Ep. 255- What's Up THIS WEEK: California Fires🙏(what NOT to do!), TikTok Ban👋? AND- Awesome New Movie Coming out this week!

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 super short episode we'll break down what's going on this week and uh in business and marketing and life and then we still have our ask us anything episode later in the week and our big tips episode at the end of the week so what's going on this week well first i want to mention how devastating it is to see everything going on in california to watch people lose their homes that they've been in for so many years is crushing. My heart goes out to them and it is beyond inspiring to see everyone rally together.

1:18And from a marketing perspective, there is something that we really need to consider. First off, nobody should be trying to capitalize on this tragedy. If you're doing that, you just stink and you're a horrible person. But beyond that, you really want to make sure in any situation where really all of us are rallying together when there's something really horrible that takes place, you want to read the room. And something my own company did this week that actually was a mistake was that we didn't do a good job of quote unquote reading the room. And what do I mean by that? So on one of our social accounts, one of our team members posted a meme.

1:57It was a meme of a cartoon character that was on fire. And it was about how, you know, marketers are running around crazy to start the year off. And it was this image of a cartoon character that had flames coming off of them. And, you know, at any other time, this would be a nothing, nobody would care, great, it would get some traction. But in this moment, we got a lot of negative comments that we were really just not thinking properly. And that's totally fair. And I agree, we should have gotten that negative feedback. And it caused us to really take a pause and say, okay, we need to do a better job of understanding what is going on and what we are actually doing and what we're putting out there, because that's how you can hurt your brand.

2:41So right now, anything that you are promoting, using this as an example, and you should use this for any situations that come up. Anything that you're promoting right now, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer, there are certain things that you shouldn't be doing. There's certain imagery, obviously, like what we did. You shouldn't be using that imagery. But there's also certain words and phrases right now that you shouldn't be using. You shouldn't say, there's a hot new arrival. You shouldn't say, this is going to spark your interest, or you have a fire sale. you shouldn't be saying these things because is it going to destroy your performance not necessarily but it's going to destroy your brand with the audiences and communities that you're marketing to and it should because it just shows that you just are not aware and you don't care and that's terrible and it's probably not true hopefully you do care and there are other things like don't use the word lit don't use the word lit at any moment because lit is an embarrassing word to use now If I say lit to my kids, they think I am a nerd and I am a nerd.

3:42So don't do that. And I would go as far to say don't even use a fire emoji in your marketing right now because, again, it's a little bit off. And is that the most important thing what I just talked about? Absolutely not. It's a ridiculous element to even bring up all this marketing stuff. But that is our job, right? And our job is to make sure that we are being involved in what's going on on the planet and we're not trying to take advantage of it. And so to be a little bit aware of this is important. All right. So what else is going on? Well, the big thing going on this week is, is, is, is, is, is, is TikTok going to get banned, right?

4:20That's the big topic. And just to do a quick rehash on what this is, what's going on with TikTok, and I'll give you my two cents what I think is going to happen. So back in April 2024, the United States enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Ooh, it was all about TikTok. And basically, it was mandating that TikTok's Chinese parent company, which is called ByteDance, that they had to divest from TikTok by January 19th of 2025. or they were going to face a nationwide ban due to national security concerns. So here we are, and the Supreme Court appears that they're going to uphold this decision, this ban.

5:08So what does that actually mean? Well, there's a few things. So if there's no intervention and nobody does anything, TikTok will stop operating in the United States on January 19th. So I think one of two scenarios is going to probably play out. In my opinion, which is totally useless, the most likely scenario is that TikTok is going to remain on our phones. You're not going to be able to, if you don't have TikTok in your phone, you're not going to be able to go to the App Store and download it for either Google or Apple's App Store. It's going to remain on our phones, but because the law is upheld by the Supreme Court, there's going to be no updates or new features that are going to be allowed to be pushed to our phones, which means that the app is going to, over time, become outdated.

5:59It's going to become less secure because there's going to be less security patches that can be pushed to our app. And then ultimately, the functionality of the app is going to completely deteriorate. But during that weird period, in my opinion, as the app is sort of deteriorating a little bit, there's going to be a new administration. And I believe that either ByteDance is going to divest completely or a giant company, a U.S. company like Oracle, who's very interested, is going to come in and have some sort of ownership and rights to it and get the app rolling again. I don't think TikTok is just going to go away.

6:35And that is the other likely outcome, right? The other likely outcome is that it just ceased to exist. And if it does cease to exist on January 19th, what does that mean? And in general, what does it mean? Right now, the biggest beneficiaries of this, all of this, are Google's YouTube and Instagram Reels. I believe that this really is the year of YouTube overall. YouTube Shorts have over 2 billion monthly active users. Those are the short videos on YouTube. And the reason I say it's the year of YouTube is podcasts are aggressively moving on to YouTube. That's becoming the home of podcasts. And I believe this TikTok ban, whether it goes full ban or not, YouTube Shorts is going to be, to me, the number one beneficiary.

7:19Everybody's saying it's Instagram Reels, but I think Instagram Reels is just, it's a wonky version of TikTok. And I think YouTube has its act together. The other player out there that thinks that they're a player that I don't really think is a player is this other app called Triller, T-R-I-L-L-E-R. They're out there. They're saying that they have 60 million monthly active users in Gadget, but everybody is suspect on that number. And they launched this campaign this week because it's a very similar app. And they're trying to say, no, we're the new TikTok. and they launched this new campaign this week called savemytiktoks.com where you could actually download all your videos that you've ever put on TikTok and then have a place to then upload them on Triller.

8:04I don't think that's gonna be what happens. It's gonna be YouTube, it's gonna be Instagram. So those are the big things that are going on this week that we should all be watching out for. But what are the most important, useless things going on this week? Because that's really all I care about. So I'm very excited. Cameron Diaz is back. She has a new movie coming out this week on Netflix. It is called Back in Action. It's a movie with her and Jamie Foxx. And Cameron Diaz has not made a movie in 11 years. And she's awesome. Okay. And it's this like spy comedy thriller. So that comes out this week, Back in Action.

8:41Very pro. Cameron Diaz coming back. And the other thing I saw, which is really ridiculous, this needs to stop. these uh food brands collaborating with uh personal care brands is really weird so dunkin donuts now called dunkin they just teamed up with native native is that personal care brand you know soaps and whatever to launch a collection of donut inspired personal care items is this something the world needs they're launching deodorants and body washes and shampoos are we are you kidding me so now okay there are going to be four donut inspired scents strawberry frosted donut do you need strawberry frosted donut deodorant is that something that we need vanilla sprinkle is another flavor so you're going to have a body wash and i can't stand it when people smell too much like vanilla it grosses me out then they get a blueberry cobbler who wants to smell like a blueberry cobbler i that is embarrassing and the last one is boston cream which is just weird hi I'm going to use the Boston cream shampoo.

9:48There's a lot of weirdness that goes into that sentence. Anyway, this is what's going on this week. Listen, if you're awesome, you're going to register for Eventastic. That is with one T, Eventastic.com. That is our new free virtual event that is about all things events. It's about webinars, in-person events, virtual events, small events. You're going to want to be there. It's in June. We have limited free spots. You want to check it out at Eventastic.com. And if you want to be my absolute best friend, you would leave this thing a review. Maybe you'll share the show with somebody. But if you leave a review, you are cool.

10:23I appreciate you and have a great week. 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