In this issue: FoodTok/Gaming Rotten Tomatoes/Post-pandemic book tours/John VarvatosxUnder Armour/Jimmy Buffett Inc./Roku layoffs/Warner Bros. Discovery doesnât think strike will end soon/TikTok agencies/Maybe machine-generated journalism translation sites are a bad idea?/Facebook subscriptions/North Korean sci-fi + more.
Welcome to Context Collapse, the worldâs best comms newsletter. Iâm 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.
âVideos on TikTok with the #foodtok hashtag have been viewed more than 64 billion times. But cooking videos are not only an unavoidable part of being online â theyâve also infiltrated physical spaces. TikTok-esque cooking videos air on large vertical screens on New York City subways and on iPad-size displays in the back of cabs, in the lobby of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the waiting room at the doctorâs office. They are everywhere.â
âMore input from different criticsâ is not very subtle code, and the prospective critic wrote back to ask what would happen if he hated the film. The Bunker 15 employee replied that of course journalists are free to write whatever they like but that âsuper nice ones (and there are more critics like this than I expected)â often agreed not to publish bad reviews on their usual websites but to instead quarantine them on âa smaller blog that RT never sees. I think itâs a very cool thing to do.â If done right, the trick would help ensure that Rotten Tomatoes logged positive reviews but not negative ones.â
âThe return of in-person bookstore author events in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic does not mean book tours are operating the same way they did in 2019. Many publishers have scaled back on national author tours or are requiring longer lead times for booking. This has resulted, according to a sampling of booksellers around the U.S., in a different kind of thinking about store programming: bookstores are scheduling earlier, focusing on local and regional authors rather than national tours, and being more creative when it comes to both author events and authorless programming.â
âIn what could be among the industryâs most unorthodox pairings, Under Armour is bringing John Varvatos on board as its chief design officer, effective Sept. 11. The award-winning designer has been consulting for the sports brand since the spring.â
âAlong with music sales and tours, Margaritavilleâs success helped propel Mr. Buffett into the billionaire ranks; in April, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion. Now, Mr. Buffettâs empire, named Margaritaville Enterprises after his signature song, must find ways to sustain its business without its founder.â
âIn addition to job cuts, Roku on Wednesday said it plans to consolidate its office space, limit new hires and perform a strategic review of its content portfolio. Roku, which according to data from FactSet has about 3,600 employees, said it expects to book restructuring charges of $45 million to $65 million related to the job cuts, mostly in the third quarter.â
âThe parent company of CNN, HBO and other networks had hoped the strikes would be resolved by early September. Warner Bros. said Tuesday in a securities filing that it canât predict when the strikes will end, and it now expects the financial fallout to affect the company through the end of the year.â
âOn TikTok, creator Mike Kruzich entertains 3.6 million followers by sharing stories from around the web. Now, heâs inviting clients to hear the story of his own successful career. Emboldened by his success on TikTok, Kruzich has launched a content marketing agency under his own name.â
âGizmodo owner G/O Media laid off editors of its Spanish-language site Gizmodo en Español and is now using AI to translate articles. [âŠ] The transition to AI translation has not been smooth, though. Readers posted on X, formerly Twitter, that some articles will start in Spanish and then suddenly change to English.â
âMeta is considering paid versions of Facebook and Instagram that would have no advertising for users in the European Union, three people with knowledge of the companyâs plans said, a response to regulatory scrutiny and a sign that how people experience technology in the United States and Europe may diverge because of government policy.â
âLate dictator Kim Jong-il referenced science fiction books in his speeches and set guidelines for authors, encouraging them to write about optimistic futures for their country. Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and technologists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.â
ChatGPT and robots.txt
How to grow your design agency.
