Hey👋,
I'm Giacomo

🚨Perplexity offers to buy Chrome!

If this isn’t the AI wars at full play I don’t know what else is.

Google was deemed a monopoly after loosing an antitrust trial earlier this year.

Splitting the giant up is one of the options on the table of antitrust officials.

Chrome could be separated and so Perplexity is making proposal.

The goal is to create the largest AI-powered browser on earth.

I strongly believe the internet of the near future will look very different from now!

🚨 SEO-hack alert.

Create a GPT conversation about yourself (or your brand) and make it discoverable.

Hopefully it'll rank on Google and serve as another piece of content.

Or maybe it's just a BS tactic? 😂

Workday you should do better!

HR had to revert my $1b salary increase because of you!

Imagine turning down a $1'000'000'000 offer 😅

And you're not Cristiano Ronaldo,
with all due respect to AI researchers.

What's even happening out there??

Now Meta is targeting the newly-founded Thinking Machines Lab for its hiring spree.

TML was founded by Mira Murati, former CTO at OpenAI.

It seems that so far NOBODY had accepted the offer.

Including the one for $1'000'000'000 😨

Marketing is EASY.

And AI is reminding us of that, loud and clear!

Until recently, marketing was all about complexity.

We were told it had to be about:

→ Overly complex campaign structures
→ Granular tracking and hyper-segmentation
→ Complex attribution models
→ Endless loyalty retargeting loops
→ Growth "hacking"

Technology and over-engineering hijacked marketing.
Overshadowing creativity and fundamentals.

But marketing scholars (like Byron Sharp) had already warned us:

If you want to grow your brand,
focus on maximising your brand's "mental availability".

Prioritise branding, mass-reach always-on advertising and mass marketing initiatives. Instead of over-targeted campaigns and loyalty loops/hacks.

Looks like those academics got it spot-on.

Fast forward to today,
two forces are pushing us back to the fundamentals:

👉 Privacy regulations killed granular targeting and reporting.
👉 AI rewrote consumer behaviour and advertising operations.

AI makes things simple again:

→ Consumers have a chat with AI bots instead of performing granular searches.
→ AI-driven campaigns outperform old-school media buyers.

Eg PMax and Demand Gen in Google Ads just need strong creative and a budget (more or less).

No complex targeting, personas, attribution etc.

Just press a button and enjoy 🏖️

But there's more.

The latest GEO (Generative AI Optimisation) guidelines emphasise omnipresence across digital and offline spaces, rather than SEO engineering and hacks.

AI doesn't care how meticulously your site is SEO-optimised.
AI cares about one thing:

💡 People talking about your brand.

On social media, Reddit, forums, reviews, offline interactions,
and subsequently, in AI-bot conversations.

The more your brand is discussed,
the higher the chance AI chatbots will mention it.

It's a virtuous circle even a kid could understand. 🔄
Brand Popularity → AI Mentions → More Customers.

What a news! 😅

So we're transferring human "mental availability" to an AI's "brand availability". (just because AI doesn't have a mind, yet!)

This leaves us with two choices:

1. Embrace the new reality and get back to the fundamentals of brand building.
2. Keep doing what we've done for the past 15 years and cross our fingers.

Any marketers out there with a different take?

In 2027, humanity will face a choice.

Which path will we choose?

According to the "AI 2027" academic project, our future will be decided by one of two paths.

1️⃣ The AI Race.
We continue the sprint towards AGI.
It becomes independent and sees humanity as an obstacle.
Result: Extinction. 💥

2️⃣ The AI Pause.
We slowdown development, manage misalignment risks, and unlock new human-friendly scientific breakthroughs.
Result: new age of prosperity. ✨

↳ Scenario 1
feels crazy, but plausible.
The geopolitical AI race with China, combined with the power-hunger of tech leaders and politicians, points in this direction.

AI development has to be hyper-centralised because of the immense resources it needs. This means power in the hands of a tiny few.

And this is not the future.
It's the present.

↳ Scenario 2
requires those few to give up power for the greater good.
Likely?

This isn't sci-fi.
It's a potential timeline resulting from thousands of simulations.

I'm not smart enough to evaluate the quality of the research,
but judging from their website, you can tell there's some brain behind it.

Which path do you think we will choose?

Sunday thoughts:
"Working in a cafe is still working. Whether you're in a Starbucks in Swindon or a beach bar in Bali."

What a news 😂

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a fan of office work, as opposed to remote.

But digital nomadism is on another level of remote.

And it will inevitably wind down.

It's sold as a dream by social media remote "performers", whose real lives and struggles are seldom disclosed.

But the reality is that it just doesn't work for the vast majority of people.

We all crave for connections.
With a place, with people, with a community. With a job?

This is especially true in our careers.
Personal connections are, like, 90% of professional success.
Prove me wrong!

Office colleagues for employees,
or local groups from university, startup accelerators, co-working mates for self-employed.

Every one of these connections needs time to be built and maintained.
You need to "consistently show up".

Something digital nomads definitely don't do.

That's why it should be treated as a rare exception.
Not a dream to be sold to everyone.

Tell me how I'm wrong.

Just to put things into perspective 😅

Ruoming Pang will make more money than all the major tech CEOs combined.

Meta, where do I apply?

Everyone on LinkedIn:
“Europe is a joke. The US is crushing it.”

The data:
👉 5 of the 8 richest countries on earth are in Europe, lol 😅

↳ The US isn’t even in the top 5.
↳ Four European nations rank higher.
↳ Three of them are in the EU.
↳ The fourth, Switzerland, just proposed a new set of treaties to be even closer to the EU. Some are even calling it a “passive member.”

👉 Of the 10 most liveable cities in the world:
4 are in Europe.
Zero in the US.

👉 On the Human Development Index,
the US ranks 17th.
Europe once again dominates the top ten: 8 are European countries.

👉 Mortality rate:
Even the richest Americans have a mortality rate close to the poorest Northern and Western Europeans.

Michael Jackson what am I missing here?

Maybe the future.
Because this data reflects the present.
But the future might look darker for Europe.

Or... maybe not?

The greatest civilisations in history thrived on democracy and openness.
To people. Capital. Trade. Ideas.

From Ancient Greece to the Roman Republic,
to the US and Western democracies in the '90s and 2000s,
to Switzerland,
a hyper-democracy where >20% of residents are foreigners.

But now, the US is shifting gears.
Tariffs. Immigration restrictions. Democratic cracks?
It's starting to challenge the very openness
that made it the world’s largest economy.

Sure, a few tech giants are making a tiny group of people incredibly rich.
As in: <20 people! those earning 9-figure salaries at Meta. 😅

But what about the millions of others?

Europe is watching closely.
And, so far, it’s not making the same mistakes. (kind of)

The future might not look like what everyone on LinkedIn says it will.

Looking to stand out?

Easy. Gift a Coldplay ticket to to your CEO 😂

I had never heard of Astronomer before.
Now I have.

Now I know who they are, what they do and even found out some teams at my employer use its tools.

Earned media at its best 😅!

ColdplayGate is turning into a marketing case study!

Meet Andy Byron, NOT THE GUY FROM THE COLDPLAY GIG 🤣

I love how he capitalised on the trend and promoted his own video business.

Kudos to you Andy,
I'm sure your wife was relieved to know you didn't waste hundreds of dollars to see Coldplay 😂

Oh, and many brands are capitalising on the trend too.

My favourite is Ryanair - Europe's Favourite Airline:

"Ryanair 🤝 Coldplay
splitting up couples"

Literally just happened to me on a flight last week 😅