I am a victim

Bonjour,

Felt sick today:

Latest livestream can be watched here.

ily,

Writer: Natasha 
Editor: Deana

Now feels like a good time to remind you all that Polymarket is build on Polygon.

This week I fell victim to a rage-bait marketing effort by Friend, an AI wearable startup that offers friendship through a necklace that monitors you.

Their new out-of-home campaign, seen across NYC subways, leans into the dystopian and, based on the replies and quote tweets, is making people feel deeply unsettled.

A few people have received their pre-orders early this month and I found the below takeaway to be very balanced. TLDR: it’s a fresh form factor that could potentially give us a more “eyes up” reality.

There’s a lot that can be said about this type of product, including whether it will work and what it means for our collective future, but what I’m interested in here is the marketing age we’re all subject to and how we participate in it.

Rage-bait marketing isn’t a new phenomenon. Coca-Cola literally launched in 1886 with the premise that it used coca leaf extract, which riled people up over its addictive qualities.

What is new is that we’ve become the distribution channel for these types of ads. When the knee-jerk reaction to seeing something that makes you feel bad is to post about it, creating ads that make people feel bad is the most effective marketing tactic. Want to guess what sparked the 2017 spike in ‘Pepsi’ google searches?

It’s a tried-and-true method that gets people talking. Me writing this newsletter about Friend is a bit of a case-in-point situation. It’s… humiliating that we keep falling for it.

As a marketer, getting anyone to feel anything about your ad is a major W, so game recognize game here. Genuinely:

But here’s my CTA, for both marketers and internet users everywhere: what if we tried to turn the tide toward things that spark joy?

Or at the very least, let’s all know when we are getting played.