In This Issue! New York Times Vs Biden Administration / FTC Banning Non-Compete Agreements / Amazon 1: AMZN De-Emphasizing Alexa Development / Amazon 2: Prime Video Catalog Issues / Amazon 3: Green Card Slowdown / Google Search Boss Raghavan - We Are In A ‘New Operating Reality’ / On Agency Pitches
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
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-Neal
NEW YORK TIMES VS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: “According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the paper’s coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.
Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets, the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience — and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work. On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.”
FTC BANNING NON-COMPETE AGREEMENTS: “Today, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide, protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fostering new business formation.
“Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.”
The FTC estimates that the final rule banning noncompetes will lead to new business formation growing by 2.7% per year.”
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AMAZON 1: AMZN DE-EMPHASIZING ALEXA DEVELOPMENT: “About seven years after launching a rewards program to encourage developers to build Skills, Alexa's most preferred abilities are the basic ones, like checking the weather. And on June 30, Amazon will stop giving out the monthly Amazon Web Services credits that have made it free for third-party developers to build and host Alexa Skills. The company also recently told devs that its Alexa Developer Rewards program was ending, virtually disincentivizing third-party devs to build for Alexa.”
AMAZON 2: PRIME VIDEO CATALOG ISSUES: “Prime Video is full of inaccurate content details, such as incomplete titles, missing episodes, and bad translations, and that's causing more viewers to abandon shows, according to internal documents obtained by Business Insider.
The documents also disclose that Amazon launched an initiative in 2024 to address these issues and avoid thousands of related customer complaints.
The effort shows how hard it is to maintain a vast and expanding library of diverse content.”
AMAZON 3: GREEN CARD SLOWDOWN: “Amazon won't be sponsoring any new US green cards for foreign workers for the rest of this year, a sign of sustained weakness in the tech job market.
Earlier this year, the company told employees it would continue to pause all new PERM filings through 2024, per an internal announcement seen by Business Insider.
PERM is a permanent labor-certification process run by the US Department of Labor. It aims to ensure that admitting foreign workers into the country doesn't impact US workers' job opportunities, wages, or working conditions. It's often the first step toward a green card.“
GOOGLE SEARCH BOSS RAGHAVAN - WE ARE IN A ‘NEW OPERATING REALITY’: “I think we can agree that things are not like they were 15-20 years ago, things have changed,” Raghavan said, according to audio of the event obtained by CNBC. He was referring to the search industry, which Google has dominated for two decades, emerging as one of the most profitable and valuable companies on the planet along the way. […] He referenced heightened competition and a more challenging regulatory environment. Though he didn’t name specific rivals, Google is facing pressure from the likes of Microsoft and OpenAI in generative artificial intelligence.”
ON AGENCY PITCHES: “If you really think that the difference between you winning and losing is having a piece of creative, somewhere on slide 97, that shows that you can also do vertical banners - then you’re missing the point.
Because the best pitches lift their heads, look to the sky and ask “where do we want to take this brand / this product / this business?”
The best pitches clearly define, illustrate and romance the future that you see for the brand.
And then they put a dollar value on that destination.”