Shownotes
In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson dives into the latest marketing trends, industry insights, and pop culture updates for the week. From TikTok's quirky JCPenney trend to updates from CES and upcoming TV shows, Jay shares his thoughts and actionable takeaways.
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Best Moments:
(00:56) The holidays are over, and people are back at work
(01:14) TikTok trend of awkward photo sessions at JCPenney
(02:23) Criticism of misleading marketing statistics
(04:37) Updates from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
(06:23) The rise of AI-integrated TVs and connected TV marketing
(07:43) Review of the Extreme Makeover Home Edition reboot
(08:26) Anticipation for Kitchen Nightmares season 2
(08:54) Commentary on award shows and acceptance speeches
(09:54) Announcement of Eventastic, a free virtual event about events
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Transcripts
Foreign welcome 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 Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.
We are back for what is up this week from the do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our super short episode where we break down what's going on this week in marketing and business and in life.
And then we still have our short ask us anything later in the week and our big tips episode at the end of the week. So what's going on? Well, everybody's miserable. They're back at work. Who we kidding? But the holidays are unfortunately totally in the rear view now.
And one of the things that came out of the holidays, that's my favorite trend that I'm excited exists, is this new thing going on at JCPenney. Have you seen this?
It blew up on TikTok, and now it's kind of like a thing where, you know, you go to JCPenney or I used to go to Sears, and you would take those family photo portraits that were horrible and embarrassing. Well, there's been this trend that started on TikTok, which is the awkward photo session at JC Penney specifically.
And so people have been going there and taking embarrass, purposely embarrassing family photos or ridiculous photos with their friends and posting them all over social media. And it's exploded, which I love, because anything stupid I love. And JCPenney doesn't actually even run the studios there.
It's run by this group called Life Touch, which I think got bought by Shutterfly. But now people are going to all the studios. They have over 350 studios all over the country. And on TikTok, it's everywhere.
If you look up for the hashtag JCPenney, there's like thousands and thousands of posts and some of the posts getting over 10 million views. So I need to take my family JCPenney and do a super awkward family photo shoot. I. I'm very pro anything ridiculous like this. So that's cool.
So one of the other things coming out now that the new year starts, one of the things I can't stand is at the start of every new year, there's a flurry of these new marketing stats that flood everything everywhere. And everybody should realize the majority of marketing stats are Total garbage. And they take people down a weird rabbit hole.
And let me give you an example. I'm sorry to call people out or whatever, but I don't really care.
marketing. And they said for:Wow, that is complete garbage. And toilet paper. And it also said that a good email open rate across all industries is 17 to 28%. This is ridiculous.
And these are the types of stats that drive me bananas. Because what happens is we read them like, oh, my open rate's only 14%.
So if the average industry open rate across all industries is 21%, I'm not doing well. Ridiculous. It makes no sense. First of all, you're in a sub industry.
Whatever you're in, you have your brand, whatever it is, your offer is going to be different every time. The segment of the database that you're marketing to is different every time. The time of the day you're sending out is different.
Who cares what these ridiculous averages are that are out there across all industries? It's meaningless. The only thing that matters is what your metrics are and what you want to do is you want to beat yourself. Benchmark yourself.
What was your average open rate for your newsletter last year? It was 17%. Great, let's try to get it to 22% this year. What was your average click through rate for your offer, your promotional emails? Last year?
It was 1%. Great, let's try to get to 1.3% this year. Benchmark yourselves in all sorts of different buckets. And then you try to beat yourself.
Do not look at industry averages across all industries or even the industry average within your industry, because it's irrelevant. What matters is your brand, what you're doing. Anyway, that's my soapbox. What else going on this week? Well, CES is going on.
That is the giant consumer electronics show that goes on every year. And this is the show where all the biggest tech companies get together every year and they release their latest and greatest tech.
And it's pretty interesting to follow what's going on there because it really does drive really technology and what's going to be going on and everybody's there. It's a wild scene.
I actually went to see, I've been to CS a bunch of times, but the first time I went to ces I was, I was young and it was a million years ago. And I'll never forget it because literally the CEOs and founders of, like, every major tech company are just walking around.
And so I was at CES, I was in my 20s, and I remember I was sitting on, like, this little bench in the exhibit hall, and I was tired because I was trying to, like, you know, work the exhibit hall, meet people, whatever. And I was sitting there, and some dude just sits down next to me and we start talking. So I go to him, I go, well, what do you do?
And he goes, oh, I founded a company called Intuit. I was like, what? And, yeah, Scott Cook, super nice guy. We end up hitting it off. And credit to him, he gave me the time of day.
I was this young dude, and we ended up staying in contact. We even did a little project together. But that's the type of weird vibe that goes on at ces.
But one of the things coming out of it, and if you're a marketer, I really think you should go to a site like theverge.com it's literally t h e verge.com and read about all the different things that all the different technology companies are announcing this week, because they cover it really, really well. But.
But I think the biggest thing for marketers really to pay attention to is how all the latest TVs, especially from LG and Samsung, which they're announcing this week, are going to be tied in with AI. They're all gonna have AI components within their TVs, and this is really gonna lead to an explosion in connected TV marketing.
If you ask me, what is the one category of marketing that I would try to learn about starting out this year, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer, it would be ctv Connected tv.
They're saying, according to Cager, that the size of the global market size for connected TVs is going to grow from around $9 billion last year to over $17 billion in the next three years. That's for both business and consumer marketing. For connected TV marketing. That's crazy.
And it makes sense because with all the streaming services and now connected TVs with AI and your ability to instantly buy from your remote or instantly download a piece of content from your remote, this is where it's at. So I would really look into what's going on.
Theverge.com to step to date on all the connected TV changes that are coming now in completely useless information that has nothing to do with the Brooklyn Bridge. Why do people. Why do people say that the Brooklyn I don't even understand. But anyway, so a new show came out this week, or reboot for that matter.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition. It just came out on Hulu. I used to love this show.
Remember that show with Ty Pennington when they would go to people's homes and they would redo them in a week? And it was very touching and it was great and you loved it. Well, they just had a reboot and it came out on Hulu.
I was very excited for this, so I tried it. The first episode was terrible. Absolutely unwatchable. Terrible.
And the reason it was terrible is that instead of going into people's homes, now what they're doing, you know, and they would fix the person's home and change it all around. Now they're just building somebody a brand new home in five days, which is not that interesting. It just isn't. I don't know why the show stinks.
Anyway, what else is coming out this week, which I am hyped for and is season two of Kitchen Nightmares. I think Gordon Ramsay is great. Kitchen Nightmares is one of my all time favorite shows. If you've never watched Kitchen Nightmares, it is awesome.
If you. Unless you're the person that owns the restaurant, they go into these restaurants, they shred the restaurants.
They say, you're the biggest doofus alive. You don't know what you're doing. Your restaurant's disgusting, your food is disgusting. They change it all around and it's fantastic.
So season two premieres this week. And then also all the award shows started kicking off. I watched the Golden Globes.
The thing about the award shows is that all I do is judge people like, and now the award for the best supporting, you know, female actor in whatever. And they'll say, whoever the five people are. And then what I'll do, And they'll put their faces up in the little squares.
And then what I do is I sit on my couch with my wife. I go, oh, that person looks terrible. Or that person looks great. Or they'll say, whatever show they're from.
And I'll be like, I've never heard of that show. Why are they nominated? Okay? Or I'll say, that show is epically horrible.
And by the way, if you win an award like this, do not go up there and ever read anything that's very boring. And also, don't thank a hundred people that nobody knows. That's also very boring. Just go up there and say, listen, this is cool. I'm having fun.
Everybody out here is a loser, and move on. That's what you say. All right. These are my rules of the rope. I don't know what we just talked about as usual.
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