It’s almost Leo SZN!

Hello!

It’s been a while! You probably forgot you were subscribed to this! That’s okay I haven’t forgotten about you yet. I’ve just been soul searching. Some issues might get personal soon but not this one.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my head lately and just wanted to do some quick bites of them before deciding to do a deep dive. Many of them are a bit more business oriented than what I usually write about so sorry if it doesn’t excite you. Any who let’s get on with it.

Should Microsoft still do gaming?

Microsoft just literally did another round of layoffs and will probably do more this year let’s be real. Many of the layoffs come from the Xbox team many of whom have been working in the gaming space for years. I could go on and on about AI, destroying creativity and the tech bubble and so on for another time. With these layoffs Microsoft gutted many game studios and cancelled a ton of new games. So like what’s the point of being in gaming? Microsoft has been spending billions buying gaming studios and rights to money printing game franchises for years now and they’ve literally done nothing with it ever. Xbox has nothing really going for it. Like why buy all these studios just to shelve games so you can’t make anymore money with them and then completely gut those studios so they can barely operate. It doesn’t make business sense. Video games can make money it’s not like they aren’t profitable.

Ryan Trahan could change advertising

If you don’t know Ryan Trahan is currently doing a daily YouTube series where he travels to all 50 states and it’s averaging over 1.5 million views a video so far. Ryan isn’t promoting any brands directly in the videos except his own candy brand but brands can play significant roles in the video if they donate to charity which can activate challenges for him. So the brand gets a shout out and directly influences the narrative of the video instead of taking away from it. They also can get shout outs at the end of the video. Instead of doing this for donors if people did this with actual paid brands it could be a really interesting way to do ads moving forward. Honestly I’m surprised not more advertisers aren’t trying to take advantage of getting some space in the videos.

Is Kid with Crocs ahead of its time?

Kid with Crocs was a collab done with YouTuber Anth Po and Crocs as a brand deal. It was a TikTok and instagram account about someone posting crocs on statues around NYC. It went a little viral and got around 800k followers across both accounts. It was a mix between new wave art and a really creative ad. It also took incredible effort to do but was it more effective than putting crocs on like a big artist and saying pose? I think that’s why we haven’t seen more brands do more creative deals like this. They don’t get it yet. People were obsessed with kid with crocs it was almost a movement. A regular brand deal might not have gotten all that passion from consumers.

More things

I got a few more things rustling in my head. Well mostly just thinking about if the NFL colluded against Sanders in the draft and how Gnarly by katseye took 20 listens to become a banger. I’m sure more random bites of ideas will come around.

Well anyways thanks for reading as always I appreciate all of you for sticking around. I might explore one of these ideas and dive deeper so be on the lookout for that. Heck I might even put it on LinkedIn. It’s a tough job market still it might be good to let employers know I can enjoy writing and I be thinking about some of these things.

See you soon!