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In a recent conversation with a friend, he asked: “How do I promote a product these days if everything just feels like algorithms talking to each other?” It’s a great question. How do you make a genuine connection with values-aligned humans when every interaction is overshadowed by the suspicion of algorithmic intervention?
Search engine marketing, social media ads, programmatic advertising… it’s all just fiddling around with abstract data in the hope that some metric on a dashboard will tick upwards. This may suffice if your goal is to demonstrate your worth as a marketer to a boss or client. But if you’ve built something that you’re proud of and are looking for a discerning audience, endlessly tweaking automation tools and funneling more cash to Big Tech will suck the soul out of you faster than you can say ‘ad spend’.
Connecting more deeply with an audience cannot be put on autopilot. It requires the slow, continuous work of seeking out communities where like-minded individuals reside and engaging with them in a sincere and respectful manner. The commitment and patience required for this work naturally weed out brands that chase immediate growth, allowing smaller projects to step in and find their niche.
Reflecting on my experience with advertisers in DD, I rarely hear stories about unexpected click or conversion rates (although they do exist). What I hear much more frequently from folks who have run campaigns in DD is this: “You have a really lovely audience!” I hear from advertisers who found not just customers but contributors, sponsors, bug-fixers and business partners. They found real humans. Most of the feedback I receive is about the quality of the response to an ad, not the quantity. It is about resonance.
As the boundary between the human-made and the machine-made internet fades, numbers on a dashboard will become less meaningful. Yep, you can always throw money at an algorithmic ad campaign to make certain metrics move. But the real challenge and reward will be in discovering the remaining delightful corners of the web where your ideas and projects can still forge meaningful connections and bring true value to your work.
(You guessed it – here comes my unashamed and honest pitch: connect with the DD audience and support this newsletter by sponsoring an issue or booking a classified slot.)
– Kai
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DD relies on word of mouth
If you’re enjoying DD, chances are your friends and colleagues will, too! Help me reach more readers by sharing the link to this issue with others:
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You receive this email because you subscribed to Dense Discovery, a weekly newsletter with the best of the internet, thoughtfully curated. Writing to you from Melbourne is Kai Brach. Do you have a product or service to promote in DD? Find out more about advertising in DD.
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“What Can I Do?”SPONSOR
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Science for people who give a shit
Want to feel better and help unfuck the world? Get the 6x Webby-nominated weekly newsletter and podcast that’ll help you understand and take action on everything from climate to COVID, hunger to heat, to democracy and data privacy – for free.
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Apps & Sites
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This is a fun idea to add more randomness to the cooking in your household: connect with your partner, set your preferences, then start swiping left or right to reject or accept recipes and hope that you and your partner find a match!
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Automation based on cal events
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This free little macOS app triggers automations (Shortcuts) based on specific criteria of an event in your calendar. For example, when your meeting in your work calendar starts, the app can turn on Focus mode.
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The internet at its best: Songsterr offers a vast, collaboratively built archive of guitar, bass and drum tabs, featuring interactive playback, practice tools and user-friendly features to help musicians learn and master songs. There are over a million tabs to play, all of them available for free.
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Public domain art archive
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I’m always surprised about just how much great art is now available under the public domain, meaning you can use it for free however you see fit. Artvee is an open source archive of over 100,000 public domain works, including illustrations, photos, drawings and paintings. Download art for free in high resolution.
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Worthy Five: Paweł Hawrylak
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Five recommendations by ex-digital product designer and artist Paweł Hawrylak
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A question worth asking:
‘Why?’ There is a design technique called ‘Five Whys’. It’s an ‘iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem’ created by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Corporation. Asking that question repeatedly – even, or especially, outside of work – can foster honesty and vulnerability.
A video worth watching:
The entire Youtube channel Every Frame a Painting offers the most exquisite and fascinating video essays about film form. You can learn so much about storytelling, even if you don’t care much about films. Start with the video about Edgar Wright.
An activity worth doing:
‘Smell the roses.’ Or rather the flowers. Seriously. Go outside without a phone, find an interesting plant and look at it in detail. Smell it, touch it, gently squash it next to your ear. Remember what it feels to be in the world. To disconnect from the constant barrage of everything. To just be.
A book worth reading:
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green is educational, random, poetic and deeply personal. John Green reviews “different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale”. John has a unique ability to find connections and weave a touching and beautiful story into it.
A quote worth repeating:
“If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” by John Irving. Finding what you love is a beast of its own, but living that dream, beating the procrastination, letting go of the excuses is the ultimate challenge.
(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Paweł Hawrylak in one click.)
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Books & Accessories
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Socially transmitted information & distorted democracy
A fascinating exploration of how we receive and transmit news and information in the age of the internet and social media, and how that contributes to a public that is at once under-informed, polarised and engaged. “As information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy.”
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The unseen world of plant intelligence
I’ve heard good things about this book: a compelling probe into the very latest plant science. We generally approach conversations about ‘other intelligences’ with a strong dose of anthropocentrism. Given the right perspective, these conversations reveal a lot about our own intellectual limitations. “In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it?”
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Overheard on Mastodon
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I am conditioned to believe that if I even touch anything in a hotel minibar, my family will be bankrupted and my descendants will be burdened with debt lo unto the seventh generation at which hour Mammon will ascend from his throne in hell to collect the final payment in the form of the blood of innocents.
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Food for Thought
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Heather Havrilesky makes an interesting point when she argues that we live in a world where avoiding emotions like sadness, pain and joy in personal and collective experiences leads to emotional divestment from public life. “Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events – political, ecological, cultural – when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or event, adds up to a kind of merciless sterility and an impatience with meatspace that we’ve never known before. ... Our morality itself has been supplanted by the morality of maneuvering and messaging, of popularity, power, and influence — which is also, not coincidentally, the morality of emotional divestment.” There is a more positive message at the end, so it’s worth reading the whole piece.
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I found the style of this essay (a written version of a commencement speech) quite tedious to read, but the message is a worthy one: despite the individualistic bias imprinted on us by Western culture, we’re a product of a complex network of microbes, genetics and stories. “I’m saying that in addition to the 23 chromosomes you got at birth, which we call ‘nature’, and in addition to the 20 years or so of upbringing which we call ‘nurture’, there’s also something else that forms you: let’s call it a network. Nature, nurture, network.”
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Even if you think you’re a good conversationalist, you will find some useful tips on having better/deeper conversations in this piece. “It’s easy to understand why questions are so charming: They demonstrate your wish to build mutual understanding and give you the chance to validate each other’s experiences. But even if we do pose lots of questions, we may not be asking the right kind.”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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The Great Elephant Migration is a travelling sculpture art exhibition (currently traversing the US) that draws attention to the relationships between people and wildlife, particularly as the human population grows and encroaches on natural habitats. The 100 elephant sculptures were crafted by the CoExistence Collective, an organisation of 200 Indigenous artisans. (via)
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More giant street art! This time by Artez, a Serbian artist whose style mixes photorealism and illustrations.
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The grotesque-ish Evert Latin is a quirky concoction of tradition and innovation, where every element adds its own spark to the typographic feast. It comes in 48 (!) styles and 3 optical sizes.
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Notable Numbers
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After the fatal 737 MAX crashes, Boeing looks set to plead guilty and pay a fine totalling $487 million, roughly 0.6% of the company’s total sales last year, or the equivalent of 2.3 days’ worth of revenue. It falls well short of the ~$25 billion that families of the victims had been pushing for.
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A Nepal government-funded team of soldiers and Sherpas removed 11 tons (24,000 pounds) of garbage, four dead bodies and a skeleton from Everest during this year’s climbing season.
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An Austrian heiress, who inherited tens of millions of euros from her grandmother, opted to let strangers decide where to give away €25 million ($27 million) – at least 90% of her fortune. A group of 50 people, representative of Austria’s demographics in terms of gender, ethnicity and income, decided what charities to give the money to.
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Classifieds
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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