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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Lots happening this week, friends, so let’s just jump into it….
I just launched a new LinkedIn newsletter, the Small Agency Journal.
It’s specifically for:
A) Leadership and team members at creative agencies with less than 15 employees.
B) Self-employed consultants and skilled freelancers.
We’re focusing specifically on ways to grow your business and navigate a challenging economy for smaller companies.
Subscribe on LinkedIn
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
“To celebrate Thanksgiving, the Walt Disney Instagram account posted a seemingly innocuous picture of Mickey Mouse and his pals eating at the dinner table. Forgetting that an homage to Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Want” had already been done by Disney in 1993, those on social media felt that the new image just looked a bit … strange. TikToker Megan Rose Ruiz noted in a million-view TikTok video that there’s an uncanny fork-like utensil next to Mickey’s hand, there’s a plate with “wiggly edges,” the shadows are off, and Daisy Duck’s head just “floats.”
”Amazon is launching an AI-powered chatbot for AWS customers called Q.
Unveiled during a keynote at Amazon’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this morning, Q — starting at $20 per user per year, now in public preview — can answer questions like “How do I build a web application using AWS?” Trained on 17 years’ worth of AWS knowledge, Q will offer a list of potential solutions along with reasons you might consider its proposals.”
”Three days after Amazon announced its AI chatbot Q, some employees are sounding alarms about accuracy and privacy issues. Q is “experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data,” including the location of AWS data centers, internal discount programs, and unreleased features, according to leaked documents obtained by Platformer.
An employee marked the incident as “sev 2,” meaning an incident bad enough to warrant paging engineers at night and make them work through the weekend to fix it.”
”Grocers are beginning to test out sensory-friendly shopping hours in an attempt to offer a more inclusive in-store experience. Retailers have been experimenting with ways to make in-store shopping more pleasant for shoppers, either by remodeling stores or updating the store layout. Rebekah Kondrat, founder of Kondrat Retail, said that offering sensory-friendly hours could just be another way retailers are working to improve their stores.
“Every brand should want their customers to feel like they’re in a safe place,” Kondrat said. “But I think there were also business benefits that were perhaps unexpected by doing by making hours just for a specific need group.”"
”The Berkshire Mall’s parking lot is dotted with five sinkholes, one so deep you can see the water main beneath. Bon-Ton closed five years ago, followed by Sears, leaving just one department store open. The fire marshal has condemned the former Bon-Ton space due to a partially collapsing roof and other issues. Last week, shortly before the crucial Black Friday shopping day, the mall’s management scrambled to fix sewer backups that were causing raw sewage to seep onto the sidewalk near the main entrance.
“It was thriving for at least three decades,” said Wyomissing borough manager Michele Bare. “It’s just sad to see it become what it’s become. In a perfect world, a giant sinkhole would open up overnight when the property was vacant, so nobody was harmed, and swallow the entire mall.”
Don’t tell that to the mall’s owners, Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management. They consider this property one of the stars of their portfolio. The partners have turned down offers from developers who want to buy the 53-year-old mall, knock it down and build something new.
“We ideally like to hold on to our assets,” said Igal Namdar, founder and chief executive of Namdar Realty.
”Bloomberg Media CEO M. Scott Havens is leaving for the big leagues.
The media executive will depart Bloomberg to become president of business operations for The New York Mets. The team announced the move Monday morning, announcing that Havens will start in January, overseeing all leadership functions except for baseball operations.”
”There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human.
"Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm."
The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes."
”For millions of early internet users, the brands Cracked.com, eBaum’s World, Cheezburger and Know Your Meme might conjure up a sense of nostalgia for a simpler era of the web.
But for Oren Katzeff, the chief executive of Literally Media, the company that owns the four legacy comedy brands, the titles instead evoked a sense of opportunity.”
“People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.
Charlotte Maines, Amazon's director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement, detailed the new types of ads that Amazon is selling on Fire TVs. In a StreamTV Insider report from November 1, Amazon said the new ads will allow advertisers to reach an average of 155 million unique monthly viewers.”
”Instagram Face, I have come to believe, is just one symptom of something far larger and more pernicious. It is one manifestation of what I see as the driving force behind much of Gen Z’s growing and global mental health crisis. It is the end result—the inevitable end-point—of what I think of as the algorithmic conveyor belt. Let me explain.
Let’s say you were born in the year 1999 so Instagram comes out when you are 12. Back then it was fairly benign: a platform to share pretty sunsets and candid pictures with friends. A few years in, the editing app FaceTune arrives (launched in 2014), and everyone on your feed starts to look perfect. You start editing yourself—smoothing your skin, reshaping your nose, restructuring your jaw. By the time you’re 16, your Instagram face is very different from your natural face, which you’ve come to despise.
And then the algorithms are introduced: your feed is no longer chronological but customized (launched in 2016 for IG). Instagram now serves you not just photos of the friends you follow but of influencers––beautiful women from all over the world, selecting the ones that make you feel the most insecure.”