Ep. 196 - What’s Up THIS WEEK ==> RETURN TO OFFICE?🤮! + WOLFS w/Pitt and Clooney is TERRIBLE! 👎

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where we take a look at what's going on this week in marketing, in business, and life. And then we still have our short Ask Us Anything later in the week in our Big Tips episode at the end of the week. So what's going on this week? Well, do you work from home? Do you work hybrid? Do you work remote? Big things seem to be changing. Big companies are pushing really hard these last few weeks to get people to come back to office. So Dell just announced that they will no longer have the option to work remotely.

1:17Reuters is reporting this from an internal memo. And this follows Amazon, who last week announced a similar thing. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a letter to all the employees of the company, and he also put on their blog, and he told the employees that the company was finally abandoning its hybrid work model for good and would require all employees to return to office starting in January. This follows Citigroup and Walmart and UPS and other big companies that are putting out very aggressive return to office requirements. What's interesting is I saw this study that just came out from KPMG, and they surveyed 400 CEOs of the largest companies in the United States, and they asked them about return to office.

2:02And 83 % of these 400 CEOs said they expect workers to all be back in office full time within the next three years. The crazy part, though, is they did this survey also like a year ago. Same thing, but instead of it being 83 % thought that, 64 % thought that. So this seems to be something that the big companies are trying to push aggressively. Now, I personally think that this is going to be a hot mess because so many of us have gotten accustomed to working from home either full-time or on a hybrid environment. And by the way, it's expensive. Owl Labs came out with this research. They just came out with it saying that when someone has to work in office versus when they're working from home, it costs them cost that individual$42 per day when they're asked to work in office because you have to pay for food and gas and childcare and all this stuff.

2:57and it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, in my own business, we have about 100 or so people in my company. And prior to the pandemic, we were fully in office, right? And then the pandemic hits, we go remote and we really became even more productive being remote. And we have stayed fully remote. We're going to stay fully remote. And look, to each their own, obviously there are some categories, some industries where, listen, if you're making a car, you gotta be, if you're in a manufacturer, you gotta be there. Hello. That makes sense, right? But there are other categories, you know, marketing services being a great example.

3:31Like, I don't know, you really need to be staring at each other. Is there really increased productivity that much? Well, anyway, that's where it's headed. What else is going on? The other big thing going on this week is that LinkedIn has removed its top voice badges for collaborative articles. You're like, what's that? You know, when you go to somebody's profile on LinkedIn and they got that yellow badge that says they're like a top content marketing voice or they're a top digital marketing voice or whatever, I got one of these badges, it really doesn't mean a lot. And I think that's why they're getting rid of it.

4:03The reason it doesn't mean a lot is those badges are not decided by a human being. The way you get one of those badges is you go to the collaborative article section on LinkedIn. And if you write in enough collaborations, you put enough comments, enough thoughts into these collaborative articles, you automatically get that badge on your profile. And the badge is like, you know, it's a big flex. You're like, look at me. I got this badge. I'm cool. You're not cool, right? And all of a sudden you think the person is like social proof. Like, oh, wow, that person must be really important. They got a badge.

4:34Well, LinkedIn figured out that basically you can game the system and anybody can get a badge, which is why starting October 8th, LinkedIn is going to be retiring the gold community top voice badge. And I'm on board that because I think they were a little bit fake. And so whatever, that's on them. What else is going on this week? I thought this was interesting. You know, marketers need to watch out what they say. They just do. Why do I say that? Because Coca-Cola, a few months ago, okay, they announced their first new permanent flavor in years. In years. It was called Spiced. It was called Coca-Cola Spiced, okay?

5:17And it was a spicy version of their soda. And they were like, this is permanent. We've done a lot of research. It's great. That was less than six months ago. Well, guess what? Coca-Cola just announced they're discontinuing the production of Spiced. This was announced as a permanent flavor. They did a whole big to-do. And now they're saying, nah, it's not permanent. Why do that? Why say something is permanent when it's not? So just be careful. And meanwhile, if you're drinking any soda, me, Poppy is where it's at. P-O-P-P-I. They should sponsor me because I love Poppy. I mean, it's expensive. That's the only problem.

5:54They need to bring the cost down. But some of the flavors are spot on. And it's not like horribly unhealthy. At least that's what my wife tells me. And she's a doctor. And so I'm all in on Poppy. I like the grape flavor the best. So you got to try Poppy if you've never tried Poppy. So what is going on in the world of stupid stuff? well there's this new movie on apple tv that i saw a lot of promotion for it's called wolfs w-o-l-f-s and it has brad pitt and george clooney in it right so i'm like oh okay well this is going to be awesome because those two guys probably get handed every script there's no way that that movie is going to be terrible well that movie is it's actually worse than terrible it's unwatchable okay i tried to watch wolves it just came out i tried to watch wolves i lasted i don't know 20 minutes maybe 30 it was horrendous and you know how i know apple knows it's horrendous also and i don't care what they're saying they were supposed to originally release wolves in the theaters and they did a whole big splash but now they're saying that their new plan for all their movies is to not release it in theaters and to just release it on apple tv and that's where you're going to catch all their movies.

7:06I don't believe that. I think that they know that this movie sucks and they're releasing it only on Apple TV and not in the theaters because it would bomb in the theaters. And there's no way for us to really know how bad it's going to do if it's just being streamed. Anyway, don't watch this movie. Horrendous. Yeah. So that is what's going on this week. And please check out our Ask Us Anything later in the week. And listen, Guru Conference is days away. If you don't never heard about this, it is free. It is virtual. My company puts this on. It's the world's largest email event on earth. It is October 16th and 17th.

7:42We're closing down registration in the next few days. It is free. It is virtual. Sarah Jessica Parker is going to be there, the founder of Morning Brew, Amy Porterfield, Anne Hanley. It's going to be wild. GuruConference.com. Hope you check it out and don't watch Wolves. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. lastly if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 free visit guru events.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like damon john martha stewart and me guru events.com check it out