making it Safe.

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So, what does a Trillion Dollars look like? I've seen visual representations in the past, and this one is exceedingly effective. (I used Google to find it, of course.) Here is what One Trillion Dollars looks like.

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Here's another way to look at it. If you spent one dollar every second, that would be $86,400 in 24 hours. At that rate you would spend $31.5 million a year. At that rate it would take you more than 32,000 years to spend a trillion.

To put THAT in perspective, the U.S. national debt is currently more than 17 trillion.

You have to wonder what kind of mojo keeps this machinery running.

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There is certainly a negative for every positive. The more we own, the more we have to manage. (This is also why it is not good to take over other countries, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's another story.)

America has a lot of poverty still, but we also have a lot of wealth. Only wealthy countries can have as many colleges and universities as we do. And as many lawyers, I suppose.

Individually, people own homes and cars and all manner of "toys" like boats and snowmobiles and motorcycles, garages and storage lockers full of junk. And more debt.

The downside of all this wealth (much of which we simply take for granted) is that the more we have, the more we have to lose. Also the more we own the more we have to worry about. Yet, somehow it seems like we're never quite satisfied.

Let's be careful about becoming envious of the billionaires, and assume an attitude of gratitude for what we have. Yes? No?

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There's more to say, but for now that's already been too much. Have a nice weekend.