2020 Prediction Round Up
The easiest prediction to make is one not bounded by time. “The DOW will rise” is a very different prediction from “The DOW will rise tomorrow.”
There is also a benefit to being a perfect inverse - predictor. Perhaps not to the individual making the predictions but to those watching, knowing to always Zag when they Zig can be a great strategy. The best example we’ve recently found is Scott Galloway and the returns of his inverse portfolio.
So with great excitement, and some trepidation, we have gone through our 2020 predictions and see how we land. Does dysrupt have a crystal ball or will someone on Twitter make an inverse ETF of our predictions.
Correct
Facebook Makes More Money During the Boycott
Our total ad revenue for Q3 was $21.2 billion, which is a 22% year-over-year increase.
Mark Zuckerberg, Q3 2020
The Cyber Quarter
Cyber Monday 2020 is expected to break more records and keep its top spot as the busiest online shopping day, with shoppers expected to spend as much as $12.7 billion or 35% more than in 2019, Adobe said.
LINK
Too Soon To Tell
Wish IPO
Too soon to tell where this IPO is heading but our analysis places us in the bullish category if the current valuation is $14 Billion. 100 MM MAU and easy expansion options with their ProductBoost ad-tech make this a *buy.
The GIPHY Acquisition
After the acquisition of GIPHY, we put out 5 predictions with a 2 year timetable after Mark completed his Infinity Gauntlet of Social. At the time of this writing all 5 are too soon to tell, but the launch of anyone being able to make their stickers searchable is a tantalizing move in the right direction for several of our predictions to come to fruition.
Reels is a Success
We've launched a number of new features. The results are encouraging. There's a lot more work to do here as well and I don't have any specific numbers to share here, Dave. I assume you don't have any specific numbers that you would share either.
Mark Zuckerberg Q3 2020 Earnings
What We Got Wrong
It’s only fair to mention one prediction that did not pan out. This wasn’t published but at one point during the initial stock market drop, a cofounder mentioned that for a specific stock “huh, that’s odd. Their market cap is less than their real estate holdings.”
And sadly we did not immediately log into E*Trade and buy into what was a 35x growth in their stock price.
Luckily, we are not an investment firm but a marketing firm. So our miss was in a different industry but a reminder of an important lesson that was our first article - there is a cost of not taking a risk.
Worth a Revisit
The Effect Gallery
We wrote about this in February 2020 that brands should begin exploring this exciting feature of Instagram. It’s great to hear about it’s growth in the latest earnings and that even Mark is impressed!
I also want to say I've been impressed by the AR effect that have been built by more than 400,000 creators on our AR platform.
Mark Zuckerberg, Q3 2020 Earnings Call
The A-Pixel-Lypse
Privacy will be front and center to social advertising in 2021. IDFA deprecation, the upcoming battle between the FTC and Facebook, and even that Facebook is part of a supreme court case right now around privacy!
GIPHY Engine Optimization
We pitched this exact idea in November 2019 to two separate brands and are still bullish on the concept. (Nice work eTORO!) If you are running social ads, develop a robust GIPHY strategy to harvest earned media impressions across all of social.
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Photo by Mark Boss on Unsplash
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. We wrote this article under our own accord, and it only expresses our own opinions. Dysrupt LLC is not receiving compensation for it. We have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Do not take this article as investment advice. All investments are risky.
Read next
*This article originally appeared in Forbes on February 26th, 2024. Link HERE
Innovation doesn't always scream; sometimes, it whispers. This is a lesson I've internalized as the founder of Dysrupt, where we've navigated the fine line between groundbreaking advancements and the comfort of familiarity. The 3% rule of change, championed by the late Virgil Abloh, a visionary in both fashion and design, offers a compelling lens to examine this balance. Abloh's ethos, focusing on the transformative power of subtle alterations, challenges the conventional push for radical innovation. It's a principle that resonates deeply in the tech world, particularly when comparing the strategic approaches of Apple's Vision Pro and Meta Quest Pro.
Abloh's influence extended beyond the realm of fashion; he was a cultural icon who redefined creativity, making his principles universally applicable, including in technology. His 3% rule—the idea that significant innovation can be achieved with minimal changes—underscores the importance of nuanced, thoughtful alterations.
The 3% Rule In Technological Innovation
Abloh's 3% rule is epitomized by the advent of Apple's "spatial computing." This term, much like "horseless carriage" in its day, melds the familiar with the novel, bridging the gap between traditional perceptions and forward-thinking technology. It suggests a nuanced evolution rather than a complete overhaul, offering a linguistic framework that makes new technologies more accessible and understandable.
Spatial computing, as introduced by Apple, allows for the integration of digital enhancements into our physical environment, enabling users to place virtual screens within their actual surroundings. This approach is contrasted sharply with Quest Pro’s goal of creating a fully immersive virtual environment, which, while technologically impressive, may alienate users who prefer a connection to their physical world.
This distinction is demonstrated in Casey Neistat's review of the Vision Pro in Times Square. Neistat's experience underscores the unique proposition of Vision Pro: the ability to seamlessly blend digital content with the real world, enhancing one's immediate environment rather than replacing it. By choosing what to see and where to see it, users retain control over their experience, embodying the essence of the 3% rule by making technology adapt to the individual's needs and preferences.
Expanding The NBA Viewing Experience
The divergent paths of Vision Pro and Quest Pro are nowhere more evident than in their partnership with the NBA to redefine the fan experience. While the Quest Pro aims to place fans directly courtside with its fully immersive VR experience, Vision Pro takes a different route. It introduces an enhanced viewing experience that transcends traditional limitations, offering "better than courtside" content. This approach leverages spatial computing to allow fans to enjoy multiple screens in their living space, offering various angles and aspects of the game in high definition, without losing touch with their immediate surroundings.
Meta Quest Pro's ambitious VR technology has the potential to transport fans into the heart of the action, offering an unparalleled sense of presence at live games. This full immersion into a virtual courtside experience represents a significant leap in how technology is used to bridge distances and bring the game to the viewer. However, this approach, while groundbreaking, may not align with all fans' desire for a more integrated viewing experience that maintains a connection to their physical environment.
Apple Vision Pro, in contrast, capitalizes on AR's potential to subtly enhance the real world. By allowing users to overlay multiple screens onto their physical space, Vision Pro offers a customizable viewing experience that can be tailored to each fan's preference. Whether it's accessing different camera angles, real-time statistics or social media feeds, Vision Pro provides a multidimensional viewing experience that enriches fans' engagement with live sports. This "better than courtside" experience doesn't remove fans from their reality; instead, it enhances it with layers of digital information and entertainment, embodying the essence of the 3% rule.
The Future Of Viewing
The introduction of Apple's Vision Pro into the marketplace heralds a nuanced shift in how viewers engage with broadcast entertainment. This principle, which advocates for impactful innovation through minimal adjustments, suggests a future where broadcasters will increasingly lean into subtle, AR-enabled enhancements to enrich the viewing experience. Instead of propelling audiences into fully immersive virtual realities, the trend is toward augmenting the physical environment with digital overlays that complement rather than replace the live viewing experience.
This evolutionary step, subtly integrated by technologies like Vision Pro, signals a move toward more personalized and contextually rich experiences within the familiar confines of viewers' existing environments. It represents a pivot in strategy for broadcasters, who now have the tools to create and distribute content that enhances reality, offering audiences the ability to customize their viewing experiences with information, graphics and interactive elements that were previously unimaginable.
This approach does not aim to upend the viewer's world with drastic changes; instead, it seeks to introduce enhancements that seamlessly integrate with their reality, offering a glimpse into how minimal shifts can have a profound impact on the collective viewing experience. In this emerging landscape, the 3% rule becomes a guiding principle for broadcasters and technologists alike, emphasizing that sometimes the most meaningful innovations are those that refine and redefine our experiences without displacing them.
Subtle Shifts, Major Impact: A More Effective Approach To Innovation
Dysrupt is a 💎✋ marketing firm and not above the occasional meme trend. With all the news of r/wallstreetbets, RobinHood, $GME, etc. we want to take a step back and deep dive on this often used internet term with an interesting history - *meme.
Origin
Meme as a term predates internet culture. Originally coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his groundbreaking book The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to “selfish” genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve, mutating at random and undergoing natural selection, with or without impacts on human fitness (reproduction and survival). - link
Dawkins himself defined meme as a noun that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation."
The Selfish Gene was groundbreaking due to meme kicking off a deeper investigation in **academia around the extent of evolutionary processes that are unrelated to genes.
Memes though are units of cultural significance. If they are repeated then they carry more significance than those that fail to replicate.
Here is a silly example: the cleaning crew in a hotel folding the toilet paper into a triangular shape is a meme. This happens worldwide now - even in some gas station bathrooms - and is an artifact of culture. It is a transfer of information in the network of humanity. This is a recent invention of culture which now carries a significance. Namely that the room was cleaned by a professional who spared no expense as they even decided to fold the toilet paper end into a small triangle.
In this light, the modern use of meme just being easily shareable phrases, images, gifs, etc. is a limited use of the term. It can extend to anything that is imitated within culture. Everything from the mundane - Fork, Knife, Spoon placement on a table - to the absurd - Qanon.
r/WallStreetBets and Community
We are a marketing firm and the recent explosion of meme stocks has been a fascinating watch in the power of community and how it empowers a movement. If you are in the business of brand building, you are trying to gain attention and direct it to action.
r/WallStreetBets created a movement of directing a group of disjointed individuals via the glue of memes. These memes allow the group to have a shared language and jokes that bond via an in group mentality. Their “units of imitation” are simple to replicate and share.
The brazen ridiculousness of all the terms makes them even more mockable which requires sharing and imitation and bonding of the in-group.
I’m an Advertiser and Don’t Care about Stonks
Budweiser made a meme with its “Wassupp” ad. TikTok’s Duet feature and many other product features on platforms are meme engines. (Memegins?) Share buttons are littered throughout the internet. Every piece of content screams to be replicated.
Yes r/WallstreetBets has a lot of weird language but after about 15 minutes you’ll start typing 🚀 🌕 with little thought and will start judging the 📜 ✋ in the midst who cost you tendies.
Easy to imitate and through the imitation the group improves upon the original idea. The successes are repeated and become even more shareable and immitatable. This is the evolutionary process Dawkins keyed into. Failure is easy to define as it is just content that is not replicated and shared.
The flywheel is that the sharing and imitation increases further sharing. Understanding how to bring this to your brand, your community, can be key to kickstarting your own movement.
What’s the Difference Between a Bad, Good and Great Story?
Bad stories are forgotten. Good stories are remembered. Great stories are retold.
The retelling and sharing within culture is the power of brand advertising.
In fact, this might be the easiest way to differentiate between brand and direct response ads. Direct response ads are judged on product sales and perhaps help define a brand.
Brand ads should be judged on the great story criteria - are they retold? Shared? Imitated? Sales will come from causing this replication.
* How to pronounce: meme rhymes with gene.
** Aaron Lynch in his book Thought Contagion defined 7 patterns of transmission for memes: Quantity of parenthood, Efficiency of parenthood, Proselytic, Preservational, Adversative, Cognitive, Motivational.
