Variety is the spice of life, and in that spirit, we’ve made sure today’s topics have nothing to do with each other. 

First, how can the CEO of a $80 billion company have time to play Elden Ring, be a dad, AND create a team of AI employees to write him a speech? Find out…

Next, we cover what growth agencies can’t do for you. And who can help instead. 

Then we cap it off with a warning: there might be some Meta-instigated legal battles ahead thanks to the all AI bugs popping up in people’s ad accounts (with examples). 

This week:

• The Wildest CEO Speech Ever (by Tobi Lutke)

• The difference between growth and ad agencies

• (Meta) legal battles ahead?

The wildest CEO speech ever

Lulu Cheng Meservey, whose credentials are too long to write, witnessed an exceptional talk by Shopify CEO, Tobi Lutke. 

The occasion: Shopify’s Summer Edition 2024 (broken down in our issue #20). 

Lulu’s opinion on the talk Tobi gave was lukewarm. Not great, not bad. Kind of, whatever. Tobi himself rated it a 7/10, so - moderately above average.

But things took a sudden turn halfway through. 

But before we explain how, a bit of background on Tobi - 

Aside from founding Shopify, he started rewriting his video games’ code at around 10 years old, and personally coded his first eCommerce shop, Snowdevil. The man is a programmer. 

Somehow, he has time to run Shopify, be a dad, and play Elden Ring, which, for those who don’t know, is ridiculously hard (funny compilation of people raging).

Turns out, he still has time left over because here’s what he did. 

He was struggling to write his speech for the Shopify Editions, so he built a team of AI employees to do it for him. 

Each of them had a set of specialized skills - a role in the team - and worked both individually and in collaboration to come up with Tobi’s speech. He even coded in a virtual water cooler where the AI agents would sometimes cross paths and chat (as they were also programmed to feel thirsty.)

Tobi either doesn't sleep or has a hyperbolic time chamber. 

The AI team autonomously researched, conceptualized, drafted, and designed the slides for Tobi’s talk. He spent the second half of it walking the crowd through his thought and design process for the AI agents, along with learnings he gleaned while tinkering. 

Form-wise, the presentation remained non-descript – basic language, slides, and delivery. However, Lulu reports that the energy in the room at this point was electric. 

Beyond the feat itself, Lulu thinks the impact came from people being reminded that their CEO is still a practitioner, and a master, of his craft. 

We’ll let Lulu take it away: 

The difference between growth and ad agencies

In his weekly Podcast, Taylor Holiday from the Common Thread Co. growth agency, pointed out a common misconception customers have about what growth agencies do. 

Oftentimes, they go to a great agency, give them a ton of money, and expect the agency to produce a ton of mind-blowing creative that will magically transform the brand into something more culturally relevant. 

But instead of a 4x or 5x magnitude of change in their ROAS, they get a 1.5x. 

Is this a failure on the growth agency side? 

Not necessarily. 

Growth agencies do iteration. And sometimes production, but what they aren’t is a “Mad Men” style agency, whose job is to come up with an amazing story, or a ground-breaking campaign idea. 

If you want those, you need to go talk to a brand or advertising agency.

Because here’s the point - if you want the 5x return, your campaigns need to connect with people in a deep, multi-faceted way. Or in Taylor’s words: “capture the zeitgeist”. 

As a brief reminder, here’s what growth agencies do: 

• Growth Hacking: smart, non-classical tactics to drive growth. 

• Performance Marketing: data and analytics-driven marketing ROI optimization. This can include ad creative iteration (small changes to drive better results).

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): website conversion rate optimization.

• Customer Acquisition and Retention: can include personalization and customer success programs. 

• Marketing Automation: tools and platforms to scale things like email or social media marketing. 

In other words, growth agencies will change how you do your marketing. 

They won’t change what your marketing says. 

Conversely, an advertisement agency does something like this. 

The Old Spice story

You probably know the brand, and even the ad that made it blow up in 2010: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”.

What you probably haven’t seen is what their ads looked like before that: 

Above, Old Spice, circa 1962. Pretty cool. But 20-30 years later, outdated for sure. 

Then, we got the above in the 90s. The lean into “manliness” is running out of gas. 

The one above is from 2005. At this point, the brand is struggling. Its clientele is all middle-aged to older men, and its owner, P&G, wants to reach younger generations. 

It goes to Wieman+Kennedy, an advertisement agency known for its creativity. 

Here’s where the transformation begins. 

Above, the “Keep it Clean” campaign of 2007. 

Nothing about “men” or “manliness”. Just a humorously suggestive image and messaging.

More humor.

You get the point. 

All of this culminated in the “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad, whose genius was in targeting women (since they often control the budget for household products.) 

Bear in mind, however, that Wieden+Kennedy started working with Old Spice in 2006, but their massive break only came 4 years later. It takes a lot of work. 

Takeaway: growth agencies will help you market better while ad agencies will fundamentally redesign your message.

Iterative marketing processes can only do so much if your message doesn’t resonate with people, so you might want to take a look at that first if your ads are struggling. 

Legal battles ahead?

Post by Cory Dobbin from Shoelace. 

If true, this is indeed a problem best solved earlier than later. 

Here’s why. 

According to Meta’s T&Cs regarding its AI modifications to ads, all liability falls upon the advertiser as they are responsible for double-checking the ad before posting. 

In essence, Meta’s base stance is: “deny all responsibility”. 

This means that an issue would have to escalate quite high before they even get responsive. 

But wait, are they really running old, weird, and unapproved AI-generated additions to ads? 

Well, it’s hard to tell without a detailed look at people’s accounts, but a quick search pulls up a number of reports of Meta’s AI doing weird stuff:

• John Tardiff implying Meta doesn’t want to let you toggle off AI optimizations.

• Barry Hott reporting unwanted AI changes to an ad of his:

• This random guy on Reddit:

The Reddit thread is particularly interesting. 

Users discuss the possibility of AI systems confusing your data with that of other users, which is a whole new potential flaw. 

We knew this already, but AI remains buggy. Perhaps it’s only natural for self-teaching black boxes that are constantly tinkered with. But as they are given longer leashes, more unwanted results are bound to occur. 

Takeaway: You’d do well to prepare for the worst-case scenario. And, uh, check your ad creative frequently, just in case a ghost in the machine has decided to change things up.

Quick hits

• In case you missed it, Taylor Holiday from the Common Thread Collective dropped his 25 takes on eComm. 

• Cody Plofker from Jones Road Beauty did too. 

• Amazon is planning to launch a “bargain price” alternative to Temu.

• Zombie brands haunt the DTC landscape.