In this episode of "Do This, Not That", host Jay Schwedelson discusses recent trends in remote work, changes in LinkedIn's badge system, and shares his thoughts on recent marketing mishaps and entertainment offerings.

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Best Moments:

(00:58) Companies pushing for return to office

(01:49) KPMG survey on CEOs' expectations for return to office

(02:37) Financial impact of working from office vs. home

(03:38) LinkedIn removing top voice badges for collaborative articles

(04:56) Coca-Cola discontinuing its "permanent" Spiced flavor

(06:11) Review of the new movie Wolfs on Apple TV

(07:29) Promotion of upcoming Guru conference

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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. 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'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 and 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 okay. That they will no longer have the option to work remotely. Reuters 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 the employees, 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. And 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. So 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 right 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, you know, on a hybrid environment. And by the way, it's expensive. Owl Labs came out with this research. They just came out with it.

So 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.

And 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. 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 manufacturer, you gotta be there. Hello. That makes sense, right? But, but there are other categories. You know, marketing services being a great example.

Like, I don't know, you really need to be staring at each other. Is it 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, that LinkedIn has removed its top voice badges for collaborative articles. 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.

The reason it doesn't mean a lot is those badges are not decided by a human being. Okay?

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.

Well, LinkedIn figured out that basically you can game the system and anybody can get a badge. Which is why starting October 8, LinkedIn's 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. And 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 that'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. They 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 gotta 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 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 Wolf's 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. I 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 us on it's the world's largest email event on earth. It is October 16th and 17th. We're closing down registration in the next few days.

It is free. 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.

Guru conference.com hope you check it out. And don't watch Wolf's later.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

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