In this issue: Small Agency Journal launch / Paid interview opportunity / Disney using GenAI / Amazon AI / Sensory-friendly shopping as revgenerator / Why property portfolios like vacant malls + more!
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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So I turned 43 over the weekend! That was fun.
Went to Texas de Brazil and had lots of steak and did something besides work, which never, ever happens. It was also my 5 year old son’s birthday weekend and he got to have a nice party at the giant ballpit/three-story climbing castle/kid’s birthday party factory. Which, honestly, I wish there was a grown-up version of. That would be damned amazing.
A client in the financial services sector is conducting a paid anonymous $100 interview of frontline medical workers. Interview will be 90 minutes over two sessions taking place online on the topic of holiday spending, and results may be used for a research paper.
Client’s ask below:
Front-line, hourly healthcare workers in U.S., including:
Ideally from mix of locations + demographic backgrounds (age, gender, race / ethnicity, etc.)
Whitepaper will only identify them by this information, since money is a touchy subject and we want them to speak candidly:
First name (or middle name, if they want to be more anonymous)
Age
City / state where they work
Job title
Type of employer
e.g. Jane, a 37-year-old hospital nursing assistant in Los Angeles
Does this sound like you or someone you know? Contact us at the button below.
Contact for interview
“Strava is taking one big step closer to becoming a true social network, as the fitness-tracking platform introduces in-app messaging to let users send private one-to-one and group messages.”
”Spotify is laying off about 17% of its workforce — or about 1,500 employees.
The music-streaming giant said in a blog post on Monday announcing the cuts that "being lean is not just an option but a necessity."
”Swift is worthy of a beat reporter. She is a billionaire colossus, a cultural icon on the scale of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and the Beatles; she is, in this fragmented and quasi-desiccated pop musical environment—the major labels no longer know, for the most part, how to break out new talent—the most dominant pop act since the Beatles stormed the United States in 1964.”
”2024 Instagram Trend Talk.”
“When people knew a product’s source, they expressed a positive bias toward content created by humans. Yet at the same time, and contrary to the traditional idea of “algorithmic aversion,” people expressed no aversion toward AI-generated content when they knew how it was created. In fact, when respondents were not told how content was created, they preferred AI-generated content.
For the study, the researchers created two tasks: writing marketing copy for five retail products, and drafting persuasive content for five uncontroversial campaigns (“eat less junk food,” for instance).”
”A Secretive $10 Billion Firm Backed By WhatsApp Billionaire Jan Koum Is Quietly Building A Startup Portfolio.”
”Bloomberg Businessweek, a weekly magazine for the past 94 years, is going monthly, the company told staff members on Thursday.
The magazine will be redesigned with “heavier paper stock for a more high-end look and feel” and relaunched as a monthly print publication “later in 2024,” according to a memo from David Merritt and Katie Boyce, two leaders of Bloomberg’s media division, that was viewed by The New York Times.”
”Walmart's recent $500 million project to upgrade 117 locations has its "store of the future" looking distinctly more Target-like, with wider aisles, enhanced signage, expanded self-checkout zones, and much more.
Some specific features seemingly borrowed from Target include the new "Dollar Shop" and "Grab & Go" sections near the front entrance. These look rather like Bullseye's Playground and the Taste of Target snack bar.”
”A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.
Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm.”
”Here’s how 13 news outlets are using LinkedIn newsletters."
”In January 2019, I was visiting Thailand when I came across a pink packet of Walkers with layered pasta, tomato sauce and cheese pictured on the front. Lasagne flavour, the pack said. You can’t get lasagne Walkers – or Lay’s, as they are known in most of the world – in Italy. Relatively speaking, Italians have a small selection of Lay’s – paprika, bacon, barbecue, salted and Ricetta Campagnola, a “country recipe” flavour featuring tomato, paprika, parsley and onion. I’ve sampled Hawaii-style Poké Bowl crisps in Hungary and chocolate-coated potato snacks in Finland; I have turned away from Sweet Mayo Cheese Pringles in South Korea. So why can you get lasagne flavour Lay’s in Thailand but not in Italy, home of the dish? Who figures out which country gets which crisps?”
