Is China Running the World's Biggest Marketing Test on You?

0:00Eric Siu:By the way, I want to check this out. So did you did you see that? So the CCP is Chinese institutions are building AI models of American voters and testing political messages on them. So this is interesting to me. So this is a marketing. I think there's a marketing angle from this for sure. So Foodon, the company Foodon used 171 million expos to create a multi a million account voter pool, a government linked team testing a campaign message on synthetic Pennsylvania owners. uh users okay or voters uh so it inferred the the race the ideology all these things right and so what's happening right now what this person melissa chen posted this okay so she's like look this is right out of ender's game except the the kids in school are chinese state researchers the simulations are real influence ops and the the aliens are us so what's interesting to me neil is that the in china like if they're our adversary they can pull from x they can pull from all these open sources, right?

0:59Eric Siu:They can't, we can't do that to them because everything's closed off, right? So they can influence our politics. We can't actually do anything back to them on that. And so the argument with this is that if Chinese institutions are already building this, they have, we're a lot more vulnerable to that. And she's like, yeah, we cannot build a million agent model of the Chinese public. We cannot test messages on synthetic Shanghainese factory workers or Chengdu nationalists. We cannot A-B test narratives about Taiwan. We live in a glass house, while they live in a fortress. Every American rant, every demographic signal, every cultural fracture is harvested, modeled, and weaponized.

1:34Eric Siu:Meanwhile, their population remains opaque, unmodeled, and unreachable. Beijing now possesses a live, continuously updated war game of the American mind. We possess nothing comparable about theirs. A whole new level of unrestricted warfare has been unlocked. We are not ready for this, right? Now, aside from the whole doomerism around this, like I'm not here to talk about that. I just think it's interesting going back to what we talked about last time. There are no solutions to anything in life. They're only trade-offs. So this is a big trade-off that we have, operating how we operate, and they have trade-offs in terms of how they operate too.

2:04Neil Patel:But isn't that interesting? Yeah, but we're also getting more strict on how we operate just with privacy. Like you saw the Facebook lawsuit, right? They owe 11 - 16 billion? They owe$11 billion up front. The remainder of the money they owe if the other platforms don't conform. From my understanding, maybe I misread it. and it can get to 16 or 18 or somewhere of that billion dollars in total but the u.s government is is putting much more strict rules for social media and i believe we're going to start seeing more and more of this right now it's for the youth i thought it was a huge win for the u.s population um just me personally this is just my opinion i don't have any data on it i i never thought it was so healthy for what a lot of the youth are seeing on social media and the way i like talking about this is when tiktok was owned by byte dance the u.s version right one of their guys was in front of you know our politicians in congress here in the u.s and they were asking what type of content they show on tiktok here and like what kind of content do you guys show on the same version in China.

3:17Neil Patel:And they're like all educational content, things that help you be better. And they're just like so you show the US citizens stuff that rots their brain and then you show people in China stuff that helps them be better people and they're like, what the heck is this? It's

3:34Eric Siu:different ideologies, you know?

3:36Neil Patel:Not just different ideologies. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

3:38Eric Siu:It's what's implanted.

3:39Neil Patel:It's what's allowed. Because showing them brain rot makes them more money than showing them educational content. Yep. Yep.

3:46Eric Siu:And by the way, this is the trade-off with us being a very capitalist society. Yes. So you look at the newspapers or you look at social media, what is rewarded the most? Remember, when it bleeds, it leads typically, meaning that if the story bleeds, the topic bleeds, it'll lead. So because we're on this topic, something similar here. So Paul Graham tweeted this. So Paul Graham said he showed this graph. So LinkedIn users have been editing their work histories to add AI and remove DEI. OK, so look at this. And you can see AI is being added to a lot more people's titles. Work from home is starting to trend downwards.

4:23Eric Siu:OK, DEI had a sharp drop over here. Maybe it like went up a little bit. But it's so interesting to me that. What's the red chart? The red chart is. Net share of edits, net share of descriptions. So titles up here and then these are descriptions on the bottom. Got it. So you want to describe what you're seeing on the chart?

4:41Neil Patel:Yeah, so it's job titles. And the top chart is of people are changing their job title. The bottom chart is people that are taking the job description, from my understanding. Yep. And the chart is broken into three parts. The first one is how many people are putting AI in their job title. It's climbing up into the right. On the bottom, how many people are putting AI in their job description is climbing up into the right. The middle is, what was the middle again? Work from home. Work from home. In the title, it is... Down slightly. It's roughly flat, right? When you look at the line in the middle, it's almost flat.

5:16Neil Patel:In the description, though, you're seeing it go down, which means I'm guessing that more people will have to come to office. The right side is DEI. Way less people are putting it in their title. They're still kind of including it in the description, but it is down substantially. So the reason I'm even showing this right now is because...

5:38Eric Siu:it's never been more powerful to think for yourself. Instead of just following the trend, like I get it, AI is a trend I love talking about, don't get me wrong, but you don't see me, like I don't even think I have AI in my description or my title in my LinkedIn. Definitely I never had like anything around work from home or DEI, right? The only reason I'm saying this right now, like if you truly believe in that stuff, great. But what I noticed during 2020 is like more and more people started adding DEI because it was the trend, right? The trend du jour, right? Work from home is a trend du jour, right?

6:07Eric Siu:And that's also when the pendulum had swung more towards employees, right? It always swings back and forth, right? Employees and employers, right? Now, AI is clearly trending right now. People know they can get jobs from it. Of course, they're going to take advantage of that, right? But what I would just say to this is it's more beneficial for you to think for yourself because the vast majority of people, 99 % of people won't think for themselves, right? And I will say this, right? Maybe I'll get canceled for this, but like, okay, you have the DEI thing there. Like, do you like when I ask when I have asked people just during the interview, like, what does that mean to you?

6:39Eric Siu:They couldn't really explain it. Right. Sometimes I'll even ask. So what is the you know, the the the pronouns? Can you explain what they mean? Right. Because sometimes I'm like, I don't even know what they mean. Right. But like I can't if I can't get a straight answer and I can't get a strong point of view. It actually means that they were just following a trend. And the Overton window has switched that has shifted where it's more OK to say this. So I'll say it. Neil doesn't have to say anything here, but I will say it openly, right? It's more powerful if you think for yourself, again, versus just following trends.

7:08Eric Siu:And this tweet got like over a million views on it. So that's my thought.

7:12Neil Patel:Real quick, if you wanna acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year

7:16Eric Siu:with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency. Again, www.singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan.

7:28Neil Patel:I think just in general in life, And in marketing specifically, Eric and I have been marketing for, call it 20 years. Typically, if you're following trends in marketing, you're not going to do as well compared to if you think for yourself. Following trends in marketing usually means you're going after very saturated channels that are expensive. It doesn't mean you should ignore the trends. You should just pick and choose wisely on what works for you. I'll talk about TikTok. talk. I was at a conference in Laguna Beach earlier today. And that was a whole cool experience. But I quickly realized I am not a fan of the ocean.

8:11Neil Patel:Why? They gave me a hotel room right on the water, which was really nice of them. Like right on the water, nothing obstructing me. You can hear the ocean, the sound. And I was like, well, I'm like, man, what is all this humidity? And I forgot how human it gets. The second is you keep hearing the ocean and I'm like, man, I just want to go to sleep. That's white noise. Yeah. And the third is I didn't care for within five minutes of getting into the room and I got there in the afternoon. I closed my blackout sign. I had to look at the ocean. Wow. I feel like when I see an ocean environment, I feel like it's time for me to retire and just, you know, hang up my spurs and just be done with it.

8:56Neil Patel:So you weren't with family. I thought you were with family. In Laguna? Yeah. No, they're speaking at a conference at the hotel.

9:02Eric Siu:So when you called yesterday, I thought you were with family. That's why.

9:05Neil Patel:No. Yeah.

9:06Eric Siu:Okay. But what Neil's point here is that you know what you like and you stick with it.

9:11Neil Patel:Yes. But going back to the marketing example of this, I was getting carried away here or sidetracked. I was talking to the audience about TikTok. And a lot of people believe TikTok doesn't have their audience. I agree. TikTok is not right for all businesses, even though the trend is TikTok's booming. You got to be on it, leverage it. If you're not, you're missing out on a lot of revenue. You and I would agree that a lot of our ideal customer is not on TikTok. I assume you agree with that statement, right? It is what it is. There's other businesses where the ideal customer is. Just because the trend is to leverage TikTok, it doesn't mean Eric and I do because that's not where our ideal customer typically lies.

9:51Neil Patel:But we pay attention and we pay attention to things like Google and a few other platforms have deals with TikTok for their data. So even if your ideal customer is not on there, our ideal customers for sure are on Google. So we will go and post content on TikTok because it feeds Google's algorithm, which helps with attracting our ideal customer, even though They may not be on TikTok, but posting on TikTok helps us get more visibility on Google, which is where our ideal customers do live.

10:23Eric Siu:So here's the last thing I'll say about this, right? So it's not about DEI or pronouns or remote work or AI. Ultimately, if you believe in something, it's easier to just believe in something that you genuinely believe in versus just following the fads, right? Right. So I'm not saying, you know, remote work is bad or DEI is bad or pronouns are bad. But when you get pressed on it and you don't have a good response and you don't have a point of view on it, it means you don't genuinely believe in it. And so then why should I believe in you to join my company when you're not firm on your beliefs and you don't stand for something?

10:55Because if you don't stand for anything, if you stand for anything, you stand for nothing.

10:58Eric Siu:Right. If you stand for everything. Yeah. So that's my point there. So and by the way, by the way, I'll say one more thing there. Like if you're susceptible to all of these trends and you don't have a point of view on it, that means you're susceptible to everything in your life. And that means that you're just going to let trends carry you. And that's not a way to live, right? So we hope you enjoyed that one. If you want more case studies like this, let us know and we'll see you tomorrow.