Free Speech and Heart Eye Emojis
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #133 ❤️
This week we’re talking the affront on free speech that is “being mean to Elon Musk”, the advertising genius of Spotify Wrapped, and what it really means to be irreplaceable in the workplace. Spoiler alert – you don’t really want that.
Also – do we prefer emojis to corporate jargon? Absolutely
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Twitter vs Apple
This week in the Muskoverse, Musk took on Apple, asking Tim Cook if he hates free speech because Apple have largely stopped advertising on Twitter.
This may have something to do with the fact that most advertising services have advised the brands they work with not to advertise on Twitter for many various reasons, not least the blue tick debacle which gave free reign to anyone to speak on behalf of literally anyone, the droves of people quitting the platform, and worries of literal Nazis all over the place.
But, sure, it’s probably because Tim Cook hates free speech. Maybe Elon Musk loves it a little bit too much, and his definition of free speech is basically the embodiment of amoral chaos, but that’s beside the point for the moment.
Our favourite title for the covering of this news is on Vice and reads – “Elon Musk Wonders does the company that fought the FBI in court to prevent giving it the text messages of terrorists hate free speech because it stopped giving me money”.
Touché.
But don’t worry, the boys have talked it out, Tim gave Elon Musk a tour of a lake at Apple HQ and apparently never even considered taking it off the app store like Elon was raving about, so silly!
Weird to get a live tweet of internal discussions between huge tech companies and their private conversations, but that’s life with Musk at the helm of Twitter, whether we, or Tim Cook, like it or not.
#2 - Spotify Wrapped – The Ads That Literally Create Themselves
It’s that time of the year again.
Depending on how much of a scrooge you are, Spotify Wrapped is either an annoying thing that you skip through on everyone’s stories, or your yearly opportunity to show off how cool your music taste is, or draw attention to what a difficult year you’ve had and underline it with how many times you listened to the same song by Adele…
But that’s not all it is, most importantly, it’s a piece of marketing genius from Spotify.
They’ve managed to humanize data and make it individually relevant, so much so that you want to share it rather than ask them to stop tracking you.
One day a year everyone who uses Spotify literally posts an ad for Spotify on their social media, and they’re excited about it. It’s an ingeniously insidious way to get your user base to advertise for you, and enthusiastically to boot.
Even the people complaining about it, the memes either blasting it or, as happens every year, making fun of people who use Apple Music for not being part of the cool gang, are literally engaging in guerrilla advertising campaigns for Spotify.
Nobody else has quite managed to capture the same end of year round up energy, except maybe Instagram with their top 9 most-liked photos. While that may be because of the unique nature of music and our desire to share it rather than any particular magic from the Spotify brand, they certainly got there first and left Apple Music in the dirt, if nothing else.
#3 - Should You Be Irreplaceable At Work?
The cliché of “everyone is replaceable” in the workplace has often been used since Covid to argue that employee loyalty should be relative, as everyone is replaceable to their boss. The depressing idea of, if you die tomorrow, your desk will be filled in a week.
However, the idea of being irreplaceable is just as thorny.
Logically you would think that being irreplaceable is the best way to get ahead in your sector and have opportunities to grow within your role. But if you’re considered “irreplaceable”, prepare to have the workload and the pressure to go with it, as it suggests that nobody else can do your job – what about when you need to take a vacation?
Being completely irreplaceable is a one-way ticket to burnout, and for those in a managerial role could mean you’re not passing on knowledge and helping your team reach their full potential effectively.
Another side of the coin, management who sing the praises of “irreplaceable” workers may need to take a minute to think about what that means, not least because of the pressure on the employee themselves.
If every member of your team is irreplaceable, then there’s too much work for the actual people, or the goals being set are unrealistic. In this type of situation, no one can take a vacation without increasing their colleagues’ workloads, and a vacation where your co-worker hates you when you get back isn’t much of a vacation.
Basically, no one should be “irreplacable” but that doesn’t mean we’re all interchangeable – everyone can bring something unique to the table without being the only one who knows how to do that thing in excel that we need to do.
#4 - The Emoji Hard At Work
How has the emoji transformed the way we talk to each other at work?
Slack noted a major spike in the use of the heart emoji when work from home was announced at the very beginning of the pandemic – the heart emoji was replacing the smiles, nods, and bringing of coffees that were the usual forms of support in difficult times between employees.
But how has our use of chat evolved over the last two years of using it as our major communication tool?
With most of our conversations still being done via chat now, as many of us are still working from home or not always in the office the same time as our colleagues, workplace language has evolved to become something different, less formal, and maybe a bit more fun overall.
One interesting thing to note is that if emojis have entered the workplace chat, workplace jargon has taken a hit, with the use of terms like “circle back” and “take this offline” being replaced with more concise language – there’s just not as much need for filler or grandstanding when communicating by text.
Another funny thing about our use of emojis between colleagues is that employees largely note that their company has develop their own internal language and use of emojis that differs from the way they use it in other contexts, i.e. with friends and family.
Will it now be weird to talk to our colleagues in person, without the help of emojis and the equalizing nature of text?
#5 - Crypto Centre Stage at Fifa – Is Now Really A Good Time?
After seeing photos online of the famous ad space bordering the World Cup emblazoned with ads for Crpyto.com, we were certainly a little surprised.
These ads in the primest of prime-time ad space in the sporting world will get a LOT of attention for cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, and it may be the most mainstream advertising we’ve seen for cryptocurrency, but we can’t help but note that it comes at a pretty weird time for the crypto market.
The Cryptosphere went absolutely AWOL, as we covered in this newsletter, a few months ago, leading to huge losses such as those seen in the famous Wall Street Crash of 2008, and hasn’t quite managed to get on track yet.
If we compare the crypto rush of last year, using the buzz of NFT’s as an example and the NFT bought by YouTube millionaire Logan Paul for 632 thousand dollars, was brought down to a value of 10 dollars this October.
And in recent news, which is still unfolding in court, FTX CEO and “crypto tycoon” Sam Bankman-Fried saw his fortune gutted by 94% in one day earlier this month, which is the single biggest wealth collapse a millionaire has experienced in a 24-hour period.
Will these ads fix the market? Or just bring even more chaos to the crumbling crypto world…
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Face Paint Vs. Facial Recognition Technology
The Qatar World Cup is using a LOT of facial recognition technology in their stadiums, officially for safety reasons, but not everyone is super keen on sharing their face.
Can face paint, in your team colours of course, trick the AI behind these cameras?
To find out more on how you can retain talent without asking them to be irreplaceable, or how we can help you with digital solutions to your business challenges, check out our case studies.