SD#25: Recession marketing, apophenia and getting things done
July 3, 2022
Hi friends,
Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more.
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) During a recession, organisations that double down on marketing come up on top after the storm From retaining a long-term view and the importance of excess share of voice to making strategic changes to positioning and saying no to failure, Mark Ritson sets out the important steps for marketers during a recession.A recession is a peculiar thing. No economist can ever accurately predict when one will arrive, how big it will be, or how long it will last. But once it begins everything is affected in an entirely predictable way. The only silver lining for marketers is that while we have no clue when the recessionary curtain will drop across our businesses, we know from experience how we should handle things once we are plunged into darkness. Marketing Week |
2. (Investing) Most stock market downtrends have several small rallies along their way In the realm of U.S. stock market history, four major bottoms come to mind—1932, 1974, 2003, and 2009. While all of these bottoms are unique in their way, they each had at least three rallies of 10% or more on the way down. Nick Maggiulli wrote this piece a month ago when the market rallied 6.6% over a week and just like his piece suggests had another downward run after. I don’t say this to scare you, but to provide you with a realistic understanding of how markets work. That’s how you become a better investor. You recognize the nature of the market and invest accordingly. You don’t panic. You don’t change your strategy. You educate yourself and acknowledge volatility when it rears its ugly head… This doesn’t mean that you have to be happy when markets decline. Trust me, I do not enjoy seeing stocks fall. But, I also don’t lose my head either. Instead, I see these occasional declines for what they are—risk. And nothing good in life comes without risk. Not love. Not a career. Not a family. Nothing. So why should money? Why should your wealth magically compound itself at 7% a year? It shouldn’t. At least not in a straight line. It should be a windy, windy road to get there. And that’s okay. That’s what you should expect to happen. The volatility of today should pay for the growth of tomorrow. Rallies to the bottom |
3. (Psychology) The dangers of apophenia: not everything happens for a reason Humans love patterns. Sometimes that’s helpful, but other times… Not so much. Apophenia is the common tendency to detect patterns that do not exist. Also known as “patternicity”, apophenia occurs when we try to make predictions, or seek answers, based on unrelated events. Apophenia can lead to poor decision-making. For instance, many people choose their lottery numbers based on the birthdates of family members. As the numbers are picked at random, however, this approach won’t increase their chance of winning. In rare cases, apophenia can even be an indicator of some mental conditions. Let’s have a look at how apophenia works, and how you can both detect and manage this phenomenon. Ness Labs |
4. (Crypto) 5 takeaways from the a16z 2022 State of Crypto Report A lot has changed in the state of crypto since we started investing in the area nearly a decade ago. A16z crypto report is the first of what will be an annual overview of trends in the crypto industry, shared through the crypto vantage point of both tracking data and across the countless entrepreneurs and builders we meet. Here are the five key takeaways from the report: 1. We’re in the middle of the fourth ‘price-innovation’ cycle 2. web3 is much, much better for creators than web2 3. Crypto is having a real-world impact 4. Ethereum is the clear leader but faces competition 5. It is still early days for the crypto movement Full report can be found here. |
5. (Productivity) A simple 15-minute guide to “Getting things done” GTD—or “Getting things done”—is a framework created by David Allen for organizing and tracking your tasks and projects. Its aim is a bit higher than just “getting things done”, though. (It should have been called “Getting things done in a much better way than just letting things happen, which often turns out not to be very cool at all”.) Its aim is to make you have 100% trust in a system for collecting tasks, ideas, and projects—both vague things like “invent greatest thing ever” and concrete things like “call Ada 25 August to discuss conference schedule”. Everything! I’ve never read David Allen’s “Getting things done”, despite having many people recommend it to me or reference it in some way. My soul has been saved by this 15-minute summary of the principle and how to implement it. It is super simple and easy to implement. |
6. (Marketing) An ad is not a court case. The best argument does not win. Logic is, to a frightening degree, irrelevant Another brilliant quote from Bob Hoffman. It should be written on every marketing department wall, particularly those of B2B as they are gullible to falling into the abyss of ‘let’s shout about our product features’ the most. The majority of your buyers are not in the market to buy right now. They do not care about the product features. An emotional brand message will help put the brand in their mind for when that crucial moment of consideration comes. If you’re lucky. And you did your job in branding the hell out of your ads. |
7. (Wealth) There’s an inverse correlation between union membership and income inequality In periods with greater union membership, the share of income going to the top 10% declines. But as union membership has fallen in the last 50 years, the rich have gotten richer. By 2021, when just 10.3% of workers were unionized, nearly 50% of income went to the top 10% of Americans. Scott Galloway’s take on this. Just the other week, we Londoners were facing carnage in the city as several unions of train/tube operators went on strike. Those lucky of us were able to work from home. Others had to endure painful one, sometimes two, hour-long bus rides or expensive bills for carriage. We were unhappy. We complained and grunted. What we should have done is celebrated. Rail workers are doing something that many of us have lost the chance to do – exercising union rights and demanding better pay. Over the last 50 years, as union membership has fallen, the rich have gotten a whole lot richer. Let’s forget the minor inconveniences suffered by us and celebrate that some workers are still fighting for their rights |
Fun things to click on:
If you love tools just like me, here’s 100 tools for an easy life. 200 years of great writers and artists on the creative and spiritual rewards of gardening. How to professionally say is a list of things you might feel like saying at work and the alternative (more professional way) you should say it.
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom